Moreover, after quarter of a century of faithful labour and strict economy, he found himself with a load of debt, broken health, and a cheaply educated family of boys and girls to whom he was a complete stranger—merely the man who found the money and sent it Home, visiting them from time to time at intervals of four or five years. India had killed his wife, and broken him.
He had had what seemed to him to be bitter experience also. An individual, notoriously slack and incompetent, ten years his junior, had been promoted over his head, because he was somebody's cousin and the kind of fatuous ass that only labours industriously in drawing-rooms and at functions, recuperating by slacking idly in offices and at duties—a paltry but paying game much practised by a very small class in India.
Another individual, by reason of his having come to India two boats earlier than the Inspector, drew Rs. 500 a month more than he did, this being the Senior Inspector's Allowance. That he was reported on as lazy, eccentric, and irregular, made no difference to the fact that he was a fortnight senior to, and therefore worth Rs. 500 a month more than, the next man. The recipient regarded the extra trifle (£400 a year) as his bare right and merest due. The Inspector regarded it as an infamous piece of injustice and folly that for fifteen years the whole of this sum should go to a lazy fool because he happened to set sail from England on a certain date, and not a fortnight later. So he loathed and detested India where he had had bad luck, bad health and what he considered bad treatment, and sympathized with the desire of Moussa Isa.
"Why do you want to go back to Aden?" he inquired in the lingua franca of the Indian Empire, of Moussa whose heart beat high with hope.
"Because here, where there are no lions, wolves think a lion is a dog; here where there are no men, asses think a man is a monkey. I am a Somal, and these ignorant camels think I am a negro—a filthy Hubshi."
"And you tried to kill another boy because he called you 'Hubshi,' eh?"
"I did, Sahib, and I will kill him yet if I be not sent to Aden. If that fail I will kill myself also."
"Stout fella," commented the Inspector in his own vernacular, and added, musing aloud:—
"You'll come to the gallows through possessing pride, self-respect and determination, my lad. You're behind the times—or rather you maintain a spirit for which Civilization has no use. You must return to the Wilds of the Earth or else you must be content to become good, grubby, and grey, dull and dejected, sober and sorrowful, respectable and unenterprising—like me; and you must cultivate fat, propriety, smugness and the Dead Level…. What, you young Devil! You'd have self-respect and pride, would you; be quick upon the point of honour, eh? revive the duello, what? Get thee to a—er—less civilized and respectable age or place … in other words, Mr. Toshiwalla, bring the case before the Committee of Visitors. I'll put up a note to the effect that he had better be sent back to Aden. This is a Reformatory, and there's nothing very reformatory about keeping him to plan murder and suicide because he has been (quite unjustifiably) transported as well as flogged and imprisoned. Yes, we'll consider the case. Meanwhile, keep a sharp eye on him—and give him all the corn-grinding he can do. Sweat the Original Sin out of him … and see he does not secrete any kind of weapon."
Accordingly was Moussa segregated, and to the base women's-work of corn-grinding in the cook-house, wholly relegated. It was hard, soul-breaking work, ignoble and degrading, but he drew two crumbs of comfort from the bread of affliction. He was developing his arm-muscles and he was literally watering the said bread of affliction with the sweat of labour. As the heavy drops trickled from chin and nose into the meal around the grindstone, it pleased Moussa Isa to reflect that his enemy should eat of it. Since the shadow of Moussa was pollution to these travesties of men and warriors, let them have a little concrete pollution also. But in the cook-house, while arm and soul wearied together, one heavy day of copper sky and brazen earth, first eye and then foot, fell upon a piece of tin, the lid of some empty milk-tin or like vessel. The prehensile toes gathered in the trove, the foot gently rose and the fingers of the pendant left hand secured the disc, while the body swayed with the strenuous circlings of the right hand chat revolved the heavy upper millstone.
That night, immediately after being locked in his cell, that there might be the fullest time for bleeding to death, he slashed and slashed while strength lasted at wrist and abdomen—but without succeeding in penetrating the abdominal wall and reaching the viscera.
This effected his transfer to the Reformatory hospital and underlined the remark of the Inspector in the Visitors' Book to the effect that one Moussa Isa would commit suicide or murder, if kept at Duri, and would certainly not be "reformed" in any way. In hospital, Major Jackson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, a Visitor of the Duri Jail, paying his periodical visits, grew interested in the sturdy bright boy and soon came to like him for his directness, cheery courage, and refreshing views. When the boy was convalescent he took him on the surrounding Duri golf-links as his caddie in his endless games with his poor friend Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith, ex-gentleman.
Moussa was grateful and, fingering the scar on his throat, likened Major Jackson to his hero, the fair Sheikh who had saved him from the lion and had lost his life through intervening on Moussa's behalf in the boat. But he was not mad like these English. He would not, with infinite earnestness, seriousness and mingled joy at success and grief at failure, have pursued a little white ball with a stick, mile after mile, knocking it with infinite precautions, every now and then, into a little hole, and taking it out again.
No, his idea of sport across country with an iron-shod stick would rather have been lion-hunting with an assegai (yet, curiously enough, one, Robin Ross-Ellison, lived to play more than one game of golf with Major Jackson on these same Duri Links). To see this adult white man behaving so, coram publico, made Moussa bitterly ashamed for him.
And, as the sun set, Moussa Isa earned a sharp rebuke for inattentive slacking, as he stood sighing his soul to where it sank in the West over Aden and Somaliland…. Wait till his chance of escape arrived; he would journey straight for the sunset, day after day, until he reached a sea-shore. There he would steal a canoe and paddle and paddle straight for the sunset, day after day, until he reached a sea-shore again. That would be Africa or Arabia, and Moussa Isa would be where a Somal is known from a Hubshi…. Should he make a bolt for it now? No, too weak, and not fair to this kind Sahib who had healed him and sympathized with him in the matter of the ignorance and impudence of those who misnamed a son of the Somals…. In due course, the Committee of Visitors met at the Reformatory one morning, and found on the agenda paper inter alia the case of Moussa Isa, a murderer from Aden, his attempt at murder and suicide, and his prayer to be sent to Aden Jail.
On the Committee were the Director of Public Instruction, the Collector, the Executive Engineer, the Superintendent of Duri Jail, the Educational Inspector, the Cantonment Magistrate, Major Jackson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and a number of Indian gentlemen. To the Chairman's inquiries Moussa Isa made the usual replies. He had been mortally affronted and had endeavoured to avenge the insult. He had tried to do his duty to himself—and to his enemy. He had been put to base women's-work as a punishment for defending his honour and he had tried to take his life in despair. Was there no justice in British lands? What would the Sahib himself do if his honour were assailed? If one rose up and insulted him and his race? Called him baboon, born of baboons, for example? Or had the Sahib no honour? Why should he have been transported when he was not sentenced to transportation? What had he done but defend his honour and avenge insults? Unless he were now tried for murder and suicide, and sentenced to hard labour in Aden Jail, he would go on murdering until they did send him there. If they said, "Well, you shan't go there, whatever you do," he would kill himself. If he could get no sort of weapon he would starve himself (he did not in his ignorance quote the gentle and joyous Pankhurst family) or hold his breath. So they had better send him, and that was all he had got to say about it.
"Send him for trial before the City Magistrate and recommend that he go to Aden Jail at once, before he hurts somebody else," said the native members of the Committee. "Why should we be troubled with the off-scourings of Aden?"
"Certainly not," opined the Collector of Duri. A pretty state of affairs if every criminal were to be allowed to select his own place of punishment, and to terrorize any penitentiary that had the misfortune to lack favour in his sight. Let the boy be well flogged for the assault and attempted suicide, and then let him rejoin the ordinary gangs and classes. It was the Superintendent's duty to watch his charges and keep discipline in what was, after all, a school.
"Sir, he is one violent and dangerous character and will assault the peaceful and mild. Yea—he may even attack me," objected the babu.
"Are we to understand that you admit your inability to maintain order in this Reformatory?" inquired the Director of Public Instruction from the Chair.
Anything but that. They were to understand, on the contrary, that the babu was respectfully a most unprecedented disciplinarian.
"You don't expect cock angels in a Reformatory, y' know," said the engineer, suddenly awaking to light a fat black cheroot. "Got to use the—ah—strong hand;—on their—ah—you know," and he resumed his slumbers, puffing mechanically and unconsciously at his cheroot.
So Moussa Isa was flogged and sent back to gardening, lessons and drawing.
Yes—the Somali was taught drawing. Not mere utilitarian drawing-to-scale and making plans and elevations, but "freehand"-drawing, the reproducing of meaningless twirly curves and twiddly twists from symmetrical conventional "copies". He copied copies and drew lines—but never copied things, nor drew things. In time he could, with infinite labour, produce a copy of a flat "copy" that a really observant eye could identify with the original, but had you asked him to draw his foot or the door of the room, his desk, his watering-can or book, he would probably have replied, "They are not drawing-copies," and would have laughed at your absurd joke. No, he was not taught to draw things, nor to give expression to impression.
And he had a special warder all to himself, who watched him as a cat watches a mouse. However, warders cannot prevent looks and smiles, and whenever Moussa Isa saw the Brahmin youth, he gave a peculiar look and a meaning smile. It was borne in upon the clever young man that the Hubshi looked at his neck, below his ear, when he smiled that dreadful smile.
Sometimes a significant gesture accompanied the meaning smile. For Moussa Isa had decided, upon the rejection of his prayer by the Committee, to wait until he was a little older and bigger, more like a proper criminal and less of a wretched little "juvenile offender," and then to qualify, by murder, for the Aden Jail—with the unoffered help of the Brahmin boy.
Allah would vouchsafe opportunity, and when he did so, Moussa Isa, his servant, would seize it. Doubtless it would come as soon as he was big enough to receive the privileges of an adult and serious criminal. Anyhow, the insult would be properly punished and the honour of the Somal race avenged….
Came the day when certain of the sinful inhabitants of the Duri
Reformatory were to be conducted to a neighbouring Government High
School, a centre for the official Drawing Examinations for the district,
there to sit and be examined in the gentle art of Art.
To this end they had been trained in the copying of lines and in the painting of areas of conventional shape, not that they might be made to observe natural form, express themselves in reproduction, render the inner outer, originate, articulate … but that they might pass an examination in copying unnatural things in impossible colours. Thus it came to pass that, in the big hall of this school, divers of the Reformed found themselves copying, and colouring the copy of, a curious picture pinned to a blackboard—the picture of a floral wonder unknown to Botany, possessed of delicate mauve leaves, blue-veined, shaped some like the oak-leaf and some like the ivy; of long slender blades like those of the iris, but of tenderest pink; of beautiful and profusely chromatic blossoms, reminding one now of the orchid, now of the sunflower and anon of the forget-me-not; and likewise of clustering fulgent fruit.
And at the back of all these budding artists and blossoming jail-birds, and in the same small desk sat the Brahmin youth and—Oh Merciful Allah!—Moussa Isa, Somali.
The native gentleman in charge of the party from the Duri Reformatory had duly escorted his charges into the hall, handed them over to Mr. Edward Jones, the Head of the High School, and been requested to wait outside with similar custodians of parties. (Mr. Edward Jones had known very strange things to happen in Examination Halls to which the friends and supporters of candidates had access during the examination.)
To Mr. Edward Jones the thus deserted Brahmin boy made frantic and piteous appeal.
"Oh, Sir," prayed he, "let me sit somewhere else and not beside this
African."
"You'll stay where you are," replied Mr. Edward Jones, suspicious of the appeal and the appellant. If the fat glib youth objected to the African on principle, Mr. Edward Jones would be glad, metaphorically speaking, to rub his Brahminical nose in it. If this were not his reason, it was, doubtless, one even less creditable. Mr. Edward Jones had been in India long enough to learn to look very carefully for the motive.
Moussa Isa licked his chops once again, and, as Mr. Jones turned away, the unhappy Brahmin cried in his anguish of soul:—
"Oh, Sir! Watch this African carefully."
"All will be watched carefully," was the suspicious and cold reply.
Moussa smiled broadly upon his erstwhile contemptuous and insulting enemy, and began to consider the possibilities of a long and well-pointed lead-pencil as a means of vengeance. Pencils were intended for marking fair surfaces—might one not be used on this occasion for the cleaning of a sullied surface, that of a besmirched honour?
One insulter of the Somal race had died by the stab of a piece of broken bottle. Might not another die by the stab of a lead-pencil?
Doubtful. Very risky. The stabbing and piercing potentialities of a lead pencil are not yet properly investigated, tabulated, established and known. It would be a pity to do small damage and incur a heavy corn-grinding punishment. He might never get another chance of vengeance either, if he bungled this one.
Well, there were three hours in which to decide … and Moussa Isa commenced to draw, pausing, from time to time, to smile meaningly at the Brahmin, and to lick his chops suggestively. Anon he rested from his highly uninteresting and valueless labours, laid his pencil on the desk, and gazed around in search of inspiration in the matter of the best method of dealing with his enemy.
His eye fell upon a picture of a lion that ornamented the wall of the hall; he stiffened like a pointer and fingered some scars on his right arm. He had never seen a picture of a lion before and, for a fraction of a second, he was shocked and alarmed—and then, while his body sat in an Indian High School hall, his spirit flew to an East African desert, and there sojourned awhile.
Moussa Isa was again the slave of an ivory-poaching, hide-poaching, specimen-poaching, slave-dealing gang of Arabs, Negroes, and Portuguese half-castes, led by a white man of the Teutonic persuasion. He could feel the smiting heat, see the scrub, jungle, and sand shimmering and dancing in the heat haze. He could see the line of porters, bales on heads, the Arabs on horseback, the white man in a litter swinging from a long bamboo pole beneath which half a dozen Swahili loped along. He could see the velvet star-gemmed night and the camp-fires, smell the smoke and the savoury odours of the cooking, hear the sudden shrieks and yells that followed the roar of the springing lion, feel the crushing crunch of its great teeth in his arm as it seized him from beside the nearest fire and stood over him…. Yes, that was the night when the fair Sheikh from the North had showed the mettle of his pastures and bound Moussa Isa to him for ever in the bonds of worshipping gratitude and love. For, while others shrieked, yelled, fled, flung burning brands and spears, or fired hasty, unaimed, ineffectual shots, the fair Sheikh from the North had sprung at the lion as it stood over Moussa Isa and driven his knife into its eye, and as it smote him to the earth, buried its fangs in his shoulder and started to drag him away, had stabbed upward between the ribs, giving it a second death-blow, transfixing its heart. Thus it was he had earned the name by which he was known from Zanzibar to Berbera, "He-who-slays-lions-with-the-knife," had earned the envy and hatred of the fat white man and the Arabs, the boundless admiration of the Swahili askaris, hunters and porters, and the deep dog-like affection of Moussa Isa….
And then Moussa's spirit returned to his body and he saw but the picture of a lion on a High School wall. He commenced to draw again and suddenly had an inspiration. Deliberately he broke the point of his pencil and, rising, marched up to the dais, whereon, at a table, sat Mr. Edward Jones.
Mr. Edward Jones had been shot with bewildering suddenness from Cambridge quadrangles into the Indian Educational Service. Of India he knew nothing, of education he knew less, but boldly took it upon him to combine the two unknowns for the earning of his living. If wise and beneficent men offered him a modest wage for becoming a professor and exponent of that which he did not know, he had no objection to accepting it; but there were people who wondered why it should be that, out of forty million English people, Mr. Edward Jones should be the chosen one to represent England to the youth of Duri, and asked whether there were no keen, strictly conscientious, sporting, strong Englishmen available; no enthusiastic educational experts left in all the British Isles, that Mr. Edward Jones of all people had come to Duri?
"What do you want?" he asked (how he hated these poverty-stricken, smelly, ignoble creatures. Why was he not a master at Eton, instead of at Duri High School. Why wouldn't somebody give him a handsome income for looking handsome and standing around beautifully—like these aide-de-camp Johnnies and "staff" people. Since there was nothing on earth he could do well, he ought to have been provided with a job in which he could look well).
"May I borrow the Sahib's knife?" asked Moussa Isa, "I have broken my pencil and cannot draw." Mr. Edward Jones picked up the penknife that lay on his desk, the cheap article of restricted utility supplied to Government Offices by the Stationery Department, and handed it to Moussa Isa. Even as he took it with respectful salaam, Moussa Isa summed up its possibilities. Blade two inches long, sharp-pointed, handle six inches long, wooden; not a clasp knife, blade immovable in handle. It would do—and he turned to go to his seat and presumably to sharpen his pencil.
Idly watching the boy and thinking of other things, Jones saw him try the point of the knife on his thumb, walk up behind the other occupant of his desk, his Brahmin neighbour, seize that neighbour by the hair, push his head sharp over on to the shoulder, and plunge the knife into his neck; seat himself, and commence to draw with the unfortunate Brahmin's pencil.
Jones sprang to his feet and rushed to the spot, to find that he had not been dreaming. No—on the back seat drooped a boy bleeding like a stuck pig and another industriously drawing, his face illuminated by a smile of contentment.
Jones pressed his thumbs into the neck of the sufferer, as he called to an assistant-supervisor to run to the hospital for Dr. Almeida, hoping to be able to close the severed jugular from which welled an appalling stream of blood.
"It is quite useless, Sahib," observed Moussa, "nor can a doctor help. When one has got it there, he may give his spear to his son and turn his face to the wall. That dog will never say 'Hubshi' to a Somal again."
"Catch hold of that boy," said Mr. Edward Jones to another assistant-supervisor who clucked around like a perturbed hen.
"Fear not, Sahib, I shall not escape. I go to Aden Jail," said Moussa cheerfully—but he pondered the advisability of attempting escape from the Reformatory should he be sentenced to be hanged. It had always seemed an impossibility, but it would be better to attempt the impossible than to await the rope. But doubtless they would say he was too small and light to hang satisfactorily, and would send him to Aden. Thanks, Master Brahmin, realize as you die that you have greatly obliged your slayer….
* * * * *
"Now you will most certainly be hanged to death by rope and I shall be rid of troublesome fellow," said the Superintendent to Moussa Isa when that murderous villain was temporarily handed over to him by the police-sepoy to whom he had been committed by Mr. Jones.
"I have avenged my people and myself," replied Moussa Isa, "even as I said, I go to Aden Jail—where there are men, and where a Somal is known from a Hubshi"
"You go to hang—across the road there at Duri Gaol," replied the babu, and earnestly hoped to find himself a true prophet. But though the wish was father to the thought, the expression thereof was but the wicked uncle, for it led to the undoing of the wish. So convinced and convincing did the babu appear to Moussa Isa, that the latter decided to try his luck in the matter of unauthorized departure from the Reformatory precincts. If they were going to hang him (for defending and purging his private and racial honour), and not send him to Aden after all, he might as well endeavour to go there at his own expense and independently. If he were caught they could not do more than hang him; if he were not caught he would get out of this dark ignorant land, if he had to walk for a year….
When he came to devote his mind to the matter of escape, Moussa Isa found it surprisingly easy. A sudden dash from his cell as the door was incautiously opened that evening, a bound and scramble into a tree, a leap to an out-house roof, another scramble, and a drop which would settle the matter. If something broke he was done, if nothing broke he was within a few yards of six-foot-high crops which extended to the confines of the jungle, wherein were neither police, telegraph offices, railways, roads, nor other apparatus of the enemy. Nothing broke—Duri Reformatory saw Moussa Isa no more. For a week he travelled only by night, and thereafter boldly by day, getting lifts in bylegharies,[45] doing odd jobs, living as the crows and jackals live when jobs were unavailable, receiving many a kindness from other wayfarers, especially those of the poorer sort, but always faring onward to the West, ever onward to the setting sun, always to the sea and Africa, until the wonderful and blessed day when he believed for a moment that he was mad and that his eyes and brain were playing him tricks…. After months and months of weary travel, always toward the setting sun, he had arrived one terrible evening of June at a wide river and a marvellous bridge—a great bridge hung by mighty chains upon mightier posts which stood up on either distant bank. It was a pukka road, a Grand Trunk Road suspended in the air across a river well-nigh great as Father Nile himself.
[45] Bullock carts.
On the banks of this river stood an ancient walled city of tall houses separated by narrow streets, a city of smells and filth, wherein there were no Sahibs, few Hindus and many Mussulmans. In a mud-floored miserable mussafarkhana,[46] without its gates, Moussa Isa slept, naked, hungry and very sad—for he somehow seemed to have missed the sea. Surely if one kept on due westward always to the setting sun, one reached the sea in time? The time was growing long, however, and he was among a strange people, few of whom understood the Hindustani he had learnt at Duri. Luckily they were largely Mussulmans. Should he abandon the setting sun and take to the river, following it until it reached the sea? He could take ship then for Africa by creeping aboard in the darkness, and hiding himself until the ship had started…. There might be no city at the mouth of the river when he got there. It might never reach the sea. It might just vanish into some desert like the Webi-Shebeyli in Somaliland. No, he would keep on toward the West, crossing the great bridge in the morning. He did so, and turned aside to admire the railway-station of the Cantonment on the other side of the river, to get a drink, and to see a train come in, if happily such might occur.
[46] Poor travellers' rest-house.
Ere he had finished rinsing his mouth and bathing his feet at the public water-standard on the platform, the whistle of a distant train charmed his ears and he sat him down, delighted, to enjoy the sights and sounds, the stir and bustle, of its arrival and departure. And so it came about that certain passengers by this North West Frontier train were not a little intrigued to notice a small and very black boy suddenly arise from beside the drinking-fountain and, with a strange hoarse scream, fling himself at the feet of a young Englishman (who in Norfolk jacket and white flannel trousers strolled up and down outside the first-class carriage in which he was travelling to Kot Ghazi from Karachi), and with every sign of the wildest excitement and joy embrace and kiss his boots….
Moussa Isa was convinced that he had gone mad and that his eyes and brain were playing him tricks.
Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison (also Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz
Ullah Khan when in other dress and other places) was likewise more than
a little surprised—and certainly a little moved, at the sight of Moussa
Isa and his wild demonstrations of uncontrollable joy.
"Well, I'm damned!" said he in the rôle of Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison. "Rum little devil. Fancy your turning up here." And in the rôle of Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan added in debased Arabic: "Take this money, little dog, and buy thee a tikkut to Kot Ghazi. Get into this train, and at Kot Ghazi follow me to a house."
To the house Moussa Isa followed him and to the end of his life likewise, visiting en route Mekran Kot, among other places, and encountering one, Ilderim the Weeper, among other people (as was told to Major Michael Malet-Marsac by Ross-Ellison's half-brother, the Subedar-Major.)
CHAPTER III.
THE WOMAN.
(And Augustus Grabble; General Murger; Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green; Mr. Horace Faggit; as well as a reformed JOHN ROBIN ROSS-ELLISON.)
§ 1. MR. GROBBLE.
There was something very maidenly about the appearance of Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble. One could not imagine him doing anything unfashionable, perspiry, rough or rude; nor could one possibly imagine him doing anything ruthless, fine, terrible, strong or difficult.
One expected his hose to be of the same tint as his shirt and handkerchief, his dress-trousers to be braided, his tie to be delicate and beautiful, his dainty shoes to be laced with black silk ribbon,—but one would never expect him to go tiger-shooting, to ride a gay and giddy young horse, to box, or to do his own cooking and washing in the desert or jungle.
Augustus had been at College during that bright brief period of the attempted apotheosis of the dirty-minded little Decadent whose stock in trade was a few Aubrey Beardsley drawings, a widow's-cruse-like bottle of Green Chartreuse, an Oscar Wilde book, some dubious blue china, some floppy ties, an assortment of second-hand epigrams, scent and scented tobacco, a nil admirari attitude and long weird hair.
Augustus had become a Decadent—a silly harmless conventionally-unconventional Decadent. But, as Carey, a contemporary Rugger blood, coarsely remarked, he hadn't the innards to go far wrong.
It was part of his cheap and childish ritual as a Decadent to draw the curtains after breakfast, light candles, place the flask of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping for visitors and an audience.
If any fellow dropped in and, very naturally, exclaimed, "What the devil are you doing?" he would reply:—
"Wha'? Oh, sunligh'? Very vulgar thing sunligh'. Art is always superior to Nature. You love the garish day being a gross Philistine, wha'? Now I only live at night. Glorious wicked nigh'. So I make my own nigh'. Wha'? Have some Green Chartreuse—only drink fit for a Hedonist. I drink its colour and I taste its glorious greenness. Ichor and Nectar of Helicon and the Pierian Spring. I loved a Wooman once, with eyes of just that glowing glorious green and a soul of ruby red. I called her my Emerald-eyed, Ruby-souled Devil, and we drank together deep draughts of the red red Wine of Life——"
Sometimes the visitor would say: "Look here, Grobb, you ought to be in the Zoo, you know. There's a lot there like you, all in one big cage," or similar words of disapproval.
Sometimes a young fresher would be impressed, especially if he had been brought up by Aunts in a Vicarage, and would also become a Decadent.
During vac. the Decadents would sometimes meet in Town, and See Life—a singularly uninteresting and unattractive side of Life (much more like Death), and the better men among them—better because of a little sincerity and pluck—would achieve a petty and rather sordid "adventure" perhaps.
Augustus had no head for Mathematics and no gift for Languages, while his Classics had always been a trifle more than shaky. History bored him—so he read Moral Philosophy.
There is a somewhat dull market for second-hand and third-class Moral Philosophy in England, so Augustus took his to India. In the first college that he adorned his classes rapidly dwindled to nothing, and the College Board dispensed with the services of Augustus, who passed on to another College in another Province, leaving behind him an odour of moral dirtiness, debt, and decadence. Quite genuine decadence this time, with nothing picturesque about it, involving doctors' bills, alimony, and other the fine crops of wild-oat sowing.
At Gungapur he determined to "settle down," to "turn over a new leaf," and laid a good space of paving-stone upon his road to reward.
He gave up the morning nip, docked the number of cocktails, went to bed before two, took a little gentle exercise, met Mrs. Pat Dearman—and (like Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, General Miltiades Murger and many another) succumbed at once.
Mrs. Pat Dearman had come to India (as Miss Cleopatra Diamond Brighte) to see her brother, Dickie Honor Brighte, at Gungapur, and much interested to see, also, a Mr. Dearman whom, in his letters to her, Dickie had described as "a jolly old buster, simply full of money, and fairly spoiling for a wife to help him blew it in." She had not only seen him but had, as she wrote to acidulous Auntie Priscilla at the Vicarage, "actually married him after a week's acquaintance—fancy!—the last thing in the world she had ever supposed … etc." (Auntie Priscilla had smiled in her peculiarly unpleasant way as the artless letter enlarged upon the strangeness of her ingenuous niece's marrying the rich man about whom her innocent-minded brother had written so much.)
Having thoroughly enjoyed a most expensive and lavish honeymoon, Mrs. Pat Dearman had settled down to make her good husband happy, to have a good time and to do any amount of Good to other people—especially to young men—who have so many temptations, are so thoughtless, and who easily become the prey of such dreadful people and such dreadful habits.
Now it is to be borne in mind that Mrs. Dearman's Good Time was marred to some extent by her unreasoning dislike of all Indians, a dislike which grew into a loathing hatred, born and bred of her ignorance of the language, customs, beliefs and ideals of the people among whom she lived, and from whom her husband's great wealth sprang.
To Augustus—fresh from very gilded gold, painted lilies and highly perfumed violets—she seemed a vision of delight, a blessed damozel, a living Salvation.
"Incedit dea aperta," he murmured to himself, and wondered whether he had got the quotation right. Being a weak young gentleman, he straightway yearned to lead a Beautiful Life so as to be worthy to live in the same world with her, and did it—for a little while. He became a teetotaller, he went to bed at ten and rose at five—going forth into the innocent pure morning and hugging his new Goodness to his soul as he composed odes and sonnets to Mrs. Pat Dearman. So far so excellent—but in Augustus was no depth of earth, and speedily he withered away. And his reformation was a house built upon sand, for, even at its pinnacle, it was compatible with the practising of sweet and pure expressions before the glass, the giving of much time to the discovery of the really most successful location of the parting in his long hair, the intentional entangling of his fingers with those of the plump and pretty young lady (very brunette) in Rightaway & Mademore's, what time she handed him "ties to match his eyes," as he requested.
It was really only a change of pose. The attitude now was: "I, young as you behold me, am old and weary of sin. I have Passed through the Fires. Give me beauty and give me peace. I have done with the World and its Dead Sea Fruit. There is no God but Beauty, and Woman is its Prophet." And he improved in appearance, grew thinner, shook off a veritable Old Man of the Sea in the shape of a persistent pimple which went ill with the Higher Aestheticism, and achieved great things in delicate socks, sweet shirts, dream ties, a thumb ring and really pretty shoes.
In the presence of Mrs. Pat Dearman he looked sad, smouldering, despairing and Fighting-against-his-Lower-Self, when not looking Young-but-Hopelessly-Depraved-though-Yearning-for-Better-Things. And he flung out quick epigrams, sighed heavily, talked brilliantly and wildly, and then suppressed a groan. Sometimes the pose of, "Dear Lady, I could kiss the hem of your garment for taking an interest in me and my past—but it is too lurid for me to speak of it, or for you to understand it if I did," would appear for a moment, and sometimes that of, "Oh, help me—or my soul must drown. Ah, leave me not. If I have sinned I have suffered, and in your hands lie my Heaven and my Hell." Such shocking words were never uttered of course—but there are few things more real than an atmosphere, and Augustus Clarence could always get his atmosphere all right.
And Mrs. Pat Dearman (who had come almost straight from a vicarage, a vicar papa and a vicarish aunt, to an elderly, uxorious husband and untrammelled freedom, and knew as much of the World as a little bunny rabbit whom its mother has not brought yet out into the warren for its first season), was mightily intrigued.
She felt motherly to the poor boy at first, being only two years his junior; then sisterly; and, later, very friendly indeed.
Let it be clearly understood that Mrs. Pat Dearman was a thoroughly good, pure-minded woman, incapable of deceiving her husband, and both innocent and ignorant to a remarkable degree. She was the product of an unnatural, specialized atmosphere of moral supermanity, the secluded life, and the careful suppression of healthy, natural instincts. In justice to Augustus Clarence also it must be stated that the impulse to decency, though transient, was genuine as far as it went, and that he would as soon have thought of cutting his long beautiful hair as of thinking evil in connection with Mrs. Pat Dearman.
Yes, Mrs. Pat Dearman was mightily intrigued—and quickly came to the conclusion that it was her plain and bounden duty to "save" the poor, dear boy—though from what she was not quite clear. He was evidently unhappy and obviously striving-to-be-Good—and he had such beautiful eyes, dressed so tastefully, and looked at one with such a respectful devotion and regard, that, really—well, it added a tremendous savour to life. Also he should be protected from the horrid flirting Mrs. Bickker who simply lived to collect scalps.
And so the friendship grew and ripened—quickly as is possible only in India. The evil-minded talked evil and saw harm where none existed, proclaiming themselves for what they were, and injuring none but themselves. (Sad to say, these were women, with one or two exceptions in favour of men—like the Hatter—who perhaps might be called "old women of the male sex," save that the expression is a vile libel upon the sex that still contains the best of us.) Decent people expressed the belief that it would do Augustus a lot of good—much-needed good; and the crystallized male opinion was that the poisonous little beast was uncommon lucky, but Mrs. Pat Dearman would find him out sooner or later.
As for Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman, that lovable simple soul was grateful to Augustus for existing—as long as his existence gave Mrs. Dearman any pleasure. If the redemption of Augustus interested her, let Augustus be redeemed. He believed that the world neither held, nor had held, his wife's equal in character and nobility of mind. He worshipped an image of his own creation in the shape of Cleopatra Dearman, and the image he had conceived was a credit to the single-minded, simple-hearted gentleman.
Naturally he did not admire Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble (learned in millinery; competent, as modes varied, to discuss harem, hobble, pannier, directoire, slit, or lamp-shade skirts, berthes, butterfly-motif embroideries, rucked ninon sleeves, chiffon tunics, and similar mysteries of the latest fashion-plates, with a lady undecided).
Long-haired men put Dearman off, and he could not connect the virile virtues with large bows, velvet coats, scent, manicure, mannerisms and meandering.
But if Augustus gave his wife any pleasure—why Augustus had not lived wholly in vain. His attitude to Augustus was much that of his attitude to his wife's chocolates, fondants, and crystallized violets—"Not absolutely nourishing and beneficial for you, Dearest;—but harmless, and I'll bring you a ton with pleasure".
Personally he'd as soon go about with his wife's fat French poodle as with Augustus, but so long as either amused her—let the queer things flourish.
Among the nasty-minded old women who "talked" was the Mad Hatter.
"Shameful thing the way that Dearman woman throws dust in her husband's eyes!" said he, while sipping his third Elsie May at the club bar. "He should divorce her. I would, to-morrow, if I were burdened with her."
A knee took him in the small of the back with unnecessary violence and he spun round to demand instant apology from the clumsy….
He found himself face to face with one John Robin Ross-Ellison newly come to Gungapur, a gentleman of independent means but supposed to be connected with the Political Department or the Secret Service or something, who stared him in the eyes without speaking while he poised a long drink as though wondering whether it were worth while wasting good liquor on the face of such a thing as the Hatter.
"You'll come with me and clear the dust from Dearman's eyes at once," said he at last. "Made your will all right?"
The Hatter publicly apologised, then and there, and explained that he had, for once in his life, taken a third drink and didn't know what he was saying.
"If your third drink brings out the real man, I should recommend you to stick to two, Bonnett," said the young man, and went away to cogitate.
Should he speak to Dearman? No. He didn't want to see so good a chap hanged for a thing like the Bonnett. Should he go and slap Augustus Grobble hard and make him leave the station somehow? No. Sure to be a scandal. You can no more stop a scandal than a locust-cloud or a fog. The best way to increase it is to notice it. What a horrid thing is a scandal-monger—exhaling poison. It publishes the fact that it is poisonous, of course—but the gas is not enjoyable.
Well, God help anybody Dearman might happen to hear on the subject! Happily Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman heard nothing, for he was a quiet, slow, jolly, red-haired man, and the wrath of a slow, quiet, red-haired man, once roused, is apt to be a rather dangerous thing. Also Mr. Dearman was singularly elephantine in the blundering crushing directness of his methods, and his idea of enough might well seem more than a feast to some.
And Mr. Dearman suffered Augustus gladly, usually finding him present at tea, frequently at dinner, and invariably in attendance at dances and functions.
Augustus was happy and Good—for Augustus. He dallied, he adored, he basked. For a time he felt how much better, finer, more enjoyable, more beautiful, was this life of innocent communion with a pure soul—pure, if just a little insipid, after the real spankers he had hitherto affected.
He was being saved from himself, reformed, helped, and all the rest of it. And when privileged to bring her pen, her fan, her book, her cushion, he always kissed the object with an appearance of wishing to be unseen in the act. It was a splendid change from the Lurid Life and the mean adventure. Piquant.
Unstable as water he could not excel nor endure, however, even in dalliance; nor persevere even when adopted as the fidus Achates of a good and beautiful woman—the poor little weather-cock. He was essentially weak, and weakness is worse than wickedness. There is hope for the strong bad man. He may become a strong good one. Your weak man can never be that.
There came a lady to the Great Eastern Hotel where Augustus lived. Her husband's name, curiously enough, was Harris, and wags referred to him as the Mr. Harris, because he had never been seen—and like Betsey Prig, they "didn't believe there was no sich person". And beyond doubt she was a spanker.
Augustus would sit and eye her at meals—and his face would grow a little less attractive. He would think of her while he took tea with Mrs. and Mr. Dearman, assuring himself that she was certainly a stepper, a stunner, and, very probably,—thrilling thought—a wrong 'un.
Without the very slightest difficulty he obtained an introduction and, shortly afterwards, decided that he was a man of the world, a Decadent, a wise Hedonist who took the sweets of every day and hoped for more to-morrow.
Who but a fool or a silly greenhorn lets slip the chances of enjoyment, and loses opportunities of experiences? There was nothing in the world, they said, to compare with War and Love. Those who wanted it were welcome to the fighting part, he would be content with the loving rôle. He would be a Dog and go on breaking hearts and collecting trophies. What a milk-and-water young ass he had been, hanging about round good, silly, little Mrs. Dearman, denying himself champagne at dinner-parties, earning opprobrium as a teetotaller, going to bed early like a bread-and-butter flapper, and generally losing all the joys of Life! Been behaving like a backfisch. He read his Swinburne again, and unearthed from the bottom of a trunk some books that dealt with the decadent's joys,—poets of the Flesh, and prosers of the Devil, in his many weary forms.
Also he redoubled his protestations (of undying, hopeless, respectful devotion and regard) to Mrs. Dearman, until she, being a woman, therefore suspected something and became uneasy.
One afternoon he failed to put in an appearance at tea-time, though expected. He wrote that he had had a headache. Perhaps it was true, but, if so, it had been borne in the boudoir of the fair spanker whose husband may or may not have been named Harris.
As his absences from the society of Mrs. Dearman increased in frequency, his protestations of undying gratitude and regard for her increased in fervour.
Mrs. Dearman grew more uneasy and a little unhappy.
Could she be losing her influence for Good over the poor weak boy? Could it be—horrible thought—that he was falling into the hands of some nasty woman who would flirt with him, let him smoke too many cigarettes, drink cocktails, and sit up late? Was he going to relapse and slip back into that state of wickedness of some kind, that she vaguely understood him to have been guilty of in the unhappy past when he had possessed no guardian angel to keep his life pure, happy and sweet, as he now declared it to be?
"Where's your young friend got to lately?" inquired her husband one day.
"I don't know, John," she replied, "he's always missing appointments nowadays," and there was a pathetic droop about the childish mouth.
"Haven't quarrelled with him, or anything, have you, Pat?"
"No, John dear. It would break his heart if I were unkind to him—or it would have used to. I mean it used to have would. Oh, you know what I mean. Once it would have. No, I have not been unkind to him—it's rather the other way about, I think!"
Rather the other way about! The little affected pimp unkind to Mrs. Dearman! Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman made no remark—aloud.
Augustus came to tea next day and his hostess made much of him. His host eyed him queerly. Very.
Augustus felt uncomfortable. Good Heavens! Was Dearman jealous? The man was not going to cut up jealous at this time of day, surely! Not after giving him the run of the house for months, and allowing him to take his wife everywhere—nay, encouraging him in every way. Absurd idea!
Beastly disturbing idea though—Dearman jealous, and on your track! A rather direct and uncompromising person, red-haired too. But the man was absolutely fair and just, and he'd never do such a thing as to let a fellow be his wife's great pal, treat him as one of the family for ages, and then suddenly round on him as though he were up to something. No. Especially when he was, if anything, cooling off a bit.
"He was always most cordial—such a kind chap,—when I was living in his wife's pocket almost," reflected Augustus, "and he wouldn't go and turn jealous just when the thing was slacking off a bit."
But there was no doubt that Dearman was eyeing him queerly….
"Shall we go on the river to-morrow night, Gussie?" said Mrs. Dearman, "or have a round of golf, or what?"
"Let's see how we feel to-morrow," replied Augustus, who had other schemes in view. "Sufficient unto the day is the joy thereof," and he escorted Mrs. Dearman to the Gymkhana, found her some nice, ladies' pictorials, said, "I'll be back in a minute or two,"—and went in search of Mrs. "Harris".
"Well," said that lady, "been a good little boy and eaten your bread and butter nicely? Have a Lyddite cocktail to take the taste away. So will I." …
"Don't forget to book the big punt," said the Siren an hour or so later.
"I'll be ready for you about five."
Augustus wrote one of his charming little notes on his charming little note-paper that evening.
"KIND AND GRACIOUS LADYE,
"Pity me. Pity and love me. To-morrow the sun will not shine for your slave, for he will not see it. I am unable to come over in the evening. I stand 'twixt love and duty, and know you would counsel duty. Would the College and all its works were beneath the ocean wave! Think of me just once and I shall survive till the day after. Oh, that I could think your disappointment were but one thousandth part of mine. I live but for Thursday.
"Ever your most devoted loving slave,
"GUSSIE."
Mrs. Dearman wept one small tear, for she had doubted his manner when he had evaded making the appointment, and was suspicious. Mr. Dearman entered and noted the one small tear ere it trickled off her dainty little nose.
She showed him the note.
Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman thought much. What he said was "Hm!"
"I suppose he has got to invigilate at some horrid examination or something," she said, but she did not really suppose anything of the kind. Even to her husband she could not admit the growing dreadful fear that the brand she had plucked from the burning was slipping from her hand—falling back into the flames.
At a dinner-party that night a woman whom she hated, and wrote down an evil-minded scandal-monger and inventor and disseminator of lies, suddenly said to her, "Who is this Mrs. Harris, my dear?"
"How should I know?" replied Mrs. Dearman.
"Oh, I thought your young friend Mr. Grobble might have told you—he seems to know her very well," answered the woman sweetly.
That night Mr. Dearman heard his wife sobbing in bed. Going to her he asked what was the matter, and produced eau-de-Cologne, phenacetin, smelling-salts and sympathy.
She said that nothing at all was the matter and he went away and pondered. Next day he asked her if he could row her on the river as he wanted some exercise, and Augustus was not available to take her for a drive or anything.
"I should love it, John dear," she said. "You row like an ox," and John, who had been reckoned an uncommon useful stroke, felt that a compliment was intended if not quite materialized.
Mrs. Pat Dearman enjoyed the upstream trip, and, watching her husband drive the heavy boat against wind and current with graceful ease, contrasted him with the puny, if charming, Augustus—to the latter's detriment. He was so safe, so sound, so strong, reliable and true. But then he never needed any protection, care and help. It was impossible to "mother" John. He loved her devotedly and beautifully but one couldn't pretend he leaned on her for moral help. Now Augustus did need her or he had done so—and she did so love to be needed. Had done so? No—she would put the thought away. He needed her as much as ever and loved her as devotedly and honourably…. The boat was turned back at the weir and, half an hour later, reached the Club wharf.
"I want to go straight home without changing, Pat; do you mind? I'll drop you at the Gymkhana if you don't want to get home so early," said Dearman, as he helped his wife out.
"Won't you change and have a drink first, John?" she replied. "You must be thirsty."
"No. I want to go along now, if you don't mind."
He did want to—badly. For, rowing up, he had seen something which his wife, facing the other way, could not see.
Under an over-hanging bush was a punt, and in the punt were Augustus and the lady known as Mrs. Harris.
The bush met the bank at the side toward his wife, but at the other side, facing Dearman, there was an open space and so he had seen and she had not. Returning, he had drawn her attention to something on the opposite bank. This had been unnecessary, however, as Augustus had effected a change of venue without delay. And now he did not want his wife to witness the return of the couple and learn of the duplicity of her snatched Brand.
(He'd "brand" him anon!)
* * * * *
Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble sat in the long cane chair in his sitting-room, a glass beside him, a cigarette between his lips, a fleshly poet in his hand, and a reminiscent smile upon his flushed face.
She undoubtedly was a spanker. Knew precisely how many beans make five. A woman of the world, that. Been about. Knew things. Sort of woman one could tell a good story to—and get one back. Life! Life! Knew it up and down, in and out. Damn reformation, teetotality, the earnest, and the strenuous. Good women were unmitigated bores, and he…. A sharp knock at the door.
"Kon hai?"[47] he called. "Under ao."[48]
[47] Who's there. [48] Come in.
The door opened and large Mr. Dearman walked in. He bore a nasty-looking malacca cane in his hand—somewhat ostentatiously.
"Hullo, Dearman!" said Augustus after a decidedly startled and anxious look. "What is it? Sit down. I'm just back from College. Have a drink?"
Large Mr. Dearman considered these things seriatim.
"I will sit down as I want a talk with you. You are a liar in the matter of just being back from College. I will not have a drink." He then lapsed into silence and looked at Augustus very straight and very queerly, while bending the nasty malacca suggestively. The knees of Augustus smote together.
Good God! It had come at last! The thrashing he had so often earned was at hand. What should he do? What should he do!
Dearman thought the young man was about to faint.
"Fine malacca that, isn't it?" he asked.
"Ye-yes!"
"Swishy, supple, tough."
"Ye-yes!" (How could the brute be such a fool as to be jealous now—now when it was all cooling off and coming to an end?)
"Grand stick to thrash a naughty boy with, what?"
"Ye-yes!—Dearman, I swear before God that there is nothing between me and——"
"Shut up, you infernal God-forsaken cub, or I shall have to whip you.
I——"
"Dearman, if you are jealous of me——"
"Better be quiet and listen, or I shall get cross, and you'll get hurt…. You have given us the pleasure of a great deal of your company this year, and I have come to ask you——"
"Dearman, I have not been so much lately, and I—"
"That's what I complain of, my young friend."
"What?"
"That's what I complain of! I have come to protest against your making yourself almost necessary to me, in a sense, and then—er—deserting me, in a sense."
"You are mocking me, Dearman. If you wish to take advantage of my being half your size and strength to assault me, you——"
"Not a bit of it, my dear Augustus. I am in most deadly earnest, as you'll find if you are contumacious when I make my little proposition. What I say is this. I have grown to take an interest in you, Augustus. I have been very kind to you and tried to make a better man of you. I have been a sort of mother to you, and you have sworn devotion and gratitude to me. I have reformed you somewhat, and you have admitted to me that I have made another man of you, Augustus, and that you love me for it, you love me with a deep Platonic love, my Augustus, and—don't you forget it."
"I admit that your wife——"
"Don't you mention my wife, Augustus, or you and I and that malacca will have a period of great activity. I was saying that I am disappointed in you, Augustus, and truly grieved to find you so shallow and false. I asked you to take me on the river to-night and you lied to me and took a very different type of—er—person. Such meanness and ingratitude fairly get me, Augustus. Now I never asked you to run after me and come and swear I had saved your dirty little soul alive, but since you did it, Augustus, and I have come to take a deep interest in saving the thing—why, you've got to stick it, Augustus—and if you don't—why, then I'll make you, my dear."
"Dearman, your wife has been the noblest friend——"
"Will you come off it, Augustus? I don't want to be cruel. Now look here. I have got accustomed to having you about the house and employing you in those funny little ways in which you are a useful little animal. I am under no delusion as to the value of that Soul of yours—but, such as it is, I am determined to save it. So just you bring it round to tea to-morrow, as usual; and don't you ever be absent again without my permission. You began the game and I'll end it—when I think fit. Grand malacca that."
"Dearman, I will always——"
"'Course you will. See you at tea to-morrow, Gussie. If ever my wife hears of this I'll kill you painfully. Bye-Bye."
Augustus was present at tea next day, and, thenceforth, so regular was he that Mrs. Dearman found, first, that she had been very foolish in thinking that her Brand was slipping back into the fire and, later, that Gussie was a bore and a nuisance.
One day he said in the presence of John:—
"I can't keep that golf engagement on Saturday, dear lady, I have to attend a meeting of the Professors, Principal and College Board".
"Have you seen my malacca cane, Pat," said Dearman. "I want it."
"But I really have!" said Augustus, springing up.
"Of course you have," replied Dearman. "What do you mean?"
* * * * *
"John dear," remarked Mrs. Dearman one day, "I wish you could give Gussie a hint not to come quite so often. I have given him some very broad ones during the last few months, but he won't take them. He would from you, I expect."
"Tired of the little bounder, Pat?"
"Oh, sick and tired. He bores me to tears. I wish he were in Government Service and could be transferred. A Government man's always transferred as soon as he has settled to his job. I can't forbid him the house, very well, but I wish he'd realize how weary I am of his poses and new socks."
* * * * *
Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble sat in the long cane chair in his sitting-room, a look of rebellious discontent upon his face. What could he do? Better chuck his job and clear out! The strain was getting awful. What a relentless, watchful brute Dearman was! To him entered that gentleman after gently tapping at the chamber door.
"Gussie," said he, "I have come to say that I think you weary me. I don't want you to come and play with me any more. But be a nice good boy and do me credit. I have brought you this malacca as a present and a memento. I have another, Gussie, and am going to watch you, so be a real credit to me."
And Gussie was.
So once again a good woman redeemed a bad man—but a trifle indirectly perhaps.
Then came General Miltiades Murger and Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison to be saved.
During intervals in the salvation process, Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison vainly endeavoured to induce Mr. Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble to lend his countenance, as well as the rest of his person, to the European Company of the Gungapur Fusilier Volunteer Corps which it was the earnest ambition of Ross-Ellison to raise and train and consolidate into a real and genuine defence organization, with a maxim-gun, a motor-cycle and car section, and a mounted troop, and with, above all, a living and sturdy esprit-de-corps. Such a Company appeared to him to be the one and only hope of regeneration for the ludicrous corps which Colonel Dearman commanded, and to change the metaphor, the sole possible means of leavening the lump by its example of high standards and high achievement.
To Augustus, however, as to many other Englishmen, the idea was merely ridiculous and its parent simply absurd.
The day dawned when Augustus, like the said many other Englishmen, changed his mind. In his, and their defence, it may be urged that they knew nothing of the activities of a very retiring but persevering gentleman, known to his familiars as Ilderim the Weeper, and that they had grown up in the belief that all England's fighting and defence can be done by a few underpaid, unconsidered, and very vulgar hirelings.
Perish the thought that Augustus and his like should ever be expected to do the dirty work of defending themselves, their wives, children, homes and honour.