X\\' v <- . \ *;. X WEE WILLIE WINKIE AND OTHER STORIES BY RUDYARD KIPLING NEW YORK MANHATTAN PRESS 474 WEST BROADWAY WEE WILLIE WINKIE. " AN officer and a gentleman." His full name was Percival William Wil- liams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His mother's ayah called him W\\\ie-l?al>a, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did not help matters. His father was the Colonel of the i95th, and as soon as Wee Willie Winkie was old enough to understand what Military Discipline meant, Colonel Williams put him under it. There was no other way of managing the child. When he was good for a week, he drew good- conduct pay ; and when he was bad, he was- deprived of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for India offers so many chances* to little six-year-olds of going wrong. Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He ac- cepted Brandis, a subaltern of the igsth, on. 2234735 8 Wee Willie Winkie sight. Brandis was having tea at the Col- onel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the com- pound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered him- self of his opinion. " I like you," said he slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to Brandis. " I like you. I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do you mind being called Coppy ? it is because of ve hair, you know." Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie Winkie's peculiarities. He would look at a stranger for some time, and then, without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name stuck. No regi- mental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He lost his good-con- duct badge for christening the Commissioner's wife " Fobs ; " but nothing that the Colonel could do made the Station forego the nick- name, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. " Fobs " till the end of her stay. So Brandis was christened " Coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation of the regiment. If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. " The Colonel's son " was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie Wee Willie Winkie 9 was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. " I want my hair like Sergeant Tummil's," said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his father abetting, the sacrifice was ac- complished. Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on Lieutenant Brandis henceforward to be called " Coppy " for the sake of brevity Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his comprehension. Coppy returned his liking with interest Coppy had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie. Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy ; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled " sput- ter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the unmanly weak- io Wee Willie Winkie ness of kissing vehemently kissing a " big girl," Miss Allardyce to wit ? In the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and can- tered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see. Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he felt instinct- ively that this was a matter on which Coppy ought first to be consulted. " Coppy," shouted Wee Willie Winkie, rein- ing up outside that subaltern's bungalow early one morning " I want to see you, Coppy 1 " " Come in, young 'un," returned Coppy, who was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. " What mischief have you been getting into now ? " Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notor- iously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue. " I've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long chair with a studious affectation of the Colonel's languor after a hot parade. He buried his freckled nose in a teacup and, with eyes staring roundly over the rim, asked : " I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls ? " " By Jove 1 You're beginning early. Who do you want to kiss ? " " No one. My muvver's always kissing me if I don't stop her. If it isn't pwoper, how Wee Willie Winkie u was you kissing Major Allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve canal ? " Coppy's brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce had with great craft managed to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. There were urgent and imperative reasons why Major Allardyce should not know how mat- ters stood for at least another month, and this small marplot had discovered a great deal too much. "I saw you," said Wee Willie Winkie calmly. " But ve groom didn't see. I said, ' Hutjao? " " Oh, you had that much sense, you young Rip," groaned poor Coppy, half amused and half angry. " And how many people may you have told about it ? " " Only me myself. You didn't tell when I twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was lame ; and I fought you wouldn't like." " Winkie," said Coppy enthusiastically, shak- ing the small hand, " you're the best of good fellows. Look here, you can't understand all these things. One of these days hang it, how can I make you see it I I'm going to marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, as you say. If your young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go and tell your father." " What will happen ? " said Wee Willie Winkie, who firmly believed that his father was omnipotent. 12 Wee Willie Winkie " I shall get into trouble," said Coppy,, play- ing his trump card with an appealing look at the holder of the ace. "Ven I won't," said Wee Willie Winkie briefly. " But my faver says it's un-man-ly to be always kissing, and I didn't fink you'd do vat, Coppy." " I'm not always kissing, old chap. It's only ' now and then, and when you're bigger you'll do it too. Your father meant it's not good : for little boys." " Ah' I " said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully enlightened. " It's like ve sputter-brush ? " " Exactly," said Coppy gravely. "But I don't fink I'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept my muvver. And I must vat, you know." There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkie. " Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy ? " '" Awfully 1 " said Coppy. " Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha or me ? " " Jt's in a different way," said Coppy. " You see, one of these days Miss Allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and com- mand the Regiment and all sorts of things. It's quite different, you see." "Very well," said Wee Willie Winkie, rising 1 ; " If you're fond of ve big girl, I won't tell 'any one. 1 I must go now." Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to Wee Willie Winkie 13 the door, adding : " You're the best of little fellows, Winkie. I tell you what. In thirty days from now you can tell if you like tell any one you like." Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engagement was dependent on a little child's word. Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie's idea of truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. Wee Willie Winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss Allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady, was used to regard her gravely with unwinking eye. He was trying to discover why Coppy should have kissed her. She was not half so nice as his own mother. On the other hand, she was Coppy's property, and would in time belong to him. Therefore it behooved him to treat her with as much respect as Coppy's big sword or shiny pistol. The idea that he shared a great secret in common with Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. Then the Old Adam broke out, and he made what he called a " camp-fire " at the bottom of the garden. How could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the Col- onel's little hayrick and consumed a week's store for the horses ? Sudden and swift was the punishment deprivation of the good- conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days confinement to barracks the house and 14 Wee Willie Winkie veranda coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance. He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up with a quivering under- lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery called by him " my quarters." Coppy came in the after- noon and attempted to console the culprit. " I'm under awwest," said Wee Willie Winkie mournfully, " and I didn't ought to speak to you." Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house that was not for- bidden and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a ride. " Where are you going " cried Wee Willie Winkie. " Across the river," she answered, and trot- ted forward. Now the cantonment in which the i95th lay was bounded on the north by a river dry in the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even Coppy the almost almighty Coppy had never set foot beyond it Wee Willie Winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the his- tory of the Princess and the Goblins a most wonderful tale of a land where the Goblins were always warring with the children of men until they were defeated by one Curdie. Ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare Wee Willie Winkie 15 black and purple hills across the river were inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth, every one had said that there lived the Bad Men. Even in his own house the lower halves of the win- dows were covered with green paper on ac- count of the Bad Men who might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfortable bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, which was the end of all the Earth, lived the Bad Men. And here was Major Al- lardyce's big girl, Coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders ! What would Coppy say if anything happened to her ? If the Goblins ran off with her as they did with Curdie's Princess ? She must at all hazards be turned back. The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a moment on the very terrible wrath of his father ; and then broke his arrest! It was a crime unspeakable. The low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie Winkie guilty of mutiny. The drowsy groom handed him his mount, and, since the one great sin made all others insig- nificant, Wee Willie Winkie said that he was going to ride over to Coppy Sahib, and went out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower-borders. 16 Wee Willie Winkie The devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of Humanity. He turned into the road, leaned forward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the direc- tion of the river. But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long canter of a Waler. Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the Police-post, when all the guards were asleep, and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce, a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-as- sumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson. Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, Wee Willie Winkie saw the Waler blunder and come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. Having thus demon- strated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony. Wee Willie Winkie 17 " Are you badly, badly hurted ? " shouted Wee Willie Winkie, as soon as he was within range. " You didn't ought to be here." "I don't know," said Miss Allardyce rue- fully, ignoring the reproof. " Good gracious, child, what are you doing here ? " " You said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted Wee Willie Winkie, throwing himself off his pony. " And nobody not even Cop- py must go acwoss ve wiver, and I came after you ever so hard, but you wouldn't stop, and now you've hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angwy wiv me, and I've bwoken my awwest 1 I've bwoken my awwest 1 " The future Colonel of the igsth sat down and sobbed. In spite of the pain in her ankle the girl was moved. " Have you ridden all the way from canton- ments, little man ? What for ? " " You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me so 1 " wailed Wee Willie Winkie disconsolately. " I saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of you van Bell or ve Butcha or me. And so I came. You must get up and come back. You didn't ought to be here. Vis is a bad place, and I've bwoken my awwest." " I can't move, Winkie," said Miss Allar- dyce, with a groan. " I've hurt my foot. What shall I do ? " She showed a readiness to weep afresh, which steadied Wee Willie Winkie, who had been brought up to believe that tears were the 2 r8 Wee Willie Winkie depth of unmanliness. Still, when one is as great a sinner as Wee Willie Winkie, even a man may be permitted to break down. " Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, " when you've rested a little, ride back and tell them to send out something to carry me back in. It hurts fearfully." The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce closed her eyes ; the pain was nearly making her faint. She was roused by Wee Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony's neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker. The little animal headed towards the cantonments. " Oh, Winkie I What are you doing ? " " Hush 1 " said Wee Willie Winkie. "Vere's a man coming one of ve Bad Men. I must stay wiv you. My faver says a man must always look after a girl. Jack will go home, and ven vey'll come and look for us. Vat's why I let him go." Not one man but two or three had appeared ifrom behind the rocks of the hills, and the 'heart of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just in this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out and vex Curdie's soul. Thus had they played in Curdie's garden, he had seen the picture, and thus had they frightened the Princess's nurse. He heard them talking to each other, and recognized with joy the bastard Pushto that he had picked up from one of his father's grooms lately dismissed. People who Wee Willie Winkie 19 spoke that tongue could not be the Bad Men. They were only natives after all. They came up to the boulders on which Miss Allardyce's horse had blundered. Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race, aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "Jaof" The pony had crossed the river-bed. The men laughed, and laughter from na- tives was the one thing Wee Willie Winkie could not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted and why they did not depart. Other men with most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty strong. Miss Allardyce screamed. " Who are you ? " said one of the men. " I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into cantonments and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that the Colonel's son is here with her." " Put our feet into the trap ? " was the laughing reply. " Hear this boy's speech ! " "Say that I sent you I, the Colonel's son. They will give you money." " What is the use of this talk ? Take up the child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom. Ours are the villages 2O Wee Willie Winkie on the heights," said a voice in the back ground. These were the Bad Men worse than Gob- lins and it needed all Wee Willie Winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. But he felt that to cry before a. native, excepting only his mother's ayah, would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. More- over, he, as future Colonel of the. i95th, had that grim regiment at his back. " Are you going to carry us away ? " said Wee Willie Winkie, very blanched and un- comfortable. " Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur" said the tallest of the men, " and eat you afterwards." "That is child's talk," said Wee Willie Winkie. " Men do not eat men." A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly, " And if you do carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will come up in a day and kill you all without leaving one. Who will take my message to the Colonel Sahib ? " Speech in any vernacular and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three -was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his " r's " and " th's " aright. Another man joined the conference, cry- ing : " O foolish men ! What this babe says is true. He is the heart's heart of those white troops. For the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the reg* Wee Willie Winkie 21 imeit will break loose and gut the valley. Our villages are in the valley, and we shall not escape. That regiment are devils. They broke Khoda Yar's breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles ; and if we touch this child they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains. Better to send a man back to take the mes- sage and get a reward. I say that this child is their God, and that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him." It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom of the Colonel, who made the diver- sion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. Wee Willie Winkie, standing over Miss Allardyce, waited the upshot Surely his " wegimcnt, ' his own " wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of his extrem- ity The riderless pony brought the news to the 1 95th, though there had been consternation in the Colonel's household for an hour be- fore. The little beast came in through the parade-ground in front of the main barracks, where the .men were settling down to play Spoil-five till the afternoon. Devlin, the color Sergeant of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each Room Cor- poml as he passed. " Up, ye beggars I 22 Wee Willie Winkie There's something happened to the Colonel's son," he shouted. " He couldn't fall off 1 S'elp me, 'e couldn't fall off," blubbered a drummer-boy. " Go an' hunt acrost the river. He's over there if he's anywhere, an* maybe those Pathans have got 'im. For the love o* Gawd don't look for 'im in the nullahs 1 Let's go over the river." " There's sense in Mott yet," said Devlin. " E Company, double out to the river sharp 1" So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, double for the dear life, and in the rear toiled the perspiring Sergeant, adjuring it to double yet faster. The cantonment was alive with the men of the igsth hunting for Wee Willie Winkie, and the Colonel finally overtook E Company, far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed. Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie's Bad Men were discussing the wis- dom of carrying off the child and the girl, a lookout fired two shots. t'What have I said?" shouted Din Ma- hommed. " There is the warning 1 The pulton are out already and are coming across the plain 1 Get away 1 Let us not be seen with the boy 1 " The men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared. " The wegiment is coming," said Wee Wee Willie Winkie 23 Willie Winkie confidently to Miss Allardyce, " and it's all wight. Don't cwy 1 " He needed the advice himself, for ten min- utes later, when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allar- dyce's lap. And the men of the iQ5th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings ; and Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men. But there was balm for his dignity. His father assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel a story that made him proud of his son. " She belonged to you, Coppy," said Wee Willie Winkie, indicating Miss Allardyce with a grimy forefinger. " I knew she didn't ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment would come to me if I sent Jack home." " You're a hero, Winkie," said Coppy " a pukka hero 1 " " I don't know what vat means," said Wee Willie Winkie, " but you mustn't call me Winkie any no more. I'm Percival Will'am Will'ams."' And in this manner did Wee Willie Win- kle enter into his manhood. BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP. BAA Baa, Black Sheep, Have you any wool ? Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full. One for the Master, one for the Dame None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane. THE FIRST BAG. * WHEN I was in my father's house, I was in a better place." THEY were putting Punch to bed the ayah and the hamal and Meeta, the big Surti boy with the red and gold turban. Judy, already tucked inside her mosquito-curtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been accorded to Punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous. He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs defiantly. 24 Baa Baa, Black Sheep 25 " Punch-/W><j going to bye-lo ? " said the ayah suggestively. " No," said Punch. " Punch-fata wants the story about the Ranee that was turned into a tiger. Meeta must tell it, and the hamal shall hide behind the door and make tiger noises at the proper time." " But ]udy-l>al>a will wake up," said the ayah. "]\idy-baba is waking," piped a small voice from the mosquito-curtains. " There was a Ranee that lived at Delhi. Go on, Meeta," and she fell fast asleep again while Meeta began the story. Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale with so little opposition. He reflected for a long time. The hamal made the tiger- noises in twenty different keys. " 'Top ! " said Punch, authoritatively. " Why doesn't Papa come in and say he is going to give me put-put 1 " " Punch-&al>a is going away," said the ayah. " In another week there will be no Punch- baba to pull my hair any more." She sighed softly, for the boy of the household was very dear to her heart. "Up the Ghauts in a train ? " said Punch, standing on his bed. " All the way to Nas- sick where the Ranee-Tiger lives ? " " Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib," said Meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. " Down to the sea where the cocoanuts are 26 Wee Willie Winkie thrown, and across the sea in a big ship, Will you take Meeta with you to Belait ? " " You shall all come," said Punch, from the height of Meeta's strong arms. " Meeta and the ayah and the hamal and Bhini-in-the- Garden, and the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake- man." There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he replied " Great is the Sahib's favor," and laid the little man down in the bed, while the ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the door- way, lulled him to sleep with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman Cath- olic Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into a ball and slept. Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three, and she would not have understood. But Punch was five ; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a trip to Nassick. And Papa and Mama sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals, and took long council together over a bundle of letters bearing the Rockling- ton postmark. " The worst of it is that one can't be cer- tain of anything," said Papa, pulling his Baa Baa, Black Sheep 27 mustache. " The letters in themselves are ex- cellent, and the terms are moderate enough." " The worst of it is that the children will grow up away from me," thought Mama ; but she did not say it aloud. " We are only one case among hundreds," said Papa, bitterly. " You shall go Home again in five years, dear." " Punch will be ten then and Judy eight. Oh, how long and long and long the time will be 1 And we have to leave them among strangers." " Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make friends wherever he goes." " And who could help loving my Ju ? " They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and I think that Mama was crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she knelt down by the side of Judy's cot. The ayah saw her and put up a prayer that the memsahib might never find the love of her children taken away from her and given to a stranger. Mama's own prayer was a slightly illog- ical one. Summarized it ran : " Let stran- gers love my children and be as good to them as I should be, but let me preserve their love and their confidence for ever and ever. Amen." Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a little. That seems to be the only answer to the prayer : and, next day, they all went down, to the sea, and there was 28 Wee Willie Winkie a scene at the Apollo Bunder when Punch discovered that Meeta could not. come too, and Judy learned that the ayah. must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand fasci- nating things in the rope, block, and steam- pipe line , on the big P. and O. Steamer, long before Meeta and the ayah had dried their tears. " Come back, Punch-&z&z," said the ayah. " Come back," said Meeta, " and be a Burra Sahib." " Yes," said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-by. "Yes, I will come back, and 'I will be a Burra Sahib Baha dur > " At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England, which, he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry breeze, and Punch was very sick. " When I come back to Bombay," said Punch on his recovery, " I will come by the road in a broom-gtiarri. This is a very naughty ship." The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani, once his second-speech. But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached Southampton, Mama Baa Baa, Black Sheep 29 asked her if she would not like to see the ttya/t again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and she said : " Ayah ! What ayah ? " Mama cried over her and Punch marveled. It was then that he heard for the first time Mama's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy forget Mama. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that Mama, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious rune that he called " Sonny, my soul," Punch could not understand what Mama meant. But he strove to do his duty ; for, the moment Mama left the cabin, he said to Judy : " Ju, you bemember Mama ? " " 'Torse I do," said Judy. " Then always bemember Mama, 'r else I won't give you the paper ducks that the red- haired Captain Sahib cut out for me." So Judy promised always to " bemember Mama." Many and many a time was Mama's com- mand laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child. " You must make haste and learn to write, Punch," said Papa, " and then you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay." " I'll come into your room," said Punch, and Papa choked. 30 Wee Willie Winkle Papa and Mama were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy to task for not " bemembering," they choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked ; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth for a kiss. Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth : Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for any- thing, and Papa and Mama grave, distracted, and choking. " Where," demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atop " where is our broom- gharri? This thing talks so much that / can't talk. Where is our own broom-gftarri ? When I was at Bandstand before we corned away, I asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, ' I will give it you ' I like Inver- arity Sahib and I said, ' Can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the win- dows ? ' And Inverarity Sahib said No, and laughed. / can put my legs through the pully- wag loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look ! Oh, Mama's cry- ing again I I didn't know. I wasn't not to do so." Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler : the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the Baa Baa, Black Sheep 31 door of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend " Downe Lodge." Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavor. It stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered legs. " Let us go away," said Punch. " This is not a pretty place." But Mama and Papa and Judy had quitted the cab, and all the luggage was being taken into the house. At the doorstep stood a woman in black, and she smiled largely, with dry chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg behind him a boy of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed the trio, and advanced without fear, as he had been ac- customed to do in Bombay when callers came and he happened to be playing in the veranda. " How do you do ? " said he. " I am Punch." But they were all looking at the luggage all except the gray man, who shook hands with Punch and said he was " a smart little fellow." There was much running about and banging of boxes, and Punch curled him- self up on the sofa in the dining-room and considered things. " I don't like these people," said Punch. " But never mind. We'll go away soon. We have always went away soon from everywhere. I wish we was gone back to Bombay soon." The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mama wept at intervals, and showed the woman 32 Wee Willie Winkie in black all Punch's clothes a liberty which Punch resented. " But p'r'aps she's a new white ayah" he thought. " I'm to call her Antirosa, but she doesn't call me Sahib. She says just Punch," he confided to Judy. " What is Antirosa ? " Judy didn't know. Neither she nor Punch had heard anything of an animal called an aunt. Their world had been Papa and Mama, who knew everything, permitted everything, and loved everybody even Punch when he used to go into the garden at Bombay and fill his nails with mold after the weekly nail- cutting, because, as he explained between two strokes of the slipper to his sorely tried Father, his fingers " felt so new at the ends." In an undefined way Punch judged it advis- able to keep both parents between himself and the woman in black and the boy in black hair. He did not approve of them. He liked the gray man, who had expressed a wish to be called " Uncleharri." They nodded at each other when they met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with rigging that took up and down. " She is a model of the Brisk the little Brisk that was sore exposed that day at Navarino." The gray man hummed the last words and fell into a reverie. "I'll tell you about Navarino, Punch, when we go for walks together ; and you mustn't touch the ship, be- cause she's the Brisk." Baa Baa, Black Sheep 33 Long before that walk, the first of many, was taken, they roused Punch and Judy in the chill dawn of a February morning to say Good-by ; and of all people in the wide earth to Papa and Mama both crying this time. Punch was very sleepy and Judy was cross. " Don't forget us," pleaded Mama. " Oh, my little son, don't forget us, and see that Judy remembers too." " I've told Judy to bemember," said Punch, wriggling, for his father's beard, tickled his neck. " I've told Judy ten forty 'leven thousand times. But Ju's so young quite a baby isn't she ? " " Yes," said Papa, " quite a baby, and you must be good to Judy, and make haste to learn to write and and and "... Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was fast asleep, and there was the rattle of a., cab below. Papa and Mama had gone away. Not to Nassick ; that was across the sea. To some place much nearer, of course, and equally of course they would return. They came back after dinner-parties, and Papa had come back after he had been to a place called " The Snows," and Mama with him, to Punch and Judy at Mrs, Inver- arity's house in Marine Lines. Assuredly they would come back again. So Punch fell asleep till the true morning, when the black- haired boy ,met him with the information that Papa and Mama had gone to Bombay, and 3 34 Wee Willie Winkie that he and Judy were to stay at Downe Lodge " forever." Antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said that Harry had spoken the truth, and that it behooved Punch to fold up his clothes neatly on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly with Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the meaning of separation. When a matured man discovers that he has been deserted by Providence, deprived of his God, and cast without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon a world which is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find expression in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally supposed to be im- pressive. A child, under exactly similar circumstances as far as its knowledge goes, cannot very well curse God and die. It howls till its nose is red, its eyes are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy, through no fault of their own, had lost all their world, They sat in the hall and cried ; the black- haired boy looking on from afar. The model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray man assured Punch that he might pull the rigging up and down as much as he pleased ; and Judy was promised free entry into the kitchen. They wanted Papa and Mama gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and their grief while it lasted was withoul remedy. Baa Baa, Black Sheep 35 When the tears ceased the house was very still. Antirosa had decided it was better to let the children " have their cry out," and the boy had gone to school. Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed mournfully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three short years had not taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. There was a distant, dull boom in the air a repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in Bombay in the Monsoon. It was the sea the sea that must be traversed before any one could get to Bombay. " Quick, Ju 1 " he cried, " we're close to the sea. I can hear it 1 Listen 1 That's where they've went. P'r'aps we can catch them if we was in time. They didn't mean to go without us. They've only forgot." " Iss," said Judy. " They've only forgotted. Less go to the sea." The hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate. 41 It's very, very big, this place," he said, looking cautiously down the road, " and we will get lost; but /will find a man and order him to take me back to my house like I did in Bombay." He took Judy by the hand, and the two fled hatless in the direction of the sound of the sea. Downe Villa was almost the last of a range of newly-built houses running out, through a chaos of brick-mounds, to a heath 36 Wee Willie Winkie where gipsies occasionally camped and where the Garrison Artillery of Rocklington prac- tised. There were few people to be seen, and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery who ranged far. Half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across heath, potato-field, and sand-dune. " I'se so tired," said Judy, " and Mama will be angry." " Mama's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at the sea now while Papa gets tickets. We'll find them and go along with. Ju, you mustn't sit down. Only a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju, if you sit down I'll thmack you ! " said Punch. They climbed another dune, and came upon the great gray sea at low tide. Hun- dreds of crabs were scuttling about the beach, but there was no trace of Papa and Mama, not even of a ship upon the waters nothing but sand and mud for miles and miles. And " Uncleharri " found them by chance very muddy and very forlorn Punch dis- solved in tears, but trying to divert Judy with an " ickle trab," and Judy wailing to the piti- less horizon for " Mama, Mama I " and again " Mama 1 Baa Baa, Black Sheep 37 THE SECOND BAG. AH, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved ! Of all the creatures under Heaven's wide scope We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, And most belierless, who had most believed. The City of Dreadful Night. ALL this time not a word about Black Sheep. He came later, and Harry the black- haired boy was mainly responsible for his coming. Judy who could help loving little Judy ? passed, by special permit, into the kitchen and thence straight to Aunty Rosa's heart. Harry was Aunty Rosa's one child, and Punch was the extra boy about the house. There was no special place for him or his little affairs, and he was forbidden to sprawl on sofas and explain his ideas about the manu- facture of this world and his hopes for his future. Sprawling was lazy and wore out sofas, and little boys were not expected to talk. They were talked to, and the talking to was intended for the benefit of their morals. As the unquestioned despot of the house at Bombay, Punch could not quite understand how he came to be of no account in this his new life. Harry might reach across the table and take what he wanted ; Judy might point and 38 Wee Willie Winkie get what she wanted. Punch was forbidden to do either. The gray man was his great hope and stand-by for many months after Mama and Papa left, and he had forgotten to tell Judy to " bemember Mama." This lapse was excusable, because in the interval he had been introduced by Aunty Rosa to two very impressive things an ab- straction called God, the intimate friend and ally of Aunty Rosa, generally believed to live behind the kitchen range because it was hot there and a dirty brown book filled with un- intelligible dots and marks. Punch was al- ways anxious to oblige everybody. He, there- fore, welded the story of the Creation on to what he could recollect of his Indian fairy tales, and scandalized Aunty Rosa by repeat- ing the result to Judy. It was a sin, a griev- ous sin, and Punch was talked to for a quarter of an hour. He could not understand where the iniquity came in, but was careful not to repeat the offense, because Aunty Rosa told him that God had heard every word he had said and was very angry. If this were true why didn't God come and say so, thought Punch, and dismissed the matter from his mind. Afterwards he learned to know the Lord as the only thing in the world more aw- ful than Aunty Rosa as a Creature that stood in the background and counted the strokes of the cane. But the reading was, just then, a much more Baa Baa, Black Sheep 39 serious matter than any creed. Aunty Rosa sat him upon a table and told him that A B meant ab. " Why ? " said Punch. " A is a and B i bee. Why does A B mean ab ? " " Because I tell you it does," said Aunty Rosa, " and you've got to say it." Punch said it accordingly, and for a month* hugely against his will, stumbled through the brown book, not in the least comprehending* what it meant. But Uncle Harry, who walked much and generally alone, was wont to come into the nursery and suggest to Aunty Roso> that Punch should walk with him. He sel- dom spoke, but he showed Punch all Rock- lington, from the mud-banks and the sand oi the back-bay to the great harbors where ship* lay at anchor, and the dockyards where the hammers were never still, and the marine-store shops, and the shiny brass counters in the Offices where Uncle Harry went once every three months with a slip of blue paper and 1 received sovereigns in exchange ; for he held a wound-pension. Punch heard, too, from his' lips the story of the battle of Navarino, where the sailors of the Fleet, for three days after- wards, were deaf as posts and could only sign* to each other. " That was because of the noise of the guns," said Uncle Harry, " and t- have got the wadding of a bullet somewhere inside me now." Punch regarded him with curiosity. He 4O Wee Willie Winkle had not the least idea what wadding was, and his notion of a bullet was a dockyard cannon- ball bigger than his own head. How could Uncle Harry keep a cannon-ball inside him ? He was ashamed to ask, for fear Uncle Harry might be angry. Punch had never known what anger real anger meant until one terrible day when Harry had taken his paint-box to paint a boat with, and Punch had protested with a loud and lamentable voice. Then Uncle Harry had appeared on the scene and, muttering some- thing about " stranger's children," had with a stick smitten the black-haired boy across the shoulders till he wept and yelled, and Aunty Rosa came in and abused Uncle Harry for cruelty to his own flesh and blood, and Punch shuddered to the tips of his shoes. " It wasn't my fault," he explained to the boy, but both Harry and Aunty Rosa said that it was, and that Punch had told tales, and for a week there were no more walks with Uncle Harry. But that week brought a great joy to Punch. He had repeated till he was thrice weary the statement that " the Cat lay on the Mat and the Rat came in." " Now I can truly read," said Punch, " and now I will never read anything in the world." He put the brown book in the cupboard where his school-books lived and accidentally tumbled out a venerable volume, without cov- Baa Baa, Black Sheep 41 ers, labeled Sharpe's Magazine. There was the most portentous picture of a griffin on the first page, with verses below. The griffin carried off one sheep a day from a German village, till a man came with a " falchion " and split the griffin open. Goodness only knew what a falchion was, but there was the Griffin, and his history was an improvement upon the eternal Cat " This," said Punch, " means things, and now I will know all about everything in all the world." He read till the light failed, not understanding a tithe of the meaning, but tantalized by glimpses of new worlds here- after to be revealed. " What is a ' falchion ' ? What is a ' e-wee lamb ' ? What is a ' base #,mirper ' ? What is a ' verdant me-ad ' ? " he demanded, with flushed cheeks, at bedtime, of the astonished Aunt Rosa. " Say your prayers and go to sleep," she replied, and that was all the help Punch then or afterwards found at her hands in the new and delightful exercise of reading. " Aunt Rosa only knows about God and things like that," argued Punch. "Uncle Harry will tell me." The next walk proved that Uncle Harry could not help either ; but he allowed Punch to talk, and even sat down on a bench to hear about the Griffin. Other walks brought othei stories as Punch ranged further afield, for the 42 Wee Willie Winkie house held large store of old books that no one ever opened from Frank Fairlegh in serial numbers, and the earlier poems of Ten- nyson, contributed anonymously to Sharpe's Magazine, to '62 Exhibition Catalogues, gay with colors and delightfully incomprehensible, and odd leaves of Gulliver's Travels. As soon as Punch could string a few pot- hooks together, he wrote to Bombay, demand- ing by return of post " all the books in all the world." Papa could not comply with this <nodest indent, but sent Grimm's Fairy Tales and a Hans Andersen. That was enough. If he were only left alone Punch could pass, at any hour he chose, into a land of his own, beyond reach of Aunty Rosa and her God, Harry and his teasements, and Judy's claims to be played with. " Don't disturve me, I'm reading. Go and play in the kitchen," grunted Punch. " Aunty Rosa lets you go there." Judy was cutting her second teeth and was fretful. She ap- pealed to Aunty Rosa, who descended on Punch. " 1 was reading," he exclaimed, " reading a book. I ivant to read." " You're only doing that to show off," said Aunty Rosa. " But we'll see. Play with Judy now, and don't open a book for a week." Judy did not pass a very enjoyable play- time with Punch, who was consumed with indignation. There was a pettiness at the Baa Baa, Black Sheep 43 bottom of the prohibition which puzzled him. " It's what I like to do," he said, " and she's found out that and stopped me. Don't cry, Ju it wasn't your fault please don't cry, or she'll say I made you." Ju loyally mopped up her tears, and the two played in their nursery, a room in the base- ment and half underground, to which they were regularly sent after the midday dinner while Aunty Rosa slept. She drank wine that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the children were really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops, ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse for- ever, especially when all Fairyland is to be won by the mere opening of a book, and, as often as not, Punch would be discovered read- ing to Judy or telling her interminable tales. That was an offense in the eyes of the law, and Judy would be whisked off by Aunty Rosa, while Punch was left to play alone, " and be sure that I hear you doing it." It was not a cheering employ, for he had to make a playful noise. At last, with infinite craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the table could be supported as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear to bring down on the floor. He could work the table with one hand and hold a book with the other. 44 Wee Willie Winkie This he did till an evil day when Aunty Rosa pounced upon him unawares and told him that he was " acting a lie." " If you're old enough to do that," she said her temper was always worst after dinner " you're old enough to be beaten." " But I'm I'm not a animal 1 " said Punch, .aghast. He remembered Uncle Harry and the stick, and turned white. Aunty Rosa had hidden a light cane behind her, and Punch was beaten then and there over the shoulders. It was a revelation to him. The room-door was shut, and he was left to weep himself into repentance and work out his own Gospel of Life. Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes. It was unjust and cruel, and Mama and Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. In which case he was abandoned in- deed. It would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to " show off." He had " shown off " before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman Harry's uncle, not his own with requests for information about the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode all points of paramount in- terest which he was bursting to understand Baa Baa, Black Sheep 45 Clearly it would not do to pretend to care for Aunty Rosa. At this point Harry entered and stood afar off, eying Punch, a disheveled heap in the corner of the room, with disgust. " You're a liar a young liar," said Harry, with great unction, " and you're to have tea down here because you're not fit to speak to us. And you're not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave. You'll corrupt her. You're only fit to associate with the servant. Mother says so." ** Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears, Harry departed up-stairs with the news that Punch was still rebellious. Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining- room. " Damn it all, Rosa," said he at last, " can't you leave the child alone ? He's a good enough little chap when I meet him." " He puts on his best manners with you, Henry," said Aunty Rosa, " but I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, that he is the Black Sheep of the family." Harry heard and stored up the name for future use. Judy cried till she was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears ; and the evening concluded with the return of Punch to the upper regions and a private sit- ting at which all the blinding horrors of Hell were revealed to Punch with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa's narrow mind pos- sessed. Wee Willie Winkie Most grievous of all was Judy's round-eyed reproach, and Punch went to bed in the depths of the Valley of Humiliation. He shared his room with Harry and knew the torture in store. For an hour and a half he had to answer that young gentleman's question as to his motives for telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quantity of punishment inflicted by Aunty Rosa, and had also to profess his deep grati- tude for such religious instruction as Harry thought fit to impart. From that day began the downfall of Punch, now Black Sheep. " Untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all," said Aunty Rosa, and Harry felt that Black Sheep was delivered into his hands. He would wake him up in the night to ask him why he was such a liar. " I don't know," Punch would reply. " Then don't you think you ought to get up and pray to God for a new heart ? " " Y-yess." " Get out and pray, then ! " And Punch would get out of bed with raging hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. He was always tumbling into trouble. Harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to his day's doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage, into half a dozen contradic- tions all duly reported to Aunty Rosa next morning. " But it wasn't a lie," Punch would begin. Baa Baa, Black Sheep ^7 charging into a labored explanation that landed him more hopelessly in the mire. " I said that I didn't say my prayers twice over in the day, and that was on Tuesday. Once I did. I know I did, but Harry said I didn't," and so forth, till the tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the table in disgrace. " You usen't to be as bad as this ? " said Judy, awe-stricken at the catalogue of Black Sheep's crimes. " Why are you so bad now ? " " I don't know," Black Sheep would reply. "I'm not, if I only wasn't bothered upside down. I knew what I did, and 1 want to say so ; but Harry always makes it out different somehow, and Aunty Rosa doesn't believe a word I say. ' Oh, Ju 1 don't you say I'm bad too." "Aunty Rosa says you are," said Judy. " She told the Vicar so when he came yester- day." " Why does she tell all the people outside the house about me ? It isn't fair," said Black Sheep. " When I was in Bombay, and was bad doing bad, not made-up bad like this Mama told Papa, and Papa told me he knew, and that was all. Outside people didn't know too even Meeta didn't know." "I don't remember," said Judy wistfully. " I was all little then. Mama was just as fond of you as she was of me, wasn't 8he ? " Wee Willie Winkie " 'Course she was. So was Papa. So was everybody." " Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does you. She says that you are a Trial and a Black Sheep, and I'm not to speak to you more than I can help." " Always ? Not outside of the times when you mustn't speak to me at all ? " Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black Sheep turned away in despair, but Judy's arms were round his neck. " Never mind, Punch," she whispered. " I will speak to you just the same as ever and ever. You're my own brother though you are though Aunty Rosa says you're Bad, and Harry says you're a little coward. He says that if I pulled your hair hard, you'd cry." Pull, then," said Punch. Judy pulled gingerly. " Pull harder as hard as you can ! There I I don't mind how much you pull it now. If you'll speak to me same as ever I'll let you pull it as much as you like pull it out if you like. But I know if Harry came and stood by and made you do it I'd cry." So the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and Black Sheep's heart was cheered within him, and by extreme caution and care- ful avoidance of Harry he acquired virtue, and was allowed to read undisturbed for a week. Uncle Harry took him for walks and consoled Baa Baa, Black Sheep 49 him with rough tenderness, never calling him Black Sheep. " It's good for you, I suppose, Punch," he used to say. " Let us sit down. I'm getting tired." His steps led him now not to the beach, but to the Cemetery of Rock- lington, amid the potato-fields. For hours the gray man would sit on a tombstone, while Black Sheep read epitaphs, and then with a sigh would stump home again. " I shall lie there soon," said he to Black Sheep, one winter evening, when his face showed white as a worn silver coin under the lights of the chapel-lodge. " You needn't tell Aunty Rosa." A month later, he turned sharp round, ere half a morning walk was completed, and stumped back to the house. " Put me to bed, Rosa," he muttered. " I've walked my last. The wadding has found me out." They put him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of his sickness lay upon the house, and Black Sheep went to and fro unobserved. Papa had sent him some new books, and he was told to keep quiet. He retired into his own world, and was perfectly happy. Even at night his felicity was unbroken. He could lie in bed and string himself tales of travel and adventure while Harry was down- stairs. " Uncle Harry's going to die," said Judy, who now lived almost entirely with Aunty Rosa. 50 Wee Willie Winkie " I'm very sorry," said Black Sheep soberly. " He told me that a long time ago." Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. " Will nothing check your wicked tongue ? " she said angrily. There were blue circles round her eyes. Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read " Cometh up as a flower" with deep and uncomprehending interest. He had been forbidden to read it on account of its " sinful- ness," but the bonds of the Universe were crumbling, and Aunty Rosa was in great grief. "I'm glad," said Black Sheep. "She's unhappy now. It wasn't a lie, though. J knew. He told me not to tell." That night Black Sheep woke with a start Harry was not in the room and there was a sound of sobbing on the next floor. Then the voice of Uncle Harry, singing the song of the Battle of Navarino, cut through the dark- ness : " Our vanship was the Asia The Albion and Genoa 1 " " He's getting well," thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through all its seven- teen verses. But the blood froze at his lit tie heart as he thought. The voice leapt an octave and rang shrill as a boatswain's pipe : Baa Baa, Black Sheep 51 " And next came on the lovely Rose, The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed, And the little Brisk was sore exposed That day at Navarino." " That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry 1 " shouted Black Sheep, half wild with excite- ment and fear of he knew not what. A door opened and Aunty Rosa screamed up the staircase : " Hush 1 For God's sake hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry is deadl" THE THIRD BAG. JOURXEYS end In lovers* meeting, Every wise man's son doth know. " I WONDER what will happen to me now," thought Black Sheep, when the semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in middle-class houses had been accomplished, and Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape, had returned to this life. " I don't think I've done anything bad that she knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross after Uncle Harry's dying, and Harry will be cross too. I'll keep in the nursery." Unfortunately for Punch's plans, it was decided that he should be sent to a day-school which Harrv attended. This meant a morn. 52 Wee Willie Winkie ing walk with Harry, and perhaps an evening one ; but the prospect of freedom in the interval was refreshing. " Harry'll tell every- thing I do, but I won't do anything," said Black Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous res- olution, he went to school only to find that Harry's version of his character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in "conse- quence. He took stock of his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, many dropped their h's, and there were two Jews and a negro, or some one quite as dark, in the assembly. " That's a hubshi" said Black Sheep to himself. " Even Meeta used to laugh at a hubshi. I don't think this is a proper place." He was indig- nant for at least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by Aunty Rosa construed into " showing off," and that Harry would tell the boys. " How do you like school ? " said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day. " I think it is a very nice place," said Punch quietly. " I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep's character ? " said Aunty Rosa to Harry. "Oh, yes," said the censor of Black Sheep's morals. " They know all about him." " If I was with my father," said Black Sheep, stung to the quick, " I shouldn't speak to those boys. He wouldn't let me. They Baa Baa, Black Sheep 53 five in shops. I saw them go into shops where their fathers live and sell things." "You're too good for that school, are you ? " said Aunty Rosa, with a bitter smile. " You ought to be grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys speak to you at all. It isn't every school that takes little liars." Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black Sheep's ill-considered remark ; with the result that several boys, including the hub- s/ii, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal equality of the human race by smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa was that it " served him right for being vain." He learned, however, to keep his opinions to himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying books and the like to secure a little peace. His existence was not too joyful. From nine till twelve he was at school, and from two to four, except on Saturdays. In the evenings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his lessons for the next day, and every night came the dreaded cross-questionings at Harry's hand. Of Judy he saw but little. She was deeply religious at six years of age Religion is easy to come by and sorely divided between her natural love for Black Sheep and her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do wrong. The lean woman returned that love with interest, and Judy, when she dared, took advantage of this for the remission of Black 54 Wee Willie Winkie Sheep's penalties. Failures in lessons at school were punished at home by a week without reading other than schoolbooks, and Harry brought the news of such a failure with glee. Further, Black Sheep was then bound to repeat his lessons at bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in making him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest fore- bodings for the morrow. Harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa's deputy executioner. He filled his many posts to admiration. From his actions now that Uncle Harry was dead, there was no ap- peal. Black Sheep had not been permitted to keep any self-respect at school : at home he was of course utterly discredited, and grateful for any pity that the servant girls they changed frequently at Downe Lodge, because they, too, were liars might show. " You're just fit to row in the same boat with Black Sheep," was a sentiment that each new Jane or Eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over, from Aunty Rosa's lips ; and Black Sheep was used to ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to him. Harry was " Master Harry " in their mouths ; Judy was officially " Miss Judy " ; but Black Sheep was never anything more than Black Sheep tout court. As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mama became wholly overlaid by the unpleasant task of writing them letters, under Aunty Rosa's eye, each Sunday, Black Sheep Baa Baa, Black Sheep 55 forgot what manner of life he had led in the beginning of things. Even Judy's appeals to " try and remember about Bombay " failed to quicken him. " I can't remember," he said. " I know I used to give orders and Mama kissed me." " Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good," pleaded Judy. " Ugh 1 I don't want to be kissed by Aunty Rosa. She'd say I was doing it to get some- thing more to eat." The weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays came ; but just before the holidays Black Sheep fell into deadly sin. Among the many boys whom Harry had incited to " punch Black Sheep's head because he daren't hit back," was one more aggravat- ing than the rest, who, in an unlucky moment, fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was not near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep struck back at random with all the power at his command. The boy dropped and whim- pered. Black Sheep was astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting body un- der him, shook it with both his hands in blind fury and then began to throttle his enemy ; meaning honestly to slay him. There was a scuffle, and Black Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some colleagues, and cuffed home tingling but exultant. Aunty Rosa was out : pending her arrival, Harry set himself to lecture Black Sheep on the sin of 56 Wee Willie Winkie murder which he described as the offense of Cain. " Why didn't you fight him fair ? What did you hit him when he was down for, you little cur?" Black Sheep looked up at Harry's throat and then at a knife on the dinner-table. " I don't understand," he said wearily. " You always set him on me and told me I was a coward when I blubbed. Will you leave me alone until Aunty Rosa comes in ? She'll beat me if you tell her I ought to be beaten ; so it's all right." " It's all wrong," said Harry, magisterially. " You nearly killed him, and I shouldn't won- der if he dies." " Will he die ? " said Black Sheep. " I dare say," said Harry, " and then you'll be hanged." "All right," said Black Sheep, possessing himself of the table-knife. "Then I'll kill you now. You say things and do things and . . and / don't know how things happen, and you never leave me alone and I don't care what happens 1 " He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry fled up-stairs to his room, promising Black Sheep the finest thrashing in the world when Aunty Rosa returned. Black Sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the table-knife in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed Harry. The servant-girl came up from the Baa Baa, Black Sheep 57 kitchen, took the knife away, and consoled him. But Black Sheep was beyond consola- tion. He would be badly beaten by Aunty- Rosa; then there would be another beating at Harry's hands; then Judy would not be allowed to speak to him ; then the tale would be told at school and then . . . There was no one to help and no one to care, and the best way out of the business was by death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told him, a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went into the nursery, unearthed the now disused Noah's Ark, and sucked the paint off as many animals as remained. It tasted abominable, but he had licked Noah's dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy re- turned. He went up-stairs and greeted them with : " Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe I've nearly killed a boy at school, and I've tried to kill Harry, and when you've done all about God and hell, will you beat me and get it over ? " The tale of the assault as told by Harry could only be explained on the ground of pos- session by the devil. Wherefore Black Sheep was not only most excellently beaten, once by Aunty Rosa and once, when thoroughly cowed down, by Harry, but he was further prayed for at family prayers, together with Jane, who had stolen a cold rissole from the pantry and snuffled audibly as her enormity 58 Wee Willie Winkie was brought before the Throne of Grace, Black Sheep was sore and stiff but triumphant. He would die that very night and be rid of them all. No, he would ask for no forgiveness from Harry, and at bedtime would stand no questioning at Harry's hands, even though addressed as " Young Cain." " I've been beaten," said he, " and I've done other things. I don't care what I do. If you speak to me to-night, Harry, I'll get out and try to kill you. Now you can kill me if you like." Harry took his bed into the spare room, and Black Sheep lay down to die. It may be that the makers of Noah's Arks know that their animals are likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them ac- cordingly. Certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke through the win- dows and found Black Sheep quite well and a good deal ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in extremity, secure himself against Harry for the future. When he descended to breakfast on the first day of the holidays, he was greeted with the news that Harry, Aunty Rosa, and Judy were going away to Brighton, while Black Sheep was to stay in the house with the serv- ant. His latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa's plans admirably. It gave her good excuse for leaving the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay, who really seemed to know a Baa Baa, Black Sheep 59 young sinner's wants to the hour, sent, that week, a package of new books. And with these, and the society of Jane on board- wages, Black Sheep was left alone for a month. The books lasted for ten days. They were eaten too quickly, in long gulps of four-and- tvventy hours at a time. Then came days of doing absolutely nothing, of dreaming dreams and marching imaginary armies up and down stairs, of counting the number of banisters, and of measuring the length and breadth of every room in handspans fifty down the side, thirty across, and fifty back again. Jane made many friends, and, after receiving Black Sheep's assurance that he would not tell of her ab- sences, went out daily for long hours. Black Sheep would follow the rays of the sinking sun from the kitchen to the dining-room and thence upward to his own bedroom until all was gray dark, and he ran down to the kitchen fire and read by its light. He was happy in that he was left alone and could read as much as he pleased. But, later, he grew afraid of the shadows of window-curtains and the flap- ping of doors and the creaking of shutters. He went out into the garden, and the rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him. He was glad when they all returned Aunty Rosa, Harry, and Judy full of news, and Judy laden with gifts. Who could help loving loyal little Judy ? In return for all her merry bab- blement, Black Sheep confided to her that the 60 Wee Willie Winkie distance from the hall-door to the top of the first landing was exactly one hundred and eighty-four handspans. He had found it out himself. Then the old life recommenced ; but with a difference, and a new sin. To his other iniquities Black Sheep had now added a phe- nomenal clumsiness was as unfit to trust in action as he was in word. He himself could not account for spilling everything he touched, upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against doors that were manifestly shut. There was a gray haze upon all his world, and it narrowed month by month, until at last it left Black Sheep almost alone with the flapping curtains that were so like ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad day- light that were only coats on pegs after all. Holidays came and holidays went, and Black Sheep was taken to see many people whose faces were all exactly alike ; was beaten when occasion demanded, and tortured by Harry on all possible occasions ; but defended by Judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew upon herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa. The weeks were interminable and Papa and Mama were clean forgotten. Harry had left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently Baa Baa, Black Sheep 61 when he failed at school he reported that al? was well, and conceived a large contempt for Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to de- ceive her. " She says I'm a little liar when I don't tell lies, and now I do, she doesn't know," thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had cred- ited him in the past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affec- tion, had been interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put Harry into the back- ground, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. He set his child's wits against hers and was no more beaten. It grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the schoolbooks, and even the pages of the open-print story- books danced and were dim. So Black Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for " dear Harry," or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he wrapped round Aunty Rosa. Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to foresee every- thing. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black Sheep's progress and received in- formation that startled her. Step by step, 62 Wee Willie Winkie with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of Black Sheep's delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in order to escape banishment from the book-shelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of Harry, of God, of all the world 1 Horrible, most horrible, and evidence of an utterly depraved mind. Black Sheep counted the cost. " It will only be one big beating and then she'll put a card with ' Liar ' on my back, same as she did before. Harry will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and tell me I'm a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to learn. But I've done all my reading and she never knew. She'll say she knew all along. She's an old liar too," said he. For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bedroom to prepare his heart. " That means two beatings. One at school and one here. That one will hurt most." And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at school before the Jews and the hubshi, for the heinous crime of bringing home false reports of progress. He was thrashed at home by Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. Aunty Rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with it upon him. " If you make me do that," said Black Sheep very quietly, " I shall burn this house down, Baa Baa, Black Sheep 63 and perhaps I'll kill you. I don't know whether I can kill you you're so bony but I'll try." No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa's withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, hav- ing reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new recklessness. In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the seas to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and Mama, and was com- missioned to see Punch and Judy. Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged into a solid tea-table laden with china. " Gently, gently, little man," said the visitor, turning Black Sheep's face to the light slowly. " What's that big bird on the palings ? " " What bird ? " asked Black Sheep. The visitor looked deep down into Black Sheep's eyes for half a minute, and then said suddenly : " Good God, the little chap's nearly blind 1 " It was a most business-like visitor. He gave orders, on his own responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to school or open a book until Mama came home. " She'll be here in three weeks, as you know of course," said he, " and I'm Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you into this wicked world, young 64 Wee Willie Winkie man, and a nice use you seem to have made of your time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you do that ? " " Yes," said Punch in a dazed way. He had known that Mama was coming. There was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank Heaven, Papa wasn't coming too. Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by a man. For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly allowed to do nothing. He spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken toys, for all of which account must be ren- dered to Mama. Aunty Rosa hit him over the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that sin was of small importance com- pared to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by Aunty Rosa. " When your Mother comes, and hears what I have to tell her, she may appreciate you properly," she said grimly, and mounted guard over Judy lest that small maiden should attempt to comfort her brother, to the peril of her own soul. And Mama came in a four-wheeler and a flutter of tender excitement. Such a Mama I She was young, frivolously young, and beau- tiful, with delicately flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that needed no additional appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her heart. Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesitated. Could this wonder be " showing off " ? She Baa Baa, Black Sheep 65 would not put out her arms when she knev of his crimes. Meantime was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get anything out of Black Sheep ? Only all his love and all his confidence ; but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty Rosa withdrew and left Mama, kneeling between her children, half laughing, half crying, in the very hall where Punch and Judy had wept five years before. " Well, chicks, do you remember me ? " " No," said Judy frankly, " but I said ' God bless Papa and Mama,' ev'vy night." " A little," said Black Sheep. " Remem- ber I wrote to you every week, anyhow. That isn't to show off, but 'cause of what comes afterwards." " What comes after ! What should come after, my darling boy ? " And she drew him to her again. He came awkwardly, with many angles. " Not used to petting," said the quick Mother-soul. " The girl is." " She's too little to hurt any one," thought Black Sheep, " and if I said I'd kill her, she'd be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will tell." There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which Mama picked up Judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. Faith- less little Judy had shown her defection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room. 66 Wee Willie Winkie " Come and say good night," said Aunty Rosa, offering a withered cheek. " Huh I " said Black Sheep. " I never kiss you, and I'm not going to show off. Tell that woman what I've done, and see what she says." Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost Heaven after a glimpse through the gates. In half an hour " that woman " was bending over him. Black Sheep flung up his right arm. It wasn't fair to come and hit him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But no blow followed. "Are you showing off? I won't tell you anything more than Aunty Rosa has, and she doesn't know everything," said Black Sheep as clearly as he could for the arms round his neck. " Oh, my son my little, little son I It was my fault my fault, darling and yet how could we help it ? Forgive me, Punch." The voice died out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep's forehead. " Has she been making you cry too ? " he asked. " You should see Jane cry. But you're nice, and Jane is a Born Liar Aunty Rosa says so." " Hush, Punch, hush ! My boy, don't talk like that. Try to love me a little bit a little bit. You don't know how I want it. Punch- baba, come back to me 1 I am your Mother your own Mother and never mind the Baa Baa, Black Sheep 67 rest. I know yes, I know, dear. It doesn't matter now. Punch, won't you care for me a little ? " It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. Black Sheep had never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman treating him Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and the Inheritor of Undying Flame as though he were a small God. " I care for you a great deal, Mother dear," he whispered at last, " and I'm glad you've come back ; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told you everything ? " "Everything. What does it matter? But " the voice broke with a sob that was also laughter " Punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling, don't you think it was a little foolish of you ? " " No. It saved a lickin'." Mama shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long letter to Papa. Here is an extract : . . . Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears with as much gravity as her relig- ious opinions only eight, Jack ! a venerable horse- hair atrocity which she calls her Bustle 1 I have just burnt it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write. She will come to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don't you 68 Wee Willie Winkie recollect our own up-bringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so often the beginning of falsehood ? I shall win Pus.ch to me before long. I am taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and, on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy, and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last 1 Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mama, who is also a sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector, and, when one can do anything without question, where is the use of decep- tion? "Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch," says Judy, con- tinuing a conversation. " Mother's never angry," says Punch. " She'd just say, ' You're a little pagal; ' and that's not nice, but I'll show." Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. " Mother, dear," he shouts, " I'm just as dirty as I can pos-j#-ly be!" " Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-j/My can ! " rings out Mother's clear voice from the house. " And don't be a little fagall" " There ! Told you so," says Punch. " It's all different now, and we are just as much Mother's as if she had never gone. ' Baa Baa, Black Sheep 69 Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge ; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith was. HIS MAJESTY THE KING. " WHERE the word of a King is, there is power : And who may say unto him What doest thou ? " " YETH ! And Chimo to sleep at ve foot of ve bed, and ve pink pikky-book, and ve bwead 'cause I will be hungwy in ve night and vat's all, Miss Biddums. And now give me one kiss and I'll go to sleep. So 1 Kite quiet. Ow 1 Ve pink pikky-book has slidded under ve pillow and ve bwead is cwumbling 1 Miss Biddums 1 Miss Bid- dums 1 I'm so uncomfy ! Come and tuck me up, Miss Biddums." His Majesty the King was going to bed ; and poor, patient Miss Biddums, who had advertised herself humbly as a " young per- son, European, accustomed to the care of little children," was forced to wait upon his royal caprices. The going to bed was always a lengthy process, because His Majesty had a convenient knack of forgetting which of his many friends, from the mehter's son to the Commissioner's daughter, he had prayed for, and, lest the Deity should take offense, was used to toil through his little prayers, in all 70 His Majesty the King 71 reverence, five times in one evening. His Majesty the King believed in the efficacy of prayer as devoutly as he believed in Chimo the patient spaniel, or Miss Biddums, who could reach him down his gun " with cur- suffun caps reel ones " from the upper shelves of the big nursery cupboard. At the door of the nursery his authority stopped. Beyond lay the empire of his father and mother two very terrible people who had no time to waste upon His Majesty the King. His voice was lowered when he passed the frontier of his own dominions, his actions were fettered, and his soul was filled with awe because of the grim man who lived among a wilderness of pigeon-holes and the most fas- cinating pieces of red tape, and the wonder* ful woman who was always getting into or stepping out of the big carriage. To the one belonged the mysteries of the " du/tar-room " ; to the other the great, re- flected wilderness of the " Memsahib's room " where the shiny, scented dresses hung on pegs, miles and miles up in the air, and the just-seen plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage of speckly combs, broidered " hanar fitch-bags," and " white-headed " brushes. There was no room for His Majesty the King either in official reserve or mundane gorgeousness. He had discovered that, ages and ages ago before even Chimo came to the house, or Miss Biddums had ceased griz 72 Wee Willie Winkie zling over a packet of greasy letters whlcft appeared to be her chief treasure on earth. His Majesty the King, therefore, wisely con- fined himself to his own territories, where only Miss Biddums, and she feebly, disputed his sway. From Miss Biddums he had picked up his simple theology and welded it to the legends of gods and devils that he had learned in the servants' quarters. To Miss Biddums he confided with equal trust his tattered garments and his more se- rious griefs. She would make everything whole. She knew exactly how the Earth had been born, and had reassured the trembling soul of His Majesty the King that terrible time in July when it rained continuously for seven days and seven nights, and there was no Ark ready and all the ravens had flown away 1 She was the most powerful person with whom he was brought into contact al- ways excepting the two remote and silent people beyond the nursery door. How was His Majesty the King to know that, six years ago, in the summer of his birth, Mrs. Austell, turning over her husband's papers, had come upon the intemperate letter of a foolish woman who had been carried away by the silent man's strength and personal beauty ? How could he tell what evil the overlooked slip of note-paper had Avrought in the mind of a desperately jealous wife ? His Majesty the King 73 could he, despite his wisdom, guess that his mother had chosen to make of it excuse for a bar and a division between herself and her husband, that strengthened and grew harder to break with each year ; that she, having un- earthed this skeleton in the cupboard, had trained it into a household God which should be about their path and about their bed, and poison all their ways ? These things were beyond the province of His Majesty the King. He only knew that his father was daily absorbed in some mys- terious work for a thing called the Sirkar and that his mother was the victim alternately of the Nautch and the Burrakhana. To these entertainments she was escorted by a Captain- Man for whom His Majesty the King had no regard. " He doesn't laugh," he argued with Miss Biddums, who would fain have taught him charity. " He only makes faces wiv his mouf, and when he wants to o-muse me I am not o-mused." And His Majesty the Kinjf shook his head as one who knew the deceit- fulness of the world. Morning and evening it was his duty to salute his father and mother the former with a grave shake of the hand and the latter with an equally grave kiss. Once, indeed, he had put his arms round his mother's neck, in the fashion he used towards Miss Biddums. The openwork of his sleeve-edge caught in 74 Wee Willie Winkie an earring, and the last stage of His Majesty's little overture was a suppressed scream and summary dismissal to the nursery. " It is w'ong," thought His Majesty the King, " to hug Memsahibs wiv fings in veir ears. I will amember." He never repeated the experiment. Miss Biddums, it must be confessed, spoilt him as much as his nature admitted, in some sort of recompense for what she called " the hard ways of his Papa and Mama." She, like her charge, knew nothing of the trou- ble between man and wife the savage con- tempt for a woman's stupidity on the one side, or the dull, rankling anger on the other. Miss Biddums had looked after many little children in her time, and served in many establishments. Being a discreet woman, she observed little and said less, and, when her pupils went over the sea to the Great Unknown which she, with touching confi- dence in her hearers, called " Home," packed up her slender belongings and sought for employment afresh, lavishing all her love on each successive batch of ingrates. Only His Majesty the King had repaid her affection with interest; and in his uncomprehending ears she had told the tale of nearly all her hopes, her aspirations, the hopes that were dead, and the dazzling glories of her ances- tral home in " CWcutta. close to Wellington Square." His Majesty the King 75 Everything above the average was in the eyes of His Majesty the King " Calcutta good." When Miss Biddums had crossed his royal will, he reversed the epithet to vex that estimable lady, and all things evil were, until the tears of repentance swept away spite, " Calcutta bad." Now and again Miss Biddums begged for him the rare pleasure of a day in the society of the Commissioner's child the wilful four- year-old Patsie, who, to the intense amaze- ment of His Majesty the King, was idolized by her parents. On thinking the question out at length, by roads unknown to those who have left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion that Patsie was petted because she wore a big blue sash and yellow hair. This precious discovery he kept to himself. The yellow hair was absolutely beyond his power, his own tousled wig being potato- brown ; but something might be done towards the blue sash. He tied a large knot in his mosquito-curtains in order to remember to consult Patsie on their next meeting. She was the only child he had ever spoken to, and almost the only one that he had ever seen. The little memory and the very large and ragged knot held good. " Patsie, lend me your blue wiband," said His Majesty the King. "You'll bewy it," said Patsie doubtfully, 76 Wee Willie Winkie mindful of certain fearful atrocities committed on her doll. " No, I won't twoofanhonor. It's for me to wear." " Pooh 1 " said Patsie. " Boys don't wear sa-ashes. Zey's only for dirls." " I didn't know." The face of His Majesty the King fell. " Who wants ribands ? Are you playing horses, chickabiddies ? " said the Commis- sioner's wife, stepping into the veranda. " Toby wanted my sash," explained Patsie, " I don't now," said His Majesty the King hastily, feeling that with one of these terrible " grown-ups " his poor little secret would be shamelessly wrenched from him, and perhaps most burning desecration of all laughed at. "I'll give you a cracker-cap," said the Commissioner's wife. " Come along with me, Toby, and we'll choose it." The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-and-tinsel splendor. His Majesty the King fitted it on his royal brow. The Commissioner's wife had a face that children instinctively trusted, and her action, as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender. " Will it do as well ? " stammered His Majesty the King. " As what, little one ? " " As ve wiban ? " His Majesty the King 77 "Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the glass." The words were spoken in all sincerity and to help forward any absurd " dressing-up " amusement that the children might take into their minds. But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool's cap a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and burst into tears. " Toby," said the Commissioner's wife gravely, " you shouldn't give way to temper. I am very sorry to see it. It's wrong." His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, and the heart of Patsie's mother was touched. She drew the child on to her knee. Clearly it was not temper alone. " What is it, Toby ? Won't you tell me ? Aren't you well ? " The torrent of sobs and speech met, and fought for a time, with chokings and gulp- ings and gasps. Then, in a sudden rush, His Majesty the King was delivered of a few inarticulate sounds, followed by the words: "Go a way you dirty little debbil I " " Toby I What do you mean ? " " It's what he'd say. I know it is 1 He said vat when vere was only a little, little 78 Wee Willie Winkie eggy mess, on my t-t-unic; and he'd say it again, and laugh, if I went in wif vat on my head." " Who would say that ? " " M-m-my Papa 1 And I fought if I had ve blue wiban, he'd let me play in ve waste-paper basket under ve table." " What blue riband, childie ? " " Ve same vat Patsie had ve big blue wiban w-w-wound my t-t-tummy 1 " " What is it, Toby ? There's something on your mind. Tell me all about it, and perhaps I can help." " Isn't anyfing," sniffed His Majesty, mind- ful of his manhood, and raising his head from the motherly bosom upon which it was rest- ing. " I only fought vat you you petted Patsie 'cause she had ve blue wiban and and if I'd had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papaw-would pet me." The secret was out, and His Majesty the King sobbed bitterly in spite of the arms round him, and the murmur of comfort on his heated little forehead. Enter Patsie tumultuously, embarrassed by several lengths of the Commissioner's pet ma/iseer-rod. " Turn along, Toby 1 Zere's a chu-chu lizard in ze chick, and I've told Chimo to watch him till we turn. If we poke him wiz zis his tail will go wiggle-wiggle and fall off. Turn along 1 I can't weach." " I'm comin'," said His Majesty the King, His Majesty the King 79 climbing down from the Commissioner's wife's knee after a hasty kiss. Two minutes later, the chu-chu lizard's tail was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with splinters from the chick, to urge its exhausted vitality into " just one wiggle more, 'cause it doesn't hurt chu-chu." The Commissioner's wife stood in the door- way and watched : " Poor little mite ! A blue sash . . . and my own precious Patsie 1 I wonder if the best of us, or we who love them best, ever understand what goes on in their topsy-turvy little heads." A big tear splashed on the Commissioner's wife's wedding-ring, and she went indoors to devise a tea for the benefit of His Majesty the King. " Their souls aren't in their tummies at that age in this climate," said the Commis- sioner's wife, " but they are not far off. I wonder if I could make Mrs. Austell under- stand. Poor little fellow I " With simple craft, the Commissioner's wife called on Mrs. Austell and spoke long and lovingly about children ; inquiring specially for His Majesty the King. " He's with his governess," said Mrs. Aus- tell, and the tone intimated that she was not interested. The Commissioner's wife, unskilled in the art of war, continued her questionings. " I 8o Wee Willie Winkie don't know," said Mrs. Austell. " These things are left to Miss Biddums, and, of course, she does not ill-treat the child." The Commissioner's wife left hastily. The last sentence jarred upon her nerves. " Doesn't ill-treat the child ! As if that were all ! I wonder what Tom would say if I only < didn't ill-treat ' Patsie 1 " Thenceforward, His Majesty the King was an honored guest at the Commissioner's house, and the chosen friend of Patsie, with whom he blundered into as many scrapes as the com- pound and the servants' quarters afforded. Patsie's Mama was always ready to give counsel, help, and sympathy, and, if need were and callers few, to enter into their games with an abandon that would have shocked the sleek- haired subalterns who squirmed painfully in their chairs when they came to call on her whom they profanely nicknamed " Mother Bunch." Yet, in spite of Patsie and Patsie's Mama, and the love that these two lavished upon him, His Majesty the King fell grievously from grace, and committed no less a sin than that of theft unknown, it is true, but burdensome. There came a man to the door one day, when His Majesty was playing in the hall and the bearer had gone to dinner, with a packet for his Majesty's Mama. And he put it upon the hall-table, said that there was no answer, and departed. His Majesty the King 81 Presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to interest His Majesty, while the packet, a white, neatly wrapped one of fascinating shape, in- terested him very much indeed. His Mama was out, so was Miss Biddums, and there was pink string round the packet. He greatly de- sired pink string. It would help him in many of his little businesses the haulage across the floor of his small cane-chair, the torturing of Chimo, who could never understand harness and so forth. If he took the string it would be his own, and nobody would be any the wiser. He certainly could not pluck up suffi- cient courage to ask Mama for it. Wherefore, mounting upon a chair, he carefully untied the string and, behold, the stiff white paper spread out in four directions, and revealed a beautiful little leather box with gold lines upon it 1 He tried to replace the string, but that was a failure. So he opened the box to get full satisfaction for his iniquity, and saw a most beautiful Star that shone and winked, and was altogether lovely and desirable. " Vat," said His Majesty meditatively, "is a 'parkle cwown, like what I will wear when I go to heaven. I will wear it on my head Miss Biddums says so. I would like to wear it now. I would like to play wiv it. I will take it away and play wiv it, very careful, until Mama asks for it. I fink it was bought for me to play wiv same as my cart." His Majesty the King was arguing against 6 82 Wee Willie Winkie his conscience, and he knew it, for he thought immediately after : " Never mind. I will keep it to play wiv until Mama says where is it, and then I will say : ' I tookt it and I am sorry.' I will not hurt it because it is a 'parkle cwown. But Miss Biddums will tell me to put it back. I will not show it to Miss Biddums." If Mama had come in at that moment all would have gone well. She did not, and His Majesty the King stuffed paper, case, and $ewel into the breast of his blouse and marched to the nursery. " When Mama asks I will tell," was the salve that he laid upon his conscience. But Mama never asked, and for three whole days His Majesty the King gloated over his treasure. It was of no earthly use to him, but it was splendid, and, for aught he knew, some- thing dropped from the heavens themselves. Still Mama made no inquiries, and it seemed to him, in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny stones grew dim. What was the use of a 'parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his inside ? He had the pink string as well as the other treasure, but greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the string. It was his first experience of iniquity, and it pained him after the flush of possession and secret delight in the " 'parkle cwown " had died away. Each day that he delayed rendered confes- sion to the people beyond the nursery doors His Majesty the King 83 more impossible. Now and again he deter- mined to put himself in the path of the beau- tifully attired lady as she was going out, and explain that he and no one else was the pos- sessor of a " 'parkle cwown," most beautiful and quite uninquired for. But she passed hurriedly to her carriage, and the opportunity was gone before His Majesty the King could draw the deep breath which clinches noble resolve. The dread secret cut him off from Miss Biddums, Patsie, and the Commissioner's wife, and doubly hard fate when he brood- ed over it Patsie said, and told her mother, that he was cross. The days were very long to His Majesty the King, and the nights longer still. Miss Biddums had informed him, more than once, what was the ultimate destiny of " fieves," and when he passed the interminable mud flanks of the Central Jail, he shook in his little strapped shoes. But release came after an afternoon spent in playing boats by the edge of the tank at the bottom of the garden. His Majesty the King went to tea, and, for the first time in his memory, the meal revolted him. His nose was very cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. There was a weight about his feet, and he pressed his head several times to make sure that it was not swelling as he sat. " I feel vevy funny," said His Majesty the 84 Wee Willie Winkie King, rubbing his nose. " Vere's a buzz-buzz in my head." He went to bed quietly. Miss Biddums was out and the bearer undressed him. The sin of the " 'parkle cwown " was for- gotten in the acuteness of the discomfort to which he roused after a leaden sleep of some hours. He was thirsty, and the bearer had forgotten to leave the drinking-water. " Miss Biddums! Miss Biddums! I'm so kirsty! " No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to attend the wedding of a Calcutta schoolmate. His Majesty the King had forgotten that. " I want a dwink of water 1 " he cried, but his voice was dried up in his throat. " I want a dwink ! Vere is ve glass ? " He sat up in bed and looked round. There was a murmur of voices from the other side of the nursery door. It was better to face the terrible unknown than to choke in the dark. He slipped out of bed, but his feet were strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. Then he pushed the door open and staggered a puffed and purple-faced little figure into the brilliant light of the dining-room full of pretty ladies. " I'm vevy hot ! I'm vevy uncomfitivle," moaned His Majesty the King, clinging to the portiere, " and vere's no water in ve glass, and I'm so kirsty. Give me a dwink of water." An apparition in black and white His Majesty the King could hardly see distinctly His Majesty the King 85 lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt his wrists and forehead. The water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering against the edge of the tumbler. Then every one seemed to go away every one except the huge man in black and white, who carried him back to his bed ; the mother and father follow- ing. And the sin of the " 'parkle cwown " rushed back and took possession of the ter- rified soul. " I'm a fief ! " he gasped. " I want to tell Miss Biddums vat I'm a fief. Vere is Miss Biddums ? " Miss Biddums had come and was bending over him. " I'm a fief," he whispered. "A fief like ve men in the pwison. But I'll tell now. I tookt ... I tookt ve 'parkle cwown when the man that came left it in ve hall. I bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny, and I tookt it to play wif, and I was afwaid. It's in ve dooly-box at ve bottom. No one never asked for it, but I was afwaid. Oh, go an' get ve dooly-box ! " Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of the almirah and unearthed the big paper box in which His Majesty the King kept his dearest possessions. Under the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet- bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly in a half-sheet of note-paper whereon were a few words. Somebody was crying at the head of the 86 Wee Willie Winkie bed, and a man's hand touched the forehead of His Majesty the King, who grasped the packet and spread it on the bed. "Vat is ve 'parkle cvvown," he said and wept bitterly ; for now that he had made res- titution he would fain have kept the shining splendor with him. " It concerns you too," said a voice at the head of the bed. " Read the note. This is not the time to keep back anything." The note was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single initial. " Jf you wear this to-morrow night I shall know what to ex- pect." The date was three weeks old. A whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned : " And you drifted as far apart as that ! I think it makes us quits now, doesn't it ? Oh, can't we drop this folly once and for all ? Is it worth it, darling ? " " Kiss me too," said His Majesty the King, dreamily. " You isn't vevy angwy, is you ? " The fever burned itself out, and His Maj- esty the King slept. When he waked, it was in a new world peopled by his father and mother as well as Miss Biddums : and there was much love in that world and no morsel of fear, and more petting than was good for several little boys. His Majesty the King was too young to moralize on the uncertainty of things hu- man, or he would have been impressed with the singular advantages of crime aye, black His Majesty the King 87 sin. Behold, he had stolen the " 'parkle cwown," and his reward was Love, and the right to play in the waste-paper basket under the table " for always." He trotted over to spend an afternoon with Patsie, and the Commissioner's wife would have kissed him. " No, not vere," said His Majesty the King, with superb insolence, fencing one corner of his mouth with his hand. " Vat's my Mama's place vere she kisses me." " Oh 1 " said the Commissioner's wife briefly. Then to herself : " Well, I suppose I ought to be glad for his sake. Children are selfish little grubs and I've got my Patsie." THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT. " AND a little child shall lead them." IN the Army List they still stand as " The Fore and Fit Princess Hohenzollern-Sigma- ringen-Auspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental Dis- trict 329A," but the Army through all its bar- racks and canteens knows them now as the " Fore and Aft." They may in time do something that shall make their new title honorable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them " Fore and Aft" does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders. Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language ; but a whisper of " Fore and Aft " will bring out this regiment with rifles. Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb- cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know The Drums of the Fore and Aft 89 it ; their officers know it ; the Horse Guards know it ; and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments of the Line that have a black mark against their names which they will then wipe out, and it will be excessively in- convenient for the troops upon whom they do their wiping. The courage of the British soldier is offi- cially supposed to be above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently shoveled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshet of unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at mid- night. Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army, might have ended in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself, please God, his men shall never behave unhandily. The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional lapses ; but this ver- dict he should not know. A moderately in- telligent General will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the capacity of his regiment 9o Wee Willie Winkie for three months after it has taken the field ; and even a Company Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper and tem- perament of his own handful : wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day, more par- ticularly, should not be blamed for falling back. He should be shot or hanged after- wards -pour encourager les autres ; but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste of space. He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are not suffi- cient to drive toughness into his fiber, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself in India he wants to save money and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploy- ing, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has lain for four years. The Drums of the Fore and Aft 91 Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, ham- pered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly in- troduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know what they are about taking a charge, rush, or demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on occasion, whispering : " They'll shout and carry on like this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em by the short hairs ! " But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service, turning white and playing with their triggers and saying: "What the Hell's up now? " while the Com- pany Commanders are sweating into their sword-hilts and shouting : " Front-rank, fix bayonets. Steady there steady ! Sight for three hundred no, for five 1 Lie down, all I Steady 1 Front-rank, kneel 1 " and so forth, he becomes unhappy ; and grows acutely mis- erable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of fire-irons falling into the 92 Wee Willie Winkie fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind passion of fighting, which is, con- trary to general belief, controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is not moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that were never given, he will break, and he will break badly ; and of all things under the sight of the Sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken British regiment. When the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and the Com- pany Commanders had better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's sake. If they can be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet, because they will not break twice. About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a beau- tifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do Butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. The Drums of the Fore and Aft 93 The ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself the Pocket-book says so. Unfortu- nately, to attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers. But these things prove the rule which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have ideas about the value of life and an up-bringing that has not taught them to go on and take the chances. They are carefully unprovided with a backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is re-introduced, as a great many Regimental Commanders intend it shall be, they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire or the dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are as good as good can be, because their training begins early, and God has arranged that a clean-run youth of the British middle classes shall, in the matter of backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. For this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing noth- ing, with a tin sword in his hand and joy in 94 Wee Willie Winkie his heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies like a gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has been " potted," ' sniped," " chipped " or " cut over," and sits down to besiege Government for a wound-gratuity un- til the next little war breaks out, when he per- jures himself before a Medical Board, blar- neys his Colonel, burns incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front once more. Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tooted fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drum- mer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft. Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age. When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually after the manner of the Bar- rack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes from between clinched teeth ; and they fought religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung from some London gutter and may or may not have passed through Dr. Barnado's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regi- ment and the delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years. He hid somewhere The Drums of the Fore and Aft 95 in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub ; insomuch that beauti- ful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak of him as a "darling." They never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band and matured fresh causes of offense against Jakin. The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin ; and the consequences were painful. The boys were the Ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys ; and thus amassed money. On this particular day there was dissension in the camp. They had just been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use plug-tobacco, and Lew's contention was that Jakin had " stunk so 'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket," that he and he alone was responsible for the birching they were both tingling under. " I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barracks," said Jakin pacifically. 96 Wee Willie Winkie " You're a bloomin' liar," said Lew without heat. " You're a bloomin' little barstard," said Jakin, strong in the knowledge that his own ancestry was unknown. Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth. " You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore," said Lew sorrowfully, dodging around Jakin's guard. " I'll make you sorer," said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted the Bazar- Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five and twenty, to put in an appearance after the first round. He was eternally in need of money, and knew that the boys had silver. " Fighting again," said he. " I'll report you to my father, and he'll report you to the C olor-S ergean t. ' ' " What's that to you ? " said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of the nostrils. " Oh 1 nothing to me. You'll get into The Drums of the Fore and Aft 97 trouble, and you've been up too often to afford that." " What the Hell do you know about what we've done ? " asked Lew the Seraph. " You aren't in the Army, you lousy, cadging civil- ian." He closed in on the man's left flank. " Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin* their diff'rences with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't wanted. Run 'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a Ma or we'll give you what-for," said Jakin. The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together. The scheme would have succeeded had not Jakin punched him vehemently in the stomach, or had Lew re- frained from kicking his shins. They fought together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and, after heavy punishment, trium- phantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull down a jackal. " Now," gasped Jakin, " I'll give you what for." He proceeded to pound the man's fea- tures while Lew stamped on the outlying por- tions of his anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the average drum- mer-boy. He fights, as do his betters, to make his mark. Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the Bazar-Sergeant. Awful too was the scene in Orderly-room when the two reprobates appeared to an- 7 98 Wee Willie Winkie swer the charge of half-murdering a " civil- Ian." The Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. The boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated. "You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment put together," said the Colonel angrily. " One might as well ad- monish thistledown, and I can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. You must be flogged again." " Beg y' pardon, Sir. Can't we say nothin* in our own defense, Sir ? " shrilled Jakin. " Hey 1 What ? Are you going to argue with me ? " said the Colonel. " No, Sir," said Lew. " But if a man come to you, Sir, and said he was going to report you, Sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend, Sir, an' wanted to get money out o'you, Sir " The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. " Well ? " said the Colonel. " That was what that measly jam-war there did, Sir, and, 'e'd 'a' done it, Sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. We didn't 'it 'im much, Sir. 'E 'adn't no manner o* right to interfere with us, Sir. I don't mind bein' flogged by the Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported by any Corp'ral, but I'm but I don't think it's fair, Sir, for a civilian to come an' talk over a man in the Army." A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly-room, but the Colonel was grave. The Drums of the Fore and Aft 99 " What sort of characters have these boys ? " he asked of the Regimental Sergeant-Major. "Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir," re- turned that revered official the only soul in the Regiment whom the boys feared " they do everything but lie, Sir." " Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir ? " said Lew, pointing to the plaintiff. " Oh, admonished, admonished ! " said the Colonel testily, and when the boys had gone he read the Bazar- Sergeant's son a lec- ture on the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep the Drums in better discipline. " If either of you come to practise again with so much as a scratch on your two ugly little faces," thundered the Bandmaster, " I'll tell the Drum-Major to take the skin off your backs. Understand that, you young devils." Then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that Lew, looking like a Seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place of one of the trumpets in hospital and rendered the echo of a battle-piece. Lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the Band. " There's nothing to prevent your becoming a Bandmaster, Lew," said the Bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and night in the interests of the Band. ioo Wee Willie Winkie " What did he say ? " demanded Jakin after practise. " 'Said I might be a bloomin' Bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a glass o' sherry- wine on Mess-nights." " Ho ! 'Said you might be a bloomin' non- combatant, did 'e 1 That's just about wot 'e would say. When I've put in my boy's service it's a bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension I'll take on a privit. Then I'll be a Lance in a year knowin' what I know about the ins an' outs o' things. In three years I'll be a bloomin' Sergeant. I won't marry then, not I ! I'll 'old on and learn the orf 'cers' ways an' apply for exchange into a reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. Then I'll be a bloomin' orf'cer. Then I'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine, Mister Lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room while the Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands." " S'pose 7'm going to be a Bandmaster ? Not I, quite. I'll be a orf'cer too. There's nothin' like taking to a thing an' stickin* to it, the Schoolmaster says. The reg'ment don't go 'ome for another seven years. I'll be a Lance then or near to." Thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves with exemplary piety for a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation with the Color-Sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen " not," as he explained to Jakin, The Drums of the Fore and Aft 101 " with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keepin' my 'and in." And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together, and Jakin preached sermons on the dangers of " bein' tangled along o' petticoats." But neither love nor virtue would have held Lew long in the paths of propriety had not the rumor gone abroad that the Regiment was to be sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of brevity, we will call " The War of the Lost Tribes." The barracks had the rumor almost before the Mess-room, and of all the nine hundred men in barracks not ten had seen a shot fired in anger. The Colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a Frontier expedition ; one of the Majors had seen service at the Cape ; a con- firmed deserter in E Company had helped to clear streets in Ireland ; but that was all. The Regiment had been put by for many years. The overwhelming mass of its rank and file had from three to four years' service ; the non- commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and sergeants alike had for- gotten to speak of the stories written in brief upon the Colors the New Colors that had been formally blessed by an Archbishop in England ere the Regiment came away. They wanted to go to the Front they were enthusiastically anxious to go but they had IO2 Wee Willie Winkie no knowledge of what war meant, and there was none to tell them. They were an educated regiment, the percentage of school-certificates in their ranks was high, and most of the men could do more than read and write. They had been recruited in loyal observance of the territorial idea; but they themselves had no notion of that idea. They were made up of drafts from an overpopulated manufacturing district. The system had put flesh and muscle upon their small bones, but it could not put heart into the sons of those who for genera- tions had done overmuch work for overscanty pay, had sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over looms, coughed among white lead and shivered on lime-barges. The men had found food and rest in the Army, and now they were going to fight " niggers " people who ran away if you shook a stick at them. Where- fore they cheered lustily when the rumor ran, and the shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the chances of batta and of saving their pay. At Headquarters, men said : " The Fore and Fit have never been under fire within the last generation. Let us, therefore, break them in easily by setting them to guard lines of communication." And this would have been done but for the fact that British Regiments were wanted badly wanted at the Front, and there were doubtful Native Regiments that could fill the minor duties. "Brigade 'em with two strong Regiments," The Drums of the Fore and Aft 103 said Headquarters. " They may be knocked about a bit, but they'll learn their business before they come through. Nothing like a night-alarm and a little cutting-up of stragglers to make a Regiment smart in the field. Wait till they've had half a dozen sentries' throats cut." The Colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his men was excellent, that the Reg- iment was all that could be wished and as sound as a bell. The Majors smiled with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in pairs down the Mess-room after dinner and nearly shot themselves at revolver-practise. But there was consternation in the hearts of Jakin and Lew. What was to be done with the drums ? Would the Band go to the Front ? How many of the drums would accompany the Regiment ? They took council together, sitting in a tree and smoking. " It's more than a bloomin' toss-up they'll leave us be'ind at the Depot with the womem You'll like that," said Jakin sarcastically. " 'Cause o' Cris, y' mean ? Wot's a woman, or a 'ole bloomin 1 depot o' women, 'longside o' the chanst of field-service ? You know I'm as keen on goin' as you," said Lew. " 'Wish I was a bloomin' bugler," said Jakin sadly. " They'll take Tom Kidd along, that I can plaster a wall with, an' like as not they won't take us." 104 Wee Willie Winkie "Then let's go an' make Tom Kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no more. You 'old 'is 'ands an' I'll kick him," said Lew, wrig- gling on the branch. " That ain't no good neither. We ain't the sort o' characters to presoom on our rep'tations they're bad. If they have the Band at the Depot we don't go, and no error there. If they take the Band we may get cast for med- ical unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy ? " said Jakin, digging Lew in the ribs with force. " Yus," said Lew with an oath. " The Doctor says your 'cart's weak through smokin' on an empty stummick. Throw a chest an* I'll try yer." Jakin threw out his chest, which Lew smote with all his might. Jakin turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes, and said, " That's all right." " You'll do," said Lew. " I've 'eard o' men dyin' when you 'it 'em fair on the breastbone." " 'Don't bring us no nearer goin', though," said Jakin. " Do you know where we're ordered ? " " Gawd knows, an' 'e won't split on a pal. Somewheres up to the Front to kill Paythans hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if they get 'old o' you. They say their women are good-looking, too." " Any loot ? " asked the abandoned Jakin. " Not a bloomin' anna, they say, unless you dig up the ground an' see what the niggers The Drums of the Fore and Aft 105 'ave 'id. They're a poor lot." Jakin stood, upright on the branch and gazed across the plain. "Lew," said he, "there's the Colonel coming. 'Colonel's a good old beggar. Let's go an' talk to 'im." Lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audac- ity of the suggestion. Like Jakin he feared not God, neither regarded he Man, but there are limits even to the audacity of drummer- boy, and to speak to a Colonel was . . . But Jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the direction of the Colonel. That officer was walking wrapped in thought and visions of a C. B. yes, even a K. C. B., for had he not at command one of the best Reg- iments of the Line the Fore and Fit ? And he was aware of two small boys charging down upon him. Once before it had been solemnly reported to him that " the Drums were in a state of mutiny " ; Jakin and Lew being the ringleaders. This looked like an organized conspiracy. The boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regulation four paces, and saluted together, each as well set-up as a ramrod and little taller. The Colonel was in a genial mood ; the boys appeared very forlorn and unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome. " Well 1 " said the Colonel, recognizing io6 Wee Willie Winkie them. " Are you going to pull me down in the open ? I'm sure I never interfere with you> even though " he sniffed suspiciously " you have been smoking." It was time to strike while the iron was hot. Their hearts beat tumultuously. " Beg y' pardon, Sir," began Jakin. " The Reg'ment's ordered on active service, Sir ? " " So I believe," said the Colonel cour- teously. " Is the Band goin', Sir ? " said both to- gether. Then, without pause, " We're goin', Sir, ain't we ? " " You 1 " said the Colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two small fig- ures. " You! You'd die in the first march.' " No, we wouldn't, Sir. We can march with the Regiment anywheres p'rade an' anywhere else," said Jakin. " If Tom Kidd goes 'e'll shut up like a clasp-knife," said Lew. " Tom 'as very close veins in both 'is legs, sir." " Very how much ? " "Very close veins, Sir. That's why they swells after long p'rade, Sir. If 'e can go, we can go, Sir." Again the Colonel looked at them long and intently. "Yes, the Band is going," he said as gravely as though he had been addressing a brother officer. " Have you any parents, either of you two ? " The Drums of the Fore and Aft 107 " No, Sir," rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. "We're both orphans, Sir. There's no one to be considered of on our account, Sir." " You poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the Front with the Regiment, do you ? Why ? " " I've wore the Queen's Uniform for two years," said Jakin. " It's very 'ard, Sir, that a man don't get no recompense for doin' 'is dooty, Sir." " An' an' if I don't go, Sir," interrupted Lew, " the Bandmaster 'e says 'e'll catch an* make a bloo a blessed musician o' me, Sir. Before I've seen any service, Sir." The Colonel made no answer for a long time. Then he said quietly : " If you're passed by the Doctor I dare say you can go. I shouldn't smoke if I were you." The boys saluted and disappeared. The Colonel walked home and told the story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. The Colo- nel was well pleased. If that was the tem- per of the children, what would not the men do? Jakin and Lew entered the boys' barrack- room with great stateliness, and refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten minutes. Then, bursting with pride, Jakin drawled : " I've bin inter- vooin* the Colonel. Good old beggar is the Colonel. Says I to 'im, ' Colonel/ says I, ' let me go to the Front, along o' the Reg'- io8 Wee Willie Winkie ment.' ' To the Front you shall go,' says 'e, 4 an' I only wish there was more like you among the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin' drums.' Kidd, if you throw your 'coutrements at me for tellin* you the truth to your own advantage, your legs'll swell." None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the barrack-room, for the boys were consumed with envy and hate, and neither Jakin nor Lew behaved in conciliatory wise. " I'm goin' out to say adoo to my girl," said Lew, to cap the climax. " Don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service, me bein' specially invited to go by the Colonel." He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the Married Quarters till Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken, Lew began to explain the situation. " I'm goin' to the Front with the Reg'- ment," he said, valiantly. " Piggy > you're a little liar," said Cris, but her heart misgave her, for Lew was not in the habit of lying. " Liar yourself, Cris," said Lew, slipping an arm round her. "I'm goin'. When the Reg'ment marches out you'll see me with 'em, all galliant and gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it." " If you'd on'y a-stayed at the Depot where you ought to ha' bin you could get as many The Drums of the Fore and Aft 109 of 'em as as you dam please," whimpered Cris, putting up her mouth. " It's 'ard, Cris. I grant you it's 'ard. But what's a man to do? If I'd a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn't think anything of me." " Like as not, but I'd 'ave you with me, Piggy- A 11 ' a ^ th e thinkin' in the world isn't like kissift'." " An' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal to wear on the front o' your coat" " You won't get no medal." " Oh, yus, I shall though. Me an* Jakin are the only acting-drummers that'll be took along. All the rest is full men, an' we'll get our medals with them." " They might ha' taken anybody but you, Piggy. You'll get killed you're so venture- some. Stay with me, Piggy darlin', down at the Depot, an' I'll love you true forever." " Ain't you goin' to do that now, Cris ? You said you was." " O* course I am, but th' other's more com- fortable. Wait till you've growed a bit, Piggy. You aren't no taller than me now." " I've bin in the Army for two years an' I'm not goin' to get out of a chanst o' seein' serv- ice, an' don't you try to make me do so. I'll come back, Cris, an' when I take on as a man I'll marry you marry you when I'm a Lance." " Promise, Piggy ? " no Wee Willie Winkie Lew reflected on the future as arranged by Jakin a short time previously, but Cris's mouth was very near to his own. " I promise, s'elp me Gawd 1 " said he. Cris slid an arm round his neck. " I won't 'old you back no more, Piggy. Go away an' get your medal, an' I'll make you a new button-bag as nice as I know how," she whispered. " Put some o' your 'air into it, Cris, an' I'll keep it in my pocket so long's I'm alive." Then Cris wept anew, and the interview ended. Public feeling among the drummer- boys rose to fever pitch, and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy's age fourteen but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the front which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. The Band which was to accompany the Regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men, the sur- plus returning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were attached to the Band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being Company buglers. " Don't matter much," said Jakin after the medical inspection. " Be thankful that we're 'lowed to go at all. The Doctor 'e said that if we could stand what we took from the Bazar Ser geant's son we'd stand pretty nigh anything." The Drums of the Fore and Aft in " Which we will," said Lew, looking ten- derly at the ragged and ill-made housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling " L" upon the cover. " It was the best I could," she sobbed. " I wouldn't let mother nor the Sergeant's tailor 'elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an' remem- ber I love you true." They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married wo- men wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its noble self black in the face. " A nice level lot," said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command, as they watched the first four companies entraining. " Fit to do anything," said the Second-in- Command enthusiastically. " But it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. It's bitter cold up at the Front now." " They're sound enough," said the Colonel. " We must take our chance of sick casual- ties." So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of camels, armies of camp followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly con- H2 Wee Willie Winkie gested junction where six lines of temporary track accommodated six forty-wagon trains ; where whistles blew, Babus sweated and Com- missariat officers swore from dawn till far into the night amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand steers. " Hurry up you're badly wanted at the Front," was the message that greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages told the same tale. " 'Tisn't so much the bloomin' fighting," gasped a headbound trooper of Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. " 'Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. It's the bloomin' food an' the bloomin' climate. Frost all night 'cept when it hails, and biling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I got my 'ead chipped like a egg ; I've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is all out o' order. 'Tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, I can tell you." " Wot are the niggers like ? " demanded a private. " There's some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an' look at 'em. They're the aristocracy o' the country. The common folk are a dashed sight uglier. If you want to know what they fight with, reach under my seat an' pull out the long knife that's there." They dragged out and beheld for the first The Drums of the Fore and Aft 113 time the grim, bone-handled, triangular Afghan knife. It was almost as long as Lew. "That's the thing to jint ye," said the trooper feebly. '* It can take off a man's arm at the shoul- der as easy as slicing butter. I halved the beggar that used that 'un, but there's more of his likes up above. They don't understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice." The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the Afghan prisoners. They were unlike any " niggers " that the Fore and Aft had ever met these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men stared the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes. " My eyes ! Wot awful swine 1 " said Jakin, who was in the rear of the procession. " Say, old man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kis- wasti you wasn't hanged for your ugly face, hey?" The tallest of the company turned, his leg- irons clanking at .the movement, and stared at the boy. " See 1 " he cried to his fellows in Pushto. " They send children against us, What a people, and what fools 1 " " Hya /" said Jakin, nodding his head cheer- ily. "You go down-country. Khana get, peenikapanec get live like a bloomin' Raja ke marfik. That's a better bandobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-by, ole man. 8 ri4 Wee Willie Winkie Take care o' your beautiful figure'ed, an* try to look kushy" The men laughed and fell in for their first march when they began to realize that a soldier's life was not all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call " Paythans," and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the .corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they !had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the fline of march said, " they lived like pigs." They learned the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and de- veloped a few cases of dysentery in their study. At the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady-rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the beginning of a long- range fire carefully calculated to that end. In the daytime they saw nothing except an occasional puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. At night there were dis- tant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, The Drums of the Fore and Aft 115 which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom, and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent but not war. Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against the franc-tireurs of the country side. Its duty was to go for- ward and make connection with the Scotch and Gurkha troops with which it was brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were deal- ing with a raw regiment. Thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the strain. Not for any- thing would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps with the wicked little Gurkhas, whose delight it was to lie out on the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers with the terrible, big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard pray- ing to their God in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount of " sniping " could shake or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white regiment was different quite dif- ferent It slept like a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile ; would fire at anything that moved even a driven don; n6 Wee Willie Winkie key and when they had once fired, could be scientifically " rushed " and laid out a horror and an offense against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely. Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph was a sudden night- rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glori- ous knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft. All the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point was the " two o'clock in the morn- ing courage " ; and they, so far, had only succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep. Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and unclean, the " Fore and Aft " joined their Brigade. " I hear you had a tough time of it coming up," said the Brigadier. But when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell. " This is bad," said he to himself. " They're as rotten as sheep." And aloud to the Colonel, " I'm afraid we can't spare you The Drums of the Fore and Aft 117 just yet. We want all we have, else I should have given you ten days to recruit in." The Colonel winced. " On my honor, Sir," he returned, " there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us. My men have been rather mauled and upset without a fair return. They only want to go in some- where where they can see what's before them." "Can't say I think much of the Fore and Fit," said the Brigadier in confidence to his Brigade-Major. " They've lost all their sol- diering, and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from the other side. A more fagged-out set of men I never put eyes on." " Oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. The parade gloss has been rubbed off a little s but they'll put on field polish before long," said the Brigade-Major. " They've been mauled, and they quite don't understand it" They did not. All the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard hitting with ac- cessories that made them sick. There was also the real sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the grave. Worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. The Fore and Aft were in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. Pot u8 Wee Willie Winkie shots up and down the valleys were unsatis- factory, and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well, for a long- limbed Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away enough lead to disable three Englishmen. The Fore and Fit would like some rifle-practise at the enemy all seven hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood of the men. The Gurkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room English strove to fraternize with them ; offered them pipes of tobacco and stood them treat at the canteen. But the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of the nature of the Gurkhas, treated them as they would treat any other "niggers," and the little men in green trotted back to their firm friends the Highlanders, and with many grins confided to them : " That dam white regiment no dam use. Sulky ugh I Dirty ugh 1 Hya, any tot for Johnny ? " Whereat the Highlanders smote the Gurkhas as to the head, and told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Gurkhas grinned cavern- ously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the privileges of kin- ship. The common soldier who touches a Gurkha is more than likely to have his head sliced open. Three days later the Brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules of war and the peculiarity of the Afghan temperament. The The Drums of the Fore and Aft 119 enemy were massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of many green standards warned him that the tribes were " up " in aid of the Afghan regular troops. A Squadron and a half of Bengal Lancers represented the available Cavalry, and two screw-guns borrowed from a column thirty miles away, the Artillery at the Gen- eral's disposal. " If they stand, as I've a very strong notion that they will, I fancy we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching," said the Brigadier. " We'll do it in style. Each regiment shall be played into action by its Band, and we'll hold the Cavalry in reserve." " For all the reserve ? " somebody asked. " For all the reserve ; because we're going to crumple them up," said the Brigadier, who was an extraordinary Brigadier, and did not believe in the value of a reserve when deal- ing with Asiatics. And, indeed, when you come to think of it, had the British Army con- sistently waited for reserves in all its little affairs, the boundaries of Our Empire would have stopped at Brighton beach. That battle was to be a glorious battle. The three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the cen- ter, left, and right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. I2O Wee Willie Winkie Thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. In the event of victory these same tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the British. The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve >.n the right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on the com- bined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and Aft would debouch from the central gorge, the Gurkhas from the left, and the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It was not every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open, and the Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it. " If we only had a few more men," he said plaintively, " we could surround the creatures and crumble 'em up thoroughly. As it is, I'm afraid we can only cut them up as they run. It's a great pity." The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace far five days, and were beginning, ic The Drums of the Fore and Aft 121 spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. Through- out those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of zymotic disease ; and their careful conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread. Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and Aft, filled with a mis- guided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit ; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely pre- pared for the fray. All the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste. The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he 122 Wee Willie Winkie succeed that the coffee was just ready when the men moved off, their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the regiment went past. It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in position real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and of this there was no doubt firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that pock-marked ground the regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets ; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half-capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process cf pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hillside, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given. " Good God ! " said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all. " That regiment lias spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off." The Drums of the Fore and Aft 123 But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unac- customed to weapons of such devilish preci- sion. The Fore and Aft continued to go forward but with shortened stride. Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use Martinis ? They took open order instinc- tively, lying down and firing at random, rush- ing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort's sake. Then the crack of his neighbor's rifle at his ear led him to fire as rapidly as he could again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. The reward was not long delayed. Five vol- leys plunged the files in banked smoke im- penetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down, and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping Martini. The Company Commanders peered helplessly through the smoke, the more nervous mechan- ically trying to fan it away with their hel- mets. " High and to the left I " bawled a Captain 124 Wee Willie Winkie till he was hoarse. " No good ! Cease fir ing, and let it drift away a bit." Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying before them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the enemy still in position and apparently un- affected. A quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the ragged earth attested. That was not demoralizing. They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his com- pany shrieking with agony, another was kick- ing the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. The smoke cleared to a dull haze. Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting and a mass a black mass detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were determined to die carried home. The fifty were Ghazis, half-maddened with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. When they rushed the British The Drums of the Fore and Aft 125 fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close ranks and meet them with the bayonet. Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft that the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges ; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favor of life if he can close with the latter. Where they should have closed and gone forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and skirmished, and where they should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited. A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in whose hands are three- foot knives. The Fore and Aft heard the Gurkha bugles bringing that regiment forward at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes came from the left. They strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their foes ; a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. The men clubbed together and 126 Wee Willie Winkie smote blindly as often as not at their own fellows. Their 'front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed on ; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they. Then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamor in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose ; they would get away from the knives. " Come on ! " shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew back, each clos- ing into his neighbor and wheeling round. Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death alone in the belief that their men would follow. ' " You've killed me, you cowards," sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut from the shoulder- strap to the center of the chest, and a fresh detachment of his men retreating, always re- treating, trampled him under foot as they made for the pass whence they had emerged. I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall, Child'un, child'un, follow me I Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all ? Halla Halla Halla Hallelujah ! The Gurkhas were pouring through the left The Drums of the Fore and Aft 127 gorge and over the heights at the double to the invitation of their regimental Quick-step. The black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubi- lantly : In the morning ! In the morning by the bright light 1 When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning 1 The Gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered over loose stones. The front-files halted for a moment to take stock of the val- ley and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold, there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the Gurkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be amusement. The little men hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch. The Gurkhas' ground sloped downward to the val- ley, and they enjoyed a fair view of the pro- ceedings. They sat upon the boulders to watch, for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting to repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away. Let the white men look to their own front. " Hi ! yi 1 " said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely. " Dam fools yonder, stand close order 1 This is no time for close order, it's the time for volleys. Ugh I " 128 Wee Willie Winkie Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Gur khas beheld the retirement let us be gentle of the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries. " They run ! The white men run 1 Col- onel Sahib, may we also do a little running ? " murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jema- dar. But the Colonel would have none of it. " Let the beggars be cut up a little," said he wrathfully. " 'Serves 'em right. They'll be prodded into facing round in a minute." He looked through his field-glasses, and caught the glint of an officer's sword. " Bering 'em with the flat damned con- scripts ! How the Ghazis are walking into them 1 " said he. The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear-rank delivered some sort of a waver- ing volley. The Ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserves the gorge might hide. Moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. They returned as wolves re- turn to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralized with fear, while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote the The Drums of the Fore and Aft 129 men with the hilts and the flats of their swords. " Get back. Get back, you cowards you women I Right about face column of com- panies, form you hounds ! " shouted the Colonel, and the subalterns swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go to go anywhere out of the range of those merciless knives. It swayed to and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the right the Gurkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper Snider bullets at long range into the mob of the Ghazis returning to their own troops. The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, lied at the first rush. Jakin and Lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with the reg- iment, they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported. " Get back to that rock," gasped Jakin. " They won't see us there." And they returned to the scattered instru- ments of the Band ; their hearts nearly burst- ing their ribs. " Here's a nice show for us," said Jakin. throwing himself full length on the ground. " A bloomin' fine show for British Infantry I Oh, the devils 1 They've gone an' left us alone here I Wot'll we do ? " Lew took possession of a cast-off water 9 130 Wee Willie Winkie bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again. " Drink," said he shortly. " They'll come back in a minute or two you see." Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the regiment's return. They could hear a dull clamor from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Gurkhas fired at them. " We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as death," said Jakin. " I'll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on Jakin's. " ' Old on ! I know something better than fightin'," said Jakin, " stung by the splendor of a sudden thought " due chiefly to rum. " Tip our bloomin' cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away. Come on, Lew 1 We won't get hurt. Take the fife an' give me the drum. The Old Step for all your bloomin' guts are worth ! There's a few of our men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By your right quick march 1 " He slipped the drum-sling over his shoul- der, thrust the fife into Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the " British Grenadiers." As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and The Drums of the Fore and Aft 131 Aft were coming back sullenly and shame- facedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse ; their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an am- bush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded. The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, Jakin bang- ing the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Gurkhas. " Come on, you dogs ! " muttered Jakin to himself. " Are we to play forhever ? " Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on parade. And in bitter mockery of the distant 'mob, the old tune of the Old Line shrilled and rattled : Some talk of Alexander, And some of Hercules ; Of Hector and Lysander, And such great names as these t There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Gurkhas, and a roar from the Highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by British or Afghan. The two little red dots 132 Wee Willie Winkie moved forward in the open parallel to the enemy's front. But of all the world's great heroes, There's none that can compare, With a tow-row-row-row-row-row, To the British Grenadier I The men of the Fore and Aft were gather- ing thick at the entrance into the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the children. Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly, while the fife squeaked despair- ingly. " Right about face ! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk," said Jakin. They wheeled and marched back : Those heroes of antiquity Ne'er saw a cannon-ball, Nor knew the force o' powder, " Here they come 1 :> said Jakin. " Go on Lew " : To scare their foes withal ! The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known ; for neither officers nor men speak of it now. The Drums of the Fore and Aft 133 " They are coming anew ! " shouted a priest among the Afghans. " Do not kill the boys I Take them alive and they shall be of our faith." But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face. Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft came forward, the maledictions of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of open shame. Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open order, and they did not fire. "This," said the Colonel of Gurkhas, softly, " is the real attack as it ought to have been delivered. Come on, my children." " Ulu-lu-lu-lu 1 " squealed the Gurkhas, and came down with a joyful clicking of kukris those vicious Gurkha knives. On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say with- out heat and without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the imperti- nent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round the flicker- ing green standards on the heights. " Charrging is an unfortunate necessity," 134 Wee Willie Winkie murmured the Color-Sergeant of the right company of the Highlanders. " It makes the men sweer so, but I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion. A foot lower and a great deal slower 1 What are the English doing? They're very quiet there in the center. Run- ning again ? " The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart, he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realized for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them. But they had no old soldiers in their ranks. The Gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged to a The Drums of the Fore and Aft 135 nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block with the kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet ; well knowing how the Afghan hates the half-moon blade. As the Afghans wavered, the green stand- ards on the mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally. Which was unwise. The Lancers chafing in the right gorge had thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper to report on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion he returned with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in Hindustani, and saying that all things were ready. So that Squadron swung round the right of the Highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of "wavering. But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the Afghans intended to retreat ; and down the track that the lances had made streamed two companies of the Highlanders, which was never intended by the Brigadier. The new development was successful. It detached the enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. And as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so vrert 136 Wee Willie Winkle the Afghans chased till they broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than large masses. " See 1 " quoth the Brigadier. " Everything has come as I arranged. We've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces." A direct hammering was all that the Brig- adier had dared to hope for, considering the size of the force at his disposal ; but men who stand or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward mer- rily. The Afghan forces were upon the run the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could .vere trying to escape from the valley of death- The Highlanders gave the fugitives two hun- dred yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere they could reach the protection of the boulders above. The Gurkhas followed suit ; but the Fore and Aft were killing on their own account, for they had penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats. " We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib 1 " panted a Ressaidar of Lancers. " Let us try The Drums of the Fore and Aft 137 the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes time." They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away fled up the hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them. On the heights the screw-guns ceased firing they had run out of ammunition and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were fired, the litters were out in force looking for the wounded. The battle was over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the Afghans would have been wiped off the earth. As it was they counted their dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft. But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders, nor did they dance uncouth dances with the Gurkhas among the dead. They looked under their brows at the Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted. " Get back to camp, you. Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one day I Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for," said the Colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all that mortal commander could expect. They had lost heavily because they did not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward. ^38 Wee Willie Winkle A young and sprightly Color-Sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself a hero, offered his water-bottle to a Highlander, whose tongue was black with thirst. " I drink with no cowards," answered the youngster huskily, and, turning to a Gurkha, said, " Hya, Johnny ! Drink water got it ? " The Gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. The Fore and Aft said no word. They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw him- self a Knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. The Colonel was heart-broken and the officers were savage and sullen. " Well," said the Brigadier, " they are young troops of course, and it was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit." " Oh, my only Aunt Maria ! " murmured a junior Staff Officer. " Retire in disorder ! It was a bally run 1 " " But they came again as. we all know," cooed the Brigadier, the Colonel's ashy-white face before him, " and they behaved as well as could possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, indeed. I was watching them. It's not a matter to take to heart, Colonel. As some German General said of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all." To himself he said : " Now they're blooded I can give 'em responsible The Drums of the Fore and Aft 139 work. It's as well that they got what they did. 'Teach 'em more than half a dozen rifle flirtations, that will later run alone and bite. Poor old Colonel, though." All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweat- ing, and sore, a misguided Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village- burning and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while. " Let's have the details somehow as full as ever you can, please. It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign," said the Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loath, told him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the Brigadier. But some say, and among these be the Gurkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai. WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY, " BUT if it be a girl ? " " Lord of my life, it cannot be 1 I have prayed for so many nights, and sent gifts to Sheikh Badl's shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the mullah of the Pattan Mosque shall cast his nativity God send he be born in an auspicious hour ! and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me, thy slave." " Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen ? " " Since the beginning till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver ? " " Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother." " And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What talk is yours of 140 Without Benefit of Clergy 141 dowry ? I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow dancing-girl instead of a child." " Art thou sorry for the sale ? " " I have sorrowed ; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me now ? An- swer, my king." " Never never. No." " Not even though the mem-log the white women of thy own blood love thee ? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are very fair." " I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred, I have seen the moon, and then I saw no more fire-balloons." Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. " Very good talk," she said. Then, with an assumption of great stateliness : " It is enough. Thou hast my permission to depart if thou wilt." The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a room fur- nished only with a blue-and-white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an English- man and she a Mussulman's daughter, bought two years before from her mother, who, being left without money, would have sold Ameera, shrieking to the Prince of Darkness, if the price had been sufficient 142 Wee Willie Winkie It was a contract entered into with a light heart. But even before the girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John Holden's life. For her and the with- ered hag her mother he had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found, when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard, and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grum- bling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and mat- ters of housekeeping in general, that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard to the women's rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was going to be added to this king- dom a third person, whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the or- derly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby's hands. "And then," Ameerq Without Benefit of Clergy 143 would always say " then he will never care for the white mem-log, I hate them all I hate them all 1 " " He will go back to his own people in time," said the mother, " but, by the blessing of God, that time is yet afar off." Holden sat silent on the couch, thinking of the future, and his thoughts were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The government, with singular care, had or- dered him out of the station for a fortnight on special duty, in the place of a man who was watching by the bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in being a bach- elor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera. " It is not good," she said, slowly, " but it is not all bad. There is my mother here, and no harm will come to me unless, indeed, I die of pure joy. Go thou to thy work, and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days are done, I believe . . . nay, I am sure. And and then I shall lay him in thy arms, and thou wilt love me forever. The train goes to-night at midnight, is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of me. But thou wilt not delay in re- turning 1 Thou wilt not stay on the road to talk to the bold white mem-log ! Come back to me swiftly, my life I " 144 Wee Willie Winkie As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the house, and bid him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up telegraph form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and, with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral, Holden went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence, his work for the state was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper toward his colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the club, where- in he heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other man's duties, and how he had en- deared himself to all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in, when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup. " Has aught occurred ? " said Holden. " The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but " He held out Without Benefit of Clergy 145 his shaking hand, as befitted the bearer of good news who is entitled to a reward. Holden hurried through the courtyard, A light burned in the upper room. His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a pin-pointed wail that sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but it did not prove that Ameera was alive. " Who is there ? " he called up the narrow brick staircase. There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of her mother, tremulous with old age and pride : " We be two women, and the man thy son." On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger that was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient heel. " God is great I " cooed Ameera in the half-light. " Thou hast taken his misfortunes on thy head." " Aye, but how is it with thee, life of my life ? Old woman, how is it with her ? " " She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is no harm ; but speak softly," said the mother. " It only needed thy presence to make me all well," said Ameera. "My king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me ? Ah 1 ah I It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look I Was 10 146 Wee Willie Winkie there ever such a babe ? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him." " Rest, then, and do not talk. I am here, bachheri " (little woman). " Well said, for there is a bond and a heel- rope [peecharee] between us now that nothing can break. Look canst thou see in this light ? He is without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya Illah I he shall be a pundit no, a trooper of the queen. And, my life, dost thou love me as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn ? Answer truly." " Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and rest." " Then do not go. Sit by my side here so. Mother, the lord of this house needs a cushion. Bring it." There was an almost imperceptible movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera's arm. " Aho 1 " she said, her voice breaking with love. " The babe is a champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was there ever such a babe ? And he is ours to us thine and mine. Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are unskilled in such matters." Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy head. " He is of the Faith," said Ameera ; " for, lying here in the night-watches, I whispered Without Benefit of Clergy 147 the Call to Prayer and the Profession of Faith into his ears. And it is most marvelous that he was born upon a Friday, as I was born. Be careful of him, my life ; but he can almost grip with his hands." Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his ringer. And the clutch ran through his limbs till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realize that there was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed lightly. " Get hence, sahib," said her mother, under her breath. " It is not good that she should find you here on waking. She must be still." " I go," said Holden, submissively. " Here be rupees. See that my baba gets fat and finds all that he needs." The chink of the silver roused Ameera. " I am his mother, and no hireling," she said, weakly. " Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money ? Mother, give it back. I have borne my lord a son." The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly, with his heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight " This house is now complete," he said, and without further comment thrust into Hoi- 148 Wee Willie Winkie den's hands the hilt of a saber worn man/ years ago, when Pir Khan served the queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the well-curb. " There be two," said Pir Khan" two goats of the best. I bought them, and they cost much money ; and since there is no birth-party assembled, their flesh will be all mine. Strike carefully, sahib. 'Tis an ill-bal- anced saber at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the marigolds." " And why ? " said Holden, bewildered. " For the birth sacrifice. What else ? Otherwise the child, being unguarded from fate, may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be said." Holden had learned them once, with little thought that he would ever say them in earnest. The touch of the cold saber-hilt in his palm turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child up-stairs the child that was his own son and a dread of loss rilled him. " Strike 1 " said Pir Khan. " Never life came into the world but life was paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now 1 With a drawing cut 1 " Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mohammedan prayer that runs : " Almighty I In place of this my son I offer life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin for skin." The waiting horse snorted and bound' Without Benefit of Clergy 149 ed in his pickets at the smell of the raw blood that spurted over Holden's riding-boots. "Well smitten I " said Pir Khan, wiping the saber. " A swordsman was lost in thee. Go with a light heart, heaven born. I am thy servant and the servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years, and . . . the flesh of the goats is all mine ? " Pir Khan drew back richer by a month's pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the low-hanging wood smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation, alternating with a vast vague ten- derness directed toward no particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse. " I never felt like this in my life," he thought. " I'll go to the club and pull myself together." A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing at the top of his voice : " ' In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet.' " " Did you ? " said the club secretary from his corner. " Did she happen to tell you that your boots were wringing wet ? Great good- ness, man, it's blood ! " " Bosh 1 " said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. " May I cut in ? It's dew. I've been riding through high crops. My faith I my boots are in a mess, though 1 150 Wee Willie Winkie " ' And if it be a girl, she shall wear a wedding-ring; And if it be a boy, he shall fight for his king ; With his dirk and his cap, and his little jacket blue, He shall walk the quarter-deck ' " " Yellow and blue green next player," said the marker, monotonously. " ' He shall walk the quarter-deck ' am I green, marker ? ' he shall walk the quarter- deck ' ouch 1 that's a bad shot 1 ' as his daddy used to do 1 " " I don't see that you have anything to crow about," said a zealous junior civilian, acidly. " The government is not exactly pleased with your work when you relieved Sanders." " Does that mean a wigging from head- quarters ? " said Holden, with an abstracted smile. " I think I can stand it." The talk beat up round the ever-fresh sub- ject of each man's work, and steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark, empty bun- galow, where his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant ones. II. " How old is he now ? " " Ya illah ! What a man's question 1 He is all but six weeks old ; and on this night I Without Benefit of Clergy 151 go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday, under the sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved ? " " There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count the stars but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud." " The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come, before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels." " Thou hast forgotten the best of all." " Ai 1 Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies." Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that let to the flat roof. The child, placid and un- winking, lay in the hollow of her right arm, gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin, with a small skull-cap on his head. Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the nostril, the gold ornament in the center of the fore- head studded with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the soft- ness of the pure metal, and the chinking curb- patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade- green muslin, as befitted a daughter of the 152 Wee Willie Winkie Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country's ornaments, but since they were Holden's gift, and fastened with a cun- ning European snap, delighted her immensely. They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city and its lights. " They are happy down there," said Ameera. " But I do not think that they are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And thou ? " " I know they are not." " How dost thou know ? " "They give their children over to the nurses." " I have never seen that," said Ameera, with a sigh ; " nor do I wish to see. Ahi 1 " she dropped her head on Holden's shoulder " I have counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life. He is counting, too." The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera placed him in Holden's arms, and he lay there without a cry. " What shall we call him among ourselves ? " she said. " Look 1 Art thou ever tired of looking ? He carries thy very eyes 1 But the mouth " Without Benefit of Clergy 153 " Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I ? " " 'Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small I And yet it holds my heart between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away." " Nay, let him lie ; he has not yet begun to cry." " When he cries thou wilt give him back, eh ? What a man of mankind thou art 1 If he cried, he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what little name shall we give him ? " The small body lay close to Holden's heart. It was utterly helpless and very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The caged green parrot, that is regarded as a sort of guardian spirit in most native households, moved on its perch and fluttered a drow. c y wing. " There is . the answer," said Holden. " Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be the parrot. When he is ready he will talk might- ily, and run about. Mian Mittu is the parrot in thy in the Mussulman tongue, is it not ? " " Why put me so far off ? " said Ameera, fretfully. " Let it be like unto some English name but not wholly. For he is mine." "Then call him Tota, for that is likest English." " Aye, Tota ; and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a minute ago ; but, in truth, he is too little to wear all the weight 1 54 Wee Willie Winkie of Mian Mittu for name. He shall be Tota our Tota to us. Hearest thou, oh, small one ? Littlest, thou art Tota." She touched the child's cheek, and, he waking, wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of " Art koko, Ja rt koko ! " which says : " Oh, crow ! Go crow ! Baby's sleeping sound, And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound Only a penny a pound, Babaon\y a penny a pound." Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled himself down to sleep. The two sleek white well-bullocks in the courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal ; old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden's horse, his police saber across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a marriage proces- sion came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying foxes crossed the face of the low moon. " I have prayed," said Ameera, after a long pause, with her chin in her hand " I have prayed for two things. First, that I may die in thy stead, if thy death is demanded ; and Without Benefit of Clergy 155 in the second, that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam.* Thinkest thou either will hear ? " " From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word ? " " I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my prayers be heard ? " " How can I say ? God is very good." " Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die or the child dies, what is thy fate ? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for kind calls to kind." " Not always." " With a woman, no. With a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life, later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could al- most endure, for I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a strange place and a paradise that I do not know." " Will it be paradise ? " " Surely ; for what God would harm thee ? But we two I and the child shall be else- where, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In the old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things ; but now I think of them perpetu- ally. It is very hard talk." " It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we The Virgin Mary. ^156 Wee Willie Winkie do not know, but to-day and love we know well. Surely we are happy now." " So happy that it were well to make our hap- piness assured. And thy Beebee Miriam should listen to me ; for she is also a woman. But then she would envy me It is not seemly for men to worship a woman." Holden laughed aloud at Ameera's little spasm of jealousy. " Is it not seemly ? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee, then ? " " Thou a worshiper 1 And of me ! My king, for all thy sweet words, well I know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet. And I would not have it otherwise. See 1 " Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his feet ; re- covering herself with a little laugh, she hugged Tota closer to her bosom. Then, almost sav- agely : " Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length of my life ? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they are old women ? " " They marry as do others when they are women." " That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true ? " " That is true." " Ya illah ! At twenty-five Who would of his own will take a wife even of eighteen ? Without Benefit of Clergy 157 She is a woman aging every hour. Twenty- five I I shall be an old woman at that age, and Those mem-log remain young forever. How I hate them 1 " " What have they to do with us ? " " I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten years after I am an old woman, grayheaded, and the nurse of Tola's son. That is unjust and evil. They should die too." " Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and carried down the staircase." " Tota 1 Have a care for Tota, my lord 1 Thou, at least, art as foolish as any babe I " Ameera tucked Tota out of harm's way in the hollow in her neck, and was carried down-stairs, laughing, in Holden's arms, while Tota opened his eyes and smiled, after the manner of the lesser angels. He was a silent infant, and almost before Holden could realize that he was in the world, developed into a small gold-colored godling and unquestioned despot of the house over- looking the city. Those were months of ab- solute happiness to Holden and Ameera happiness withdrawn from the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By day Holden did his work, with an immense pity for such as were not so for- tunate as himself, and a sympathy for small 158 Wee Willie Winkie children that amazed and amused many mothers at the little station gatherings. At nightfall he returned to Ameera Ameera full of the wondrous doings of Tota : how he had been seen to clap his hands together and move his fingers with intention and purpose, which was manifestly a miracle ; how later he had of his own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor, and swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths. " And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight," said Ameera. Then he took the beasts into his councils the well-bullocks, the little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well, and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously pulled, and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived. " Oh, villain 1 Child of strength ! This to thy brother on the house-top 1 Tobah, tobah / Fy 1 fy 1 But I know a charm to make him wise as Suleiman and Aflatoun.* Now look," said Ameera. She drew from an embroidered bag a handful of almonds. " See ! we count seven. In the name of God 1 " She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage, and, seating herself between the babe and the bird, cracked and peeled an almond less white than her teeth. " This is a true charm, my life; and do not laugh. See 1 I give the parrot one half and Tota the * Solomon and Plato. Without Benefit of Clergy 159 other." Mian Mittu, with careful beak, took his share from between Ameera's lips, and she kissed the other half into the mouth of the child, who eat it slowly, with wondering eyes. " This I will do each day of seven, and without doubt he who is ours will be a bold speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be when thou art a man and I am gray-headed ? " Tota tucked his fat legs into adorable creases. He could crawl, but he was not going to waste the spring of his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu's tail to tweak. When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt which, with a magic square en- graved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the greater part of his clothing he staggered on a perilous journey down the garden to Pir Khan, and proffered him all his jewels in exchange for one little ride on Hoi- den's horse. He had seen his mother's mother chaffering with pedlers in the veranda. Pir Khan wept, set the untried feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the bold adventurer to his mother's arms, vowing that Tota would be a leader of men ere his beard was grown. One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and mother, watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew, he demanded a kite of his own, with Pir Khan to fly it, because he had a fear of dealing with anything larger than himself ; 160 Wee Willie Winkie and when Holden called him a " spark," he rose to his feet and answered slowly, in defense of his new-found individuality : " Hum 'park nahin hai. Hum admi fiat." (I am no spark, but a man.) The protest made Holden choke, and devote himself very seriously to a consideration of Tota's future. He need hardly have taken the trouble. The delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore it was taken away, as many things are taken away in India, suddenly and without warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him, grew sorrowful and complained of pains, who had never known the meaning of pain. Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night, and in the dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him by fever the seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impos- sible that he could die, and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the evidence of the body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head against the wall, and would have flung herself down the well in the garden had Holden not restrained her by main force. One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in broad daylight, and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that demanded concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however, alive to this kindness of the gods. Without Benefit of Clergy 161 III. THE first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen seconds later. Then comes thirst, throbbing, and agony, and a ridiculous amount of scream- ing. Holden realized his pain slowly, exactly as he had realized his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding all trace of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a loss, and that Ameera needed comforting where she sat with her head on her knees, shivering as Mian Mittu, from the house-top, called "Total Total Total" Later all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him. It was an outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the evening should be alive and clamorous when his own child lay dead. It was more than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told by overfond fathers of their children's latest performances cut him to the quick. He could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort, nor sympathy, and Ameera, at the end of each weary day, would lead him through the hell of self-questioning reproach which is reserved for those who have lost a child, and believe that with a little just a little more care it might have been ii 162 Wee Willie Winkie saved. There are not many hells worse than this, but he knows one who has sat down temporarily to consider whether he is or is not responsible for the death of his wife. " Perhaps," Ameera would say, " I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or did I not ? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone, and I was ahi! braiding my hair it may be that the sun then bred the fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh, my life, say that I am guiltless ! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love thee 1 Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die I shall die 1 " " There is no blame. Before God, none. It was written, and how could we do aught to save ? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved." " He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm tells me every night that he is not here. Ahit ahil Oh, Tota, come back to me come back again, and let us be all together as it was before 1 " " Peace 1 peace 1 For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest me, rest." " By this I know thou dost not care ; and how shouldst thou? The white men have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of mine own people though he beat me and had never eaten the bread of an alien 1 " Without Benefit of Clergy 163 " Am I an alien, mother of my son ? " " What else, sahib ? . . . Oh, forgive me forgive 1 The death has driven me mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes, and the breath of my life, and and I have put thee from me, though it was but for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for help? Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke, and not thy slave." " I know I know. We be two who were three. The greater need, therefore, that we should be one." They were sitting on the roof, as of custom. The night was a warm one in early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden's arms. " The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I I am afraid. It was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much as before, though a bond is taken away ? Answer." " I love more, because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have eaten to- gether; and that thou knowest." " Yea, I know," said Ameera, in a very small whisper. " But it is good to hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child no more, but a woman, and an aid to thee. Listen. Give me my sitar, and I will sing bravely." 164 Wee Willie Winkie She took the light silver-studded sitar, and began a song of the great hero Raja Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted, checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery rhyme about the wicked crow : " ' And the wild plums grow in the jungle- Only a penny a pound, Only a penny a pound, Baba only ' " Then came the tears and the piteous rebel- lion against fate, till she slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear of the body, as though it protected something that was not there. It was after this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid him by filling up his mind for eight or nine hours a day. Ameera sat alone in the house and brooded, but grew hap- pier when she understood that Holden was more at ease, according to the custom of women. They touched happiness again, but this time with caution. " It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon us," said Ameera. " I have hung up a large black jar before our window to turn the Evil Eye from us, and we must make no protestations of de- light, but go softly underneath the stars, lest Without Benefit of Clergy 165 God find us out. Is that not good talk, worth- less one ? " She had shifted the accent of the word that means " beloved," in proof of the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went about hence- forth saying : " It is naught it is naught," and hoping that all the powers heard. The powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million people four years of plenty, wherein men fed well and the crops were certain and the birth-rate rose year by year ; the districts reported a purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand to the square mile of the overburdened earth. It was time to make room. And the Member of the Lower Toot- ing, wandering about India in top-hat and frock-coat, talked largely of the benefits of British rule, and suggested as the one thing needful the establishment of duly qualified electoral system and a general bestowal of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him welcome, and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of the blood-red dhak-tree, that had flowered untimely for a sign of the sickness that was coming, they smiled more than ever. It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot- Kumharsen, staying at the club for a day, who 1 66 Wee Willie Winkie lightly told a tale that made Holden's blood run cold as he overheard the end. " He won't bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my life. By Jove 1 I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about it. Fellow-pas- senger in his ship dined next him bowled over by cholera, and died in eighteen hours. You needn't laugh, you fellows. The Mem- ber for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it ; but he's more scared. I think he's going to take his enlightened self out of India." " I'd give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few vestrymen of his kidney to their parish. But what's this about cholera ? It's full early for anything of that kind," said a warden of an unprofitable salt- lick. " Dunno," said the deputy commissioner, reflectively. " We've got locusts with us. There's sporadic cholera all along the north at least, we're calling it sporadic for decency's sake. The spring crops are short in five dis- tricts, and nobody seems to know where the winter rains are. It's nearly March now. I don't want to scare anybody, but it seems to me that Nature's going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this summer." "Just when I wanted to take leave, too," said a voice across the room. " There won't be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great deal of promotion. Without Benefit of Clergy r6; I've come in to persuade the government to put my pet canal on the list of famine-relief works. It's an ill wind that blows no good. I shall get that canal finished at last." " Is it the old program, then," said Holden " famine, fever, and cholera ? " " Oh, no 1 Only local scarcity and an un- usual prevalence of seasonal sickness. You'll find it all in the reports if you live till next year. You're a lucky chap. You haven't got a wife to put you out of harm's way. The hill- stations ought to be full of women this year." " I think you're inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars," said a young civilian in the secretariat. " Now, I have observed : " I dare say you have," said the deputy commissioner, " but you're a great deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to you " And he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal thrt was so dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow, and began tov understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of' another, which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man. Two months later, as the deputy had fore- told, Nature began to audit her accounts with- a red pencil. On the heels of the spring reapings came a cry for bread, and the gov- ernment, which had decreed that no man should die of want, sent wheat. Then came- i68 Wee Willie Winkie the cholera from all four quarters of the compass. It struck a pilgrim gathering of half a million at a sacred shrine. Many died at the feet of their god. the others broke and ran over the face of the land, carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a walled city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains, hanging on to the foot- boards and squatting on the roofs of the car- riages ; and the cholera followed them, for at each station they dragged out the dead and the dying on the platforms reeking of lime-wash and carbolic acid. They died by the road- side, and the horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the Hills, and went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best to per- suade Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas. " Why should I go ? " said she one evening on the roof. " There is sickness, and the people are dying, and all the white mem-log have gone." " All of them ? " " All unless, perhaps, there remain some old scald-head who vexes her husband's heart by running risk of death." Without Benefit of Clergy 169 " Nay ; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold white mem-log are gone." " Do I speak to a woman or a babe ? Go to the Hills, and I will see to it that thou goest like a queen's daughter. Think, child I In a red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks upon the pole and red-cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for guard, and " " Peace 1 Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to me ? He would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For his sake, perhaps thou hast made me very English I might have gone. Now I will not. Let the mem- log run." "Their husbands are sending them, be- loved." "Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to do ? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the breadth of so much as my littlest finger- nail is that not small ? I should be aware of it though I were in Paradise ? And here, this summer thou mayest die ai, janee, diel and in dying they might call to tend thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love," 170 Wee Willie Winkie " But love is not born in a moment, or on a death-bed." " What dost thou know of love, stone-heart ? She would take thy thanks at least, and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam, the mother of thy Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough." She put an arm around his neck and a hand on his mouth. There are not many happinesses so com- plete as those that are snatched under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur-fires blazed in the streets ; the conches in the Hindoo temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great Mohammendan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of mourn- ers. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered. It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a little breathing* Without Benefit of Clergy 171 space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should be sheathed in November, if it were so willed. There were gaps among the English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending famine relief, cholera-sheds, medicine distribution, and what little sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered. Holden had been told to hold himself in readiness to move to replace the next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was con- sidering what his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death would be demanded so certain that, when he looked up from the telegram and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud, " And ? " said he. " When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the throat, who has a charm that will restore ? Come swiftly, heaven born. It is the black cholera." Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the long-deferred rains were at hand, and the heat was stifling. Ameera's mother met him in the courtyard, whimpering : " She is dying. She is nursing 172 Wee Willie Winkie herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, sahib ? " Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely thing, and when it is getting ready to go away hides itself in a misty border-land where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its work quietly and without ex- planation. Ameera was being thrust out of life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden's kisses. There was noth- ing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of joy in the parched city. The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to listen. " Keep nothing of mine," said Ameera. " Take no hair from my head. She would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower 1 Stoop lower 1 Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of taking in thy arms thy first son is taken from thee forever. Remember me when thy son is born the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His misfortunes be on my head. I bear witness I bear witness " Without Benefit of Clergy 173 the lips were forming the words on his ear " that there is no God but thee, beloved." Then she died. Holden sat still, and thought of any kind was taken from him till he heard Ameera's mother lift the curtain. " Is she dead, sahib ? " " She is dead." " Then I will mourn, and afterward take an inventory of the furniture in this house ; for that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to resume it. It is so little, so very little, sahib, and I am an old woman. I would like to lie softly." " For the mercy of God, be silent awhile 1 Go out and mourn where I cannot hear." " Sahib, she will be buried in four hours." " I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in thy hands. Look to it that the bed on which on which she lies " " Aha I That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired " " That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered thee to respect." " I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go ? " " What is that to me ? My order is that 174 Wee Willie Winkie there is a going. The house-gear is worth a thousand rupees, and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred rupees to-night." " That is very little. Think of the cart- hire." " It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. Oh, woman, get hence, and leave me to my dead 1 " The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock of the house- fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera's side, and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm, through ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs, a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water. " I have been told the sahib's order," said he. " It is well. This house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey face would be a re- minder of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy house yonder Without Benefit of Clergy 175 in the morning. But remember, sahib, it will be to thee as a knife turned in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage and I will take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence, whose sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup." He touched Holden's foot with both hands, and the horse sprung out into the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He put his hands before his eyes and muttered : " Oh, you brute 1 You utter brute 1 " The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the knowledge in his butler's eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master's shoulder, say- ing : " Eat, sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known. Moreover, -the shadows come and go, sahib. The shadows come and go. These be curried eggs." Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches of rain in that night and scoured the earth clean. The waters tore down walls, broke roads, and washed open the shallow graves in the Moham- medan burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he received a telegram which said only : " Ricketts, Myndonie. 176 Wee Willie Winkie Dying. Holden. Relieve. Immediate." Then he thought that before he departed he would look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break in the weather. The rank earth steamed with vapor, and Holden was vermilion from head to heel with the prickly-heat born of sultry moisture. He found that the rains had torn down the mud-pillars of the gateway, and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung drunkenly from one hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard ; Pir Khan's lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray squirrel was in possession of the veranda, as if the house had been untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera's mother had removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in the house. Ameera's room and that other one where Tota had lived were heavy with mildew, and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and stained with rain- borne mud. Holden saw all these things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord portly, affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a C-spring buggy. He was overlooking his property, to see how the roofs withstood the stress of the first rains. Without Benefit of Clergy 177 " I have heard," said he, " you will not take this place any more, sahib ? " " What are you going to do with it ? " "Perhaps I shall let it again." " Then I will keep it on while I am away. w Durga Dass was silent for some time. " You shall not take it on, sahib," he said. " When I was a young man I also But to- day I am a member of the municipality. Hoi ho 1 No. When the birds have gone, what need to keep the nest ? I will have it pulled down ; the timber will sell for something al- ways. It shall be pulled down, and the mu- nicipality shall make a road across, as they desire, from the burning-ghat to the city wall. So that no man may say where this house stood." 000122939 2