‘‘Tain’t because you bloomin’ can’t. It’s ‘cause you bloomin’ won’t, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. ‘Ark to’im ‘owlin’!’
‘Wot’s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! ‘E’s keepin’ us awake!’ said another voice.
A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness —
‘‘Tain’t no good, sir. I can’t see ‘im. ‘E’s ‘idin’ somewhere down ‘ill.’
Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ‘Shall I try to get ‘im, sir?’ said he.
‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Lie down. I won’t have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.’
Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a ‘bus conductor calls in a block, ‘‘Igher up, there! ‘Igher up!’
The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.
‘An’ that’s all right,’ said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. ‘S’elp me Gawd, tho’, that man’s not fit to live — messin’ with my beauty-sleep this way.’
‘Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,’ said the subaltern incautiously. ‘Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.’
Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd.
The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.
‘I’m goin’ to lay for a shot at that man,’ said Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle. ‘‘E comes up the watercourse every evenin’ about five o’clock. If we go and lie out on the north ‘ill a bit this afternoon we’ll get ‘im.’
‘You’re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,’ said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. ‘But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere’s Jock?’
‘Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ‘cause ‘e thinks ‘isself a bloomin’ marksman,’ said Ortheris with scorn.
The ‘Mixed Pickles’ were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.
‘You’ve got to sweat to-day,’ said Ortheris genially. ‘We’re going to get your man. You didn’t knock ‘im out last night by any chance, any of you?’
‘No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,’ said a private. ‘He’s my cousin, and I ought to have cleared our dishonour. But good luck to you.’
They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he explained,’this is a long-range show, an’ I’ve got to do it.’ His was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.
‘‘Ere’s the tail o’ the wood,’ said Ortheris. ‘‘E’s got to come up the watercourse, ‘cause it gives ‘im cover. We’ll lay ‘ere. ‘Tain’t not arf so bloomin’ dusty neither.’
He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.
‘This is something like,’ he said luxuriously. ‘Wot a ‘evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost! How much d’you make it, Mulvaney?’
‘Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air’s so thin.’
WOP! WOP! WOP! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill.
‘Curse them Mixed Pickles firin’ at nothin’! They’ll scare arf the country.’
‘Thry a sightin’ shot in the middle of the row,’ said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. ‘There’s a red rock yonder he’ll be sure to pass. Quick!’
Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.
‘Good enough!’ said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. ‘You snick your sights to mine or a little lower. You’re always firin’ high. But remember, first shot to me. O Lordy! but it’s a lovely afternoon.’
The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts.
‘One o’ them damned gardeners o’ th’ Pickles,’ said he, fingering the rent. ‘Firin’ to th’ right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew who he was I’d ‘a’ rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!’
‘That’s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an’ he loose on anythin’ he sees or hears up to th’ mile. You’re well out av that fancy-firin’ gang, Jock. Stay here.’
‘Bin firin’ at the bloomin’ wind in the bloomin’ tree-tops,’ said
Ortheris with a chuckle. ‘I’ll show you some firin’ later on.’
They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the whiffs of his pipe —
‘Seems queer — about ‘im yonder — desertin’ at all.’
‘‘E’ll be a bloomin’ side queerer when I’ve done with ‘im,’ said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.
‘I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin’; but, my faith! I make less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin’ him,’ said Mulvaney.
‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ it. Men do more than more for th’ sake of a lass.’
‘They make most av us ‘list. They’ve no manner av right to make us desert.’
‘Ah; they make us ‘list, or their fathers do,’ said Learoyd softly, his helmet over his eyes. Ortheris’s brows contracted savagely. He was watching the valley. ‘If it’s a girl I’ll shoot the beggar twice over, an’ second time for bein’ a fool. You’re blasted sentimental all of a sudden. Thinkin’ o’ your last near shave?’
‘Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin’ o’ what had happened.’
‘An’ fwhat has happened, ye lumberin’ child av calamity, that you’re lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an’ suggestin’ invidious excuses for the man Stanley’s goin’ to kill. Ye’ll have to wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an’ bellow melojus to the moo
n. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley, kape a rowlin’ rig’mental eye on the valley.’
‘It’s along o’ yon hill there,’ said Learoyd, watching the bare sub- Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was speaking more to himself than his fellows. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘Rumbolds Moor stands up ower Skipton town, an’ Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brig. I reckon you’ve never heeard tell o’ Greenhow Hill, but yon bit o’ bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin’ is like ut; strangely like. Moors an’ moors an’ moors, wi’ never a tree for shelter, an’ gray houses wi’ flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin’, an’ a windhover goin’ to and fro just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple colour o’ their cheeks an’ nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pinpoints by the wind. Miners mostly, burrowin’ for lead i’ th’ hillsides, followin’ the trail of th’ ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin’ I ever seen. Yo’d come on a bit o’ creakin’ wood windlass like a well-head, an’ you was let down i’ th’ bight of a rope, fendin’ yoursen off the side wi’ one hand, carryin’ a candle stuck in a lump o’ clay with t’other, an’ clickin’ hold of a rope with t’other hand.’
‘An’ that’s three of them,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Must be a good climate in those parts.’
Learoyd took no heed.
‘An’ then yo’ came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees through a mile o’ windin’ drift, an’ you come out into a cave-place as big as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin’ water from workin’s ‘at went deeper still. It’s a queer country, let alone minin’, for the hill is full of those natural caves, an’ the rivers an’ the becks drops into what they call pot-holes, an’ come out again miles away.’
‘Wot was you doin’ there?’ said Ortheris.
‘I was a young chap then, an’ mostly went wi’ ‘osses, leadin’ coal and lead ore; but at th’ time I’m tellin’ on I was drivin’ the waggon-team i’ th’ big sumph. I didn’t belong to that country-side by rights. I went there because of a little difference at home, an’ at fust I took up wi’ a rough lot. One night we’d been drinkin’, an’ I must ha’ hed more than I could stand, or happen th’ ale was none so good. Though i’ them days, By for God, I never seed bad ale.’ He flung his arms over his head, and gripped a vast handful of white violets. ‘Nah,’ said he, ‘I never seed the ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th’ others, an’ when I was climbin’ ower one of them walls built o’ loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an’ broke my arm. Not as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th’ back of my head, an’ was knocked stupid like. An’ when I come to mysen it were mornin’, an’ I were lyin’ on the settle i’ Jesse Roantree’s houseplace, an’ ‘Liza Roantree was settin’ sewin’, I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi’ gold letters — ”A Present from Leeds” — as I looked at many and many a time at after. “Yo’re to lie still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm’s broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo’ when he was goin’ to work, an’ carried you here on his back,” sez she. “Oa!” sez I; an’ I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o’ mysen. “Father’s gone to his work these three hours, an’ he said he’d tell ‘em to get somebody to drive the tram.” The clock ticked, an’ a bee comed in the house, an’ they rung i’ my head like mill-wheels. An’ she give me another drink an’ settled the pillow. “Eh, but yo’re young to be getten drunk an’ such like, but yo’ won’t do it again, will yo’?” — ”Noa,” sez I, “I wouldn’t if she’d not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin’.”‘
‘Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you’re sick!’ said Mulvaney. ‘Dir’ cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.’
Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many women in his life.
‘An’ then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin’ up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with ‘im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi’ poor folk same as theirsens. “What’s ta big agaate on naa?” he sings out. “Brekkin’ tha thick head?” An’ he felt me all ovver. “That’s none broken. Tha’ nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft eneaf.” An’ soa he went on, callin’ me all the names he could think on, but settin’ my arm, wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be. “Yo’ mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse,” he says, when he hed strapped me up an’ given me a dose o’ physic; “an’ you an’ Liza will tend him, though he’s scarcelins worth the trouble. An’ tha’ll lose tha work,” sez he, “an’ tha’ll be upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ months an’ more. Doesn’t tha think tha’s a fool?”‘
‘But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I’d like to know?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Sure, folly’s the only safe way to wisdom, for I’ve thried it.’
‘Wisdom!’ grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.
‘You’re bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you?’
Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.
‘And that was how I come to know ‘Liza Roantree. There’s some tunes as she used to sing — aw, she were always singin’ — that fetches Greenhow Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would learn me to sing bass, an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ‘em where Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man playin’ the fiddle. He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door- post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi’ th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin’ at th’ right time.
‘But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it was a man in a black coat that brought it. When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow, he would always stop wi’ Jesse Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’ beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. At th’ same time I jealoused ‘at he were keen o’ savin’ ‘Liza Roantree’s soul as well, and I could ha’ killed him many a time. An’ this went on till one day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a drink from ‘Liza. After fower days I come back, wi’ my tail between my legs, just to see ‘Liza again. But Jesse were at home an’ th’ preacher — th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough. ‘Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin’ his best to be civil, “Nay, lad, it’s like this. You’ve getten to choose which way it’s goin’ to be. I’ll ha’ nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin’, an’ borrows my lass’s money to spend i’ their drink. Ho’d tha tongue, ‘Liza,” sez he, when she wanted to put in a word ‘at I were welcome to th’ brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn’t pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in, seein’ as Jesse were losin’ his temper, an’ they fair beat me among them. But it were ‘Liza, as looked an’ said naught, as did more than either o’ their tongues, an’ soa I concluded to get converted.’
‘Fwhat?’ shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, ‘Let be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an’ most women; an’ there’s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut stay there. I’d ha’ been converted myself under the circumstances.’
‘Nay, but,’ pursued Learoyd with a blush, ‘I meaned it.’
Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at the time.
‘Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn’t know yon preacher Barraclough — a little white-faced chap, wi’ a voice as ‘ud wile a bird off an a bush, and a way o’ layin’ hold of fol
ks as made them think they’d never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him, an’ — an’ — you never seed ‘Liza Roantree — never seed ‘Liza Roantree…. Happen it was as much ‘Liza as th’ preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it, an’ I was fair shamed o’ mysen, an’ so I become what they call a changed character. And when I think on, it’s hard to believe as yon chap going to prayer-meetin’s, chapel, and class-meetin’s were me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o’ shoutin’, and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, “Joyful! Joyful!” and ‘at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i’ a coach an’ six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin’, “Doesn’t tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn’t tha feel it?” An’ sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn’t, an’ how was that?’
‘The iverlastin’ nature av mankind,’ said Mulvaney. ‘An’, furthermore, I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They’re a new corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she’s the mother of them all — ay, an’ the father, too. I like her bekaze she’s most remarkable regimental in her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein’ fwhat I am, an’ a priest handy, I go under the same orders an’ the same words an’ the same unction as tho’ the Pope himself come down from the roof av St. Peter’s to see me off. There’s neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her, an’ that’s what I like. But mark you, she’s no manner av Church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died that was three months comin’ to his grave; begad he’d ha’ sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes’ quittance of purgathory. An’ he did all he could. That’s why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an’ for that reason you’ll find so many women go there. An’ that same’s a conundrum.’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 589