CHAPTER III.
THE SNAKE APPEARS.
The European child who grows up in India, if only to the age of six or seven years, grows under a severe moral, physical, and mental handicap.
However wise, devoted, and conscientious its parents may be, the evil is great, and remains one of the many heavy costs (or punishments) of Empire.
When the child has no mother and an indifferent father, life’s handicap is even more severe.
By his sixth birthday (the regiment being still in Bimariabad owing to the prevalence of drought, famine, and cholera elsewhere) Damocles de Warrenne, knowing the Urdu language and argot perfectly, knew, in theory also, more of evil, in some directions, than did his own father.
If the child who grows up absolutely straight-forward, honest, above-board and pure in thought, word, and deed, in England, deserves commendation, what does the child deserve who does so in India?
Understanding every word they spoke to one another, the training he got from native servants was one of undiluted evil and a series of object-lessons in deceit, petty villainy, chicanery, oppression, lying, dishonesty, and all immorality. And yet—thanks to his equal understanding of the words and deeds of Nurse Beaton, Major Decies, Lieutenant Ochterlonie, his father, the Officers of the Regiment, and the Europeans of the station—he had a clear, if unconscious, understanding that what was customary for native servants was neither customary nor possible for Sahibs….
But he knew too much….
He knew what percentage of his or her pay each servant had to hand to the “butler-sahib” monthly—or lose his or her place through false accusation.
He knew why the ayah was graciously exempted from financial toll by this autocrat. He knew roughly what proportion of the cook’s daily bill represented the actual cost of his daily purchases. He knew what the door-peon got for consenting to take in the card of the Indian aspirant for an interview with Colonel de Warrenne.
He knew the terms of the arrangements between the head-syce and the grain-dealer, the lucerne-grass seller, the ghas-wallah[8] who brought the hay (whereby reduced quantities were accepted in return for illegal gratifications). He knew of retail re-sales of these reduced supplies.
He knew of the purchase of oil, rice, condiments, fire-wood and other commodities from the cook, of the theft (by arrangement) of the poultry and eggs, of the surreptitious milking of the cow, and of the simple plan of milking her—under Nurse Beaton’s eye—into a narrow-necked vessel already half full of water.
He knew that the ayah’s husband sold the Colonel’s soda-water, paraffin, matches, candles, tobacco, cheroots, fruit, sugar, etc., at a little portable shop round the corner of the road, and of the terms on which the hamal and the butler supplied these commodities to the ayah for transfer to her good man.
He knew too much of the philosophy, manners, habits, and morals of the dog-boy, of concealed cases of the most infectious diseases in the compound, of the sub-letting and over-crowding of the servants’ quarters, of incredible quarrels, intrigues, jealousies, revenges, base villainies and wrongs, superstitions and beliefs.
He would hear the hatching of a plot—an hour’s arrangement and wrangle—whereby, through far-sighted activity, perjury, malpractice and infinite ingenuity, the ringleader would gain a pice and the follower a pie (a farthing and a third of a farthing respectively).
Daily he saw the butler steal milk, sugar, and tea, for his own use; the hamal steal oil when he filled the lamps, for sale; the malli steal flowers, for sale; the coachman steal carriage-candles; the cook steal a moiety of everything that passed through his hands—every one in that black underworld stealing, lying, back-biting, cheating, intriguing (and all meanwhile strictly and stoutly religious, even the sweeper-descended Goanese cook, the biggest thief of all, purging his Christian soul on Sunday mornings by Confession, and fortifying himself against the temptations of the Evil One at early Mass).
Between these nowker log, the servant-people, and his own jat or class, the Sahib-log, the master-people, were the troopers, splendid Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Punjabis, men of honour, courage, physique, tradition. Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly understood and properly treated—in other words, while properly officered. (Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to do so much for them.)
These men Damocles admired and loved, though even they were apt to be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang, and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts’-delights, to use unkind measures towards the good bunnia and sowkar who had lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not known in the Officers’ Mess.
The boy preferred the Rissaldar-Major even to some Sahibs of his acquaintance—that wonderful old man-at-arms, horseman, shikarri, athlete, gentleman. (Yet how strange and sad to see him out of his splendid uniform, in sandals, dhotie, untrammelled shirt-tails, dingy old cotton coat and loose puggri, undistinguishable from a school-master, clerk, or post-man; so un-sahib-like.)
And what a fine riding-master he made for an ambitious, fearless boy—though Ochterlonie Sahib said he was too cruel to be a good horse-master.
How could people be civilians and live away from regiments? Live without ever touching swords, lances, carbines, saddles?
What a queer feeling it gave one to see the regiment go past the saluting base on review-days, at the gallop, with lances down. One wanted to shout, to laugh—to cry. (It made one’s mouth twitch and chin work.)
Oh, to lead the regiment as Father did—horse and man one welded piece of living mechanism.
Father said you couldn’t ride till you had taken a hundred tosses, been pipped a hundred times. A hundred falls! Surely Father had never been thrown—it must be impossible for such a rider to come off. See him at polo.
By his sixth birthday Damocles de Warrenne, stout and sturdy, was an accomplished rider and never so happy (save when fencing) as when flogging his active and spirited little pony along the “rides” or over the dusty maidans and open country of Bimariabad. To receive a quarter-mile start on the race-course and ride a mile race against Khodadad Khan on his troop-horse, or with one of the syces on one of the Colonel’s polo-ponies, or with some obliging male or female early morning rider, was the joy of his life. Should he suspect the competitor of “pulling” as he came alongside, that the tiny pony might win, the boy would lash at both horses impartially.
People who pitied him (and they were many) wondered as to how soon he would break his neck, and remonstrated with his father for allowing him to ride alone, or in charge of an attendant unable to control him.
In the matter of his curious love of fencing Major John Decies was deeply concerned, obtained more and more details of his “dweam,” taught him systematically and scientifically to fence, bought him foils and got them shortened. He also interested him in a series of muscle-developing exercises which the boy called his “dismounted squad-dwill wiv’out arms,” and performed frequently daily, and with gusto.
Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie (Officers’ Light-Weight Champion at Aldershot) rigged him up a small swinging sand-bag and taught him to punch with either hand, and drilled him in foot-work for boxing.
Later he brought the very capable ten-year-old son of a boxing Troop-Sergeant and set him to make it worth Dam’s while to guard smartly, to learn to keep his temper, and to receive a blow with a grin.
(Possibly a better education than learning declensions, conjugations, and tables from a Eurasian “governess”.)
He learnt to read unconsciously and automatically by repeating, after Nurse Beaton, the jingles and other letter-press beneath the pictures in the books obtained for him under Major Decies’ censorship.
On his sixth birthday, Major John Decies had Damocles over to his bungalow for the day, gave him a box of lead soldiers and a schooner-rigged ship, helped him to embark them and sail them in the bath to foreign parts, trapped a squirrel and let it go again, allowed him to make havoc of his possessions, fired at bottles with his revolver for the boy’s delectation, shot a crow or two with a rook-rifle, played an improvised game of fives with a tennis-ball, told him tales, and generally gave up the day to his amusement. What he did not do was to repeat the experiment of a year ago, or make any kind of reference to snakes….
A few days later, on the morning of the New-Year’s-Day Review, Colonel Matthew de Warrenne once again strode up and down his verandah, arrayed in full review-order, until it should be time to ride to the regimental parade-ground.
He had coarsened perceptibly in the six years since he had lost his wife, and the lines that had grown deepest on his hard, handsome face were those between his eyebrows and beside his mouth—the mouth of an unhappy, dissipated, cynical man….
He removed his right-hand gauntlet and consulted his watch…. Quarter of an hour yet.
He continued the tramp that always reminded Damocles of the restless, angry to-and-fro pacing of the big bear in the gardens. Both father and the bear seemed to fret against fate, to suffer under a sense of injury; both seemed dangerous, fierce, admirable. Hearing the clink and clang and creak of his father’s movement, Damocles scrambled from his cot and crept down the stairs, pink-toed, blue-eyed, curly-headed, night-gowned, to peep through the crack of the drawing-room door at his beautiful father. He loved to see him in review uniform—so much more delightful than plain khaki—pale blue, white, and gold, in full panoply of accoutrement, jackbooted and spurred, and with the great turban that made his English face look more English still.
Yes—he would ensconce himself behind the drawing-room door and watch. Perhaps “Fire” would be bobbery when the Colonel mounted him, would get “what-for” from whip and spur, and be put over the compound wall instead of being allowed to canter down the drive and out at the gate….
Colonel de Warrenne stepped into his office to get a cheroot. Re-appearing in the verandah with it in his mouth he halted and thrust his hand inside his tunic for his small match-case. Ere he could use the match his heart was momentarily chilled by the most blood-curdling scream he had ever heard. It appeared to come from the drawing-room. (Colonel de Warrenne never lit the cheroot that he had put to his lips—nor ever another again.) Springing to the door, one of a dozen that opened into the verandah, he saw his son struggling on the ground, racked by convulsive spasms, with glazed, sightless eyes and foaming mouth, from which issued appalling, blood-curdling shrieks. Just above him, on the fat satin cushion in the middle of a low settee, a huge half-coiled cobra swayed from side to side in the Dance of Death.
“It’s under my foot—it’s moving—moving—moving out,” shrieked the child.
Colonel de Warrenne attended to the snake first. He half-drew his sword and then slammed it back into the scabbard. No—his sword was not for snakes, whatever his son might be. On the wall was a trophy of Afghan weapons, one of which was a sword that had played a prominent part on the occasion of the Colonel’s winning of the Victoria Cross.
Striding to the wall he tore the sword down, drew it and, with raised arm, sprang towards the cobra. A good “Cut Three” across the coils would carve it into a dozen pieces. No. Lenore made that cushion—and Lenore’s cushion made more appeal to Colonel de Warrenne than did Lenore’s son. No. A neat horizontal “Cut Two,” just below the head, with the deadly “drawing” motion on it, would meet the case nicely. Swinging it to the left, the Colonel subconsciously placed the sword, “resting flat on the left shoulder, edge to the left, hand in front of the shoulder and square with the elbow, elbow as high as the hand,” as per drill-book, and delivered a lightning stroke—thinking as he did so that the Afghan tulwar is an uncommonly well-balanced, handy cutting-weapon, though infernally small in the hilt.
The snake’s head fell with a thud upon the polished boards between the tiger-skins, and the body dropped writhing and twitching on to the settee.
Damocles appeared to be dead. Picking him up, the callous-hearted father strode out to where Khodadad Khan held “Fire’s” bridle, handed him to the orderly, mounted, received him again from the man, and, holding him in his strong right arm, cantered to the bungalow of Major John Decies—since it lay on the road to the parade-ground.
Would the jerking hurt the little beggar in his present comatose state? Well, brats that couldn’t stand a little jerking were better dead, especially when they screamed and threw fits at the sight of a common snake.
Turning into Major Decies’ compound and riding up to his porch, the Colonel saw the object of his search, arrayed in pyjamas, seated in his long cane chair beside a tray of tea, toast, and fruit, in the verandah.
“Morning, de Warrenne,” he cried cheerily.
“How’s little—” and caught sight of the inanimate child.
“Little coward’s fainted after throwing a fit—over a common snake,” observed the Colonel coolly.
“Give him here,” answered the Major, taking the boy tenderly in his arms,—“and kindly—er—clear out.”
He did not wish to strike his friend and senior. How the black rage welled up in his heart against the callous brute who had dared to marry Lenore Seymour Stukeley.
Colonel de Warrenne wheeled his horse without a word, and rode out of Major Decies’ life and that of his son.
Galloping to the parade-ground he spoke a few curt words to his Adjutant, inspected the rissala, and then rode at its head to the brigade parade-ground where it took up its position on the left flank of the Guns and the Queen’s Greys, “sat at ease,” and awaited the arrival of the Chief Commissioner at the saluting-base. A British Infantry regiment marched to the left flank of the 118th (Bombay) Lancers, left-turned and stood at ease. Another followed and was followed in turn by Native Infantry Regiments—grand Sikhs in scarlet tunics, baggy black breeches and blue putties; hefty Pathans and Baluchis in green tunics, crimson breeches and high white gaiters, sturdy little Gurkhas in rifle-green, stalwart Punjabi Mahommedans.
The great double line grew and grew, and stood patiently waiting, Horse, Foot, and Guns, facing the sun and a dense crowd of spectators ranked behind the rope-encircled, guard-surrounded saluting-base over which flew the Flag of England.
The Brigadier and his Staff rode on to the ground, were saluted by the mile of troops, and took up their position.
Followed the Chief Commissioner in his state carriage, accompanied by a very Distinguished Guest, and surrounded by his escort. The mile of men again came to attention and the review began. Guns boomed, massed bands played the National Anthem, the crackling rattle of the feu-de-joie ran up the front rank and down the rear.
After the inspection and the salutes came the march-past by the regiments.
Now the Distinguished Visitor’s wife had told the Chief Commissioner that she “did not want to see the cavalry go past at the gallop as it raised such a dreadful dust”. But her maid bungled, her toilette failed, and she decided not to accompany her husband to the Review at all. Her husband, the Distinguished Visitor, did desire to see the cavalry go past at the gallop, and so the Chief Commissioner’s Distinguished Visitor’s wife’s maid’s bungling had a tremendous influence upon the fate of Damocles de Warrenne, as will be seen.
Passed the massed Guns at the walk, followed by the Cavalry at the walk in column of squadrons and the Infantry in column of companies, each unit saluting the Chief Commissioner by turning “eyes right” as it passed the spot where he sat on horseback surrounded by the civil and military staffs.
Wheeling to the left at the end of the ground the Guns and Cavalry again passed, this time at the trot, while the Infantry completed its circular march to its original position.
Finally the Cavalry passed for the third time, and now at the gallop, an orderly whirlwind, a controlled avalanche of men and horses, with levelled lances, and the hearts of all men were stirred at one of the most stirring sights and sounds in the world—a cavalry charge.
At the head of the leading squadron galloped Colonel de Warrenne, cool, methodical, keeping a distant flag-staff in line with a still more distant church spire, that he might lead the regiment in a perfectly straight line. (Few who have not tried it realize the difficulty of leading a galloping line of men absolutely straight and at true right-angles to the line of their ranks.)
On thundered the squadrons unbending of rank, uncrowded, unopened, squadron-leaders maintaining distance, the whole mass as ordered, shapely, and precisely correct as when at the walk.
Past the saluting-base thundered the squadrons and in full career Colonel de Warrenne’s charger put his near fore into ground honey-combed by insect, reptile, or burrowing beast, crashed on its head, rolled like a shot rabbit, and Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne lay dead—killed by his own sword.
Like his ancestors of that fated family, he had died by the sword, but unlike them, he had died by the hilt of it.
Major John Decies, I.M.S., Civil Surgeon of Bimariabad, executor of the will of the late Colonel de Warrenne and guardian of his son, cabled the sad news of the Colonel’s untimely death to Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley at Monksmead, he being, so far as Major Decies knew, the boy’s only male relative in England—uncle of the late Mrs. de Warrenne.
The reply, which arrived in a day or two, appeared from its redundancy and incoherence to be the composition of Miss Yvette Seymour Stukeley, and bade Major Decies either send or bring the infant Damocles to Monksmead immediately.
The Major decided to apply forthwith for such privilege-leave and furlough as were due to him, and to proceed to England with the boy. It would be as well that his great-uncle should hear from him, personally, of the matter of the child’s mental condition resultant upon the tragedy of his own birth and his mother’s death. The Major was decidedly anxious as to the future in this respect—all might be well in time, and all might be very far indeed from well.
Nurse Beaton absolutely and flatly refused to be parted from her charge, and the curious party of three set sail for England in due course.
“Hm!—He’s every inch a Stukeley,” remarked the General when Damocles de Warrenne was ushered into his presence in the great library at Monksmead. “Hope he’s Stukeley by nature too. Sturdy young fella! ’Spose he’s vetted sound in wind and limb?”
The Major replied that the boy was physically rather remarkably strong, mentally very sound, and in character all that could be desired. He then did his best to convey to the General an understanding of the psychic condition that must be a cause of watchfulness and anxiety on the part of those who guarded his adolescence.
At dinner, over the General’s wonderful Clos Vougeot, the Major again returned to the subject and felt that his words of advice fell upon somewhat indifferent and uncomprehending ears.
It was the General’s boast that he had never feed a doctor in his life, and his impression that a sound resort for any kind of invalid is a lethal chamber….
The seven years since the Major had last seen her, seemed to have dealt lightly with the sad-faced, pretty Miss Yvette, gentle, good, and very kind. Over the boy she rhapsodized to her own content and his embarrassment. Effusive endearments and embraces were new to Dam, and he appeared extraordinarily ignorant of the art of kissing.
“Oh, how like his dear Father!” she would exclaim afresh every few minutes, to the Major’s slight annoyance and the General’s plain disgust.
“Every inch a Stukeley!” he would growl in reply.
But Yvette Seymour Stukeley had prayed for Colonel de Warrenne nightly for seven years and had idealized him beyond recognition. Possibly Fate’s greatest kindness to her was to ordain that she should not see him as he had become in fact, and compare him with her wondrous mental image…. The boy was to her, must be, should be, the very image of her life’s hero and beloved….
The depolarized and bewildered Damocles found himself in a strange and truly foreign land, a queer, cold, dismal country inhabited by vast quantities of “second-class sahibs,” as he termed the British lower middle-class and poor, a country of a strange greenness and orderedness, where there were white servants, strangely conjoined rows of houses in the villages, dangerous-looking fires inside the houses, a kind of tomb-stones on all house-tops, strange horse-drawn vehicles, butlerless and ghari[9]-less sahibs, and an utter absence of “natives,” sepoys, byle-gharies,[10] camels, monkeys, kites, squirrels, bulbuls, minahs,[11] mongooses, palm-trees, and temples. Cattle appeared to have no humps, crows to have black heads, and trees to have no fruit. The very monsoon seemed inextricably mixed with the cold season. Fancy the rains coming in the cold weather! Perhaps there was no hot weather and nobody went to the hills in this strange country of strange people, strange food, strange customs. Nobody seemed to have any tents when they left the station for the districts, nor to take any bedding when they went on tour or up-country. A queer, foreign land.
But Monksmead was a most magnificent “bungalow” standing in a truly beautiful “compound”—wherein the very bhistis[12] and mallis were European and appeared to be second-class sahibs.
Marvellous was the interior of the bungalow with its countless rooms and mountainous stair-cases (on the wall of one of which hung the Sword which he had never seen but instantly recognized) and its army of white servants headed by the white butler (so like the Chaplain of Bimariabad in grave respectability and solemn pompousness) and its extraordinary white “ayahs” or maids, and silver-haired Mrs. Pont, called the “house-keeper”. Was she a pukka Mem-Sahib or a nowker[13] or what? And how did she “keep” the house?
A wonderful place—but far and away the most thrilling and delightful of its wonders was the little white girl, Lucille—Damocles’ first experience of the charming genus.
The boy never forgot his first meeting with Lucille.
On his arrival at Monksmead he had been “vetted,” as he expressed it, by the Burra-Sahib, the General; and then taken to an attractive place called “the school-room” and there had found Lucille….
“Hullo! Boy,” had been her greeting. “What’s your name?” He had attentively scrutinized a small white-clad, blue-sashed maiden, with curling chestnut hair, well-opened hazel eyes, decided chin, Greek mouth and aristocratic cheek-bones. A maiden with a look of blood and breed about her. (He did not sum her up in these terms at the time.)
“Can you ride, Boy?”
“A bit.”
“Can you fight?”
“A bit.”
“Can you swim?”
“Not well.”
“I can—ever so farther. D’you know French and German?”
“Not a word.”
“Play the piano?”
“Never heard of it. D’you play it with cards or dice?”
“Lucky dog! It’s music. I have to practise an hour a day.”
“What for?”
“Nothing … it’s lessons. Beastly. How old are you?”
“Seven—er—nearly.”
“So’m I—nearly. I’ve got to be six first though. I shall have a birthday next week. A big one. Have you brought any ellyfunts from India?”
“I’ve never seen a nellyfunt—only in pictures.”
A shudder shook the boy’s sturdy frame.
“Why do you go like that? Feel sick?”
“No. I don’t know. I seemed to remember something—in a book. I dream about it. There’s a nasty blue room with a mud floor. And Something. Beastly. Makes you yell out and you can’t. You can’t run away either. But the Sword dream is lovely.”
Lucille appeared puzzled and put this incoherence aside.
“What a baby never to see ellyfunts! I’ve seen lots. Hundreds. Zoo. Circuses. Persessions. Camels, too.”
“Oh, I used to ride a camel every day. There was one in the compound with his oont-wallah,[14] Abdul Ghaffr; and Khodadad Khan used to beat the oont-wallah on cold mornings to warm himself.”
“Don’t you know? Why, he’s just the oont-wallah, of course. Who’d graze the camel or load it up if there wasn’t one?”
At tea in the nursery the young lady suddenly remarked:—
“I like you, Boy. You’re worth nine Haddocks.”
This cryptic valuation puzzled Damocles the more in that he had never seen or heard of a haddock. Had he been acquainted with the fowl he might have been yet more astonished.
Later he discovered that the comparison involved the fat boy who sat solemnly stuffing on the other side of the table, his true baptismal name being Haddon.
Yes, Lucille was a revelation, a marvel.
Far quicker of mind than he, cleverer at games and inventing “make believe,” very strong, active, and sporting, she was the most charming, interesting, and attractive experience in his short but eventful life.
How he loved to make her laugh and clap her hands! How he enjoyed her quaint remarks, speculations, fairy-tales and jokes. How he yearned to win her approval and admiration. How he strove to please her!
In Lucille and his wonderful new surroundings he soon forgot Major Decies, who returned to live (and, at a ripe old age, to die) at Bimariabad, where had lived and died the woman whom he had so truly and purely loved. The place where he had known her was the only place for him.
On each of his birthdays Damocles received a long fatherly letter and a handsome present from the Major, and by the time he went away to school at Wellingborough, he wondered who on earth the Major might be.
To his great delight Damocles found that he was not doomed to discontinue his riding, fencing, boxing, and “dismounted drill without arms”.
General Seymour Stukeley sent for a certain Sergeant Havlan (once a trooper in his own regiment), rough-rider, swordsman, and boxer, now a professional trainer, and bade him see that the boy learned all he could teach him of arms and horsemanship, boxing, swimming, and general physical prowess and skill. Lucille and Haddon Berners were to join in to the extent to which their age and sex permitted.
The General intended his great-nephew to be worthy of his Stukeley blood, and to enter Sandhurst a finished man-at-arms and horseman, and to join his regiment, Cavalry, of course, with nothing much to learn of sword, lance, rifle, revolver, and horse.
Sergeant Havlan soon found that he had little need to begin at the beginning with Damocles de Warrenne in the matter of riding, fencing or boxing, and was unreasonably annoyed thereat.
In time, it became the high ambition and deep desire of Dam to overcome Sergeant Havlan’s son in battle with the gloves. As young Havlan was a year his senior, a trained infant prodigy, and destined for the Prize Ring, there was plenty for him to learn and to do.
With foil or sabre the boy was beneath Dam’s contempt.
Daily the children were in Sergeant Havlan’s charge for riding and physical drill, Dam getting an extra hour in the evening for the more manly and specialized pursuits suitable to his riper years.
He and Lucille loved it all, and the Haddock bitterly loathed it.
Until Miss Smellie came Dam was a happy boy—but for queer sudden spasms of terror of Something unknown; and, after her arrival, he would have been well content could he have been assured of an early opportunity of attending her obsequies and certain of a long-postponed resurrection; well content, and often wildly happy (with Lucille) … but for the curious undefinable fear of Something … Something about which he had the most awful dreams … Something in a blue room with a mud floor. Something that seemed at times to move beneath his foot, making his blood freeze, his knees smite together, the sunlight turn to darkness….