ASIA 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 6005.L72S2 
 
 Sallyja study and other tales R' ll , l !jfi ll 2 u llllll 
 3 1924 023 556 503 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023556503 
 
SALLY: A STUDY 
 
' ' Over the Past not e'en the gods have power, 
 For what hath been, hath been, and I have had my hour ! " 
 
 — Dryden. 
 
SALLY: A STUDY 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH CLIFFORD, C.M.G. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY,' ' BUSH-WHACKING,' 
 a FREE-LANCE OF TO-DAY," ETC., ETC. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MCMIV 
 
 <H*> 
 
TO 
 
 MY BRETHREN IN MALAYA. 
 
 The grim Recording Angel turns the pages of the Book, 
 
 And the days are thrust behind us past recall — 
 All the sorrows that we tasted, all the pleasure that we took 
 
 In that life we shared together, Brothers all I 
 But to-day the forest whispers and to-day the ungkas whoop, 
 
 While the big, slow river lumbers down to meet the sunlit sea, 
 And the village drones and drowses where the palm-fronds lift 
 or droop, 
 
 For the old life glideth onward still — with ne'er a place 
 for me! 
 
 In the hut and in the palace, 'mid the rice-fields or the shade 
 Where the vast trees crowding stagger 'neatk their load of 
 fern and vine, 
 In that world of untouched Nature, 'mid the marvels God hath 
 made, 
 Ye are living on in listlessness the life that once was mine / 
 Hark ! I catch the thud of tom-toms, and the drone of old- 
 world song, 
 The sleepy hum of insects and the rush of startled beast — 
 And I lack the words to tell you, O my Brothers, how I long 
 For the glory and the glamour and the wonder of the East! 
 
Ye are far, too far, my Brothers, gnarled brown faces that I 
 know — 
 Men who dealt with me aforetime, friend with friend and 
 heart with heart, — 
 Our paths lie worlds asunder, since the Fates would have it so, 
 For behold " The Order reached me" 1 and to-day, old Friends, 
 we part. 
 Yet ye will not quite forget me, O my Brothers over sea — 
 
 Let me keep that fond illusion, it will help me on my way — 
 And I pray you tell the little ones who gather round your knee 
 Of the days we saw together in the Land of the Malay. 
 
 And my thanks are yours, my Brothers, for a thousand acts of 
 grace, 
 For the trust wherewith you trusted, for the love wherewith 
 you loved, 
 For your honest, open greetings, outstretched hand and friendly 
 face, 
 For the kindness that ye dealt me when through all your land 
 T roved. 
 It was mine to toil and struggle, it was mine to war with wrong, 
 It was mine to labour for you, aye to sorrow, hope, and 
 yearn ; 
 But ril shout it on the house-tops from Barbados to Hong- 
 Kong — 
 If to you I rendered service, I from you had most to learn I 
 
 HUGH CLIFFORD. 
 
 1 Sitdah sampai hukum — "The Order hath come!" — a Malayan 
 euphemism for Death, wherein there is a great bitterness. — H. C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD .... 
 
 
 
 ix 
 
 "sally": a study . 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 "RACHEL" .... 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 "CAST" .... 
 
 
 
 ISI 
 
 FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS . 
 
 
 
 185 
 
 "SET ON EDGE" . 
 
 
 
 205 
 
 "GREATER LOVE" . 
 
 
 
 241 
 
 A TALE OF OLD LABUAN 
 
 
 
 275 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 These tales of the Outskirts, fragmentary garner- 
 ings of 
 
 " The lore o' men who ha' dealt with men 
 In the raw and the naked lands,'' 
 
 I cannot suffer to go from me quite without one word 
 wishing them God-speed, and perhaps one other of 
 apology and explanation. These stories have been 
 written through the sheer delight I have found in 
 recording, no matter with how little of skill or art, 
 the impressions of men and things which have been 
 imprinted upon my memory during twenty years of 
 life in the East ; and now that they are about to 
 quit me, seeking their own fortune in a world that 
 may well have no room for them, it is to me as 
 though, in parting with them, I was severing the last 
 link that binds me to a life which I have loved, to 
 a people and to a land which have become to me 
 very dear. For I, who once was outcast in Asia, 
 to-day am outcast from the East, and, behold, the 
 East is claiming me as she never claimed me before ! 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 Twenty years — the years which bridge the gulf be- 
 tween boyhood and middle age — have wedded me to 
 Malaya, and now, of a sudden, there has been pro- 
 nounced against me the decree of a great divorce. 
 
 Those years have brought me things good and 
 things ill, joys and sorrows, failures over -numerous 
 and successes one or two : my union with the East 
 has had, like nearly every union, its jars and its 
 evil moments, its periods of depression, its passing 
 accesses of aversion, of nausea, of satiety. But above 
 and beyond and behind all this, how much, how more 
 than much, it has held for me! Now at the last, 
 when the bitter hour of separation has come, a full 
 realisation of all that the East has meant for me, 
 of all that the East has taught to me, of all that the 
 East has given to me, of all that the East stands 
 for in my heart and in my memory, is upon me with 
 overpowering force ; and I, the whilom exile, kneel 
 humbly at her dear feet, — " grim Step-Mother of our 
 kind," though some be found to name her, — thank 
 her for her bounties, kiss her time-worn hand, and 
 so depart in sadness. 
 
 And to-day these tales of the Outskirts go from me 
 too, the last of their kind, or so I fancy, that my hand 
 shall fashion : and with their going there is closed for 
 me a long chapter of my life — a chapter through 
 every rough line of which I fain would live again. 
 Treat them kindly then, my brethren, ye Knights of 
 the grey Goose-quill, judging them not as literature 
 but as truth — as fragments whose only value is that 
 they are, as it were, the aftermath of a rich harvest 
 
FOREWORD. XI 
 
 of experience garnered in joy, — joy, the thought of 
 which, now that the old life is taken from me utterly, 
 is bitter in my mouth. 
 
 The brilliant sunshine of the Tropics floods the 
 world about me as I write : all around is the luxuri- 
 ant vegetation and the vivid colouring unknown to 
 tame and temperate lands: far away yonder on the 
 wooded hillside the vermilion of the bois immortel 
 stains with glorious tint the tender greenery. Here, 
 too, is a land of splendour and of beauty, with the 
 same mysterious hint of sadness underlying all; but 
 this is not my shrine, these High Woods are not my 
 dear Malayan forests; this is a Holy of Holies held 
 sacred by other men, who well may resent the prying 
 presence of a stranger who must learn much ere he 
 can hope to catch the hushed whisper of the inner 
 sanctuary. Meanwhile the dissimilarity in similarity 
 mocks my memory, and, deprived of the light of in- 
 timate, first-hand knowledge, that in the East had 
 become for me so sure a guide, I stand to-day be- 
 wildered in the half-darkness of a new experience — 
 crying for the Moon ! 
 
 All these tales have already made their bow to the 
 public in various magazines. For permission to re- 
 print them my thanks are due to Mr Blackwood, to 
 Mr Reginald Smith, K.C., and to the Editors of 
 ' Macmillan's Magazine ' and ' Temple Bar.' 
 
 HUGH CLIFFORD. 
 Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, B.W.I. 
 
SALLY": A STUDY 
 
SALLY": A STUDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 " D IVE ? 1 should think so ! " said his host to 
 
 Jack Norris. "You just watch the little 
 beggar dive ! " 
 
 It was early morning, and the two men were strip- 
 ping for a swim on board one of the big house-boats 
 which lie eternally at their moorings on the right bank 
 of the river near Thames Ditton. The place was 
 littered with sweaters, towels, flannels, boat-cushions, 
 books, newspapers, pipes, and the varied accumulations 
 of rubbish such as only a house-boat full of bachelors 
 can collect when it lacks even the feminine influence 
 of a charwoman. Without, seen through the wide 
 oblong windows, the tawny waters ran cool and in- 
 viting under the glad sunshine of a bright summer 
 morning. From a spring-board rigged in the bows 
 men from time to time took running headers : in the 
 middle of the narrow fairway five or six heads were 
 bobbing, while arms and legs in number to correspond 
 splashed gallantly. The cheery clamour of the bathers 
 carried far over the water. 
 
 Presently another head broke through the surface of 
 
4 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 the river some twenty yards up - stream, — a head to 
 which the wet hair clung sleek and black as the fur 
 of an otter, — and from it came a cry of defiance, 
 the tone of which was somehow strangely familiar 
 as it smote upon Jack Norris's ears. The swimmers 
 answered the challenge with discordant chorus, and 
 began to splash up against the current, with straining 
 arms and legs, in the direction of the man who had 
 uttered it. The latter waited until his pursuers had 
 nearly surrounded him, were almost upon him, and 
 then dived neatly, leaving barely so much as a ripple 
 behind him. Two or three men went down headlong 
 in pursuit, to reappear in a minute or so baffled and 
 panting. A moment later, first one and then another 
 were drawn under, with gurgles and splutterings of 
 protest, by an invisible hand that had gripped them 
 by the heels. With renewed splutterings each in 
 turn came to the surface, laughing and shouting, 
 breathing forth threats of instant retribution. Dash- 
 ing the water from their eyes, they looked around, 
 vainly seeking for some sign of their antagonist's 
 whereabouts, calling upon him by name the while 
 with humorous mock-wrath. 
 
 " Sally ! " they cried. " Sally, you young ruffian ! 
 Sally ! Sally ! Sally, you villain ! We'll pay you out 
 properly when we catch you ! " 
 
 Again the head, with its close covering of straight 
 limp hair, came to the surface, far down river this 
 time, and well out of the reach of its pursuers. Again 
 that queer challenging cry came from it, and set 
 Norris tingling with old memories suddenly awakened. 
 
 "Why, he is a Malay!" he exclaimed. "No one 
 but a Malay ever used that lilting whoop. It is the 
 sorak — their war-cry ! " 
 
"sally": a study. 5 
 
 " Of course he is a Malay," said the part-owner of 
 the house-boat. " He is Sally, you know — a Malay 
 boss of sorts. We all knew him when we were at 
 Winchester. He is being educated in England pri- 
 vately, not at the school ; but he is an awfully decent 
 little chap, and was very pally with a lot of us." 
 
 Jack Norris stepped out on to the bows, and stood 
 for a minute in his bathing-pants looking across the 
 river. The Englishmen had abandoned the hopeless 
 chase, and the little Malay was swimming back to 
 them, breasting the current with the unmistakable 
 long overhand stroke of his people. The sight, and 
 the echo of the cry which still rang in his ears, 
 brought back to Norris suddenly the memory of many 
 a swim in the glorious rivers of the Malay Peninsula ; 
 and for a space the banks around him, with their 
 fringe of moored house-boats and floating stages, the 
 trim towing-path opposite skirting the tall brick wall, 
 and the great shapeless pile of Hampton Court Palace, 
 its window-panes winking in the sunlight, its ruddy 
 bulk surmounted by grotesque chimney-stacks, picked 
 out with white masonry and set with grinning gar- 
 goyles, were rolled back. He seemed once more to 
 be standing on the beak of a Malayan prahu, with an 
 olive-green tide of waters surging past him, and spread- 
 ing away and away to the marvellous tangles of forest 
 that stood, more than half a mile apart, hedging the 
 river on either flank. Then he braced himself and 
 took a header from the bow, and the chill of the 
 English stream smote him with a shock of surprise, 
 for so complete had been the momentary illusion that 
 he had expected to be greeted by the tepid waters of 
 the East. 
 
 When he rose to the surface he found himself close 
 
6 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 to the man they called " Sally." His face— the boyish, 
 hairless face of a young Malay — was turned towards 
 him. The great, black, velvety, melancholy eyes of 
 his race looked at Norris from their place in the flaw- 
 less, olive-tinted skin in which they were set. The 
 mouth, somewhat full, with mobile sensitive lips that 
 pouted slightly, had just that sweetness of expression 
 that is most often seen in the face of a little child. 
 The features were clean-cut, delicate, giving promise 
 of more adaptability than strength of character : the 
 whole effect was pretty and pleasing, for this was a 
 Malay of rank and breeding, the offspring of men who 
 for uncounted generations have had the fairest women 
 of their land to wife. 
 
 Mechanically Norris spoke in the vernacular. 
 
 " What is the news ? " he asked, using the conven- 
 tional greeting. 
 
 " Khabar baik ! The news is good ! " the Malay 
 answered, speaking the words from sheer force of 
 habit, and he eyed Norris curiously with evident sur- 
 prise. Then his face lighted up with a gleam of recog- 
 nition, and his lips, parting in a grin, disclosed two 
 even rows of beautiful white teeth, — teeth such as 
 belong by right to every Malay, did not the inex- 
 plicable fashion of this people order them to be 
 mutilated with the stone -file and blackened by in- 
 delible pigment. 
 
 " Ya Allah, Tuan Nori' ! It is thou ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 The word or two of the vernacular, to which he 
 added the popular mispronunciation of Jack's name, 
 slipped from him unconsciously. An instant later he 
 corrected himself. 
 
 " Do you remember me ? " he asked in English. 
 " I am Raja Saleh of Pelesu. I met you las' at Ka.ru." 
 
" SALLY ' : A STUDY. 7 
 
 He spoke his acquired language fluently, but with a 
 strong foreign intonation, lengthening the flat English 
 vowels and eliding the last of two final consonants. 
 His words unlocked a forgotten chamber of Jack's 
 memory, and at once the boy himself, his identity, 
 his circumstances, and all connected with him, were 
 made so clear that Norris fell to wondering how it 
 had come to pass that, even for a moment, he had 
 failed to recognise him. Immediately the Englishman 
 and the Malay were busy interchanging news, the 
 former chatting volubly of men and places with st range 
 n ames ^ that surely had never before bee n s poken on 
 the bosom of the ancient Thames, the latter listening 
 and replying," but with a certain indifference and aloof- 
 ness that were curious. Once more, from force of 
 habit, Norris spoke in the vernacular. Using the 
 Malayan idiom like his own mothe r, tongue, he had 
 neve ? : -y§L. I 5§t-?-_5?: t i v ? who did not prefer to converse 
 withjbim in -that language, or who was completely at 
 his best when employing the white man's speech. The 
 foreign tongue seems in some subtle fashion to em- 
 phasise defects in taste and character which the more 
 familiar vernacular mercifully hides. Iang-Miilia Raja 
 Muhammad Saleh bin Iang-Maha-Mulia Sultan Abu- 
 bakar Maathanl Shah Iang-di-per-Tuan Pelesu, how- 
 ever, — to give his full title to the youth who was 
 known to his English friends by the undistinguished 
 name of "Sally," — had not heard Malay spoken for 
 years, and he seemed now to shy away from it, as 
 though it were not only unfamiliar, but also, in some 
 sort, distressing to him. It was only at a much 
 later period" ~5F their intercourse that Saleh came 
 back to his Malayan tongue, and found in it the 
 only medium of expression with which to convey to 
 
8 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Jack an understanding of the feelings that were in 
 his heart. 
 
 Now, as the bathers dressed themselves on board the 
 house-boat, — Saleh standing among them all in com- 
 plete unconsciousness of the nakedness which would 
 have outraged the sense of decency of the meanest of 
 his subjects, — Jack was busy piecing together all that 
 he could recollect concerning his past meetings with 
 the lad. So again the familiar surroundings of the 
 home-land faded, and were replaced by scenes that he 
 had looked upon, lived through, years before, and 
 thousands of miles away, on the banks of a mighty 
 Malayan river. 
 
 II. 
 
 They rose up singly, — these scattered memories of 
 incidents in which Saleh had played a part, — lingered 
 for a moment, and were gone ; for the mind, when it 
 wanders in retrospect, knows no trammels of space 
 or time, and, flashing hither and thither at will, throws 
 sudden gleams into the dark places with all the speed 
 and the vividness of lightning. Thus, as in silence 
 N orris dressed himself amid the hum of talk on board 
 the house-boat, the trivial happenings of nearly a score 
 of years were reviewed in less than half as many 
 minutes, each picture rising before him clear-cut and 
 complete to the last detail, glimmering for an instant 
 ere it vanished to give room to another — just as a view 
 cast by a magic-lantern leaps whole and sudden out 
 of the darkness, burns its impression upon our eye- 
 sight, and in a flash is blotted out. 
 
"SALLY : A STUDY. 9 
 
 Three big wooden houses, raised on piles above the 
 untidy litter of a compound, connected each to each 
 by narrow gangways roofed and walled; three high- 
 pitched pyramids of thatch, the dried palm -leaves 
 rustling and lifting under the full beat of the noontide 
 sun ; a big brown river rolling by, with a dull murmur 
 of sound, beyond the ten-foot fence of wattled bamboos 
 which encloses in its lop-sided square this palace of a 
 native king. In the central house Jack Norris squats 
 cross-legged, surrounded by a mob of expectant Ma- 
 lays of both sexes. The great barn-like apartment is 
 bare, save for the mengkuang-palm mats spread upon 
 the floor, and the bellying squares of ceiling patch- 
 work sagging from the rafters overhead, whence, near 
 the centre of the room, a big hammock also depends, 
 swaying gently to and fro. Above the hammock, in 
 dingy contrast to the glaring patterns of the Manchester 
 ceiling-cloths, an old casting-net, whereof the soiled 
 and rent meshes prove that it has seen much service, 
 hangs in an uneven oblong. It is a barrier raised 
 against the assaults of the Pen-anggal — the Undone 
 One — that fearful wraith of a woman who has died 
 in childbirth, and who cherishes for ever a quenchless 
 enmity towards little children. She, poor wretch, 
 wrenched terribly in twain, is doomed to flit eternally 
 through the night, — a dreadful shape with agonised 
 woman's face, full breasts, and nought beside save only 
 certain awful blood-stained streamers, — bringing a curse 
 of destruction wherever she can win an entry. But 
 the gods, who suffer such things to be, mercifully 
 ordain that her onslaughts upon defenceless babes 
 can only be made from above, and a discarded casting- 
 net dipped in magic-water, it is well known, will often 
 stay and baffle her. Yet even now, perchance, she 
 
10 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 may be lurking, unseen by impotent human eyes, in 
 the hammock itself, wherefore due precaution must be 
 taken ere the royal baby can be safely laid to rest 
 therein. 
 
 As the crowd sits watching, a grim figure strides into 
 the centre of the room. It is that of an aged woman, 
 tall, erect, with a fierce mouth, wild eyes, and a tumble 
 of shaggy elf-locks making an unsightly halo about 
 her lean face, a woman dressed in the male costume 
 of a Malay warrior. It is Raja Anjang — the witch of 
 the blood royal — and at her coming a little wave of 
 tremor ripples over the faces of the Malay onlookers. 
 She is in a condition of trance — possessed by her 
 familiar demons: those unseeing eyes and every rigid 
 muscle in her big angular frame bear witness to her 
 uncanny state, and no man knows with certainty what 
 will befall while this inspired beldam fills the stage. 
 She wanders round and round the hammock, moving 
 with long masculine strides, muttering fearfully words 
 of a forgotten language which none save the wizards 
 know; and her elf-locks, stirring restlessly, seem to 
 be lifted by winds which should have no place in that 
 still atmosphere. Then stooping, she seizes suddenly 
 upon a reluctant cat, which the onlookers thrust within 
 her reach, and clutches the miauling creature to her 
 fiat breasts with merciless grip. A chorus of minor 
 witches squatting on her right breaks into a wild chant 
 of incantation, while the devil-drums sob and pant in 
 time to the rhythm of the dirge. With her disengaged 
 hand Raja Anjang seizes the cord of the hammock and 
 sets it swinging in time to the chant, which grows 
 momentarily wilder and wilder. The women who form 
 the chorus are rocking themselves backward and for- 
 ward in a kind of hysteria of excitement ; the hands 
 
"sally": a study. ii 
 
 that smite the drums are raised between each stroke 
 high in the air with fingers wriggling rapidly in frantic 
 gesticulation; the hair and the garments of the hag 
 by the hammock are agitated anew, as though those 
 unearthly breezes, which are yet unfelt by the spec- 
 tators, were raging mightily. When the weird song 
 is at its shrillest the cat is dropped into the sag of 
 the hammock, whence it scrambles quickly on to the 
 mat-covered floor. It is promptly recaptured by those 
 nearest to it, and the witch pounces upon it with the 
 spring of a tigress. Again, and yet a third time, the 
 unhappy beast is clutched to that comfortless bosom, 
 is dropped into the hammock, and at the last is suf- 
 fered to make its escape, spitting and scratching with 
 bared claws and humped back. A wild cry goes up 
 from the mouths of all the Malays present, and is suc- 
 ceeded by a heavy silence. The witch sinks to the 
 floor in a shapeless bundle, sweating profusely, and 
 rocks to and fro with smothered moans and cries. 
 Her struggle with the ghastly Pm-anggal has left her 
 utterly spent. The close atmosphere of the room is 
 heavy with the reek of incense. 
 
 A little pause ensues, the stillness of which is tense 
 with the recent excitement, and then from the inner 
 apartment a huddled procession of women makes its 
 way, headed by the king himself, a great rolling figure 
 clad in glaring colours. One of the women carries a 
 tiny burden swaddled in cloth-of-gold, the upper folds 
 of which being presently drawn aside reveal the exist- 
 ence of a minute head. With much state and cere- 
 mony the crown of this head is solemnly shaved, the 
 invisible fluff shorn from it being reverently treasured, 
 and when this operation has been performed, the baby 
 is at last placed in the hammock, whence all evil spirits 
 
12 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 have now departed for their new abode in the body of 
 the miserable cat. 
 
 A priest in a green jubah and ample red turban, 
 who has sat complacently watching the magic practices 
 which are an abomination to the Prophet's Law, stands 
 erect and recites a rolling Arabic prayer with breathless 
 fluency, his audience sitting with hands on knees and 
 curved palms uppermost, chiming in at intervals with 
 long " Amins ! " 
 
 Then the spectators rise to their feet, and each in 
 turn files past the hammock, and looks down at the 
 child as he drops a dollar or two into a basket placed 
 convenient for the purpose. Jack Norris, as he stands 
 gazing down at the infant, sees a small brick-red disk, 
 with a slack, slowly moving mouth, a shapeless button 
 of a nose, a skin all crumpled with puckers, and two 
 big dull eyes made grotesque by enormous arched eye- 
 brows traced with soot upon the wrinkled forehead. 
 The rest of the baby is immobile in its lashing of 
 swaddling-clothes, and is imbedded deeply in a nest 
 of gorgeous Malayan silks. 
 
 It is thus that Jack gets his first glimpse of the boy 
 whom his English friends call " Sally." 
 
 It is late at night in the audience-hall of the king, — 
 a big bare room without ornament or furniture, — and 
 the monarch, nude to the waist, is squatting on a mat 
 beside a Chinese gambling-cloth. Around him sit a 
 number of his courtiers, and facing him are two yellow 
 Chinamen in loose coats and trousers of shining black 
 linen. In the centre of the cloth there rests a little 
 square box made of dull brass, and presently, at a sign 
 from the king, one of the courtiers begins to draw 
 upward with maddening slowness the outer cover, which 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 13 
 
 fits very closely over the inner box. A dead silence 
 reigns while all eyes are riveted upon the dice-box and 
 the hand that lifts its cover. Little by little, a fraction 
 of an inch at a time, the outer box is raised, the 
 narrower column of brass within it being disclosed 
 more and more, standing squarely on the mat. At 
 last the cover is free of that which it has encased, and 
 more slowly than ever the courtier proceeds to twist 
 it round in such a fashion that presently a corner of 
 the hidden die will be made visible. The gamblers are 
 leaning forward now with straining eyes ; they draw 
 their breaths pantingly ; and still the hand gripping 
 the dice-box moves with incredible slowness. The 
 notes and dollars are piled in little heaps all in one 
 quarter of the mat. The obsequious courtiers have 
 followed the inspiration of their king. 
 
 There is another second or two of tense excitement 
 and expectation, and then a shout is raised, — a shout 
 which is discordant and angry, tingling with passionate 
 disappointment — a shout with which are blent impre- 
 cations and fierce ejaculations of disgust — a shout 
 which ends in a sound like a sob. The king's inspira- 
 tion has failed him, and he and his courtiers, in con- 
 sequence, are the poorer by many good silver dollars. 
 It is the last coup of a disastrous evening, and the king, 
 who is a prudent soul withal, will have no more of 
 it. The Chinamen gather up their gaming -gear and 
 their winnings, and depart into the night. Their un- 
 emotional faces — faces "like wooden planks," as the 
 Malay idiom has it — betray no consciousness of the 
 obvious hatred which they inspire. They are quite 
 indifferent to it, for the money is duly pouched, and 
 they know that the justice-loving British Government, 
 in the person of the Resident, sits mighty and im- 
 
14 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 passive on the river's farther bank, and takes thought 
 even for the property and the lives of the despised 
 yellow man. A little naked boy, who has been sleeping 
 fitfully with his head pillowed on a courtier's knee, 
 rouses himself, puts on an enormous orange-coloured 
 cap a size too large for him (his only garment), lights 
 a cigarette, and sits listening gravely to the hum of 
 talk about him, talk of all that might have been had 
 chance proved less fickle. He is Raja Saleh, the 
 king's baby son. 
 
 Jack Norris, who has been watching the play with 
 such patience as he can command, sees that his time 
 has come at last. He has visited the palace in order 
 to have speech with the king concerning some of that 
 shameless monarch's most glaring misdemeanours, — 
 matters connected with an abducted wife, an aggrieved 
 husband, and a pack of motherless bairns — a squalid 
 tragedy, in which the king has played the part of an 
 ignoble Mephistopheles. The culprit is curiously in- 
 sensitive. His feelings, overlaid by many strata of 
 ruffianism and self-content, are things which have to 
 be dug for. He knows now what has brought Norris 
 to his hall, but he evinces no desire that the humiliat- 
 ing discussion about to take place should be conducted 
 in private. In a sense he is somewhat proud of his 
 achievement, for it is not every man of his years who 
 can be such a devastating roue as he, and he enters 
 with gusto into a lurid account of his indiscretions, 
 making display of an unfettered coarseness of speech 
 and thought, while the little angel-faced boy, his son, 
 sits at his side looking preternaturally wise. It is not 
 the first time that the child has been privileged to 
 listen to an exposition of his father's crude notions 
 concerning morality and seemliness of conduct. It is 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 15 
 
 Jack, not the king or his people, who is irked by the 
 boy's presence, and finds the ugly discussion doubly 
 degrading while those big sad eyes are fixed upon him. 
 To the Malays the innocence of childhood makes no 
 appeal : to them there is nothing incongruous in the 
 subject of the talk and its baby audience. But duty 
 may not be shirked ; the matter must be threshed out, 
 and before such listeners as the king may select ; 
 wherefore ignoble passions, and the wanton cruelties 
 born of them, are freely canvassed for an hour and 
 more. The discussion, as all who take part in it know 
 well, is only a form, but it is deemed to be necessary 
 in order to salve the royal self-esteem and render 
 possible the king's inevitable surrender to a power 
 greater than his own. 
 
 When at last the end is reached, sweetmeats of un- 
 speakable nastiness are served, the king, little Raja 
 Saleh, and Norris eating from the same tray, while the 
 courtiers range themselves around others in the order 
 of their precedence and rank. The child pecks at the 
 unwholesome stuff with the blase indifference bred of 
 long familiarity and the absence of any attempt to 
 restrain his appetites, and all the while his grave looks 
 are fixed upon the white man. 
 
 " Why dost thou not wear a hat, Tuan ? " he in- 
 quires suddenly, gazing with open disapproval at 
 N orris's bare head. 
 
 " I follow my custom, little one." 
 
 " And thou wearest boots — even in the king's hall ! " 
 
 " That too is my custom ; moreover, it prevents my 
 feet from being bruised by stones on the way." 
 
 " I wore boots once, Tuan," says the child proudly. 
 " Shoes of gold cunningly fashioned. That was on the 
 day when for the first time I trod upon the earth. 
 
l6 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 There was a great feast that day because of my 
 boots." 
 
 " Men do not think it necessary to feast whenever 
 I put on my boots, nor can I afford to have them 
 fashioned of gold. Did they hurt thy feet, little 
 brother ? " 
 
 " Yes," says the child thoughtfully. " They hurt me 
 sore; but, Tuan, they were beautiful to behold. Do 
 thy boots hurt thee ? " 
 
 " No, my boots are soft and comfortable. Thou 
 shouldst wear boots like mine, little one." 
 
 " So will I. Thou, Tuan, are doubtless wealthy. 
 Thou shalt send to Singapura and purchase boots for 
 me. Thou wilt send, wilt thou not, Tuan, for I desire 
 greatly to possess them ? " He drops his little head 
 on one side with so insinuating an air that he is 
 altogether irresistible. 
 
 " Thou shalt have thy boots, little one, never fear," 
 says Jack. 
 
 " Listen, you people," cries the child exultantly to 
 the assembled courtiers. " The Tuan is sending to 
 Singapura to purchase boots for me, stout leather 
 boots, yellow and comely. Armed with them, how 
 gallantly shall I kick! O Ma?! there'll be many 
 children with sore stomachs in the king's compound the 
 day I don them ! " and he laughs in joyful anticipation. 
 
 " There is no need to teach young tiger-cubs how to 
 use their claws," says an old man admiringly, quoting 
 a native proverb, and the king leads the laughter. 
 
 "If thou makest any such use of thy boots thou 
 shalt lose them," says Norris ; " and now I must take 
 my leave of the king." 
 
 "And wilt thou bear the woman with thee?" 
 inquires the child. "That will surely anger my 
 
" SALLY : A STUDY. V] 
 
 father. When I am big I will take all the women I 
 choose and use them villainously — ay, and keep them 
 too, if so I wish ! " 
 
 " There is no need to teach young tiger-whelps how 
 to prey ! " cackles the old man again, and once more 
 it is the king who leads the applause. 
 
 Other pictures flit across Norris's memory. Days 
 upon the river with boat and casting-net, or when the 
 natives of the countryside muster to help drag the 
 great relap-cord down-stream for miles, driving shoals 
 of frightened fish before it, to be caught at last in 
 cunning mazes of bamboo stakes. Days in the fruit 
 orchards, when all the court goes a-picnicking, and 
 the boys gather in little groups to feast gluttonously 
 while they talk knowingly of war and daggers and 
 women. Days in the jungle, when the king and his 
 people go forth to gather flowers, mounted on huge 
 clay-coloured elephants. And in every picture Saleh 
 fills a space, always cutting a pretty figure ; always 
 gaily clad in delicate silks ; always having as his right 
 the best of everything that is going ; always pampered 
 and petted, flattered and adulated ; always taught 
 that his whims are above aught else, that his desires 
 are given him to satisfy, not to restrain; always 
 applauded most loudly for his naughtiest deeds and 
 sayings. 
 
 Then the recollection recurs of a day in the palace 
 cock-pit when Saleh's bird is mishandled by its judra 
 — its keeper — and the young prince in a fury of anger 
 seizes a billet of wood which chances to be lying near 
 at hand, and deals the culprit a sounding blow upon 
 the head. There is, unknown to Saleh, a long rusty 
 nail in the billet, and the judra is carried away, a limp 
 
 B 
 
l8 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 burden, with blood streaming down a face gone 
 suddenly grey beneath the brown skin. When Norris 
 comes upon the scene the little raja is weeping 
 passionately in a paroxysm of grief and self- hatred, 
 which in his father's eyes is unmanly, and far more 
 reprehensible than the crime which is its occasion. 
 
 The memory of a later day comes next — the day 
 which is the end of childhood for Raja Saleh. There 
 has been much feasting and high revelry for weeks in 
 the palace on the river's bank, culminating in rude 
 horse-play on the yellow sandbank below the high 
 fence, when all the world has been unmercifully soused 
 with water, so that the gorgeous silk raiment of the 
 feasters is drenched and ruined. Late that afternoon 
 little Saleh is circumcised by the palace mtidin, and 
 so enters at last upon man's estate. Immediately on 
 his recovery he should celebrate his emancipation, 
 according to the custom of the people, by taking to 
 himself a wife, or at any rate a concubine or two; 
 but this lad, born and bred up in the villainous 
 atmosphere of a Malayan court, has come into the 
 world in an age of many changes. Hitherto the 
 presence of the white men in the land has affected 
 him but little, but now the alien folk step in and 
 demand to have a hand in the ordering of his destiny. 
 A year or two earlier, when the future seemed still so 
 distant that pledges given concerning it could not 
 affect the comfort of the present, the king had con- 
 sented to the lad being sent to Europe to be educated. 
 Now he repents him of this promise bitterly; but 
 the Resident stands firm, and in spite of the tears of 
 the boy himself and the frantic ravings of the palace 
 women, he will not suffer the word once passed to be 
 recalled, 
 
"sally": a study. 19 
 
 It is a forlorn little figure that stands on the deck 
 of the P. & O. steamer which has just slipped its 
 moorings from the wharf at Singapore, with the 
 keening of the knot of Malays which has come to bid 
 him God-speed wailing in his ears, and with no friend 
 in all the world save the European officer who is to 
 see him safely to his destination. He is bound for 
 that mysterious country concerning which nought is 
 known save that it lies somewhere in that vague 
 quarter which is called " above the wind." The ship 
 moves away with an impassivity, a calmness at once 
 cruel and inexorable. The boy feels himself to be a 
 thing of torn and bleeding roots, plucked wantonly 
 from the soil in which they have won a hold. The 
 consciousness of his helplessness, his impotence, 
 crushes him ; he watches his fatherland being drawn 
 away and away from him with eyes wide with despair. 
 What time, in the palace on the banks of the great 
 river, — the palace made suddenly so very empty, — a 
 woman weeps and laments with tears frantic and un- 
 restrained, throwing herself prone upon her sleeping- 
 mat, biting at the flock pillows, and tearing her hair 
 savagely, because her son has been taken from her by 
 the infidels. His going robs her of the sole love of 
 her dreary life, slips the last tie that binds her to her 
 lord and master, who has long treated her with neglect, 
 and has lavished his smiles and his gifts upon younger 
 and fairer rivals. How vast a work of kindness and 
 of love must the white men do, in exile and bitter 
 travail, to win enough of gratitude from those they 
 rule and serve, to outweigh the hatred they have 
 inspired in that one broken woman's heart! 
 
20 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 III. 
 
 To little Saleh, now some fourteen years of age, that 
 voyage across the trackless seas was in the beginning 
 a sort of dreadful nightmare. During the first few 
 days all other emotions were forgotten in the com- 
 pelling agonies of sea-sickness, and the boy went 
 through the successive stages of the malady, fearing 
 at the outset that he was like to die, and later that 
 no such good fortune awaited him. By the time the 
 vessel reached Ceylon, however, he had found his sea- 
 legs, and was able to give his undivided attention 
 to his mental miseries. 
 
 The first sight of the coast, with its clusters of 
 nodding palms and its shroud of vivid greenery, com- 
 forted him a little; for here, at any rate, was land, 
 friendly land covered with forest and fruit-groves such 
 as he had always known, not the vast emptiness of 
 the sea. Colombo itself, too, brought some measure 
 of consolation ; for there were Malays here in fair 
 numbers, men with whom he could converse in his 
 own tongue, albeit they spoke a sadly degenerate 
 jargon, whereas on board the ship, since he had as yet 
 had no English, he was to all intents and purposes 
 dumb. The white man in whose charge he was travel- 
 ling spoke Malay fluently, but Saleh, who had known 
 him hitherto only as a high official, regarded him with 
 awe, and gave him none of his shy confidence. A 
 further acquaintance with Colombo, however, ended 
 by increasing the gnawing home-sickness from which 
 the lad was suffering. His only conception of the 
 whole round earth was as one vast tangle of forest 
 
"SALLY : A STUDY. 21 
 
 through which the big rivers crawled seaward, where- 
 fore, to him, the dissimilarity of Ceylon to the Malay 
 Peninsula was more striking than its resemblance. 
 The place was, in a disquieting fashion, reminiscent 
 of his fatherland — a land of shadows filled with the 
 echoes of distant voices ; but it was to the boy only 
 a mocking reflection of the reality, and its points of 
 difference jarred on him like discordant notes. On 
 every side, it seemed to him, he was met by sorry 
 distortions of familiar scenes. It was as though he 
 looked upon his home in a bad dream, and beheld it 
 hideously deformed and misshapen. He went back 
 to the ship with a heart heavy as lead. 
 
 The vessel, her coal-bunkers replenished, put to sea 
 once more, and began to thrust her nose into the 
 boisterous waters of the Indian Ocean. The dreary 
 interminable days, their monotony unbroken by the 
 smallest happenings, trailed one after the other in slow 
 procession ; and Saleh, who did not care to read turgid 
 Malay verse, and was too shy to talk much with the 
 only man on board who understood his language, 
 learned for the' t first time what is meant by solitude and 
 weariness of spirit. Each dull hour heaped up the 
 burden that was crushing him. He was in the grip 
 of a grinding home-sickness — a yearning so acute that 
 it was as agonising as an aching tooth, forcing itself 
 upon his attention insistently, maddening him with a 
 pain which yet lacked the relief of expression, and 
 haunting his very slumbers. He longed with unspeak- 
 able intensity for all familiar things— the faces that 
 he knew, even though they belonged to men and 
 women for whom he cared nothing ; for the sound of 
 his mother tongue spoken with the native accent ; for 
 the scenes, the colour, the very atmosphere of his 
 
22 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 home; for the trivial things of every day, so little 
 valued when they were his, which hitherto had made 
 up life for him. The depression, inseparable from lack 
 of occupation or interest, deepened the gloom of the 
 nostalgia which darkened his days ; but the emotion 
 that throughout, oppressed him most sorely was fear — 
 blank, unreasoning fear. The immensity of the world 
 was a new fact which had been flashed upon his 
 intelligence suddenly, had been revealed to him 
 abruptly with no course of preparation to soften the 
 shock. It smote now upon his understanding, numb- 
 ing, cowing him. He, who hitherto had never 
 wandered more than a dozen miles from the village 
 in which he had been born, who had lived in a land 
 whose every inhabitant was known to him, found 
 himself now adrift upon the bosom of a boundless sea, 
 with countless eyes, he fancied, glaring at him with a 
 cruel glitter from those restless waters, and the dome 
 of the unpitying heavens arching over him. On board 
 the ship he was in the midst of strangers, men who 
 were not only unacquainted with him, but belonged to 
 a different race, followed strange customs, professed an 
 alien faith. From time to time some unfamiliar port was 
 touched at, — the blinding, burnt-brick mound of Aden, 
 unsoftened by so much as a single blade of grass, and 
 peopled by naked negroes who, to his thinking, resem- 
 bled Jins; the white-hot sand-sweeps of Suez, where 
 blue-clad Arabs, with scarred faces, lived among strange 
 beasts of burden, the like of which Saleh had never 
 seen — camels and asses ; and later still the European 
 seaport towns, with their deafening roar of traffic and 
 steam -cranes, where white men dwelt in numbers 
 past all counting. These new lands terrified Saleh, 
 and caused him to feel outcast beyond redemption ; 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 23 
 
 for every step of the way, every turn of the churning 
 screw, bore him farther and farther from the folk he 
 loved, and the only corner of the earth that was dear 
 to him. It seemed to him that he was the merest 
 atom, a thing infinitely minute, lost past all recovery 
 in limitless space. A sense of that %wful vastness — 
 which somehow was interwoven with a sudden per- 
 ception of the real meaning of eternity — came upon 
 the boy, shaking him with an abject terror. The 
 idea, to his unaccustomed mind, was so immense that 
 the sheer effort required to assimilate it set his brain 
 reeling, tottering. And constantly the haunting ques- 
 tion obtruded itself, " How shall I ever find a way 
 back again across this uncharted wilderness ? " At that 
 thought a cold despair would seize him, and he would 
 fall to prowling about the ship like a caged beast, his 
 eyes wearing a hunted look, while he endured agonies 
 that were doubly bitter because he had no one in 
 whom to confide his fears. So, when the night came, 
 he would sob himself to sleep, and tossing restlessly 
 upon his mattress when forgetfulness at last had come, 
 would call by name upon his mother and upon others 
 whom he loved, as men in heavy grief murmur in 
 dreams the names of dear ones who are dead and 
 gone. 
 
 The utter monotony of a long sea-voyage to one 
 unaccustomed to travel spins out the days in such 
 interminable wise that at the end of a fortnight one 
 is tempted to believe that more than half of life has 
 been passed in the belly of a ship. All the events of 
 our normal existence become faint and shadowy mem- 
 ories — things that belong to some half-forgotten, unreal, 
 former state of being ; things that have little practical 
 value or significance. The world is narrowed down 
 
24 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 to the limits of the ship, its inhabitants to the number 
 of the men and women who journey in her. There 
 seems to be no special reason why anything should 
 occur to break the dead sameness of the days: it 
 would appear to be quite natural were the voyage to 
 continue to the end of time interminable in its dull 
 routine, its regularity, its idleness. And this, too, 
 was Saleh's experience. With the passing of the 
 third week his native land became something incredibly 
 remote : the men and women who dwelt there little 
 more than moving shadow-shapes that came and went 
 vaguely amidst the haze of memory. The natural 
 adaptability of the boy, and, it may be, something of 
 the innate philosophy and patience of the Malay and 
 the Muhammadan, came to his rescue. He had 
 settled down insensibly into the life of the ship so 
 completely that he might have been a part of her; 
 and though the present manner of his existence brought 
 him no active happiness, he had found contentment 
 of a dull vegetable sort that had in it nothing of 
 irritation, expectation, or hope. He was picking up 
 a little English too, — learning it as a child learns, 
 unconsciously and without effort, — and he had all 
 a child's delight in making display of his new acquire- 
 ment. He had grown almost callous to the awful 
 conception of the immensity of God's universe, to the 
 humiliating sense of his own insignificance. These 
 facts had lost their power to terrify and appal. Nor 
 did it now seem to him to matter greatly if, after 
 all, the land of his birth and all that it held had 
 sunk beneath the sky-line past the possibility of re- 
 discovery. People were kind to him, and the inertia 
 of his race caused him to shrink from the thought 
 of the huge expenditure of energy which a return 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 25 
 
 to the Malay Peninsula would entail. The conviction 
 was upon him that he could never again bring himself 
 to undertake another voyage like that which he now 
 was making, yet this no longer filled him with terror or 
 with despair. He had reached the condition which 
 in his own tongue is called kdleh — a state of blank 
 torpor and indifference, incomprehensible to the average 
 European, that, holding all things of little worth, 
 lulls the senses as with opium fumes. 
 
 Wherefore it came to pass that the end of his 
 journey found Saleh with roots firmly fixed in the 
 life of the ship, parting from it and from the new 
 friends whom he had made with intense discontent; 
 but it found him also weaned already from his own 
 people, for whom in the beginning he had sorrowed 
 so grievously. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Saleh's first impressions of the white man's country 
 remained later in his mind as a confused and fearful 
 memory. The size, the dingy ugliness, the noise, the 
 hurry of London combined to awe him ; the great 
 towering buildings, blackened with smoke, the blurred 
 jumble of their roofs and chimney-stacks half merged 
 in the grey mirk, stood around him in serried ranks, 
 hemming him in, stifling- him ; the colourless sodden 
 sky, lowering above them, seemed to bear him to 
 the ground through its sheer weight ; the danger of 
 instant annihilation, with which at every crossing of 
 the streets the mighty traffic threatened him, set him 
 shaking with an ague of terror; but most of all the 
 frightful isolation, of which the seas of strange faces 
 
26 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 made him conscious, clutched at his heart-strings with 
 a grip that was chill and paralysing. The immensity 
 of the universe had cowed him once : now it was the 
 glimpse he had gotten of the unsuspected multitude 
 of humanity — unnumbered folk who had no thought 
 or care for him — that robbed him of breath. He had 
 never yet felt so utterly lost as now with these packed 
 streams of unknown men and women drifting past 
 him. All his days he had been an object of considera- 
 tion, the son of a king, with willing subjects ready at 
 his beck and call. He had never walked a yard without 
 a tail of idle pages trailing after him. Now he believed 
 himself to be drowning in an ocean of human beings, 
 yet overwhelmed by an appalling solitude. 
 
 A drive in a hansom through the throng of vehicles 
 set his heart in his mouth, his hand clutching vainly 
 at the arm of the man who sat beside him ; the fearful 
 speed of trains that rushed along the labyrinths of 
 lines kept him in momentary expectation of catastrophe; 
 but worse still were the crowds of Europeans that 
 stared at and jostled him in the streets, men of an 
 alien race, of pallid unnatural colour, with intent busy 
 faces and hard eyes. Saleh felt much as a white child 
 might feel who was suddenly set down in the midst 
 of vast mobs of gibbering savages. He was convinced 
 that the blended horror and fear with which his strange 
 surroundings inspired him would last for ever; that 
 he could never become used to an environment so 
 dreadful, so appalling ; and all the while his very soul 
 was aching with longing for the soft moist climate, 
 the sunshine, and the lavish greenery of the Malayan 
 land. The bitter nostalgia revived with all its ancient 
 force, but his craving now was for inanimate rather 
 than for animate things — for the familiar places in 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 27 
 
 which his days had been passed, not for the men and 
 women, his friends and kindred, who had already 
 become mere shadow-phantoms to his memory. And 
 still his every suffering was made doubly hard because 
 it was endured in secret and in silence. 
 
 After a busy week in London Saleh was sent to 
 Winchester, where a home had been found for him 
 in an English family. This severed the very last link 
 that still connected him with the old life, for the officer 
 who had brought him to England left him on the 
 platform at Waterloo, after handing him over to the 
 charge of a magnificent-looking personage, who, the 
 boy thought, must surely be one of the great ones 
 of the earth. He was surprised when this brass-bound 
 potentate pocketed five shillings with apparent satisfac- 
 tion, and addressed him as " Sir " ; but in this strange 
 land everything was puzzling, and Saleh despaired of 
 ever getting a grip upon the bewildering customs of the 
 white men. He would have resisted this sudden trans- 
 fer of himself from the care of a man whom he knew to 
 that of a total stranger, but he was past the power of 
 resistance or protest. He was completely cowed, as a 
 young horse is cowed by an alien environment, and with 
 the innate fatalism of his people he set himself to 
 endure all that might befall with patience and philo- 
 sophy, which only added to his trouble, since it drove 
 it inward, denying it the relief of expression. 
 
 At Winchester the boy was passed on to an im- 
 mensely tall, upright, grave -faced clergyman, whose 
 stiff black clothes and gaunt, clean - shaven face 
 depressed the lad with gloomy forebodings. It was 
 as though this man were an ogre — the grim custodian 
 of the prison in which he was to be pent. All the 
 passionate love of personal liberty, bred of the free 
 
28 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 life in the forest lived by uncounted generations ot 
 his forebears, awoke in Saleh, filling him with resent- 
 ment against all the world, with savage impotent rage, 
 with the instinct of fight, "with a sullen desire to hurt 
 some one, any one, because he himself was quivering 
 with despair and fear and pain. When the clergyman 
 held a hand towards him, the boy shrank back, his 
 gums bared for the moment in something like a snarl, 
 his whole body tingling with blended anger and terror, 
 his muscles braced for flight or for self-defence. His 
 new friend, looking down upon him through grave, 
 preoccupied eyes, noted nothing of the lad's discom- 
 fiture, and as he shook him by the hand, patted him 
 on the back, and gave him kindly welcome, he was 
 happily unconscious of the fact that the little brown 
 creature before him was longing for a dagger with 
 which to stab ! 
 
 Next, after a short drive in a cab, from the windows 
 of which Saleh saw the effigy of a big black swan, that 
 he decided must be some unclean idol of the white 
 folk, he found himself standing very ill at ease just 
 within the doorway of an English drawing-room. It 
 was the first place of the kind that he had ever seen, 
 and its smallness, its strangely low ceiling, the quantity 
 of furniture, the endless knicknacks and ornaments, 
 seemed to him to be things unnatural, barbarous, 
 stifling. He felt as a wild thing may do when it finds 
 itself in a trap. The narrowness of the confined space 
 set him gasping : he looked about him with furtive 
 eyes, seeking some means of escape. 
 
 The room seemed to him to be packed with people, 
 for Mrs Le Mesurier, the clergyman's wife, was seated 
 beside a tea-table with her family about her. There 
 were three girls with their hair down their backs, and 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 29 
 
 a boy, all of whom stared at the stranger with eyes 
 made round by curiosity. 
 
 Mrs Le Mesurier rose from her chair and came 
 towards him, holding out both her hands in greeting. 
 Saleh noticed that she moved as no Malayan woman 
 ever yet moved, with a graceful sweeping carriage that 
 had still the spring of youth in it, and that her eyes 
 were soft and kind. Her thick dark hair fell low upon 
 a broad forehead, parting in two glossy waves; her 
 cheeks had a delicate tinge of pink, that seemed a 
 blemish in Saleh's eyes, for he was accustomed to 
 the even pallor of his own womenkind. Just as at 
 Colombo it had been the dissimilarities rather than 
 the resemblances that had arrested his attention, so 
 now it was the points in which Mrs Le Mesurier failed 
 to conform to the standard set by her sisters in Malaya 
 that at first struck Saleh's eye : yet as she came 
 towards him she appeared to him to be a figure 
 vaguely, elusively familiar, like something seen for an 
 instant in a state of previous existence fitfully remem- 
 bered. The little feet so daintily shod, the pretty un- 
 dulating gait, the gentle frou-frou of her garments as 
 she moved, the soft delicate hands with their pink 
 palms and slender nervous fingers, outstretched in 
 greeting, the thoughtful eyes whose gaze was bent 
 upon him, all were quite foreign to his experience of 
 women — of the women whom he had known ; and 
 yet . . . and yet, there exhaled from her a subtle 
 air of femininity, of tenderness, of he knew not what, 
 that reminded him irresistibly of his mother. No two 
 human beings could be more unlike, wider apart, could 
 differ more completely in their habit of thought, out- 
 look upon life, in mental grasp, in opinion or in sym- 
 pathy, — in all things they resembled one another as 
 
30 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 little as did their outer seeming, yet to Saleh they were 
 strangely, indiscribably alike; for, though he knew it 
 not, it was the maternity which these women shared in 
 common that forged between them a subtle link that 
 made them akin. He did not reason or speculate 
 about it then or later, but he was conscious of it, felt 
 it in the very marrow of his bones, and as his hands 
 met her warm clasp his misery was tempered for him 
 suddenly, and something of peace was restored to him. 
 Thenceforth, I think, Saleh was a little less lonely and 
 outcast in the heart of this strange world into which he 
 had been thrust so ruthlessly. 
 
 V. 
 
 " Why are you crying ? Only babies cry." 
 "Go away!" 
 
 " ' Baby, baby bunting ! 
 Father's gone a-hunting ; 
 Mother's gone to get a skin, 
 To wrap the baby bunting in ! ' " 
 
 " Go away ! Damn you ! I hate you ! " 
 
 " Oh, you naughty, shocking boy ! " cried Miss 
 Mabel Le Mesurier, cetat thirteen, throwing back her 
 mass of ruddy golden hair with a shake of her pretty 
 head. "How dare you say such wicked words! 
 Where do you suppose that you will go to when you 
 die if you swear like that ? If I were to tell father he 
 would whip you." 
 
 " No, he wouldn't," said Saleh savagely. 
 
 " Yes, he would." 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 31 
 
 " He wouldn't dare, because I should kill him," said 
 Saleh, with the calmness of utter conviction, while the 
 tears still stood upon his face. 
 
 " You couldn't kill my dad if you tried ever so, he is 
 much too big and strong and brave, so there ; but he 
 would beat you worse than anything if he heard the 
 awful wicked things you say." 
 
 " Go away ! I hate you ! " 
 
 " I shan't go away. This is my garden-house, not 
 yours. I shall stay here just as long as I like. You 
 are a horrid little savage blackamoor, that's what you 
 are, or you wouldn't be so dreadfully rude and wicked." 
 
 "I'm not rude and wicked and a blackamoor," cried 
 poor Saleh, throwing his arms across the little rustic 
 table before him, and sinking his head face-downward 
 between them. " I'm unhappy, and I hate everybody, 
 and I wish I was dead." His shoulders heaved with a 
 fresh paroxysm of sobs. 
 
 Mable stood looking at him thoughtfully, biting at 
 the corner of her blue pinafore the while. She was a 
 tender-hearted little woman, and she had come there 
 to comfort, not to aggravate, Saleh's sorrows. She 
 had only given way to her natural instinct when she 
 had derided his unmanly tears. She had not intended 
 to hurt him wantonly. Now she stepped nearer to 
 him, and laid a tiny grubby hand upon his shoulder. 
 He shook it off with an irritable shrug, but she de- 
 clined to take offence. 
 
 " Don't cry, Sally. Dear Sally, don't cry," she 
 whispered. "Tell me what's the matter. Why do 
 you hate every one, and why do you say such naughty, 
 wicked things ? " 
 
 For a time Saleh strove sullenly to repel her ad- 
 vances ; but her persistency and his own craving for 
 
32 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 sympathy at last prevailed, so presently he found him- 
 self telling her, brokenly, inarticulately, for the strange 
 tongue still fettered his thought, the story of his 
 misery. To the little girl more than half of what he 
 said was unintelligible, for the things that most irked 
 this oriental boy were to her matters of course, to 
 which custom had inured her from babyhood. Also 
 Saleh, apart from the difficulty he experienced in 
 giving form to his ideas, discovered that it was one 
 thing to be acutely conscious of a sensation, and a 
 wholly different matter to describe that feeling in 
 words. But the little girl with the ready sympathy 
 that belongs to womenkind, even to womenkind in the 
 bud, listened to his halting explanations, and made no 
 sign when she failed to follow the meaning which they 
 were intended to convey, while Saleh was aware of a 
 sensible alleviation of his trouble, merely because he 
 had met with some one who was willing to listen to 
 him kindly, some one of whom he was not shy. 
 
 The sharp pangs of home -sickness had become 
 numbed into a dull ache; the awful fear with which 
 this world of white men had at first inspired him had 
 passed away; in his new home he was treated with 
 kindness, and he no longer felt it necessary to stand on 
 the defensive, no longer had the panic-stricken sensa- 
 tions of a trapped animal. None the less his surround- 
 ings were utterly uncongenial to him. Their iron 
 regularity oppressed him. The household was as 
 punctual as a nicely adjusted piece of clock-work, and 
 he, who had never been taught the value of time, 
 chafed at the extravagant importance which the Le 
 Mesuriers attached to never being so much as a min- 
 ute late for meals, play, or lessons. Then discipline — 
 another thing entirely new to him — had come to the 
 
"sally": a study. 33 
 
 ordering of his days. Each hour was ear-marked for 
 the special use to which it was to be put. To Saleh 
 this was the veriest tyranny, — the tyranny of the slave- 
 driver, — and he felt himself to be covered with ig- 
 nominy because he was obliged to submit to it. Then, 
 too, this world of the white men seemed to be ruled 
 by ideas, abstractions, which previously had had no 
 meaning to him. Mr Le Mesurier was perpetually 
 putting his son George, and Saleh with him, upon 
 their " honour " to do this, that, or the other, and 
 George would turn upon Saleh, calling him a " cad " 
 with the bitterest contempt, if he sought to break 
 through the impalpable barriers thus arbitrarily set 
 up. Saleh, who in common with most Malays had 
 a keen desire to stand well in the estimation of his 
 fellows, did not want to be looked upon as a "cad," 
 but he could not for the life of him understand why 
 Mr Le Mesurier, of whose general wisdom he was 
 profoundly convinced, had the wanton folly to put 
 trust in any one. Then also he had made the ac- 
 quaintance of another obscure thing called " duty." 
 He was constantly being told that it was his duty to 
 do this or that ; or it was declared that duty required 
 of him that he should abstain from doing something 
 upon which his heart was set. Here was a notion 
 which as yet was altogether beyond his powers of com- 
 prehension ; but the children about him accepted it as 
 a matter of course, and were obviously ill at ease, and 
 out of conceit with themselves, when they succumbed 
 to the temptation to sin against its precepts. Those 
 other abstractions, " Right " and " Wrong," were a 
 perpetual puzzle to him. In his own country he had 
 been used to hear of things that were paiut or ta' pdtut 
 — fitting or not fitting — but they had been largely 
 
 c 
 
34 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 questions of good or bad taste, matters of opinion 
 dependent upon the point of view of the individual. 
 Among white men, however, Saleh discovered, to his 
 astonishment, that they were hard-and-fast categories 
 into which actions were divided past all possibility 
 of debate, and the simple answer, " It would not be 
 right," sufficed in most cases to deter his new 
 comrades from participating in the most tempting 
 pleasures. Once again, for the life of him, he could 
 not understand it. When he had suggested to George 
 that indulgence in a certain vice — a vice for which in 
 his father's court men and women mainly lived — would 
 relieve the tedium of their studies, the English boy 
 had looked upon him with horror, had threatened to 
 "knock his head off" if he talked like that again, and 
 had shown him with true British bluntness how 
 unfathomable was his disgust. 
 
 Honour, duty, morality — straitening things which 
 seemed to clog the feet of liberty, as Saleh had always 
 understood it — had come upon him suddenly, new 
 ideas difficult to assimilate, and in their own fashion 
 more numbing to the brain, more paralysing, more 
 appalling than those other revelations, the vastness of 
 the universe and the multitude of humanity, had been. 
 Then, too, the life in which he found himself was 
 strenuous, earnest, instinct with a restless energy that 
 jarred upon his indolent nature. It seemed to him 
 as though he had been transported to some lofty 
 mountain-top, and were called upon, without prepara- 
 tion, to breathe the rarefied atmosphere of the upper 
 airs. He stood there morally panting, gasping, — 
 moving with acute discomfort on a plane too high for 
 him. He longed for the denser atmosphere of his 
 fatherland, and he despaired of ever becoming habitu- 
 
"sally": a study. 35 
 
 ated to that which seemingly was natural, congenial, 
 to those with whom he now associated. As to ever 
 winning to a real understanding of the extraordinary 
 points of view of these people, that obviously was a 
 patent impossibility. 
 
 Beyond this there were half a hundred minor 
 matters which appealed to Saleh as incongruous. His 
 manhood was offended, revolted, by the position occu- 
 pied among white folk by the women. Even after 
 weeks of use, his meals were a humiliation to him 
 because Mrs Le Mesurier and her daughters sat at 
 table. Even his own mother would not have dreamed 
 of taking such a liberty with her son. The service 
 rendered by the maid-servants was natural enough, 
 but it hurt his pride and his self-respect to find that 
 he was expected to give way to the daughters of 
 the house in everything, that he was chidden if he 
 neglected to offer to carry a cloak for a lady, if he 
 did not run willingly on trifling errands for Mrs Le 
 Mesurier, if he was not active in forestalling the wants 
 of her and of her daughters. From the moment of 
 their first meeting Mrs Le Mesurier, by her grace and 
 kindness, had won his heart ; but still, to his thinking, 
 she was but a woman, — a being of inferior clay to the 
 material from which he was fashioned, — and he was 
 irked by a system that made of her a central pivot 
 round which the household revolved. This un- 
 questionably was ta' pdtut — not fitting — yet seemingly 
 it offended the sense of propriety of no one save him- 
 self. The absence of all forms, too, struck him as 
 barbarous. All his life he had been hedged about by 
 ritual. Those who had spoken to him had described 
 themselves as pdtek — thy slave ; for was he not the son 
 of a king ? — but here all ceremony was dropped, and, 
 
36 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 shorn of his titles, he found himself answering to the 
 name of " Sally," and being scoffed at and mocked 
 because "Sally" was in England a woman's name. 
 George, the young barbarian, even called him " Aunt 
 Sally" at times, and once at a fair had gravely intro- 
 duced him to a dilapidated cockshy, which he declared 
 must be one of his near relatives, — a hideous idol of 
 the white men at which certain savage creatures were 
 engaged in throwing missiles with grotesque antics 
 and an outrageous uproar. It was when he next was 
 addressed as "Aunt Sally" that he had first tried to 
 fight George, and finding that the attempt was a 
 failure, — for what could a man do who had no knife 
 ready to his hand ? — had retired to the arbour in tears. 
 " Chaff," as George would have called it, was again 
 something foreign to Saleh's experience. To him it 
 was simply a rudeness, a brutality — not fitting. 
 
 As much of all this as his mental and linguistic 
 limitations could make articulate he now sobbed out 
 to Mabel, omitting only all reference to his dis- 
 approval of the undue exaltation of her sex, for Malays 
 are not devoid of a certain instinctive tact. His 
 trouble was of a nature too complex to be readily 
 comprehended by his little listener; but, fortunately 
 for mankind, a woman's sympathy is not always de- 
 pendent upon her understanding, and Mabel, knowing 
 he was very unhappy, without inquiring too closely 
 into the causes, patted his shoulder and whispered 
 words of consolation into his ear. 
 
 " Don't cry, Saleh dear," she said. " We all like 
 you very much, and you are going to live with us for 
 a long time and be very happy too when you get used 
 to us. You mustn't mind George. He is a boy, you 
 know, and boys are like that. He is always trying 
 
" SALLY ' : A STUDY. 37 
 
 to get a rise out of all of us. He likes you very much 
 too, really. He was only saying the other day how 
 beautifully you swim, and how clever you are in the 
 gym. He says you can do things on the bar at the 
 first try which it takes English boys years and years 
 to learn. He only calls you 'Aunt Sally' for fun, 
 just as he calls me ' Furze-bush ' when I have had my 
 hair in curl-papers." 
 
 Saleh shuddered at the recollection. His taste, 
 moulded by the lank, sleek, oil-dressed heads of his 
 own womankind, was grievously offended by the sight 
 of curls. 
 
 " And you called me a blackamoor," he said sulkily. 
 
 " I'm sorry, Sally." 
 
 " You white people are so ... so proud. You think 
 many things of yourself, but we Malays have beated 
 you. The English soldiers ran like stags when we 
 ambushed them during the war in Pelesu." 
 
 " They didn't ! " cried the little girl indignantly. 
 
 " Yes, they did. They ran and ran, and our people 
 ran after them and shot them and shouted. I have 
 often heard people talk of it." 
 
 " English soldiers are very brave," said Mabel, with 
 proud conviction. 
 
 " They are not as brave as the Malays, and they ran 
 away," said Saleh doggedly. 
 
 " I don't believe it," cried Mabel. " Besides, we 
 won, didn't we ? " 
 
 Saleh was silent. 
 
 "You called me a blackamoor," he said presently, 
 returning with resentment to his earlier accusation. 
 
 " I know I did, and I was a beast," said Mabel 
 generously. "And, Sally, I'm sorry — ever so sorry — 
 and I'll never do it again ; but you mustn't say that 
 
38 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 English soldiers ran away, because they never do, you 
 know." 
 
 "But they did," objected Saleh. 
 
 " O Sally, Sally, you'll make me quarrel with you 
 after all!" cried Mabel piteously. "And I do want 
 to be friends." 
 
 " I can not be frien's with people who calls me black- 
 amoor," said Saleh, looking at her and softening ever 
 so little. 
 
 " But I won't. And I do like you, Sally, and when 
 you are unhappy don't go away and cry by yourself. 
 Come and tell me all about it, and I'll comfort you. 
 I can help you in a lot of ways, if you'll let me. I 
 know heaps and heaps of things. And I won't tell 
 that you said such wicked words, only promise that 
 you won't go on hating us, and that you won't mind 
 George, and that you will come to me when you have 
 the blues." 
 
 She spoke very earnestly, with her kind little hand 
 still resting on the boy's coat-sleeve, and with her 
 bright eyes shining. She was to Saleh like a being 
 from another world, possessed of nothing in common 
 with the women-folk of his own race. Her kindness 
 spoke to him in his desolation, took him by the hand 
 to lead his faltering steps through the darkness in 
 which he was engulfed ; and in that moment, I think, 
 he began to understand why in our land the accident 
 of sex causes women to be held in such deep reverence. 
 
 During the twelvemonth that followed — the painful 
 first year in which Saleh was finding his level, and 
 fitting in as best he might with the circumstances of 
 his alien surroundings — Mabel's friendship and encour- 
 agement, Mabel's advice, admonitions, guidance, made 
 the rough path smooth, and laid many a high hill low 
 
A STUDY. 3^ 
 
 for him. Also it was through the child's eyes, though 
 she was wholly unconscious of it, that this little out- 
 lier obtained his first glimpse of the kindness, the 
 sanctity, and the exquisite purity of English family 
 life. It was indeed a serene and wholesome atmos- 
 phere that his exotic lungs were made to breathe ; 
 but Saleh, the adaptable, learned at last to inhale it, 
 not only with ease and comfort, but with keen pleasure, 
 taking an active pride in living up to the high standard 
 which, having begun by depressing and bewildering 
 him, ended by awaking his appreciation, enchaining 
 his sympathies, and kindling his enthusiasm. 
 
 The boy's pliable nature had been taken in time : its 
 upward tendencies had been stimulated, given room 
 for development. He had caught the health-giving 
 spirit of the honest English home-life in which his 
 days were spent, and, chameleon-like, he lost the 
 colour absorbed from his environment in Malaya, 
 assuming in its place the duller, more permanent 
 character-tints of the British youngster. Only, by 
 force of contrast, the newer ideal was seen more clearly, 
 was aimed at more persistently, more consciously, with 
 a keener desire to attain to it. Thenceforth, till very 
 near the end of his sojourn in England, the denation- 
 alisation of Raja Saleh was a completed fact. The 
 Malayan shell was there, more or less intact ; a mist 
 of nebulous memories, hovering somewhere in the 
 background of his mind, told of a Malayan past ; but 
 within the lad the Malayan soul lay dead, or slumber- 
 ing, and in its stead had been born the soul of a clean- 
 minded, honest-thinking, self-respecting Englishman, 
 possessed of many of the virtues and not a few of 
 the limitations of its kind. 
 
 The work which the white men in their wisdom 
 
40 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 had set themselves to do had now presumably been 
 accomplished in triumphant fashion, with all the 
 thoroughness, the uncompromising completeness which 
 belongs to white men's work. Starting with the axiom 
 that civilisation— that is to say, the civilisation of the 
 Englishman of the twentieth century — is a blessing, 
 they had brought all its forces to bear upon the de- 
 fenceless Saleh. They had concerned themselves only 
 with the immediate achievement — the difficult experi- 
 ment of which Saleh was the victim : they had made 
 no attempt to forecast results, to pry into the future, 
 to foresee in what manner their action would be like 
 to affect the lad himself and his individual happiness. 
 A high standard of civilisation, with its exalted moral 
 code and nobler ideals, was in itself a blessing, a 
 happiness. That was the theory, — a beautiful theory, 
 — and it was for Saleh, since the opportunity had been 
 thrust upon him, to work it out in practice. Even the 
 omniscience and the omnipotence of the white men 
 have their limitations. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The end of the fifth year of his exile in Europe found 
 Saleh a very different being to the little, scared, half- 
 savage boy who had been thrust, like a trapped animal, 
 into Mrs Le Mesurier's drawing-room. Regular hours, 
 quantities of good, plain, English food, plenty of open 
 air and violent exercise at all seasons and in all 
 weathers, had wrought a great improvement in his 
 physique. He was small of stature, judged by English 
 standards, as are most men of his race ; but his 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 41 
 
 beautifully built frame was spare, and hard, and active. 
 Each limb was developed to the full, every muscle 
 stood out in a rounded cord beneath the glossy skin. 
 The blood ran warm under cheeks of which the olive 
 tint was hardly more dusky than that of a Neapolitan ; 
 his hair, which of old had been so stiff and straight 
 that it had resolutely declined to allow itself to be 
 parted in the European fashion, was now silky and 
 abundant, and, for all its blackness, grew with a slight 
 wave in it, as an Englishman's hair should grow. His 
 great dark eyes were clear and bright, lighting up 
 readily with facile merriment, although there still 
 lurked in them, when his face was in repose, that 
 soft and dreamy melancholy which ever seems to me 
 to speak of the dumb agony of a race doomed to early 
 extinction. 
 
 Saleh had always been a pretty boy, and his beard- 
 less face still caused him to appear incredibly youthful ; 
 but now, at nineteen years of age, he was more 
 completely a man than any of the English youngsters 
 with whom his days were passed. Also he was 
 handsome, — not with the soft, foreign, almost feline 
 beauty that distinguishes so many Orientals, but with 
 good looks of a sturdier cast, bred of clean-cut 
 features, manly independence, and self-respect, which 
 approximate far more nearly to English standards of 
 taste. The discipline to which he had been subjected, 
 to which he had resigned himself as to one of the 
 inevitable facts of life, had not succeeded in eradi- 
 cating all the natural indolence of his character. He 
 was still "slack," incurably "slack," more especially 
 whenever anything in the nature of an intellectual 
 effort was demanded of him ; but he was not alone 
 in this, for the failing was shared by many of his 
 
42 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 English comrades. In games, however, this weakness 
 did not show itself, for the sporting instincts of his 
 race came to his rescue. He pulled a good oar for 
 one of his size and weight ; he was a pretty bat, and 
 the neatest of fields ; his activity and dexterity stood 
 him in good stead at Association football and at 
 hockey; he was a beautiful gymnast, and, as a 
 swimmer, no one in his set could touch him. That 
 peculiar form of discipline which is best taught by 
 games, in which a man plays for the side, not for his 
 own hand, had helped to strengthen his character, 
 and he owed far more than he knew to the constant 
 exercise which, demanding so much of his energies, 
 left little over to tempt him to less wholesome things. 
 In this direction, too, climate doubtless aided him, 
 climate and the whole tone of the family of which he 
 had become a member, for Saleh had fitted into the 
 new life so perfectly that he now was seemingly 
 nothing save just what that life had made him. 
 
 Moreover, his whole outlook had undergone a 
 change, and women had ceased to be regarded by 
 him as inferior beings, mere playthings given to their 
 master, Man, for his amusement. He had lived with 
 the Le Mesurier girls as brother and sister; Mrs Le 
 Mesurier had come to be his mother in everything 
 but fact : and the girls with whom he from time to 
 time associated were often his superiors in education 
 and intelligence, and all now commanded his respect 
 simply by reason of their sex. Five years before this 
 mental attitude towards women would have seemed 
 to him the veriest topsyturvydom, but now it appealed 
 to him as a matter of course. The change had come 
 about so gradually, was the result of such daily 
 accretions of experience, that he was conscious of no 
 
"sally": a study. 43 
 
 alteration in his point of view. It seemed to him 
 that he had always thought of these matters as he 
 thought of them now; and when he danced with a 
 pretty girl — and he danced quite beautifully — his 
 pleasure was as natural and as little sullied by unholy 
 dreams as that of any right-minded English lad. 
 
 And with all this Saleh was thoroughly, if uncon- 
 sciously, happy. He loved his adopted family dearly, 
 without troubling to ask himself why he loved them ; 
 he revelled in the games ; he delighted in balls and 
 parties; he was without a care in the world, for his 
 intellectual failures, which were indeed colossal, did 
 not greatly trouble him. Also, during the first five 
 years of his life in England he had no ambitions, no 
 aspirations that were not easily satisfied by a success 
 in the playing-fields or the gym., while his adoption 
 into the family and social circle of the Le Mesuriers 
 had been so complete that he had forgotten that he 
 was divided from them by the accident of colour. 
 
 Saleh had been transformed into an Englishman, 
 and had himself accepted the fact of his inner trans- 
 formation so unreservedly that to him it stood in need 
 of no demonstration. His simple paganism, which 
 only by an excess of courtesy could be called Muham- 
 madanism, had been scrupulously respected. It 
 formed no part of the white men's scheme that the 
 lad should abandon the Faith of his fathers, wherefore, 
 loyally observing the letter of the bond, the Le 
 Mesuriers had carefully abstained from making any 
 attempt to convert their charge to Christianity. Had 
 they been minded to effect this change, it is probable 
 that they would have encountered little difficulty ; but 
 as matters stood, Saleh's opinions concerning things 
 spiritual — if indeed he entertained any — had been 
 
44 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 suffered to take care of themselves. None the less 
 the sincerely religious atmosphere of the household 
 had made a deep impression upon his sensitive and 
 receptive mind ; it had given him new standards, new 
 ideals, and, all unknown to him, had become a prime 
 factor in the regulation of his conduct. He detested 
 reading, hating the mere laborious drudgery of it, and 
 the Bible is a stout volume. He was neither expected 
 nor invited to study it, and save under compulsion it 
 was not his custom to study anything. Even if he 
 had been made to enter that great treasure-house of 
 Oriental wisdom, however, he was at this time too 
 little given to introspection to have made any personal 
 application to himself of aught that he would have 
 found therein. The text which propounds that grim 
 question : " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the 
 leopard his spots ? " would have held for him no 
 special augury. The bitter meaning of those taunting 
 words was to be revealed to him in all its bearings 
 in days which as yet were hidden by the merciful 
 mystery of the future. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Of that fugue of distracting discords, which in the end 
 was fated to bring to Saleh a dreary comprehension 
 of Truth, naked, inexorable, and unashamed, the first 
 jarring note was struck, I think, by the little Princess. 
 The holidays of his fifth summer in England were 
 spent by him on a visit to a friend, an old Wykehamist, 
 whose people lived in a river-side house near Richmond. 
 Saleh was quite contented to remain where he was, 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 45 
 
 and had he been left to himself he would have de- 
 clined the invitation unreservedly. Mr Le Mesurier, 
 however, thought that it would be good for him to 
 be severed for a time from the support of his " home " 
 surroundings, and to be thus forced to stand alone. 
 He therefore insisted upon an acceptance being sent, 
 and in due course Saleh reluctantly followed his letter. 
 
 Harry Fairfax, the friend in question, had become 
 very intimate with the Le Mesuriers, and had learned 
 to look upon Saleh as a member of the family. Also 
 he liked him for himself, and thought that it would 
 be rather a " lark " to introduce the little stranger to 
 his own people. His father and mother were a quiet 
 elderly pair, still wholly wrapped up in one another, 
 who watched the bewildering doings of their offspring 
 with a mild surprise without attempting to influence 
 or control them. If Harry had expressed his intention 
 of inviting Muck-a-Muck, the Noble Savage himself, to 
 stay at Crosslands, Mr and Mrs Fairfax would have 
 supposed that such was the fashion of the present day, 
 and would have raised no objection. Their daughters, 
 Alice and Sibyl, who were also allowed to do in all 
 things very much as they pleased, thought that their 
 brother's proposal promised some amusement, and 
 they were prepared to pay almost any price for the 
 rare privilege of his company at home. Therefore 
 the prospect of Saleh's visit displeased nobody except 
 Saleh himself. 
 
 Just at first he was uncomfortably conscious of the 
 fact that Fairfax's relations — more especially the two 
 girls — eyed him with a certain curiosity, as a being 
 new to their inexperience. Living under the same 
 roof in daily intercourse with women, between whom 
 and himself there subsisted no such brother and sister 
 
46 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 familiarity as that to which life with the Le Mesuriers 
 had accustomed him, brought with it a measure of 
 embarrassment. It made him shy, self-conscious, 
 constrained, — all things from which hitherto his sim- 
 plicity had kept him singularly free, — and yet in some 
 way it was pleasurable, stimulating, even exciting. 
 These latter sensations were realised more fully later, 
 when the first strangeness of his new environment had 
 to some extent worn off; but at the beginning of his 
 visit Saleh felt himself to be divided from the Fair- 
 faxes by an impalpable barrier. Its nature and cause 
 he did not attempt to analyse, only he was dimly 
 aware of its existence, and an unwonted feeling of 
 loneliness, of isolation, came upon him. Instinct told 
 him, hinted to him, that he was regarded as in some 
 sort an alien, a curiosity, and this made him sore and 
 angry, not with others, but with himself. It was as 
 though he had suddenly been revealed to himself in a 
 new light, — had been made conscious of some unsus- 
 pected, unreal, yet inherent inferiority in his nature 
 which differentiated him from the rest of humanity. 
 He would rather have died than have shaped such a 
 thought in words : for the moment he shirked allowing 
 it to take even nebulous form in the back of his mind 
 — in his most secret self-communings ; but none the 
 less an uneasy restlessness was bred in him by these 
 disquieting, vague, and, as he forced himself to believe, 
 groundless suspicions. For some days, therefore, he 
 shunned the companionship of his new friends, seeking 
 refuge from them and from the shadowy fancies that 
 troubled him in solitary rambles. .These led him 
 mostly into Richmond Park, for the big expanse of 
 comparatively wild woodland held for him a curious 
 fascination. Though he had almost ceased to re- 
 
"sally": a study. 47 
 
 member it, Saleh was forest-bred, and he, to whom 
 by right of birth belongs the freedom of the jungle, 
 is driven by instinct to the woods and thickets when 
 the craving for consolation is upon him. The old 
 park, with its network of metalled roads, its tame 
 deer and fearless rabbits nibbling the grass undis- 
 turbed by groups of Londoners picnicking noisily 
 within a few yards of them, was but a poor substitute 
 for the magnificent, untouched forests of Malaya. 
 Even here, however, there were hollow places filled 
 with tangles of underwood or mounds of brambles, 
 sheltered by which it was possible for Saleh to fancy 
 himself very far removed from the hurrying life around 
 him ; and here, too, the huge gnarled trunks of oak 
 and elm were silent comrades whose neighbourhood 
 consoled him with a sense of companionship and 
 peace. 
 
 It was in Richmond Park that Saleh first saw the 
 little Princess — a figure more exotic than his own — 
 clad in a crimson frock with a coquettish feather 
 springing saucily from a toque of the same brilliant 
 colour. She passed quite close to him where he lay 
 among the bracken, a dog-whip in her little hand, and 
 five great hounds of a breed unknown to Saleh, with 
 long coats of white and silver-grey, lean, fierce heads, 
 sharp muzzles, and savage eyes. The girl's hair was 
 black, as only the hair of an Asiatic woman can be ; 
 her clear pale skin was swarthy; her features — the 
 straight, low forehead, the hooked nose with nostrils 
 curving outward, the full lips, the rounded but slightly 
 retreating chin — were strongly Semitic in cast; her 
 eyes — the big, sloe-black, elliptical eyes of the daughter 
 of Northern India — were veiled and dreamy in repose 
 under the heavy arches of eyebrow. She was of smaller 
 
48 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 stature than are most European girls, and her trim 
 figure had ever so little a tendency to thickness ; but 
 •her hands and feet were exquisite things, diminutive 
 in size and most delicately formed, although at the 
 bases of her almond-shaped finger-nails tiny smudges 
 of a faint dusky blue betrayed the Eastern blood. She 
 looked at the youngster lounging on the grass, and 
 passed him by with a toss of her little head. 
 
 After that Saleh saw her frequently, always clad in 
 crimson or scarlet, — for the love of colours crude and 
 gay was innate in her, — always chaperoned by those 
 five great hounds, over whom she seemed to exercise 
 a tyrannical ascendancy. The incongruity of this 
 oriental child and her surroundings began by piquing 
 Saleh's curiosity, though it was significant of the extent 
 to which he had identified himself with the people of 
 his adoption that the little Princess, who, as a fellow- 
 Asiatic, and one of his own colour, should surely have 
 been felt to be akin to him, seemed to him a being 
 outlandish, fantastic, bizarre, — infinitely more alien 
 than were any of the English girls with whom he 
 was wont to associate. Her beauty — for the little 
 Jewish -looking lady with her marvellous eyes, the 
 heavy arched eyebrows, and the wealth of blue-black 
 hair, had her full share of good looks — made no appeal 
 to him, even repelled him a little, just as the pink-and- 
 white loveliness of English women had repelled him 
 five years earlier. His taste had altered with the rest 
 of him, and to-day he was as insular in the narrow 
 range of his appreciation as any British-born youngster 
 in the set to which he belonged. He had no desire 
 to make the little Princess's acquaintance, for the 
 sight of her was, in a manner, terrifying to him. It 
 seemed to cross the t's, to dot the i's of his half- 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 49 
 
 formed fears, to make his vague suspicions more 
 haunting and less nebulous, to add to the restless 
 uneasiness of which he was already the prey. Some- 
 how or another that crudely tinted exotic figure, 
 moving so incongruously across the quiet English 
 landscape, conveyed to him a hint that emphasised 
 the falseness of the position which he himself occupied, 
 and forced upon him an explanation of all that had 
 troubled him since he came to stay with the Fairfaxes 
 — the true explanation to which he still strove to shut 
 his eyes. It was as though he had caught sight of 
 himself horribly caricatured and distorted in a mis- 
 shapen mirror, and instinctively he turned his head 
 away, refusing to look at an ugly vision which was 
 fraught for him with so much of pain and of humiliation. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 On the occasion of their third chance meeting the little 
 Princess stopped and spoke to Saleh. He was lying in 
 the bracken as usual, idle of body, yet trying to keep 
 his mind from digging too deeply into the enigmas 
 that fretted him, and she halted in front of him, her 
 dog-whip in her hand, her great hounds grouped 
 around her, and looked down upon him with a sort of 
 haughty scorn in her eyes. 
 
 "Who are you, you little black boy?" she asked 
 insolently. 
 
 With the instinct of courtesy which the past five 
 years had bred in him, Saleh sprang to his feet and 
 stood before her hat in hand. He felt himself to be 
 insulted, outraged by the girl's rude words, but her sex 
 
 P 
 
50 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 rendered him defenceless. This, again, was the fruit 
 of his English training. 
 
 " I am Raja Saleh," he said, speaking with the 
 strong foreign accent of which he was blissfully un- 
 conscious. " My father is the Sultan of Pelesu." 
 
 " And where is Pelesu, pray ? " asked the girl, her 
 lips curling scornfully. " I have never heard of Pelesu." 
 
 Unlike Saleh, she spoke her adopted language per- 
 fectly7 yet with that slight lengthening of the vowels 
 and over-precise enunciation of the consonants which, 
 when accompanied with a fluty falsetto voice, proclaims 
 the "Chee-Chee" to the Anglo-Indian with uncom- 
 promising distinctness. 
 
 " Pelesu is a State — a very large State — in the Malay 
 Peninsula," answered Saleh sulkily. 
 
 The little Princess tossed her head and laughed. 
 " Oh, that savage place ! " she said. " I knew your 
 father could not be one of the great princes of India, 
 or I should have heard of him. I," she added proudly, 
 " I am a daughter of the great House of Baram Singh. 
 We are Rajputs. We are descended without a break 
 in our line from Alexander the Great, who went to the 
 East that he might find the spot where the sun rises. 
 My people have been kings for hundreds and hundreds 
 of years." 
 
 " So have mine," cried Saleh. " And we too are 
 descended from Alexander ! " He spoke in all good 
 faith, for every sprig of Malayan royalty, in common 
 with the members of wellnigh every princely House in 
 Asia, claims the proud distinction of the same mythical 
 ancestry; but the little Princess laughed contemptu- 
 ously at such preposterous pretensions. 
 
 " It is in the books — the Malay books. I have read 
 it," said Saleh feebly. 
 
"sally": a study. 51 
 
 " There are plenty of lies in the books," rejoined the 
 little Princess sententiously. " But our chronicles are 
 true. They are ever so old, and all the world knows 
 about our descent. My people were kings for thousands 
 and thousands of years ! " 
 
 " And aren't they kings any longer?" inquired Saleh 
 innocently. 
 
 This time the little Princess bent upon him a look of 
 scornful pity that was withering. 
 
 " Have you learned no history, you little black boy?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Saleh, with the ineradicable childish- 
 ness of his race, and anxious, too, to display his know- 
 ledge. " I know a lot of history, about Julius Caesar, 
 and William the Conqueror, and Clive, and Warren 
 Hastings, and Oliver Cromwell, the wicked regicide, 
 and Marie Antoinette, and . . . and ... Sir Stamford 
 Raffles, . . . and " 
 
 "Oh, all that stuff!" she interrupted. "That is 
 nothing ; but the story of the House of Baram Singh 
 is real history. The English robbed us ! " 
 
 " I don't believe it," cried Saleh bluntly, his loyalty 
 getting the better of his acquired courtesy. 
 
 "Then that just shows what a stupid, ignorant little 
 boy you must be ! " she retorted. " Everybody who 
 knows anything knows what bandits these English are. 
 They talk a great deal about right and wrong, and 
 about injustice and justice ; they are always sending 
 poor people to prison for little thefts ; but they make 
 me sick, — these English, — they are such robbers! They 
 were running wild in their horrid wet woods, naked 
 and shivering under their blue paint, when my 
 ancestors were civilised men and mighty kings. They 
 were just miserable savages; and now, for all their 
 
52 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 prating about virtue, if men steal big enough things, — 
 a crown, a kingdom, — they account it no crime — they 
 think it glorious. Oh, they are such hypocrites and 
 liars ! I hate them ! hate them ! " 
 
 She ceased her tirade from sheer lack of breath, and 
 stood there in the summer sunlight quivering with 
 rage. She would not have dreamed of speaking thus 
 to any European ; but, despite all her pride of race, 
 this little brown boy did not seem to matter, simply 
 because the accident of his colour brought with it a 
 conviction of his inferiority. Also, she felt, all right- 
 thinking Orientals must share the opinions to which 
 she gave such uncompromising expression. 
 
 To Saleh, the denationalised, however, her words 
 were the rankest blasphemy. To him the very fire 
 of her emotions was repellent because — because it was 
 un-English ! This unexpected encounter with a point 
 of view so diametrically opposed to that which he had 
 assimilated through his training, sympathies, and as- 
 sociates, smote him with a shock of horrified surprise. 
 The limitations of his imagination had so far pre- 
 vented him from so much as guessing that there might 
 be more than one side even to the question of Eng- 
 land's vast reformatory work in Asia, and his Malayan 
 memories had become too blurred and distant for them 
 to afford him any assistance in this direction. There- 
 fore the railings of the little Princess were in the 
 nature of an ugly revelation which, while it made the 
 fool's paradise in which he had been living so con- 
 tentedly totter to its foundations, outraged him by 
 laying sacrilegious hands on much which he had 
 learned to regard as holy. For the moment he was 
 dumb, and had no words at his command to oppose 
 to the bitter flood of the girl's rhetoric. 
 
" SALLY : A STUDY. 53 
 
 " And the English hate us too," she went on 
 presently. " They hate us because they fear us. 
 Some day we shall drive them out of India, and my 
 people will go back and reign as before in their own 
 land ! " 
 
 " That is nonsense ! " cried Saleh, with utter con- 
 viction. " You could never turn us out. We are 
 much too strong, and have got a footing there that 
 nothing will ever shake." 
 
 "That shows how little you know," she retorted. 
 "It will be done easily. We will out -caste them. 
 We will make it a sin for any one, be he Hindu or 
 Muhammadan, to supply the Melch with food or water. 
 They will try to force our folk to give way ; they will 
 call out their soldiers ; they will behave as they did in 
 '57 — like the savages they are at bottom ; but it will 
 be of no use. When it is their religions that inspire 
 them, our people in India will die in thousands rather 
 than sin at the bidding of the English. They have 
 proved it in the past. It is the spirit of religion — not 
 the accident of creed — which will unify our peoples, 
 that will give them the power to die, but never to sub- 
 mit. The English will resist, for they are stubborn ; 
 but in the end they will have to go, and India will be 
 ours once more. It can be done ; I have heard my 
 people speak of it, and some day we will do iti" 
 
 The dark blood dyed her pale cheeks to a deeper 
 hue ; her eyes, which had lost their dreamy melan- 
 choly, flashed as she gazed into vacancy like some 
 tiny savage prophetess ; her words poured from her, 
 tingling with excitement, thrilling with the sincerity 
 of her emotion, and Saleh stood before her, carried 
 away in spite of himself by the contagion of her en- 
 thusiasm, but horrified at the picture which her words 
 
54 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 conjured up, and filled suddenly with a great fear for 
 his friends. 
 
 " I do not think like you," he said hesitatingly, and 
 even to his own ears his words sounded weak and 
 stupid. "I like the English. They are my friends. 
 They do a lot of good. They are kind people, and 
 are just in their dealings." 
 
 He was painfully aware of his lack of eloquence: 
 the very strength of his feelings rendered him more 
 than usually inarticulate. He was loyally eager to 
 vindicate the honour of his friends — of the nation of 
 his adoption ; but he was conscious that he had neither 
 the brains nor the words to argue successfully with the 
 little spitfire before him. 
 
 "You like the English! " she cried. "You dare to 
 say that you like them — you, an Asiatic, the son of one 
 of the many whom they have despoiled ! Only cowards 
 like them, cowards who fawn, as dogs fawn, upon the 
 hand that beats them — thus ! " And she struck the 
 hound which stood nearest to her a vicious blow upon 
 his muzzle with the handle of her whip. The great 
 beast, whimpering a little, cowered on the ground at 
 her feet, looking up at her uncomprehendingly with 
 his heavy, slavish dog's eyes. " You are like him if 
 you are fond of the English ! " she cried, and struck 
 the cowering creature again with her little cruel 
 hand. 
 
 " Leave him alone ! Don't be so cruel ! " shouted 
 Saleh, quivering with anger. Five years earlier the 
 brutal treatment of any animal would have had no 
 power to move him, and his quick indignation at the 
 girl's maltreatment of her dog went far to prove how 
 utterly dead, or how completely lulled to sleep, was 
 the oriental soul within him. Her words had dis- 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 55 
 
 quieted, pained, tortured him ; but now as he watched 
 her brutally punish an unoffending animal he felt that 
 he hated her. 
 
 " Ah !" she cried triumphantly, "you do not 'like' 
 me when I am unjust to Rustam here, yet. you praise 
 the English, who have done much worse things ! 
 They hated my grandfather because he was a man and 
 fought them. They beat his armies because they were 
 ill-armed; they took his country from him, stealing 
 even his crown jewels, like the brigands they are ; and 
 they carried him away to this horrible cold England to 
 die in exile ! But he never ceased to hate them and 
 to show them the measure of his hate, and they 
 watched him always, because they were afraid of the 
 poor old man whom they had wronged, but whose 
 spirit they could never break ! " 
 
 " I am sorry for him," said Saleh, " but perhaps 
 there were reasons which you do not know. Perhaps 
 his people were unhappy when he ruled them." 
 
 " That is the nonsense which the English hypocrites 
 have taught you to talk," the girl replied with infinite 
 scorn. " If his people did not love him, why did they 
 fight for him ? Why did the English have to kill 
 hundreds and hundreds of them before they could 
 conquer his country? Answer me that?" 
 
 " I do not know. I have not read about it," said 
 Saleh, who found himself at more of a disadvantage 
 than ever. 
 
 " And if you had read of it, it would be in English 
 books, written for the English by Englishmen, and 
 crammed with lies ! They can always find an excuse 
 to justify their wickedness, these English; but the 
 truth — ah, that is different ! Only we who have 
 suffered know the truth ! 
 
56 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " Listen, you little black boy. They tried to make 
 my father different — to turn him into an Englishman. 
 He became a Christian, — it is bad to be anything but 
 a Christian in this land, — and we are all Christians 
 now. But when we win back our country we shall 
 be restored to caste. 
 
 " My grandfather had tried resistance all his life, 
 and it had failed. My father pretended for a long 
 time that he was a friend of the English, hoping that 
 would better serve his purposes ; but because he spent 
 some paltry sums — for even in exile a king must live 
 lavishly — the English, who had robbed us of every- 
 thing, were very angry on account of his debts. Then 
 he escaped — went to Russia; but the Russians are 
 white men too, and liars like the English. They 
 made fair promises to him, but they never would do 
 anything. They only wanted to make a tool of him. 
 Then despair seized him, and he came back here and 
 made his peace with the English — outwardly. He 
 was a broken man then. He used to sit all day with 
 his head fallen forward upon his breast, his hands idle, 
 doing nothing, only thinking, thinking, thinking, — 
 thinking of all that ought to have been his, — and 
 waiting for death. He died of a broken heart, my 
 father, and it was the people whom you and other 
 cowards ' like ' who broke it ! Oh, how I detest them ; 
 but still more I hate and despise black men like you 
 who pretend to love them ! " 
 
 She spoke with so fierce a passion that Saleh drew 
 back from her, shocked and dismayed : outraged too, 
 for instinctively he was aware that the little Princess 
 would never have dreamed of using such words to a 
 white man, and Saleh desired above everything to be 
 treated as an Englishman. Her action in addressing 
 
" SALLY : A STUDY. 57 
 
 him at all, even more than the words which she had 
 uttered, was to him an insult, a humiliation. 
 
 " I am not a coward, and I do like the English. 
 You must be a wicked girl to talk as you talk, and I 
 don't believe what you say about the English is true. 
 They are just people, and very kind people." Once 
 more the hopeless inadequacy of his words caused him 
 to be smartingly conscious of his own intellectual 
 impotence. 
 
 The little Princess only answered with a disgusted 
 ejaculation, and calling to her hounds to follow her, 
 she left him with a look of blighting contempt and a 
 toss of her pretty head. 
 
 Long after she had passed from his sight behind 
 the trunks of the elms, Saleh stood where she had 
 left him, knee-deep in the bracken, jarred to the very 
 marrow, confused, humiliated, and beset by vague 
 doubts. During the whole interview his own inferior- 
 ity had been borne in upon him with the force of a 
 new discovery, for throughout she had spoken to him 
 as though, because he was not white, he ranked no 
 higher in her estimation than if he were one of her 
 hounds. Coming precisely at the moment when for 
 the first time his colour was beginning to trouble him, 
 the wound thus inflicted had eaten deep into his soul ; 
 but also, apart from the purely personal question, he 
 had been offended by all that she had said against his 
 friends. His was a nature formed for loyalty, and her 
 abuse rankled. Moreover, her words had violated 
 the integrity of that facile optimism which hitherto 
 had led him to accept the world as he found it, sub- 
 scribing without reserve to Pope's astonishing article 
 of faith, that " whatever is, is right " ! Now, in less 
 than half an hour his universe had been turned topsy- 
 
58 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 turvy before his eyes : white had been made to look 
 like black, right like wrong. It was horrible, un- 
 natural, and infinitely bewildering, for it made him 
 feel as though he were being robbed of his dearest 
 beliefs, and were being, left with nothing solid for his 
 feet to rest upon. 
 
 As he turned homeward he tried, with the Malayan 
 instinct that ever shuns the contemplation of aught 
 that is distressing, to forget the little Princess and 
 her dreadful charges; but do what he would, the 
 thought of her still clung to him as a hateful and 
 haunting memory. 
 
 IX. 
 
 From that day onward Saleh abandoned his rambles 
 in Richmond Park. He dreaded to meet the little 
 Princess again, and to be forced once more to listen 
 to the bitter railings which had so disquieted him. 
 Yet the story of the House of Baram Singh, as she 
 had told it, still troubled him ; for if she had spoken 
 the truth, her people had been the victims of injustice 
 and hardship, and their history was a dreadful and 
 inexplicable tragedy. He wished that he possessed 
 a deeper knowledge of history and of affairs, for he 
 felt dimly that there must be some explanation, some- 
 thing resembling a justification for all that the English 
 were stated to have done. Failing such knowledge, he 
 was plunged in doubt, in uncertainty ; he was a prey 
 to uncomfortable suspicions suddenly aroused; he 
 longed to be convinced that all was as it should be, but 
 knew not whither to turn in search of enlightenment. 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 59 
 
 He could not bring himself to ask questions of the 
 Fairfaxes, partly because he was reluctant to appear 
 to be identifying himself with Asiatics as against white 
 folk, to be ranging himself on the side of the lesser 
 breed — partly because the memory of his interview 
 with the little Princess set him wincing whenever he 
 recalled it to mind. The incident had left behind it 
 an impression as of something shameful, something 
 upon which he must not suffer his thoughts to dwell, 
 if the old serene and peaceful happiness and content- 
 ment with his lot were to be lured back again. There- 
 fore it was with something of a shock that he heard 
 the name of Baram Singh spoken one day at the 
 Fairfax table. 
 
 " I see the Baram Singhs are still knocking about," 
 Harry Fairfax remarked suddenly. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Sibyl. " Princess Marie played 
 hockey with us all this winter. She is a beautiful 
 half-back." 
 
 " I remember her playing when I was at home at 
 Christmas," said Harry. " She played an uncommonly 
 good game, but she struck me as being a trifle vicious 
 with her stick. I have a dent in my shin-bone the 
 depth of a walnut-shell to remember her by." 
 
 " She dances beautifully," said Alice. 
 
 " I remember that too, and, by the way, Fred 
 Castle was awfully gone on her. Did it ever come 
 to anything ? " 
 
 "No," said Sibyl; "but I think his people were 
 rather glad to get him away. He went out to India 
 to join his regiment in March." 
 
 " Ah! " said Harry ruminatingly, "that will cure him." 
 
 " But her brother, Prince Alexander, has been 
 married since you were here." 
 
60 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " Yes, of course. Wasn't there a great row about 
 it?" 
 
 "Dreadful. Her people were furious: they did 
 everything they could to prevent it," said Sibyl, with 
 the eager interest which so many display only when 
 discussing the misfortunes of their friends. 
 
 "I suppose she thought it smart to be 'Princess 
 Anything,' in spite of all drawbacks," suggested 
 Harry. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so," assented Sibyl; "but she has 
 not got much out of it. Lots of people give her the 
 cold shoulder, and I believe that she is not particularly 
 bien vue even at Court." 
 
 " Serve her right ! " said Harry. 
 
 " Oh, how could she ! " ejaculated Alice, who so far 
 had been listening in silence. " She must have been 
 a horrid girl ! " 
 
 She gave a little shudder, and then suddenly, as her 
 eyes lighted upon Saleh's attentive face, her delicate 
 skin was dyed to her very forehead with a burning 
 blush. 
 
 " Keep off the grass ! " said Harry, and then he and 
 Sibyl laughed, while Mr and Mrs Fairfax looked em- 
 barrassed, and Saleh glanced from one to the other 
 in utter perplexity. 
 
 The words of the conversation were in themselves 
 familiar, yet the meaning which they seemed to have 
 conveyed to the rest of the party was something which 
 Saleh felt that he had caught imperfectly. What con- 
 cern of his could the family affairs of the Baram Singhs 
 be supposed to be ? Yet he was dimly aware that 
 Alice's evident embarrassment had been caused by his 
 presence, and the fact, which to him lacked all reason, 
 was distressing. Once again he felt himself to be an 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 6l 
 
 alien ; once more he was filled with anger against the 
 little Princess, who seemed fated to bring upon him 
 unmerited humiliation. 
 
 The memory of this trifling incident was soon effaced, 
 however, by the unusual graciousness with which Alice 
 treated him during the afternoon that followed. She 
 was enthusiastic in her praise of his play at lawn-tennis, 
 and repeatedly chose him as her partner. Later, when 
 they went on the river after tea, she said kind things 
 about his handling of his oar, and pointedly invited 
 him to share her seat in the stern for the homeward 
 row. She fancied that she had hurt his feelings, and 
 was determined to make amends ; but Saleh, who was 
 conscious of no grievance against her, and consequently 
 was expectant of no reparation, saw in her overtures 
 only the natural expression of her personal liking for 
 himself. Her approval and her graciousness warmed 
 him with a glow which that of the Le Mesurier girls 
 had never had the power to kindle. His proximity to 
 her thrilled him, as he sat beside her, in a fashion that 
 was new and wholly delightful, nor did it occur to him 
 that her advances were somewhat more frank and open 
 than such courtesies are apt to be between a girl and 
 a man with whom she feels herself to be upon a footing 
 of perfect equality. To Alice, Saleh's nationality and 
 colour made him to all intents and purposes sexless. 
 In her estimation he was not a man, like other 
 marriageable men, and she accordingly admitted him 
 behind that barrier of reserve which is the girl's 
 natural intrenchment against the aggression of the 
 male besieger. 
 
 Therefore, as the boat lolled down the Thames that 
 evening through the fragrant summer gloaming, Alice 
 went out of her way to be " nice " to Saleh, her desire 
 
6a TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 to allay the pain of a wound thoughtlessly inflicted 
 leading her, though she had no inkling of it, to work 
 him a far more lasting injury. 
 
 X. 
 
 Thenceforth Saleh marvelled at the folly which had 
 driven him to ramble alone in Richmond Park, and 
 at the prodigality with which he had so wantonly 
 wasted precious hours that might have been spent 
 in Alice's company. His one desire now was to be 
 near the girl, to watch the play of her dainty features, 
 the grace of her every movement, to listen to her, 
 to feel the thrill that shot through him when she spoke 
 to him or smiled upon him. The remaining members 
 of the Fairfax family had sunk in his estimation to the 
 utter insignificance of shadows. They were to him 
 of no sort of account, save as happy satellites that 
 revolved around his star. For him a room was empty 
 till Alice chanced to enter it ; a game or a jaunt was 
 unspeakably stupid and wearisome if she took no part 
 in it ; and Harry Fairfax cursed Saleh' s " slackness " 
 hourly, since the latter shirked every amusement that 
 might take him away from the society of the girl. 
 
 Mr Fairfax and his wife had never passed beyond 
 the stage of being unable to see anything in the world 
 except each other's faces, so they were quite blind 
 to what was happening. The young people of the 
 household were not less obtuse. They liked their 
 guest, and noted with a certain surprise how very 
 like an English lad he was ; but their attitude towards 
 him resembled that of the great Dr Johnson with 
 
"sally": a study. 63 
 
 regard to the pig. They were not greatly concerned 
 with the excellence of his swinish calligraphy, all 
 their admiration being claimed by the marvel that a 
 pig should write at all. They rather enjoyed showing 
 Saleh off to their friends, but they never dreamed of 
 looking upon him as a human being susceptible to all 
 the emotions of humanity. His racial inferiority was 
 something so completely beyond the range of dispute 
 that it passed into their acceptance as an axiom. It 
 was so patent a fact that it called for no demonstra- 
 tion. It was a point upon which they were unshak- 
 ably convinced. If Alice had been accused of flirting 
 with Saleh, she would have resented the charge as 
 a degrading insult, and her brother and sister would 
 have felt themselves to be no less outraged through 
 her ; but the bare possibility of such an interpretation 
 being put upon her kindness to the lad never so much 
 as crossed the girl's mind. It would have seemed 
 to her too grotesque, too absurd. Her whole con- 
 ception of their relative positions would have had 
 to be revolutionised before such a suspicion could even 
 find an entry into her mind, for her very graciousness 
 to Saleh was but an expression of the pity with which 
 his inferiority inspired her. 
 
 Also, I think, Saleh's hairless, boyish face, which 
 made him look to unaccustomed English eyes so much 
 younger than his years, did him here a sorry service ; 
 for to Alice he seemed little more than a child, and 
 it was as a child rendered piteous by irremediable 
 deformity that she petted and flattered him. Yet 
 Saleh, for all his apparent youth and his bare nineteen 
 years of age, was a man full-grown. In his own 
 country he would have entered upon the estate of 
 the husband and the father before he was fifteen, 
 
64 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 and though the climate of England had done something 
 towards checking his precocious development, he 
 was now far more mature than are the majority of 
 European lads six years his senior. Also the blood 
 running in his veins was hot from a race which since 
 the beginning of things has paired and mated almost 
 in childhood, a race which holds with the primitive 
 Adam that "it is not good for man to live alone." 
 Circumstances, so far, had saved him from the divine 
 obsession of love ; but now in the daily companionship 
 of Alice Fairfax the passion, which his people name 
 " the madness," came upon him in all its grandeur 
 and its might. And the pity of it was that this was 
 no mere calf-love, such as an English lad might have 
 felt, nor yet the crude animal craving of man for 
 woman which passes for love with the men of Saleh's 
 blood and is called among them by too holy a name. 
 For here the curse of his five years' training among 
 English folk fell heavily. The spiritual side of the 
 lad's nature had been developed by insensible degrees, 
 giving him a higher range of aspirations, a greater 
 acuteness and delicacy of feeling, and far more power 
 of appreciation and delight than were his by right 
 of inheritance ; but endowing him also with a capacity 
 for suffering infinitely enhanced. 
 
 Primitive men are denied many joys which may be 
 tasted only by their highly civilised and cultured 
 brethren. Their desires are few, and of a kind easy 
 to satisfy. They are never thrilled and exalted by 
 the dreams of a lofty ambition ; but the most bitter 
 of disappointed hopes means for them nothing much 
 more difficult of endurance than a hunger-pang — a 
 memory which the next full meal will triumphantly 
 efface. Inasmuch as they are nearer to the beasts» 
 
"sally": a study. 65 
 
 in so much are they spared the deeper agonies of man ; 
 for, just as the little mermaid in the German story 
 could put on the likeness of a woman only at the 
 cost of feeling the knife-blades eat into the feet with 
 which she trod the earth, so each painful step which 
 humanity has taken upon its upward path has made 
 it more and more vulnerable through its increased 
 sensitiveness, its finer preceptions. And Saleh, born 
 and bred a primitive, but lifted through the caprice of 
 the white men out of his native conditions, found 
 himself, now on the threshold of manhood, possessed 
 of a refinement of taste and a yearning after higher 
 things such as his teachers had been at no small 
 pains to instil. They had given him all they might, 
 but one thing they could not give — the equal chance 
 with others to satisfy the aspirations they had inspired. 
 
 Left to himself, he would have loved many brown 
 girls, after the fashion of his people, with a rough 
 passion that made no demand upon his intellect and 
 asked no contribution from the stunted soul of him ; 
 but transplanted as he had been from his natural en- 
 vironment, and forced to a development foreign to his 
 circumstances, he loved Alice Fairfax with all the fire 
 of his Malayan temperament, but also with the rever- 
 ence, the purity, the idealism of a European lover. 
 And here again his utter denationalisation smote him 
 shrewdly ; for since the devout lover must ever think 
 meanly of himself when he raises his eyes to the object 
 of his adoration, Saleh presently began to torture 
 himself with doubts and questions. 
 
 For some flawless days he had lived in a fool's 
 paradise, knowing only that he was happy, and dream- 
 ing not as yet that it was love which of a sudden had 
 made the world so good a place in which to live. Then 
 
 E 
 
66 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 a chance word of Harry Fairfax had forced upon him 
 a realisation of the truth. "When you girls are 
 married and settled down," Harry had said with 
 casual, brotherly indifference, speaking of some plan 
 of his own, and immediately Saleh had understood 
 that the bare notion of Alice becoming the wife of any 
 man was a thing he could not endure to contemplate. 
 He asked for nothing for himself. He would be con- 
 tent just to watch and love and serve her; but she 
 must be Alice Fairfax, not the wife of some other man. 
 In a moment it flashed upon him how bitter it would 
 be "to look at happiness through another man's eyes," 
 and to that thought succeeded a kind of cold despair, 
 for the humility of a reverent lover at last brought into 
 focus the elusive vision of himself as a being innately 
 inferior, giving instantly a new meaning to the hints 
 and suspicions which of late had been haunting him. 
 Yet still he struggled manfully with his conviction. 
 He was eager to admit the supreme beauty and worth 
 of his deity, he was content to prostrate himself in 
 spirit before her, confessing that no man in all the 
 world could be deserving of her love. This, he 
 thought, must be the creed of any man who dared 
 to love her ; but he fought with himself desperately to 
 prevent the truth from forcing him further than that 
 admission implied. He tried to shut his eyes to the 
 gulf that divides the white men from the brown, strove 
 strenuously to persuade himself that though all men 
 were unworthy of her, he was not the most unworthy 
 of all, and then the insolent words of the little Princess 
 came back to him, mocking his grief. "You black 
 boy," she had called him, and the memory of the 
 words set him wincing anew. He was not black, he 
 told himself, — not black like a Habshi. (He still 
 
"sally": a study. 67 
 
 preserved sufficient of his narrow Malayan prejudices 
 to feel the deepest contempt for an Abyssinian.) He 
 was dark, of course, but hardly more swarthy than 
 were many of the people he had seen at Naples on his 
 voyage to England ; yet he knew now that it was this 
 very matter of his colour which had been troubling him 
 ever since he first came to stay at Richmond. For a 
 day or two after he had made the discovery that he 
 loved Alice, the emotions that rent him affected him so 
 deeply that his friends feared that he was ill, and Alice, 
 more pitiful of him than ever, was doubly kind and 
 gracious. Then the facile optimism of the ease-loving 
 Malay came to his aid, and seeing how good the girl 
 was to him, he speedily persuaded himself that he had 
 been frightened by shadows. Something of his former 
 self-content returned to him; an echo of the belief, 
 held so firmly by the natural Malay, that his race 
 represents humanity in its highest expression, came to 
 him, bringing him some measure of comfort in spite 
 of its want of logic ; he comported himself with his 
 old proud independence, and though now and again 
 reaction plunged him in despair, at other times his 
 hopes ran high, and even the impossible seemed easy 
 of achievement. 
 
 XI. 
 
 It was in this spirit of intense exaltation that Saleh 
 went with the young Fairfaxes to the ball at Aston 
 Manor- House. Harry undertook to chaperon his 
 sisters, but was far too busy to look after any one 
 save himself and certain young ladies who claimed his 
 attention. Alice and Sibyl, therefore, were left com- 
 
68 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 pletely to their own devices, and the former chose, in 
 obedience to some momentary whim, to give a large 
 share of her dances to Saleh, an act which bore him 
 aloft on the wings of delight. I have said that he 
 danced beautifully, and upon this evening the haunting 
 suspicion of inferiority was forgotten. The music, the 
 bright lights, the sheen of soft silks, the rustle of 
 women's skirts, Ithe glitter and movement, elated and 
 excited him. The open preference for himself which 
 he thought to detect in Alice's favours intoxicated him. 
 Reason had ceased to whisper its sombre warnings in 
 his ears. A divine certainty of success was his. A tag 
 of verse, committed to memory laboriously at Mr Le 
 Mesurier's bidding, sorely against the grain, came to 
 his mind : — 
 
 " He either fears his fate too much, 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 That dares not put it to the touch, 
 To gain or lose it all ! " 
 
 He would test his fate to-night ! 
 
 But, for all his new-born confidence, the courage 
 was for the moment lacking. Perhaps he feared to 
 jeopardise such joy as was already his; perhaps, almost 
 unknown to him, the conviction that the risk of failure 
 was great still lingered ; perhaps Alice's complete un- 
 consciousness of the feelings with which she had in- 
 spired him had a certain repressive effect of which he 
 was unaware. Whatever the reason, however, he 
 danced the first four dances that she had given him 
 without suffering a word to escape him that could 
 prepare her for what was to come, and this though his 
 mind was made up, and his determination to tempt 
 Providence unshaken. Reluctantly he yielded her up to 
 
"sally": a study. 69 
 
 another partner, and saw her float lightly away in his 
 arms. Then he stood with his back against a door- 
 post watching her animated face and graceful figure, 
 and dreaming of the hopes that centred in her. 
 
 A hand laid suddenly upon his arm caused him to 
 return to the things of the gross earth with a shock, 
 and looking round he saw the little Princess standing 
 by him. She was in evening dress, with a bodice of 
 crimson satin cut low and trimmed with black chiffon ; 
 and with a kind of inward shrinking Saleh noted how 
 dark the skin of her neck looked by gaslight, and how 
 swarthy were the arms now bared to the shoulder. 
 
 She had a string of marvellous pearls round her 
 neck, great gold bracelets on her wrists, and a second 
 string of pearls twisted in and out among the black 
 masses of her hair. Her great eyes were looking at 
 him with a sort of elfish amusement. 
 
 " How do you do ? " she said. " You are not 
 dancing now." 
 
 " No," said Saleh ; " but I am engaged to dance 
 presently." 
 
 "With Alice Fairfax, I suppose," she said mis- 
 chievously ; " but as she is dancing with some one 
 else now, you had better come and sit out with me." 
 
 " Thank you," said 'Saleh, with very little of grati- 
 tude in his voice ; " but won't you dance instead ? " 
 
 " No, thank you. I don't want to dance with you. 
 These horrid people would laugh if they saw us 
 dancing together. Besides, it wouldn't be proper, and 
 I want to talk to you." 
 
 She led the way into one of the sitting-out rooms, 
 and Saleh reluctantly followed. She had not seemed 
 to notice the arm which he tentatively offered, and 
 inconsequently enough Saleh felt hurt by the fact, 
 
70 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 though he lacked the perception to understand that 
 this little Oriental shrank instinctively from allowing 
 a fellow-Asiatic of the opposite sex to touch her, as 
 any white man might have done without offence. 
 
 She threw herself down in the corner of a vast 
 Chesterfield, arranging her skirts with a sort of cosy 
 feline movement vaguely suggestive of her Eastern 
 origin. Saleh seated himself beside her, pulling up the 
 knees of his well-cut evening trousers, and crossing his 
 neat little feet in their pumps and silk stockings. 
 
 " I was rude and unkind the other day," she began, 
 " but you angered me. Now I am going to be rude 
 again, but it is because I want to be kind. You think 
 that you are in love with Alice Fairfax." 
 
 " How do you know ? " asked Saleh, unconscious of 
 the admission he was making. 
 
 The little Princess laughed. 
 
 " I know because I am not blind," she said. " Do 
 you remember that I told you you were like one of my 
 hounds ? Well, if you could have seen yourself as 
 you stood looking at her from that doorway, you would 
 have needed no telling. Your eyes were following her 
 about slavishly — just like a dog's. Now," — as Saleh 
 would have interrupted, — " don't be angry. I do not 
 mean to be rude. After all, she is so nice that you 
 would not mind being her dog, would you ? " 
 
 " No," said Saleh. Though his dislike of the little 
 Princess was no whit diminished, to talk even to her 
 about Alice was in itself pleasurable. 
 
 "I know," she resumed, "and that is why I am 
 sorry for you, and why I am talking to you now. 
 Listen. You love her so much that you would ask her 
 to marry you, isn't it so ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Saleh. " I mean to ask her." 
 
"SALLY : A STUDY. 71 
 
 " And I say that you shall do nothing of the kind ! " 
 cried the little Princess, stamping one of her dainty 
 feet with all the fire that she had shown at their first 
 interview. "You do not know these English as I 
 know them. They despise us : they call us ' niggers.' 
 Oh, I know what you would say, — that they treat us 
 civilly, that you and I are guests here to-night, are 
 received by them on equal terms. But that is nothing. 
 Up to a certain point they can make-believe to regard 
 us as human beings, but only up to a certain point. 
 They will talk with us, laugh with us, even flirt with 
 us, perhaps, but they will not wed with us ! I know." 
 
 " But your brother, Prince Alexander, he has married 
 an English girl. I have heard people talk of it," ob- 
 jected Saleh. 
 
 "And how have you heard them talk of it, — with 
 disgust, with horror, — as a degradation, a disgrace ! " 
 
 The conversation at the Fairfax lunch-table recurred 
 to Saleh's memory, fraught suddenly with a new 
 meaning. 
 
 " I had not thought of it in that way," he said 
 haltingly. 
 
 " And the girl my brother married was not like Alice 
 Fairfax. She fell in love with his good looks, and 
 when once a woman has got over something that is 
 repellent to her, her passion is stronger than any 
 ordinary feeling — while it lasts. It is morbid, and all 
 morbid things are more violent than nature, because 
 they have beaten nature before they have prevailed. 
 I am sorry for my brother now." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 "Because morbid passions are short-lived. But 
 Alice is not like that. She is just an ordinary com- 
 monplace English girl, — not in the least like the angel 
 
72 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 you fancy her, but even more unlike the neurotic, mor- 
 bid creature who is my brother's wife. She would 
 never do what my sister-in-law did, and though I hate 
 her for it, I know that the reason is that she is more 
 normal, more healthy, and could not sin against her 
 paltry, prejudiced nature, even if she would." 
 
 " If you are going to abuse Alice I won't listen to 
 you," said Saleh sullenly, drawing away from her. 
 
 " I am not abusing her. Can't you understand that 
 I am praising her — as she would account praise ? She 
 would say that my brother's wife was a degraded, 
 horrid woman." 
 
 " She did," said Saleh musingly, blurting out the 
 truth unthinkingly, more to himself than to his 
 hearer. 
 
 The little Princess sprang into a more upright atti- 
 tude, her cheeks darkened by the rush of blood under 
 her skin, her eyes flashing with fury. 
 
 "She said that?" she exclaimed. "The hateful, 
 proud wretch ! But I knew it, I knew it, and . . . 
 and she was right ! Nature did not mean brown folk 
 and white to mate together : it is contrary to her law. 
 In the East we Orientals feel the same repulsion: it 
 is only those of us who are morbid, depraved, debased, 
 who can overcome the repugnance inspired by the pale 
 faces, which to our eyes are like nothing so much as 
 animated corpses, since death bleaches the colour out 
 of our cheeks ; but people like you and me who have 
 been brought up here in England have been robbed 
 even of our nature. To us that which should be 
 horrible has become natural, even attractive it may be. 
 The English, who have taken so much from us, have 
 taken that too. We cannot even keep our taste, our 
 judgment." 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 73 
 
 " But they give us something in exchange," said 
 Saleh. " I could never have felt about a girl as . . . 
 as I feel about Alice — not if I had remained in the 
 East, not if I had never come to England." 
 
 "And is that anything to be thankful for?" cried 
 the little Princess in bitter derision. " Can you be 
 glad because you have been taught to feel as you 
 ought not to feel, because you have learned to want 
 what you cannot have ? " 
 
 "But . . . you may be wrong. You hate the 
 English, and you misjudge them." Saleh longed to 
 convince himself, but the miserable doubts which of 
 late had taken root in his mind had sprung up now 
 into sudden maturity with the speed of Jack's bean? 
 stalk, were flourishing luxuriantly, bearing a heavy 
 crop of bitter fruit. 
 
 " I do not misjudge them in this. I know — I have 
 good reason to know," the girl replied, her voice vi- 
 brating with passion. " Listen. If I had lived all my 
 life in India, — if the English had not robbed us, de- 
 priving us even of the environment which should have 
 been ours by right of nature and inheritance, — I 
 should have scorned to think of a European with love. 
 I should have felt about white people as ... as 
 they now feel about us. But I grew up here. I have 
 never been to India. I have been made to associate 
 with English people all my life, and so . . . so . . . 
 when love came to me, it was . . . through an 
 Englishman." Her voice was subdued to a whisper 
 — a whisper that vibrated with intense passion. 
 Saleh followed her words with an eager and painful 
 excitement. 
 
 " Are you speaking of a man called Fred Castle ? " 
 he asked. 
 
74 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 The girl gave a little inarticulate cry of pain, such 
 as might have escaped from a tortured animal. 
 
 " Who told you ? " She seemed to scream the 
 words, though her voice was still hushed. 
 
 "I heard the Fairfaxes talking about it," replied 
 Saleh, "but I did not understand. I mean I did not 
 know that it meant so much to you." 
 
 The little Princess wrung her hands, and then clasp- 
 ing them together, let them fall into her lap. Saleh 
 noticed that the knuckles stood out white and promi- 
 nent, the skin strained over them by the violence with 
 which the fingers dug into the palms. For a moment 
 or two there was silence between them. Then the girl 
 spoke again. 
 
 " I might have known," she said, and in her tone 
 there was a sort of desperate rage and impotence. " I 
 might have known that people talked of it and . . . 
 laughed. I was not spared even that humiliation. 
 To them it is something ' funny ' — a jest, a good story ! 
 
 " Yes : it was Fred Castle. I was fool enough to 
 love him, and he — he loved me." She spoke the 
 words softly, as though even in her pain the memory 
 brought to her some measure of comfort. " But . . . 
 he could not do it. He was too weak, and public 
 opinion was too strong. He went away to India — and 
 people said, I suppose, that 'he was well out of it,' 
 and laughed at me ! " Again she wrung her hands in 
 that odd un-English fashion. Again she restrained 
 her gestures with obvious effort, and clasped her writh- 
 ing fingers in her lap. 
 
 " Why could not the English have left us alone ! " 
 she almost wailed. " I could have been so happy if I 
 had been left alone ! " 
 
 " You don't know what the life of women in the 
 
"sally": a study. 75 
 
 East is," said Saleh, bent on consoling her, for his 
 sympathies were awakened suddenly by the sight of 
 her pain. " If you had been born and bred in India, 
 you would have been shut up behind the curtain all 
 your life. You would not have been able to go about 
 as you do in Richmond Park. You could not have 
 gone to balls, or have played hockey, or ... or 
 anything." 
 
 The little Princess laughed a discordant laugh. 
 
 " How appalling ! " she exclaimed, with bitter sar- 
 casm. " No walks, no balls, no hockey ! What im- 
 mense privileges to have lost ! And what sorry things 
 I should have had in their place ! Only love, and 
 marriage, and . . . and motherhood, perhaps ! Only 
 everything ! " 
 
 Again the silence fell, and from the distance came 
 the soft strains of a valse tune and the faint sound 
 of dancing feet. Saleh felt that he had nothing of 
 comfort to offer to her, and that he himself was all 
 on edge from listening to her words. Yet even now 
 he hoped against hope that her case might be unique, 
 that it might have no special application to his own 
 circumstances. An uneasy feeling impelled him to 
 ask a question. 
 
 " Why do you tell me all this ? " 
 
 " Because you ought to know. Because I do not 
 want these English to have something else to laugh 
 about. You do not belong to India, but you are a 
 'nigger' too, just as I am." She laid a stress that 
 was fierce upon the word, and Saleh winced. 
 
 " If you speak of love and marriage to Alice Fairfax, 
 she will laugh at you. It will be one more humiliation 
 for us all. I don't mean that to happen, if I can do 
 anything to prevent it." 
 
76 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 "She wouldn't laugh," said Saleh indignantly. 
 " You do not know. She likes me, I am sure. She is 
 so sweet, so kind. She couldn't be cruel if she tried." 
 
 The dance had ended, and the couples were begin- 
 ning to overflow into the sitting-out rooms. The little 
 Princess rose suddenly. 
 
 " Take me over there," she said, indicating two 
 vacant seats, the backs of which rested against a tall 
 screen. She led the way, and Saleh again followed 
 her obediently. Somehow her talk, though it made 
 him uneasy, miserable, fascinated him, much as a snake 
 fascinates a bird. They seated themselves in the places 
 she had selected, and the little Princess spoke again, 
 sinking her voice to the lowest of whispers. 
 
 " You say that she is kind to you ; you fancy that 
 she is fond of you. I know what that is worth. She 
 is much kinder to you than to any Englishman with 
 whom you have seen her. Isn't that so ? " 
 
 " I think she is," said Saleh, with something of 
 triumph in his voice. 
 
 " Kinder, for instance, than she is to Major Dalton ? " 
 pursued the little Princess. 
 
 "Yes — much," said Saleh joyfully. "She certainly 
 likes me better than Major Dalton." 
 
 "That does not follow," said the little Princess 
 blightingly. Her sex gave her the intuition which 
 poor Saleh lacked. " She is nicer to you than to any- 
 body. Do you know why ? It is because you matter 
 less. Because, being only a ' nigger,' you do not seem 
 to her to stand on the same footing as other men. She 
 thinks she can be kind to you without danger of seem- 
 ing too kind. She can't imagine a mere ' nigger ' even 
 daring to fall in love with her ! " 
 
 She spoke brutally, tauntingly, as though she took 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 77 
 
 pleasure in the pain she was inflicting; and Saleh 
 interrupted her with an angry exclamation, that broke 
 in upon her tense sibilant whisper. 
 
 "It is a lie!" he said. "I won't believe it. She 
 isn't like that. You don't know her." 
 
 " Hush ! " said the little Princess. " Hush ! " 
 
 Saleh obeyed her mechanically, and in the silence 
 that followed he became conscious for the first time 
 of voices on the other side of the screen. He had 
 been so wrapped up in his own affairs, his own painful 
 emotions, that hitherto he had been totally unaware 
 of all that was going on around him. A man's voice 
 was speaking. 
 
 " I suppose you wanted to hurt me," it said. " You 
 have given him four dances already." 
 
 "And why shouldn't I ? " came the reply, in the low 
 murmur of musical feminine speech. " He is our? 
 guest, you know." 
 
 The man's voice grumbled something that Saleh 
 could not catch. 
 
 " You mustn't say that about him," the girl's voice 
 objected. 
 
 " But it's true," said the man. " I should hate it if 
 you flirted with any one — but to flirt with a thing like 
 that ! " 
 
 " How can you say such a thing — such a hateful 
 thing ? " cried the girl, with real indignation in her 
 voice. " I never have flirted in my life. But to flirt 
 with a poor little creature like that ! Why, the idea's 
 horrible. How can you think such a thing of me? 
 How can you ? " 
 
 " It is all very well ; but if you don't call it flirting 
 to dance four dances with the same man out of the 
 first half-dozen, I'm at a loss for a definition." 
 
78 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " But he's different. Nobody could flirt with him. 
 Oh, it's dreadful that you should think such a thing 
 possible ! " 
 
 " Of course I have no right to object," said the man's 
 voice sulkily. " But the little beast is head over ears 
 in love with you. You can't pretend to be blind to 
 that obvious fact." 
 
 " He is nothing of the sort. He wouldn't dream of 
 such a thing. It would be an insult. He wouldn't 
 dare to feel like that." 
 
 " And I suppose you are going to give him some 
 more dances presently?" hazarded the man, still 
 sulkily. 
 
 " I was going to give him one," replied the girl 
 hesitatingly. "But ... but . . ." 
 
 " Don't," pleaded the man. " Don't, Alice ; I can't 
 bear it. You must know. I care so much — so terribly." 
 
 There was the sound of a little happy sigh. Then 
 very softly — 
 
 " Do you ? " said the girl's voice. 
 
 " Yes — you know I do. And, dear, I don't want 
 only this ; I want — just everything. Do you care a 
 little?" 
 
 The inaudible answer was accompanied again by 
 that sigh of happiness, and then there was a silence 
 through which Saleh sat rigid like one turned to stone. 
 
 " But you really were mistaken about him," the 
 girl's voice said presently, in eager explanation. " He 
 didn't look at things in that way at all, any more than 
 I did. Don't you see that such a thing was impossible 
 — quite impossible ? " 
 
 " Well, we won't bother about him ; but you mustn't 
 give him that dance, Alice," said the man masterfully, 
 with a ring of joy in his voice. " You see the little 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 79 
 
 eggar is a man for all he is a nigger, and I can't 
 allow my queen to become the idol of even a savage's 
 worship." 
 
 " I am your High Mightiness's very humble ser- 
 vant," said the girl with a gay laugh, " so of course 
 I must do the bidding of my lord and master. You 
 shall have the dance yourself. You see I am beginning 
 to honour and obey already ! " 
 
 " But I want you to love too. Do you ? Just a 
 little?" 
 
 The opening bars of a new valse drowned her soft 
 reply, and Saleh, suddenly conscious that he had been 
 eavesdropping, sprang to his feet, and turned a face, 
 grey under its brown skin, upon the little Princess. 
 
 "You brought me here on purpose! " he said, in a 
 voice of concentrated passion. " You have made me 
 behave like a cad ! " 
 
 The little Princess rose too, and laid a restraining 
 hand upon his coat-sleeve. 
 
 "Yes, I brought you here on purpose, though of 
 course I did not know to what you would have to 
 listen. It was Alice Fairfax and Major Dalton. I am 
 very sorry for you — sorry for your pain. I — I have 
 been through it all myself. There is nothing to be 
 said, but at any rate you are convinced ; at any rate 
 you will be spared the humiliation which was in store 
 for you ; at any rate you will not make an exhibition 
 of yourself — as I did ! There is nothing for any one 
 to laugh and mock at now. Let that comfort you. 
 We brown people have ' given ourselves away ' enough, 
 and often enough, without you adding to the list. But 
 I am sorry, dreadfully sorry, and now you will under- 
 stand how much you owe to the English. Oh, why 
 can't they let us alone ! why can't they let us alone ! " 
 
80 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 "It is not the English," cried Saleh in a choking 
 voice. " It is not the English ! It is we ourselves 
 who are all wrong ! Oh, why was I ever born, why 
 was I ever born! Allah-hu ! Allah-hu!" Uncon- 
 sciously in his grief he made use of the cry of his 
 own people. At that moment he felt himself to have 
 reverted suddenly to the condition of the Oriental, 
 to be utterly an alien. 
 
 The little Princess watched him critically, noting 
 how in the extremity of his pain the veneer which the 
 white folk had superadded was stripped from him, and 
 from her heart she was glad because the brown 
 humanity they shared in common had not been ex- 
 posed in his person to wanton insult. His individual 
 agony signified little in her estimation. That was 
 his affair, and he must make with it the best terms 
 he might. What really mattered was that he had, 
 through her agency, been spared the humiliation of 
 an inevitable rebuff, which, as being, in a sense, a 
 triumph gained by the white race at the expense of 
 the suffering Oriental, would have mortified her also 
 by proxy. 
 
 " Don't let them see. Whatever you do, don't let 
 them know," she pleaded now, earnestly, eagerly, 
 half- entreating, half - commanding. "Don't let this 
 English girl understand that she has hurt you, that 
 she has had the power to wound you. Don't let the 
 English have that satisfaction too ! Learn to hate 
 them and to make others hate them, as I do ! " 
 
 " I don't hate them ! " cried Saleh. " I hate myself, 
 because I can't be one of them, — because I am all 
 wrong, made all wrong from the beginning; and I 
 hate you, because you are hateful, and cruel, and 
 wicked, and . . ." 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 8l 
 
 He broke off, stuttering and gesticulating. His 
 hand flew to his belt, and grabbed at vacancy just 
 above his left hip. The movement was due to a 
 slumbering instinct suddenly awakened, and had the 
 kris he sought been in its place it would in that instant 
 have gone hard with the little Princess, and Saleh, 
 thrown back with a jerk upon his Malayan nature, 
 might have run amok through that English ballroom, 
 his sorak clanging discordantly through the voluptuous 
 dance-music, his weapon stabbing indiscriminately 
 through the staid white shirt-fronts of men and the 
 dainty frocks of screaming women. 
 
 The little Princess watched him with a kind of inter- 
 ested contempt. The traditions of her own people had 
 taught her to look for stoicism in a man, and a sneer 
 curled her lips as she noted his working features and 
 his frantic gesticulations. 
 
 "Even if you are a 'nigger' don't let them . . ." 
 she began, but she got no further. Saleh's hand 
 came away empty from his hip, then was lifted above 
 his head, and an instant later was dashed into her 
 face, wiping from it as by magic the half-pitying, 
 half -jeering smile with which she was regarding 
 him. 
 
 He had acted on the impulse of the moment, acted 
 in direct defiance of all that he had learned since his 
 arrival in England, but in obedience to the inherited 
 instinct that held the brown woman as a chattel, and 
 bade him chastise her when insolent. It was the 
 stirring within him of the Malayan soul that had so 
 long been lulled in anaesthesia ; a stirring made more 
 violent by the truth so abruptly, so mercilessly revealed, 
 that his transformation into a white man— a transfor- 
 mation he had fondly believed to be triumphantly 
 
 V 
 
82 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 complete — was only a mockery, a sham. The bitter 
 realisation of his racial inferiority was upon him now 
 in all its fulness, and while it inspired him with self- 
 loathing, causing him to feel that, as he had phrased 
 it, he was "made all wrong," it aroused in him a 
 certain savage lust to give free play to his lower im- 
 pulses. If he could not rise to the level after which 
 he had yearned, he would put no further restraint 
 upon himself. He did not argue, he felt : and so his 
 hand fell and the blow brought him an instant's relief. 
 If he could not kill, at least he could inflict pain ! 
 Then he turned away, and passed through an open 
 French window out into the night. 
 
 The little Princess was left alone in the deserted 
 room, with one hand pressed to her smarting cheek. 
 She felt dizzy, and physically sick with anger and 
 indignation, yet in her too the blow had struck a 
 chord of inherited memory; and though she would 
 gladly have seen Saleh torn to pieces in punishment 
 for that which he had done, he excited in her, for the 
 first time in their intercourse, something of respect 
 and even of admiration. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Saleh, bareheaded and in his evening clothes, passed 
 out of the garden on to the road, and was presently 
 climbing the hill upon which the Star and Garter 
 stands. Once more the instinct of the forest-dweller 
 had borne him in the direction of the Park, but the 
 gates were closed, so turning to the left he skirted the 
 high wall, following it mechanically, wholly uncon- 
 
"sally": a study. 83 
 
 scious of whither his steps were carrying him. His 
 only desire was to get away — somewhere very far away 
 from the men and women who knew him — so that he 
 might do battle with his pain alone and unobserved. 
 His was the dull misery — the sense that the world has 
 come to an end — which any English lad might endure 
 who has heard the love of the girl he had dreamed of 
 making his own plighted to another man ; but it was 
 also much more than this. The tremendous reaction 
 following upon the confidence, the triumphant hope 
 almost amounting to certainty, which had been his 
 during the early hours of the evening, caused the blank 
 despair by which he was now overshadowed to assume 
 a proportionately sombre tint ; but here, too, he was 
 suffering no more than any Englishman might have 
 suffered in the like circumstances. What differentiated 
 his agony from that of the common run of men was 
 the fact that, incidentally, his entire outlook upon life 
 had been knocked out of focus. His was not merely 
 the grief — poignant enough for the moment, but by 
 no means necessarily eternal — of the lover who has 
 learned that one bewitching maid is not for him. In 
 the glare of dreadful light that had been poured upon 
 his circumstances he saw at last that it was not only 
 Alice Fairfax who was denied to him by Fate, but that 
 he was doomed to lifelong separation from all desir- 
 able members of her sex and race. The morbid, the 
 debased, the degraded — he now understood that the 
 little Princess had been right when she had declared 
 that these were the only Englishwomen who would 
 stoop to mate with him ; with him who had been 
 taught to love ••beauty and truth and womanliness and 
 honour! Thus his trouble was irremediable: time 
 could not alter or soften it. It had its root in the fixed 
 
84 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 scheme of things — the sorry scheme that nothing could 
 amend. 
 
 And as it was irremediable, so also it owed no atom 
 of its force to any fault, any misdeed, any failing of 
 his own. He had been born a Malay, — a "nigger," 
 as he now bitterly called it, — and he had had no 
 choice in the matter, yet the accident of his birth was 
 enough to rob him of all the joy of life. He was not 
 to blame, yet on him alone fell the heavy, heavy 
 punishment. The immense injustice of it appalled, 
 amazed him : his utter impotence in the face of this 
 unalterable, this tremendous fact set him tearing at 
 his heart, as men in dreams struggle desperately with 
 invisible powers. Even now he could not understand 
 the why of it — why a man whose training had been 
 that of other English lads, whose views and opinions 
 were the same as theirs, who cherished their ideals, 
 tried his best to live up to their standards, should be 
 banned for all his days because his skin was swarthy. 
 The reason was hidden from him, though of the cruel 
 ugly truth he no longer entertained a doubt ; and then, 
 in a flash, he recalled how he had smitten the little 
 Princess in the face. No Englishman, no matter what 
 the provocation, would have done that, he thought ; 
 and with unwonted clearness of introspection it 
 dawned upon him that it was not only in the colour 
 of his skin that he differed from the men around him. 
 In that moment of mad pain, and misery, and anger, 
 his real self had come to the surface, beneath which 
 it had lain hidden for years, and Saleh stood astounded 
 at what it had revealed. 
 
 It seemed to him that he had been moving through 
 a world of dreams, of smiling unrealities, and had mis- 
 taken these mocking, delicious illusions for the truths 
 
"sally": a study. 85 
 
 of life. Now, in an incredibly brief space, enlighten- 
 ment had been forced upon him, and for the first time 
 he perceived something of the proportions of the facts 
 that made his circumstances. A thousand half-for- 
 gotten memories crowded his recollection, piecing 
 themselves together into a connected, coherent whole, 
 and the discovery was driven into his intelligence that 
 his transformation into an Englishman had never been 
 sufficiently complete to delude any one but himself. 
 He had been "taken in " by it, but he had been alone 
 a victim of the deception. He knew this now — knew 
 that he had always been an alien, an outcast, an in- 
 ferior, even to those who had been kindest to him, 
 even to the Le Mesuriers, who had adopted him, loved 
 him after a fashion. His affection for the Le Mesurier 
 girls was that of a brother for his sisters ; but he felt 
 it in his bones now, that had that sentiment ripened 
 into something more passionate, it would have 
 awakened the same incredulous, almost horrified, dis- 
 may which the idea, when barely suggested to her, 
 had aroused in Alice Fairfax. 
 
 Therefore, as Saleh plodded blindly through the 
 growing twilight of the early morning, he was bowed 
 down by a burden of humiliation and self-abasement 
 till little of fight was left in him. He had not the 
 heart, the spirit now to dispute the facts, to arraign 
 their justice. Only he was utterly wretched, filled 
 with a loathing for his body because it was not like 
 the bodies of the white folk to whom he would fain 
 have belonged ; with a hatred of the soul within him, 
 because it too had shown itself that night to be unlike 
 that which he had learned to think that the soul of a 
 man should be. As he still expressed it, shackled by 
 the limitations of his vocabulary, he felt himself to be 
 
86 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 "made all wrong" within and without, and the per- 
 ception that this was not his fault, that he could do 
 nought to remedy it, only added to the bitterness of 
 his rage and misery. Fiercely he longed for death, 
 longed to be blotted out, to cease to be. His very 
 existence had become to him a thing repulsive since 
 this thorough comprehension of his inferiority had 
 penetrated his understanding, and the feeling brought 
 with it a mad fury against humanity at large. Suicide 
 never presented itself to his imagination as a possi- 
 bility : his Malayan instinct did him so much service. 
 But he was possessed by a craving to hurt others, to 
 make them feel pain, to force them to share in some 
 kind the agony that preyed upon his heart. The im- 
 pulse of the dmok-mnner was gripping him, and though 
 he barely realised what it was with which he was con- 
 tending, he strove with it, summoning to his aid all 
 the mastery of self which his five years spent in an 
 English household had instilled into him. And all the 
 while, underlying, interwoven with his other tempestu- 
 ous thoughts, the memory of Alice Fairfax haunted 
 him, — the memory of his love for her, of her sweetness 
 and kindness to him, of the soft happy sigh which he 
 had overheard, of her joy in the love of another man ; 
 and then he would fall to smiting himself cruelly upon 
 the breast, as though he sought to stun by blows the 
 passionate demons of envy and grief that were gnaw- 
 ing at his vitals. 
 
 The summer sun was shining brightly as he came 
 at last along Roehampton Lane, and so out upon the 
 Portsmouth Road, which leads across Putney Heath. 
 The road was empty save for half-a-dozen bicyclists, 
 in flannels and sweaters, with bath -towels round their 
 necks, pedalling gaily riverwards for an early morning 
 
"sally": a study. 87 
 
 dip. These wayfarers looked at Saleh with amused 
 surprise, and he glared back at them in hatred, through 
 heavy, bloodshot eyes. Why should they sneer at his 
 misery ? Many of them plainly were not even gentle- 
 men, he thought, and he — he was the son of a king ! 
 Yes, but they were white, and in so much they towered 
 above him in unapproachable superiority. There were 
 white women of their own class, women who doubtless 
 represented to them the height of their desires, who 
 would love them, cherish them, and see nothing de- 
 grading, no covert insult, in the devotion which these 
 men could offer. " Women of their own class ! " 
 Yes, that was it. There did not exist in all the world 
 any women of his class, Saleh felt. He had learned 
 that night that he was not, could never be, a white 
 man ; but he knew no less surely that only an edu- 
 cated Englishwoman could satisfy his ideals, could 
 give him the companionship, the kind of love, for which 
 he hungered. With a wonderful distinctness the life 
 lived in his father's Court was suddenly pictured for 
 him by memory. He recalled the crowds of empty, 
 vapid, giggling women among whom his early years 
 had been spent — women whose very conception of love 
 was only as a debased and debasing passion ; women 
 who had no minds, no ideas, no ambitions even, save the 
 gratification of their cupidity and their vanity ; women 
 whose only conversation was a sort of reckless banter, 
 whose only joys were the satisfaction of coarse appe- 
 tites; women who sank uncomplainingly into mere 
 slovenly drudges when their short-lived youth and 
 beauty were ended. The thought of them set him 
 shuddering, as in merciless contrast there floated 
 before his mind's eye those other women of whom 
 Alice Fairfax was for him the type. 
 
88 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Presently he found himself at the bottom of Putney 
 Hill, with the wood pavements of London beneath his 
 feet. The passers-by were staring at his bare head, his 
 disordered evening- dress, his dark face. A knot of 
 gutter children jeered him, and he turned upon them a 
 face so savage that they fled in terror. Then suddenly 
 realising the strangeness of his position, of the appear- 
 ance which he must be presenting, he hailed a four- 
 wheeler from the stand near the bridge, and bade the 
 driver take him to Jack Norris's address in York Street, 
 St James's. He knew few people in London : he could 
 not bring himself to go back to the Le Mesuriers in 
 his present circumstances and in a condition of such 
 woful disarray. Jack, he knew, would give him shelter, 
 and also, it seemed to him, this white man, who knew 
 and loved the Malayan land, would understand better 
 than his fellows. Therefore he drove to York Street 
 through the slowly awakening town, hiding himself from 
 curious eyes as best he might in the depths of the four- 
 wheeler, and feeling jarred by the incongruity of this 
 prosaic vehicle and by the self-absorbed indifference of 
 London to the tremendous tragedy of which he knew 
 himself to be the victim. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Jack N orris, colonial civil servant, carried with him 
 when on leave many of the barbarous habits bred by 
 long exile, wherewith to outrage the eternal fitness of 
 the civilisation encompassing him. Thus he was an 
 incurably early riser, a persistent devourer of " early 
 morning breakfast," a thrall of the insidious, poison- 
 ous, depraved, and wholly delightful early -morning 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 89 
 
 cigarette. It was his custom to enjoy these luxuries 
 lounging in a huge chair, with his legs thrown over 
 one of the arms, with all that he required set within 
 easy reach of his hand, and a book resting on his 
 knee, its page partly obscured by the clouds of tobacco- 
 smoke. Also, during this hour of peace and quiet, ere 
 the strenuous whirlpool of the day had sucked him 
 into its vortex, he was accustomed to let the oriental 
 half of him — the half that had been absorbed little by 
 little from his Malayan environment' — assert itself. 
 He thrust his bare feet into sandals, hampered his 
 body by no garments save a loose silk jacket open at 
 the neck, and a wide native waist-skirt, knotted about 
 his middle and falling to his ankles, like a plaid petti- 
 coat of innumerable colours. It was a relief to be 
 free for a little space from the grip of the high collar 
 and starched shirt, — the rigid strait-waistcoat of civil- 
 isation, — and with his body thus released from con- 
 ventional restraints it was easy for his mind to take 
 on something of the peaceful indolence of the Oriental. 
 By nature alive with energy, quick with force and with 
 vitality, he was able, while the day was yet young and 
 quiet, to look out upon life with the lazy philosophy 
 of the brown man ; to regard for the moment toil and 
 effort of any kind as a blameworthy and inexplicable 
 madness; to dream dreams; to dwell upon the past, 
 upon things done, without troubling himself about 
 plans for the future, difficulties that still waited to 
 be overcome, and all "the demned horrid grind" of 
 active life. 
 
 He was sitting thus, smoking, sipping his tea, 
 dreaming, and making pretence to read, when Saleh 
 suddenly threw open the door and entered the room. 
 The boy was draggled and woe-begone. His dress- 
 
90 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 shirt was soiled and crumpled; his tie was out of 
 place; his clothes were powdered with the dust of 
 the roads; his pumps were trodden down at heel. 
 His face, too, was drawn and gaunt, robbed for the 
 time of its air of excessive youthfulness ; his cheeks 
 were hollow ; and the colour of his skin had that grey 
 tinge that belongs to the faces of brown men who are 
 the prey of violent emotion. His eyes, deeply sunken 
 by fatigue and want of sleep, were bloodshot. They 
 glared with a sort of savage pain, and the dark bruise- 
 like smudges below gave to them an unnatural bright- 
 ness. His hair was disordered ; his forehead knit into 
 hard lines ; his gums, drawn back a little, disclosed 
 the even rows of his set teeth. Jack noticed, too, 
 that the hands hanging by his sides were tightly 
 clenched. 
 
 Saleh stood within the closed door, swaying a little 
 from side to side, looking at Jack in silence ; and for 
 an instant the white man gazed at him in astonish- 
 ment. Then he leaped to his feet. 
 
 "What hath befallen thee?" he asked, speaking in 
 the vernacular. 
 
 The question was asked mechanically ; but no answer 
 came to it beyond a sort of choking cry, such as might 
 have escaped from an animal in pain, and Norris, 
 taking Saleh by the hand, half led him, half pushed 
 him into a chair. He poured out a cup of tea and 
 made the lad drink it. Then he seated himself on 
 the arm of the chair and patted his visitor on the 
 shoulder, soothingly, without saying a word, as a man 
 might caress a frightened child. 
 
 Saleh remained silent, as though sunken deep in a 
 dreary torpor, shivering a little now and again as with 
 an ague, his quivering body held with a certain rigidity, 
 
"sally": a study. 91 
 
 his heavy eyes fixed upon vacancy. The silence of the 
 room was broken only by Saleh's laboured breathing 
 and by the ticking of a clock upon the mantelpiece. 
 Had his visitor been a European, curiosity might have 
 impelled Jack to cross-question him, to try to discover 
 the lie of the land, that he might the better be able 
 to comfort him; but Saleh was a Malay, wherefore 
 his white friend said no word, and waited with the 
 inexhaustible patience born of long habit. He felt the 
 youngster's shoulder thrilling under his touch ; with 
 the corner of his eye he noted the twitching features, 
 the clenched hands, the taut muscles ; and the memory 
 came back to him of a night long ago in the capital 
 of Pelesu, when he had spent some anxious hours at 
 the elbow of a Malay friend, with difficulty combating 
 the devil which impelled him to run amok since grief 
 for a father's death was overpowering him. He re- 
 membered the hushed, breathless whisper with which 
 the Malay had said to him — 
 
 " Don't speak to me ! . . . Don't let any one speak 
 to me ! . . . I ... I ... I .. . If any one 
 speaks to me, I shall ... I shall ... I shall ... I 
 shall do them an injury! . . . Keep close, Tuan, 
 keep close ! . . . Let me feel thy hand gripping 
 me ! . . . Let me know that thou wilt not let 
 go ! . . . Keep very close ! " 
 
 It had been an anxious time, a nightmare whose 
 reality was horrible, for the credit of the British 
 Agency had depended upon Jack's ability to subdue 
 the possessing demon ; and when the dawn had come, 
 and the Malay had sunk at last into a restless moaning 
 sleep, N orris had risen up feeling aged and shattered, 
 and knowing that he, if ever a man had done so, had 
 wrestled that night with devils. 
 
0,2 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 It seemed to him that Saleh was now the victim of 
 a similar nervous obsession ; that he too was on the 
 brink, tottering on the brink, of that gulf into which 
 from time to time a Malay, driven beyond the bounds 
 of human endurance, plunges, seeking death amid the 
 slaughter of his fellows. The incongruity of the idea 
 struck him as wonderful — the incongruity of this savage 
 instinct and the little English-nurtured boy whom he 
 had known, the incongruity of such elemental passions 
 and the staid ponderous life, the orderliness of London ! 
 Yet for all that he saw no reason to question the 
 accuracy of his diagnosis : the shoulder that quivered 
 under his hand, that nervous working face, spoke to 
 him more forcibly than words; only there was a 
 certain bathos in the situation, here in this weapon- 
 less land, amid the organised systems that impose so 
 crushing a restraint upon individual action. In the 
 capital of Pelesu the thing had been very real, thor- 
 oughly in its place in the picture, inevitable, a natural 
 circumstance. In the little sitting-room in York Street 
 Jack felt it to be grotesque, farcical, a piece of pure 
 burlesque. Yet to Saleh, of course, let the cause of 
 his emotions be what they might, the thing was real, 
 Jack was sure, and the lad differed from that other 
 Malay only because he was making a more gallant 
 effort to restrain himself. But for him, too, the 
 presence of the white man who understood, who needed 
 no word of explanation, was a very tower of strength. 
 Jack's proximity, the sense of calm force and deter- 
 mination exhaled from him, were tonics that helped 
 the sufferer to fight ' the" rending struggle that was 
 going on within him; wherefore, gradually, Saleh 
 relaxed the rigidity of his limbs, and his stare lost 
 something of its fixed intensity. 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 93 
 
 Jack was quick to note the change ; and as soon 
 as he had satisfied himself that it was safe to quit 
 Saleh's side for an instant, he went into his bedroom, 
 and presently returned with a dose of bromide in a 
 tumbler. This, not without difficulty, he forced Saleh 
 to swallow, and in a little while the soothing properties 
 of the drug began to take effect upon his exhausted 
 frame. He sank back into the cushions of the chair, 
 his limbs hanging limp, his muscles loosened, the fire 
 dying out of his hollow eyes. 
 
 " I have spent the night among the fires of the 
 Terrible Place ! " he said drowsily, dropping into the 
 vernacular, which had so long been unfamiliar to his 
 tongue; and with that explanation Jack Norris had 
 to content himself, for nothing more fell from his guest 
 before sleep came upon him, and he lay, moaning a 
 little, tucked into Jack's bed. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "'The evil that men do lives after them,'" quoted 
 Jack Norris; "'The good is oft interred with their 
 bones.' We white folk have done a wonderful lot 
 of good in Pelesu beyond a doubt, but it will take a 
 world of it to wipe out the memory of the harm we 
 have done to poor Saleh. From first to last we have 
 made a pretty bad break with him." 
 
 "I really cannot agree with you," said Mr Le 
 Mesurier earnestly. "He is suffering now, poor boy, 
 suffering cruelly; but against that you must place 
 the benefits he has derived from his education in 
 England." 
 
94 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " I don't fancy that his very slender book-knowledge 
 is going to help him much," said Jack grimly. "* 
 
 " I was not referring to his books," said Mr Le 
 Mesurier. " He has never distinguished himself as 
 a scholar — he lacks the mental energy and stamina 
 for that kind of thing. No ; I was thinking of the 
 improved moral standard which association with 
 English people has given him." 
 
 " I don't think you or any one who has not watched 
 him daily, as we have done, can know how really good 
 the boy is," said Mrs Le Mesurier softly, bending the 
 gaze of her kind eyes upon Jack's honest, ugly face. 
 " He has learned to be quite punctiliously upright and 
 honourable, and he has lived a life as pure and manly 
 as I could wish that of my own son to be." 
 
 They were seated in Jack's small sitting-room after 
 dinner, the men smoking, Mrs Le Mesurier reclining 
 with tired grace in the one big arm-chair. Jack had 
 wired for his guests earlier in the day, and they had 
 come hurriedly in answer to his telegram. Saleh 
 was lying in the next room, tossing in a high fever, 
 and all his three friends had had an anxious and a 
 busy day arranging for his nursing. Now they were 
 resting from their labours, and were talking of the 
 topic which for the moment filled their minds to the 
 exclusion of aught else. 
 
 " I daresay he is all that," said Jack ; " but don't 
 you see ? It is because he is so malleable, so plastic, 
 that you have been able to influence him as you have 
 done. You have given him the training of an English 
 boy, and he has taken to it like a duck to water. The 
 only difference is that he has learned consciously what 
 we all learned without knowing it. You have utterly 
 changed him. You have given him improved standards 
 
"sally": a study. 95 
 
 of morality, I daresay, improved standards of every- 
 thing, including taste; you have set an ideal before 
 him of which he had never dreamed before, and you 
 have led him for years to fight his way up to it. An 
 English boy does not need to be taught' to be an 
 Englishman. It comes natural to him. But you 
 had to make Saleh see, to begin with, that it is a fine 
 thing to be an Englishman, and that once accomplished, 
 you have done your best to help him to attain to 
 the unattainable." 
 
 " But, as you must see for yourself, it has not been 
 the unattainable in his case. The boy is English now 
 in all his instincts," interposed Mr Le Mesurier. 
 
 " Not all of them, I think," said Jack ; " but that 
 doesn't matter. The point is, that you have taught 
 him between you that the one thing for him to do is 
 to become an Englishman, — not a Christian, mind you, 
 but just an Englishman. He has believed you, and 
 now he is as near an approximation to a decent white 
 man as a Malay can be." 
 
 "Ah, you admit that," said Mrs Le Mesurier. " Is 
 not that something to have accomplished ? " 
 
 She spoke with a sort of passionate enthusiasm 
 which Jack thought very tender and beautiful — 
 tender and beautiful as only the dreams of good 
 women can be. 
 
 "You have such faith in sheer goodness that I 
 despair of ever making you understand," he said. 
 " Virtue ought to be everything, oughtn't it ? " 
 
 " I think it is everything — everything that matters," 
 said Mrs Le Mesurier softly. 
 
 " I wish it were ! " cried Jack. " Of course it ought 
 to be, only — well, it isn't, you know. You have given 
 Saleh an ideal — a purely secular, not a religious ideal ; 
 
0.6 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 you have helped him to work up to it ; you have helped 
 him so well that it seemed to him that he had attained 
 it ; and then the events of last night happened, and 
 he found that he had mistaken the lowest valley for 
 the crest of the unachievable mountain. You see there 
 was a flaw in the theory from the beginning. A Malay 
 hasn't got the rudiments of the Englishman in him ; 
 there aren't the materials there with which to effect 
 the transformation ; all you can do is to make of him 
 an imitation, a sorry imitation, a sham, a fraud ! Don't 
 imagine that I question his good faith for an instant," 
 Jack added hurriedly. "The pliability of the poor 
 little beggar, the very love of the approval of his 
 fellows which is bred in the bones of a Malay, helped 
 him to deceive himself — and you ! He has been 
 so busy aping Englishmen for so long, consciously 
 at first, less consciously later, but aping always, that 
 the thing had become a habit. You believed you had 
 made an Englishman of him : he hoped that you were 
 right — believed that you were right, very likely; and 
 now suddenly, without a word of warning, he has 
 brought up sheer against the Truth — the eternal, 
 adamantine Truth that swerves for no man. If you 
 could have changed the colour of his skin, the deception 
 might have lasted a trifle longer than it has done; 
 but that was a miracle that even your love and kindness 
 and constant influence could not accomplish, that 
 even his imitative genius could not fake; and the 
 change inside him is no more complete, only you 
 haven't eyes to penetrate into those depths." 
 
 Jack stopped breathless, and Mr Le Mesurier looked 
 at his wife. They both shook their heads. 
 
 " I can't think you know him as we do," Mr Le 
 Mesurier said gravely. " I refuse to believe that the 
 
"sally": a study. 97 
 
 change in him is only skin-deep, as you seem to 
 think it." 
 
 " I don't think, I know," said Jack. " He told me 
 things himself this morning after he woke up, before 
 you came, — things I can't repeat because you wouldn't 
 understand. Don't mistake me, Mrs Le Mesurier," 
 he said hastily, as Saleh's adopted mother turned 
 anxious eyes upon him ; " I am not referring to any 
 sins against his acquired code of morality. I don't 
 mean that he has been knowingly deceiving you. 
 Nothing of the kind. Only, well, he told me enough 
 to convince me that the Malay soul is alive and kicking, 
 and very much its old unregenerate self. You see it 
 woke up suddenly last night, and shook itself in a 
 way that surprised even its owner." 
 
 "And you think that it is all wasted — all this love 
 and care, all the hopes we have had for him ? " said 
 Mrs Le Mesurier, leaning forward in her chair, her 
 hands clasped on her knee, her eyes looking almost 
 beseechingly into Jack's grim face. " You don't know 
 how I have yearned over him, how I have prayed . . ." 
 
 " It can't be wasted — no kind action can ever be 
 wasted. That much at least must be sure. But . . . 
 oh, I feel a brute for saying it ! . . . the whole thing 
 is just a gigantic mistake, the sort of mistake that 
 white men make, with the most glorious intentions, 
 and without an atom of foresight, in the name of 
 Progress." 
 
 " I still think that you are wrong," persisted Mr 
 Le Mesurier. " The happiness of the individual, much 
 as we may desire it, is not everything. Saleh will not 
 spend all his days among English people. I only this 
 morning received a letter telling me to arrange for his 
 return. His training here will fit him for the govern- 
 
 G 
 
98 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 ment of his people. It will enable him to exert over 
 them a beneficial, an elevating influence. His prin- 
 ciples are acquired, I admit, but they are solid." 
 
 Jack groaned aloud. 
 
 "You don't understand, you can't understand," he 
 said hopelessly. " If you knew the Malays as I know 
 them ; if you had lived into their life as I have done ; 
 if you had gone for a year at a time without seeing a 
 white face or speaking a word of your own language, 
 so that the strangeness of you had had time to wear off, 
 and the natives had grown to look upon you as one of 
 themselves, and to let you get a real sight of their char- 
 acters, not decked out for your inspection, but living, so 
 to speak, in their shirt-sleeves, you would see matters as 
 I see them. You can form no conception of the inert 
 bulk of that people, — of the sheer dead-weight of their 
 inertia. They are incapable of feeling even the ' divine 
 discontent,' which is the beginning of new things, the 
 very groundwork upon which reform can be built up. 
 To you it is self-evident that they need elevating, that 
 they occupy an inferior position ; but they wouldn't 
 agree with you. They are quite satisfied with them- 
 selves as they stand ; they are altogether unambitious 
 of improvement ; unconscious that, in so far as they 
 are concerned, improvement is either possible or neces- 
 sary. You have taught Saleh to accept your point of 
 view, have put him utterly out of conceit with himself, 
 with his lot, wholly out of touch and sympathy with 
 his own people." 
 
 " But now that he has learned to look at all things 
 from a higher standpoint, he will make a wiser ruler 
 than his father before him," said Mr Le Mesurier. 
 
 " I am afraid that even that does not follow," replied 
 Jack. " You see, the British Government looks after 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. 99 
 
 the administration of the country, and takes precious 
 good care nowadays that the Sultan doesn't oppress 
 his subjects, so the personality of the ruler — the nom- 
 inal ruler — does not signify much. On the other hand, 
 the Sultan is the recognised mouthpiece of the native 
 population. His position is secure ; he stands to lose 
 nothing by any concessions that the Government may 
 be led to make to his subjects; and since he is by 
 birth, by training, and by instinct a Malay of the 
 Malays, he is in close sympathy with the natives, 
 knows what they want, why they want it, what will 
 happen if they get it, and has no motive to conceal his 
 knowledge. But put Saleh in the same position. We 
 have made a sort of Englishman of him, taught him to 
 see things exclusively from our point of view, have 
 estranged his sympathies from his own people, have 
 blunted his understanding of their character and needs. 
 They will spot the change in him quick enough, — trust 
 them for that, — and the springs of their confidence 
 will be dried up at the source. Far from making him 
 a more useful instrument for the government of his 
 people, the training we have given him will spoil 
 him for the very work he could have done most 
 efficiently." 
 
 " If you are right," said Mr Le Mesurier sadly, "this 
 is a very miserable business. I confess that the matter 
 has not appealed to me in this way before. I am be- 
 ginning to wish that I had never had a hand in it." 
 
 " I would give worlds to believe that I was mistaken," 
 said Jack, no less sadly ; " but I know, I know. To 
 sacrifice the happiness of the individual for the happi- 
 ness of the majority is sound, no doubt. A heroic 
 policy, perhaps, but utilitarian and just. I haven't a 
 word to say against it. But in this case, it seems to 
 
100 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 me, the cause of the greater number has not been 
 served, and the hapless individual has been delivered 
 up a whole burnt-offering, — has been plunged into the 
 fires of the Terrible Place, as he said himself, poor 
 little fellow ! " 
 
 " And what do you think is to be the end of it all ? " 
 asked Mrs Le Mesurier drearily. Neither she nor her 
 husband seemed able longer to contend against Jack's 
 merciless logic, backed as it was by such deep, sure 
 knowledge. 
 
 " Heaven knows ! " he answered. " You see he has 
 found out that he isn't and can never be the English- 
 man he had thought himself — that, in a word, every- 
 thing for which he has been striving is unattainable. 
 A reaction of some sort is inevitable in the face of this 
 paralysing discovery. For the moment, as far as I 
 can make out, he is in desperate pain ; but his strong- 
 est feeling is humiliation, disgust of himself because of 
 his limitations physical and moral. That is bad, but 
 in a way it is healthy too. If he sticks to that he 
 will suffer, but it won't do him much harm." 
 
 "Then what do you fear?" asked Mrs Le Mesurier 
 anxiously. 
 
 " All sorts of things. I fear that he may get to see, 
 as I do, the shocking injustice of the folly of which 
 he has been the victim. If that happens, it will em- 
 bitter him terribly. If he ever asks himself why he 
 was given false hopes, taught to cherish ideals that of 
 their very nature were far beyond his reach, — why he 
 was led on and on with fair promises to the brink of 
 the discovery that he could be an Englishman only 
 minus an Englishman's happiness and privileges, that 
 he has been robbed, too, of the power to appreciate the 
 lower, grosser life to which he was born, — then, I am 
 
" SALLY " : A STUDY. IOI 
 
 afraid, it may play the very devil with him — I beg 
 your pardon, Mrs Le Mesurier — I mean it may be 
 very bad for him indeed." 
 
 " His is a very sweet nature," said Mrs Le Mesurier 
 hopefully. " I can hardly imagine him becoming 
 soured. Besides, I don't think you allow enough for 
 the amount of principle he has." 
 
 " Don't you think that the principles may go by the 
 board when he sees what misery the whole system, 
 of which they form a part, has entailed upon him ? 
 I do. Remember they have no root in religious 
 conviction." 
 
 " Oh, I hope not, I hope not," cried Mrs Le Mesurier 
 earnestly. 
 
 " Yet if he escapes the bitterness, if his love be not 
 turned to hate, his only chance of happiness is to 
 forget," said Jack musingly, his eyes fixed with a 
 far-away gaze upon the empty grate, his chin propped 
 upon his hand. " The East is a wonderful place. It 
 weaves its own spells — spells whose magic even a 
 white man can feel. Perhaps it will take back its 
 own. Perhaps when he returns to Pelesu the East 
 will open its arms and draw him close to its tattered, 
 gorgeous breast. Maybe the sun-glare on the wilder- 
 nesses of hot damp forest, the heavy air moving lazily 
 through the sleepy land, the great rivers lumbering 
 seaward, the utter quiet and calm and melancholy of 
 it all, will lull him to a sort of peace. ' After a storm ■ 
 there cometh a great calm ' ; you know what wise old 
 Thomas a Kempis says? Perhaps the East will be 
 for him the Land of Cockagne, and in the voluptuous 
 folds of it, drugged by the beauty of it, loving even 
 the sickly sweet smells of it, he will sink down, down, 
 down from the height to which you have raised him, 
 
102 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 till a certain animal joy be his in oblivion of the 
 unattainable." 
 
 " I cannot hope that," said Mrs Le Mesurier. 
 "That would be the worst of all!" 
 
 " I don't know," said Jack gloomily. " In some 
 ways, perhaps, it would be the best that could befall 
 him, — perhaps it is all there is left to hope for!" 
 
RACHEL" 
 
 "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, 
 "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great 
 
 mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, 
 
 because they are not." 
 
R A C H E L." 
 
 I. 
 
 " 'T'HEY are so dreadfully far away," she murmured 
 plaintively — " ever so much farther away than 
 they used to be." 
 
 Her words — the expression of a thought which 
 almost without her volition had framed itself in speech 
 — fell upon the heavy quiet of the verandah, softly as 
 a sigh. 
 
 The man in the long cane chair at her side started, 
 dropped the book which he had been reading upon his 
 knee, keeping a finger on the page to mark his place, 
 and gazed at her vaguely through absorbed, half-seeing 
 eyes under a knitted brow. He was trying, with ob- 
 vious effort, to make the words which had filtered 
 into his ears stamp some actual impression upon a 
 brain deeply engaged in other things. His was a. 
 gnarled and rugged face, furrowed by hard lines such 
 as care, responsibility, and thought are wont to trace. 
 During the slight pause which supervened before he 
 spoke, the world without, under the luminous darkness 
 of the tropic night, seemed to pant through the hot, 
 
106 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 still, scent-laden air, as though spent with travail. 
 The insistent notes of insects were blent in a rumour 
 of sound, faint yet restless. Somewhere in the dis- 
 tance savage drums pulsed and throbbed. 
 
 " Who is farther from what ? " he asked. 
 
 "Oh, nothing, dear," said the woman with a half- 
 sigh. " I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was only 
 thinking aloud." 
 
 " But what was it you said ? " he insisted. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, nothing. I was only being stupid." 
 
 " I wish you would tell me," he urged, laying the 
 book aside with a reluctance which his masculine 
 clumsiness had not the wit to conceal. " I want to 
 know." 
 
 " I was only saying what I have said a thousand 
 times — that they are so dreadfully far away ; that they 
 are so much farther off than they used to be." 
 
 " The children ? " he queried, and his voice fell at 
 the word. 
 
 " The children," she assented with a sort of yearning 
 tenderness, her hands knotted about her knee, her 
 eyes gazing out unseeingly into the darkness of the 
 night. 
 
 There was again a slight pause before he spoke, and 
 a little puff of exhausted breeze, hot and empty to the 
 lungs as the draught from a furnace, brought the 
 thrumming of the drums nearer for an instant, the 
 savage rhythm rising in menacing clamour to sink 
 again into a far-away pulse-beat. 
 
 " I don't understand," he said. " They have always 
 been at the other end of the earth." In his voice 
 there was the bitterness of pain. 
 
 " It isn't the distance," she said. " It is that they 
 are growing away from us. They aren't now the 
 
" RACHEL. 107 
 
 children we parted from three years ago. We don't 
 even know what they are like." 
 
 The man winced. 
 
 " I wish you would go Home, darling," he said. " I 
 should get on all right, and — and I should see them 
 through your eyes." 
 
 " Yes, and you would work twelve hours a-day, and 
 read all meal-time, or forget that there is such a thing 
 as food, and the servants would maltreat you, and you 
 would never notice it, and then you would get ill, 
 
 and Oh, it is all impossible! Don't ask me to 
 
 leave you. I can't do it. Anything is better than 
 that." 
 
 She rose from her chair, walked to his side, seated 
 herself upon a stool, and rested her head against his 
 knee, holding his strong, sensitive hands in her soft 
 fingers. 
 
 " God bless you, sweetheart," he said gruffly. " I'm 
 
 not worth it all, and Oh, you ought to go Home ! 
 
 I wish you would go Home ! " 
 
 He had an inconsequent feeling that if she and the 
 little ones were together in the pleasant English 
 country, while he remained out there in the sun-glare 
 to toil for them, all the pain, all the burden, would be 
 his alone. Endurance would be easy, he thought, if 
 he could take the whole suffering upon himself — if he 
 could be spared the sight of her agony, of all that she 
 bore so bravely, so uncomplainingly, so patiently. He 
 could never quite realise that to her separation from 
 the children, bad as it was, would be outweighed by 
 that other pain that would be caused by separation 
 from him. 
 
 " You always say that," she said now, almost in- 
 dignantly. " You make it impossible for me to speak 
 
108 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 to you about the children, because, whenever I mention 
 them, you cry out that I ought to go Home — that I 
 ought to leave you." 
 
 " Oh, it is all such a mess ! " he exclaimed fiercely. 
 " A man who is doomed to exile in the East — exile for 
 all his days — has no right to ask any girl to share his 
 life with him ! What a monstrous selfishness it is ! 
 What a coxcomb a man must be who imagines even 
 for a moment that his love — his love! — can compensate 
 for all the sacrifice, all the pain, all the . . . Oh, it's 
 incredible, incredible ! " 
 
 "And yet it does," she said softly; and the pressure 
 on his fingers tightened. 
 
 " It doesn't : it can't ! A man has his work, the 
 work that claims him body and soul, the work which 
 is the best anaesthetic of all. A woman has nothing — 
 only empty days — such long, cruel hours in which to 
 think and think — empty days and such wofully empty 
 arms." 
 
 " Don't," she whispered. " It is just as bad for 
 you as for me ; " and her voice was caught with 
 sobs. 
 
 Long they sat there, with the wilderness of the 
 East lying around them, filled with sounds incom- 
 prehensible, mysterious, vaguely inimical, with the 
 little drawing-room behind them gay with the pretti- 
 nesses of dainty feminine contrivance, striking by 
 contrast to its environment such a pathetic note in 
 the very futility of the effort, for which it stood, to 
 create the illusion that exile is home. Long the man 
 petted, soothed, tried to comfort her, mocking himself 
 grimly in his heart the while, because he knew that 
 sorrow such as theirs is impossible of alleviation, while 
 
iog 
 
 she sought bravely to cheat him and herself into a 
 faith in a non-existent happiness. 
 
 " When is your birthday ? " he asked inconsequently, 
 as at last they rose up and turned towards their bed- 
 room. 
 
 " On the 15th of March — the month after next," she 
 said. " But what has that got to do with it ? " 
 
 " Nothing, darling," he replied. " I was only 
 wondering. Shall I ring for the boys to shut up the 
 house ? " 
 
 II. 
 
 " Many happy returns of the day, sweetheart," he 
 said, coming into her bedroom, bearing in his arms a 
 loaded tray. " See, I have brought you your chota 
 hazri myself." 
 
 " Oh, and what is this parcel ? How ' aciting ' ! 
 as the children used to say. Give me your knife; I 
 want to undo the string at once." 
 
 " Oh no. Take your tea first. The parcel will 
 keep." 
 
 " It will do nothing of the sort. Give me your 
 knife at once. Oh, you darling ! What a lovely 
 silver bowl ! Real old workmanship. Why, it must 
 have cost a mint, you extravagant boy." 
 
 He stooped to take the kiss she offered him in 
 thanks, and then turned away rather shamefacedly. 
 
 " Look inside it," he said gruffly. 
 
 She twisted off the lid, and found a folded piece of 
 paper covered with his fine handwriting, and this is 
 what she read: — 
 
110 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 To my Own Darling on her Birthday. 
 
 Cold and fog and a leaden sky 
 
 O'er pavements drizzle-damped ; 
 The clatter of footsteps passing by, 
 The coster's yell and the street-boy's cry, 
 The roadway packed and cramped, 
 The newsboys bawling the lists of the dead, — 
 
 'Tis a mightier, drearier, dingier Rome, 
 That wonderful land where we twain were wed, 
 — The land called Home. 
 
 A nursery lit by the merriest sun, 
 
 For two little sunbeams are there ; 
 A nursery ringing with laughter and fun, 
 And the last, last romp that will never be done, 
 And the pranks of an impish pair. 
 Here's General Buller astride of a stick, 
 
 O'er the hearth-rug the cavalry speed- 
 Turn away, dear Love, for the heart grows sick. 
 To us that were Home indeed. 
 
 Green-clad slopes, where the thatched huts cling ; 
 
 A sea that is smooth as glass ; 
 Forest on forest, where no birds sing 
 As they sing at Home in the English spring, 
 When the dew is fresh on the grass. 
 Merciless sunshine, pitiless glare 
 
 Rack the land which we still must roam, 
 But with thee at hand my days to share 
 Exile itself is Home. 
 
 A little sob from the bed caused him to turn about 
 sharply upon his heel. Her face was pressed against 
 the pillow ; her shoulders rose and fell ; she was weep- 
 ing very bitterly, very quietly. In an instant he was at 
 
Ill 
 
 her side, his arms about her, his kisses upon her hair, 
 while he cried out against himself in fierce reproach for 
 a dolt and a fool. 
 
 " Don't cry, darling," he whispered. " I would not 
 make you cry for worlds. I meant it to please you. 
 What a stupid brute I am, thrusting my great clumsy 
 finger into the open wound ! " 
 
 " It isn't that — it isn't that ! " she protested, looking 
 up at him through her tears. " I love them — they are 
 beautiful. It is because they are so beautiful that they 
 make me cry ! " 
 
 Loving women, mercifully for the men whose verses 
 are turned to pleasure them, are not exacting critics of 
 the literary value of such offerings. 
 
 " I love them," she said again, though a sob still 
 lingered; and she kissed them. 
 
 Sitting there on the sheets, which, bare of bed- 
 clothes, held no suggestion of the cosy repose of 
 temperate climates, dressed in her white night-gown, 
 with her little bare feet drawn up under her, and gazing 
 up at him through wide eyes on which the dew of tears 
 still rested, she seemed to him such a child, such a poor 
 little thing, such a pathetic and pitiful little creature to 
 be called upon by Fate to endure so much. As he 
 looked at her there was a hard something in his own 
 throat, and his face worked. 
 
 " I love them — love them," she repeated. " Only 
 they are . . . too sad. And besides I . . . I . . . 
 They show me so plainly how very far the chicks have 
 drifted from us. We haven't seen them since the 
 beginning of 1900. Three whole years ago ! They 
 were babies then : they will never ... be ... be 
 babies any more. Now . . . now they are strangers 
 to us both. They don't play like that . . . like babies 
 
112 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 . . . like they used to play . . . any . . . any more ! " 
 And again the sobs shook her. 
 
 He had not thought of that. When he had tried to 
 draw for her in words a picture of the nursery — their 
 nursery — as it had been when last he had looked upon 
 it, it had not occurred to him that three years — so long 
 a time in the life of a child — had come and gone since 
 then, and had wrought changes there, as elsewhere — 
 nay, had altered the scene his memory cherished out of 
 all recognition. He saw it all now, had always seen it, 
 as it had been then — the two mites, blissfully un- 
 conscious of what was befalling them, wild with excite- 
 ment at the prospect of seeing the baggage piled on to 
 the roofs of the cabs, their shouts of pleasure stabbing 
 deep at the heart of the mother who stood watching 
 them with that yearning, stricken face ! And that 
 scene had vanished for ever ! It was three whole years 
 ago ! The boy was at a preparatory school by this 
 time. No more playing at General Buller astride on 
 a walking-stick for him ! A true realisation of the fact 
 came to him suddenly, smote him shrewdly, and the 
 lump in his throat grew harder. He had known that 
 there must be a change, of course — that he and she 
 were missing precious years of baby-life that could 
 never be recalled ; but the full meaning, the full pathos 
 of it all had never struck him as it did now. It came 
 in some sort as a revelation to him, that change. Yet 
 she had been watching it daily, hourly — watching it, in 
 imagination, transforming, working cruel havoc upon 
 her darlings ; for she — poor soul ! — had been thinking, 
 thinking, while he had been deep in affairs, numbed 
 and blinded by the work which was to him as the 
 breath of his nostrils. The lump rose more rebel- 
 liously than ever. 
 
"RACHEL." 113 
 
 " But my real birthday present is yet to come," he 
 said presently, anxious to divert her thoughts and his 
 own from that which the fatal verses had awakened. 
 " I have kept it a secret all this time because I wanted 
 it to come as a surprise ; and if that infernal French 
 mail had not been late again, it would have been here 
 the day before yesterday. Guess what it is." 
 
 " No, tell me. I'm not good at guessing." She 
 feared to ask whether the unknown gift was the thing 
 for which above everything she longed, lest she should 
 be disappointed, and so be the cause of disappointment 
 to him. 
 
 " Well, then, I'll tell you. I wrote to Catherine two 
 months ago and sent her money to have the children 
 photographed by a first-rate photographer." 
 
 Catherine was his maiden sister, a woman some 
 years his senior, in whose conscientious but unsym- 
 pathetic care the children had been left. She was no 
 child-lover — indeed, she was singularly free from all 
 such tender weaknesses — but she prided herself upon 
 her sense of duty, and regarded her charges as a cross 
 laid upon her for the sins. 
 
 "Oh, you darling! That is the one thing I have 
 been simply pining for, and I didn't like to ask for it 
 because of the dreadful expense." 
 
 " But that isn't all. I sent enough for Catherine to 
 get miniatures painted from them, and the whole thing 
 ought to have been here a couple of days ago. Isn't 
 it bad luck that the mail is late ? " 
 
 She didn't answer this time, but clung to him with 
 her face buried on his breast, though now there was 
 no bitterness in her tears. 
 
 " And how shall I manage to live until the mail 
 comes in ? " she said presently as she began to dress. 
 
 H 
 
114 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 III. 
 
 Through the heavy stillness of the noontide a gun 
 boomed out, and at the sound her heart stood still, 
 then bounded on again, racing with a joy that yet had 
 in it the pain of intensified expectation. 
 
 " The mail at last ! " she cried ; then flung herself 
 upon her knees, and thanked God for His goodness 
 to her. 
 
 A quarter of an hour elapsed, and she was roaming 
 up and down her bungalow with a sort of fierce unrest, 
 as caged creatures prowl for ever in their narrow 
 prisons. With a clatter of hoofs her husband rode up 
 on his pony. 
 
 " I have shirked shamelessly," he said with a 
 laugh. " I don't often play truant, but I just had 
 to be here with you when the mail arrived. They 
 are sorting the letters now. They will be up in a 
 minute." 
 
 "Thank God!" she said faintly, for her excite- 
 ment made her weak ; but still the words were a 
 prayer. 
 
 They sat down in two chairs upon the verandah, 
 and each took up a book and made believe to read. 
 Outside the sun beat down upon a panting world, in 
 which all living things cowered hidden from its anger, 
 while the leaves and the palm -fronds stiffened and 
 lifted beneath the parching rays. The thin, exhausted 
 air hung above the earth, pressing upon it, stifling it. 
 There came no sound to break the painful silence, save 
 the slow ticking of a clock and now and again the dry 
 rustle of soil, which, crumbling in the heat, detached 
 
"RACHEL." 115 
 
 itself from a bank in the garden and slid downward. 
 The moments — long drawn out by the intensity of 
 suspense — crawled with merciless deliberation. Every 
 few seconds he or she looked up from the pages which 
 held for them no meaning, and cast anxious glances 
 at the clock-face, where the minute-hand appeared to 
 be stationary. It seemed to them that the longed-for 
 time would never come which should bring them the 
 mail-bag for which they looked. Every succeeding 
 mail-day they endured something of this agony of an- 
 ticipation ; but to-day the pain of waiting was keener, 
 more difficult of endurance than ever before. 
 
 At last the sound of bare feet sauntering up the 
 gravel path without came to their listening ears. The 
 man jumped to his feet, walked hastily to the edge of 
 the verandah, and something like a shout of joy went 
 up from him as he saw the orderly, mail -bag on 
 shoulder, coming with irritating slowness up the ap- 
 proach to the house. Immediately with clamorous 
 execrations his indolence was goaded into an in- 
 different energy, an indolent speed. Rachel pressed 
 both her hands to her heart. She felt physically 
 faint, now that the supreme moment had come. 
 
 The man plunged headlong down the stairs and 
 reappeared a moment later, his face flushed with ex- 
 citement, the mail-bag swinging triumphantly in his 
 grasp. 
 
 " You must open it, sweetheart," he almost panted. 
 " Here's the best birthday present of all ! " 
 
 She took the bag with eager, trembling fingers, 
 thrust her arm elbow-deep into it, with the light of a 
 great joy in her eyes. For a moment or two she 
 rummaged among its contents, and the expression of 
 her face changed rapidly from hope to anxiety, from 
 
Il6 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 anxiety to a kind of terror, to dismay, to utter blank 
 despair. She looked up at her husband through eyes 
 that were pitiful to see, so sad and full of pain they 
 were. 
 
 "They are not here," she said in a strained 
 whisper. 
 
 "They must be," he said savagely, taking the bag 
 from her with a roughness which was almost a snatch. 
 The colour of a moment earlier had left his cheeks : 
 the lines upon his face were deep and hard of a sudden, 
 as though they had been chiselled in stone. With 
 feverish haste, he tipped the contents of the bag out on 
 to the floor. There fell forth a number of newspapers, 
 one or two magazines, some books, and a slender 
 bundle of letters, with English stamps and post-marks, 
 tied with a piece of twine — but there was nothing that 
 could contain either photographs or miniatures. 
 
 With a bitter curse he threw himself into a chair. 
 His wife sat rigid, with clasped hands. No word 
 escaped her. The pain of her disappointment, inten- 
 sified by the keen anticipation which had preceded it, 
 numbed, while it stabbed her to the heart. She shed 
 no tear, made no complaint, uttered no blasphemy 
 such as her husband had used, even in her heart. 
 Only she sat very still, and endured this cruel blow 
 with a conscious, resistant effort. 
 
 After a pause the man rose to his feet with some- 
 thing that was more groan than sigh, and began list- 
 lessly to examine the bundle of letters. 
 
 " Here is one from Catherine," he said sulkily. " Per- 
 haps it will explain. Umph," as he opened it, " only a 
 couple of sheets. I wish she would tell us more about 
 them. Catherine never could write a letter." 
 
 " Read it," said his wife. 
 
" RACHEL. 117 
 
 My dear Martin [he began obediently], — We have been 
 having a deplorably wet winter, and I am sure that you and 
 Rachel are to be congratulated upon being able to live in a 
 more congenial climate. [" Damn the climate ! " he inter- 
 jected.] As I think I told you in my last, the rain obliged 
 me to keep William [" Oh, I wish she wouldn't call my little 
 Boysie ' William ' ! " murmured Rachel in plaintive protest] — 
 to keep William indoors during the greater part of his vaca- 
 tion — an arrangement which did not conduce to his amuse- 
 ment or to the comfort of myself and my household. William 
 has now returned to school, where no doubt he will benefit 
 from masculine control and discipline. I fear that William 
 is of a somewhat turbulent disposition, and his persistent 
 neglect to wipe his shoes and to shut doors after him shows 
 less consideration for others than I should wish to see. 
 ["Poor mite ! he is only nine!" protested Rachel.] Mary Anne 
 [" She shan't call my Maisie ' Mary Anne ' ! " cried Rachel. 
 "You know what she is," growled her husband. "Catherine 
 hates what she calls ' corruptions of proper names.' You can't 
 make her different at her time of life." " Go on," said Rachel 
 with a sigh], — Mary Anne, I am glad to say, is developing 
 many estimable qualities. Her disposition is sedate and 
 naturally ladylike. I trust that she will grow up to be a 
 comfort and a support to Rachel. Tell the latter that, though 
 it is natural and proper that she should desire to have her 
 children with her, she is spared by circumstances many 
 anxieties and trials as well as responsibilities, which I find to 
 be inseparable from the care of children. She should re- 
 member this when she is inclined, as I gather from your 
 letters is occasionally the case, to be discontented. 
 
 I shall have to be in London lodgings from the middle of 
 April until the end of the May Meetings this year, and this 
 will prevent me from taking in William for the Easter Va- 
 cation. I have therefore arranged for the dear boy to remain 
 at school, where he will no doubt be quite happy. Mary 
 Anne I am sending for these few weeks to my old maid- 
 servant Thatcher [" That horrible old Gorgon ! " cried Rachel 
 in horrified protest], who, you may remember, married Mr 
 Bently, a farmer at Uxmore, a man of high principle and con- 
 
Il8 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 duct. Mary Anne's character gives me confidence that she 
 will not take any harm from a temporary association with 
 people of an inferior class, the more so since Mr Bently is a 
 churchwarden, and both he and his wife are very austerely 
 religious. I trust that these arrangements will meet with your 
 approval. 
 
 Give my love to Rachel, and hoping that you continue to 
 enjoy good health, — Believe me your affectionate sister, 
 
 Catherine Allister. 
 
 " And not a word about the photographs ! " cried 
 Rachel. 
 
 " Wait, here's a postscript." 
 
 P.S. — I have noted your wish that the children should be 
 photographed, and I hope that an opportunity may occur dur- 
 ing the Summer Vacation. These holidays the inclemency of 
 the weather, which greatly affected my movements owing to 
 my susceptibility of influenza, made it quite out of the question 
 that I should attend to the matter at once. The delay, how- 
 ever, will be trifling, and it is possible that the children may 
 themselves have improved in appearance by that time. I 
 shall not have Mary Anne done by herself, as it will be less 
 trouble to get them both taken at the same time, and it will 
 be cheaper if you have them photographed together. As for 
 the miniatures, you will, if guided by me, abandon the idea. 
 Even my natural affection cannot blind me to the fact that 
 they are not pretty, even as the standard of childish prettiness 
 is judged — a by no means exacting standard ; and it appears 
 to me that a miniature, to be worth the money paid for it — 
 some £$, 5s. each — should at least be an ornament to your 
 drawing-room. However, you will have ample time in which 
 to acquaint me by letter with your wishes upon this point ; and 
 if you insist, the miniatures shall of course be painted. — C. A. 
 
 The man threw the letter on to the ground and 
 swore again. 
 
"RACHEL." Iig 
 
 "Six whole months before we can hope to get 
 them," sighed Rachel. " Six whole months ! What 
 a weary time ! " 
 
 Once more her husband swore, deeply, gruffly, with 
 emphasis and meaning. 
 
 "And my poor little Boysie left at school for his 
 holidays ! And my little girl put out to board with 
 an abominable Low Church couple who will restrain 
 her and repress her and do their best to make her stiff 
 and artificial and . . . and ' ladylike ' ! Oh, my poor 
 little motherless bairns ! My poor little motherless 
 babies ! " And she buried her face in her hands, 
 though still the relief of tears was denied to her. 
 
 " And there is not a single word in the whole letter 
 which tells us what we most want to know," said the 
 man savagely. " Not a line that gives us a picture of 
 the chickies as they are, which shows us what they are 
 developing into." He realised now with a certain 
 bitterness that it was due to Catherine's limitations, as 
 well as to his own, that the fact that his children were 
 changing had come upon him suddenly as a surprise, 
 a shock. Why could not the woman have enough 
 imagination to understand what sort of things the 
 hungering father and mother most desired to hear ? 
 Why were her letters so unsympathetic, so tactless, 
 so empty ? He was filled with a strong resentment 
 against his sister, to whom Fate had given the precious 
 charge of his little ones — that which would have been 
 such a blessing to poor Rachel, that which to her was 
 only a burden. 
 
 " There is not a thing in the whole screed that tells 
 us a word of the children — really," he repeated. 
 
 " Except Boysie's dirty boots and unshut doors, poor 
 little duck ! " said Rachel with a wan smile. 
 
t20 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 For a space there was silence : then the man spoke 
 again. 
 
 "All this seems to me to point to something," he 
 said grimly. " What do you think ? " 
 
 " Don't ! " said his wife sharply. She gave a little 
 shudder, and in her eyes was a look which was all 
 dismay. Suddenly a foreknowledge had come to her 
 of that which the future must hold for her and for him. 
 
 " It is as plain as a pikestaff," he said gloomily. 
 " You must go Home. They are older now, and need 
 you even more than I do. They are no longer babies. 
 Don't interrupt," he added quickly, as she made as 
 though she would speak. " We won't talk of it now. 
 I must get back to my grindstone, you to your thinking. 
 It seems to me that the right path — the path before 
 us — is marked out all too clearly, and that we must 
 take it, be it never so hard to tread." 
 
 He stooped and kissed her lips with a tenderness 
 that had in it something new, something more 
 clinging, more claiming than ordinary. 
 
 " God guide and help you, wife ! " he said. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was mail-day once more in the little bungalow — 
 a mail -day which saw the arrival of an in-coming, 
 the departure of an out-going mail, and which also 
 chanced to fall upon a Sunday. Time, some eighteen 
 leaden-footed months, had passed, and on the man's 
 surroundings its ravages had been aided by neglect 
 and by the absence of the inspiring feminine genius 
 of the house. The cretonnes and draperies of the 
 
" RACHEL." 121 
 
 drawing-room were just as Rachel had left them, but 
 their colour had faded, their freshness was gone, and 
 dust had gathered deeply where of old no speck had 
 been suffered to remain. The litter of books and 
 papers on tables, chairs, and floors; the disorderly 
 disarray of the furniture, each article left standing at 
 the angle at which it had happened to be thrust aside ; 
 an empty glass which had been used on the preceding 
 evening, and which had not been cleared away ; ash- 
 trays over-full, vases without flowers, — these and a 
 hundred other things betrayed the untidy bachelor 
 household which had been evolved gradually from the 
 ruins of Rachel's dainty little domain — that most cheer- 
 less, most pathetic of all dreary masculine establish- 
 ments, the home of the married solitary in the East. 
 
 Martin Allister sat at his writing-table in a corner 
 of the verandah, like Marius amidst the ruins of 
 Carthage. His only garments were a pair of flannel 
 trousers, yellow and shrunken with age and from the 
 hard usage which they had received at the hands of 
 the station dhobi, and a torn silk singlet, from the 
 front of which more than one button was missing. 
 His bare feet were thrust into slippers ; he held an 
 extinguished pipe between his teeth ; and upon his 
 chin there was a stubble of beard some three days old. 
 He looked as unkempt, as uncared-for as the com- 
 fortless house in which he lived. "Wofully gone to 
 seed" would have been the verdict passed upon him 
 by the least critical of observers. 
 
 Yet to-day he had as nearly touched happiness as 
 now was possible to him, since the home mail, for 
 the coming of which alone he lived from week to week, 
 had arrived that morning some hours earlier than had 
 been anticipated, and had brought him the usual 
 
122 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 priceless budget from Rachel. He was reading it 
 through now for the third time, finding in the words 
 of the one soul who loved him, was in complete 
 sympathy with him, and to whom that love and 
 sympathy gave a wonderful understanding and insight, 
 exactly that which he most desired to know con- 
 cerning his children, a series of living pictures of them 
 as they now were. Yet of Rachel herself, who was 
 so infinitely more dear to him than her little ones, 
 the letter afforded no equally illuminating glimpse. 
 The children stood out from the pages, vivid, alive, 
 distinct. He seemed to know them now as he had 
 never known them before — to picture their actions, 
 to understand their characters, to rejoice with them 
 in their pleasures, feel for and with them in their 
 childish griefs, to glory in their impish naughtinesses, 
 and to lament over their occasional punishments. 
 But throughout the figure of his wife eluded him. 
 She wrote with strong self-repression, fearing doubtless 
 to add to the burden of his sorrows by dwelling upon 
 those which she was called upon to endure. There 
 was a false air of cheerfulness in every line, a gallant 
 striving to appear light-hearted, which, while it was 
 powerless to deceive him, created an impression of 
 unreality, plunged him in a haze of doubt and of con- 
 jecture, wherein the figure of the wife whom he had 
 known became shadowy or was lost. She had been 
 used to deal with him so frankly, to show him all 
 that was in her heart : now he was conscious that 
 she kept her deepest feelings closely hidden from him, 
 lest a revelation of them should increase his pain. 
 
 " God help us," he said half aloud, as he laid the 
 letter aside and sat motionless, sunken deep in thought. 
 " We are drifting, drifting apart. I can see the 
 
123 
 
 chickies through her eyes. She has brought them 
 nearer to me than ever before, but ... I am losing 
 her. Loss and gain — loss and gain ; and the loss is 
 ever the greater. God help us both ! " 
 
 He fell to thinking ruefully of the time, which now 
 seemed so long ago, the golden time when for a little 
 space Rachel and her children had been with him 
 in the house in which he now lived in such bitter 
 loneliness and exile. He opened his desk and drew 
 from it some verses which he had scribbled on the 
 previous evening: — 
 
 THE HOUSE TOO FULLY TENANTED. 
 
 " The house is empty ! " — thus they speak 
 Who pity one that sits alone, 
 And worships at an altar-stone 
 All cold, where now he may not seek 
 The dear idols that have flown. 
 They cannot know how loud to me 
 The silence speaks of thine and thee ! 
 
 If they spake truly I could bear 
 The pall of silence that is cast 
 Athwart this casket of the Past, 
 And shrouds dead days that were so fair — 
 Those happy days too dear to last ! 
 But this sad house is filled for me 
 With flitting wraiths of thine and thee ! 
 
 Still voices sound from dawn to night, 
 And then till daybreak tints the sky ; — 
 A little groping baby cry, 
 And childish laughter that made bright 
 The heart that heard. But now I sigh 
 And bid them cease : for, dear, to me 
 Too loud they speak of thine and thee ! 
 
124 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Without the door there comes the sound 
 Of pattering steps and tiny feet, 
 And thinking now at last to meet 
 The babes I love, I turn me round .... 
 No soul there moves ! My senses cheat 
 With hopes all vain. Old use, ah me, 
 Fills empty space with thine and thee ! 
 
 But more than all thy face is near — 
 The sweet, dear eyes whereout there springs 
 The soul that upward soars and sings, 
 So that I marvel it can bear 
 To stoop to me and common things. 
 In pain or grief, where'er I be, 
 Thy love upholds and comforts me. 
 
 Yes, though to-day the thought is pain 
 Of those who are so far away, 
 Our ten years' ghosts I would not lay, 
 Nor have my lone life back again. 
 All pain were nought if, as I pray, 
 My God will yet vouchsafe to me 
 One hour of life with thine and thee ! 
 
 He read the verses through slowly, sucking at his 
 empty pipe the while, and for all their roughness it 
 seemed to him that they told the story of the feelings 
 that possessed him better than he could ever tell it by 
 letter and in prose. And then the memory came to 
 him of certain other verses which he had written for 
 Rachel, and of the sob from the bed which had 
 brought him to her side full of passionate sympathy 
 and self-reproach. 
 
 "They would only make her unhappy," he thought. 
 "They would do no good, bring her no comfort; for 
 she knows how I love her, without fresh telling. 
 Besides, I should not be at hand to dry the tears this 
 time." 
 
" RACHEL." 125 
 
 He tore the paper into tiny shreds, threw them into 
 the waste -paper basket, and, lighting his pipe, set 
 himself down squarely to write the concluding para- 
 graphs of his weekly journal to his wife — one of those 
 letters which always made her laugh as she read them, 
 and left her so sad and so unsatisfied. 
 
 " I must do nothing to make it worse for her," was 
 the thought in his mind. 
 
 V. 
 
 At the window of her cottage, overlooking the bay at 
 Lyme Regis, Rachel Allister sat musing, a letter in 
 her hand, her eyes looking out unseeingly, her heart 
 and her thoughts far away in distant Asia. Below 
 her, bathing-tents were pitched upon the narrow belt 
 of sands, where her boy and girl were digging with 
 shouts and laughter. To her right the grey Cobb 
 curled out from the land, slim and sinuous, like a 
 gorged snake; to her left rose the cliffs, white and 
 yellow and red, crowned with the bright greens of the 
 rolling downs. The summer morning sunshine beat 
 full upon the scene, lending a gay fresh colour to all 
 things, dyeing the gently heaving sea to a brilliant 
 blueness, and just touching the white sails of a solitary 
 sailing-ship loafing down to Portland. Men and 
 women lolled upon the benches on the primitive 
 esplanade ; the waves were dotted with the figures 
 of bathers ; the sands were crowded with nurses 
 and children ; and here and there small knots of in- 
 dolent Lyme Regis fisher-folk stood about, waiting 
 with the patience of a Micawber for the something to 
 
126 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 turn up whose arrival they did their feeble utmost 
 to retard. 
 
 But Rachel saw none of these things. Instead, 
 before her mind's eye there floated the picture of the 
 station whence had come the letter she held between 
 her fingers. Again she breathed the stifling thin air ; 
 again the merciless sun -glare smote the earth and 
 parched it ; again she saw the little bungalow clinging 
 to the hillside, the dense foliage, the colourless sea 
 spreading away to a horizon misty with heat, and a 
 lonely man eating his heart out in solitude in the 
 midst of all this luxuriant beauty. 
 
 She glanced at the letter in her hand, and her eye 
 caught a jesting phrase. A smile formed slowly on 
 her sad face, then died out quickly as she gave a tiny 
 wince, and heaved a sigh. 
 
 " I wish he wouldn't," she thought. " He can't feel 
 like that : it doesn't ring true a bit. He puts it on to 
 blind me, to hide what he is suffering, and yet it 
 doesn't deceive me — it only hurts. I know what he 
 must be going through, poor Martin ; yet no one could 
 guess it all from his letters, and it makes him feel so 
 much farther away — so much farther away." 
 
 She rested her chin upon her hand, and in the eyes, 
 which still peered into the unknowable, there gathered 
 the film of tears. 
 
 Rachel, with her children close at hand, still was 
 weeping for her child — the one to her most precious, 
 most sorely in need of her mothering — and refused to 
 be comforted because he was not. 
 
THE 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 
 
THE 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. 
 
 TZRETING, the old Sakai slave-woman, first told 
 me this story, as I sat by her side on the banks 
 of the P6rak River, watching her deft management of 
 her long native fishing-rod, and listening to her guttural 
 grunts of satisfaction when she succeeded in landing 
 anything that weighed more than half an ounce. The 
 Malays called her Kreting (woolly-head) in derision, 
 because her hair was not so sleek and smooth as that 
 of their own women-folk, and that was the only name 
 by which she had been called for well-nigh half a 
 century. When I knew her she was repulsively ugly, 
 lean, and bent with years and many burdens, with a 
 loose skin that hung in pouches of dirty wrinkles, and 
 a shock of grizzled hair which, as the village children 
 were wont to cry after her, resembled the nest of a 
 squirrel. Even then, after many years of captivity, 
 she spoke Malay with a strong Sakai accent, splitting 
 each word up into the individual syllables of which it 
 was composed ; and even when she told the history 
 of her life's tragedy she was far from fluent or eloquent. 
 By dint of making her tell me the story over and over 
 
 I 
 
13° TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 again, however, by asking countless questions, by fitting 
 what she said and what she hinted on to my own 
 knowledge of her fellow-tribesmen and their surround- 
 ings, I contrived to piece her tale together into some- 
 thing like a connected whole. For the rest, the Sakai 
 people of the upper Plus, into whose country duty 
 often took me in those days, told me their version of 
 the facts, not once but many times, as is the manner 
 of natives. Therefore I think it probable that in what 
 follows I have not strayed far from the truth. 
 
 The Sakai camp was pitched far up among the little 
 straying spurs of rising ground which wander off from 
 the mountains of the main range, and straggle out 
 into the valleys on either hand. In front of the camp 
 a tiny nameless stream tumbled its hurried waters 
 down the slope to the plain below. Across the slender 
 rivulet, and on every side as far as the straitened eye 
 could see, there rose forest, nothing but forest, crowd- 
 ing groups of giant trees, underwood twenty feet in 
 height, a tangled network of vines and creepers, the 
 whole as impenetrable as a quickset hedge. It had 
 been raining heavily earlier in the day, and now that 
 evening was closing in, each branch and twig and 
 leaf dripped slow drops of moisture persistently with 
 a melancholy sound as of nature weeping furtively. 
 The fires of the camp, smouldering sullenly above the 
 damp fuel, crackled and hissed their discontent, send- 
 ing wreaths of thick, blue smoke curling upward into 
 the still air in such dense volumes that the scarlet 
 of the flames was hardly visible even in the gloom of 
 gathering night. In the heavens, seen overhead through 
 the interlacing boughs, the sunlight still lingered, but 
 the sky looked wan and woe-begone, pale and sickly. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. 131 
 
 There were a score and a half of squalid creatures 
 occupying the little camp, men and women, and 
 children of various ages, all members of the down- 
 trodden aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula, creatures 
 melancholy and miserable, thoroughly in keeping with 
 the sodden, dreary gloom of their comfortless resting- 
 place. All the children, and some of the younger 
 women, were stark-naked, and the other inhabitants 
 of the camp wore no garment save a narrow strip of 
 bark-cloth twisted in a dirty wisp about their loins. 
 Up here in the hills it was intensely cold, for the rain 
 had chilled the forest lands with a dank rawness. 
 The rude shelters of leaves and branches, under which 
 the Sakai had sat huddled together while the pitiless 
 sky poured its waters upon them, had afforded no real 
 protection from the weather, and everything in the 
 camp was drenched and clammy. The Sakai squatted 
 on their heels, pressing closely one against the other, 
 with their toes in the grey ashes, as they edged in 
 nearer and nearer to the smoky fires. Every now and 
 again the teeth of one or another of them would start 
 chattering noisily, and several of the children whim- 
 pered and whined unceasingly. The women were 
 silent, but the men kept up a constant flow of dis- 
 jointed talk in queer, jerky monosyllables. Most of 
 the Sakai were covered from head to foot with a 
 leprous -looking skin -disease, bred by damp jungles 
 and poor diet ; and since the wet caused the irritation 
 to be excruciating, they tore at their skin with relent- 
 less finger-nails, like apes. The men smoked a green 
 shredded tobacco, soft and fragrant, rolled into rude 
 cigarettes with live leaves for their outer coating. A 
 few yams and jungle roots were baking themselves 
 black in the embers of the fires, and one or two fish, 
 
132 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 stuck in the cleft of a split stick, were roasting in the 
 centre of the clouds of smoke. 
 
 Of a sudden the stealthy tones of the men ceased 
 abruptly, and the women fell a-quieting the complain- 
 ing children with hurried maternal skill. All the folk 
 in the camp were straining their ears to listen. Any 
 one whose senses were less acute than those of the 
 Sakai would have heard no sound of any kind, save 
 only the tinkling babble of the little stream, and the 
 melancholy drip of the wet branches in the forest; 
 but, after a moment's silence, one of the elder men 
 spoke. 
 
 " 'Tis a man," he said, and a look of relief flitted 
 over the sad, timorous faces of his companions. Even 
 the Sakai, whose place is very near the bottom in the 
 scale of humanity, has his own notions of self-esteem, 
 and he only speaks of those of his own race as men; 
 all other human beings are gobs (strangers). 
 
 Presently a shrill cry, half scream, half hoot, such 
 as you might imagine to be the war-whoop of a Red 
 Indian, sounded from the forest about a quarter of 
 a mile down -stream. Even a European could have 
 heard this, so clear and penetrating was its note; 
 and he would have added that it was the cry of the 
 argus-pheasant. A Malay, well though he knows his 
 jungles, would have given the sound a similar inter- 
 pertation ; but the Sakai knew better. Their acute 
 perceptions could detect without difficulty the indefin- 
 able difference between the real cry of the bird and 
 this ingenious imitation, precisely similar though they 
 would have seemed to less sharpened senses; and a 
 moment later an argus-pheasant sent back an answer- 
 ing whoop from the centre of the fire over which the 
 old man who had spoken sat crouching. The yell 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. I33 
 
 was immediately answered from a hill -top a few 
 hundred yards up-stream, and the old fellow clicked 
 in his throat, like a demoralised clock-spring. It 
 was his way of laughing, for a wild bird had answered 
 his call. It had failed to detect the deception which 
 the Sakai could recognise so easily. 
 
 In about a quarter of an hour two young Sakai, 
 with blowpipes over their shoulders, rattan knapsacks 
 on their backs, and bamboo spears in their hands, 
 passed into the camp in single file. They emerged from 
 the forest like shadows cast upon a wall, flitting swiftly 
 on noiseless feet, and squatted down by the fire 
 without a word. They rolled cigarettes, lighted them 
 from a flaming firebrand, and fell to smoking them 
 in silence. Then the old man who had answered their 
 signal spoke a question in jerky monosyllables without 
 even glancing at them. The elder of the two new- 
 comers grunted a response, with his eyes still fixed 
 upon the smoky fire. 
 
 "The Gobs were at Legap, three, and three, and 
 three, many Gobs," he said. The Sakai's knowledge 
 of notation does not extend beyond the numeral three ; 
 a larger number than that must be expressed by kerp' n , 
 which means many. 
 
 " May they be devoured by a tiger ! " snarled the 
 old man. It is the worst curse of which the Sakai, 
 who fears his house-mate the tiger more than anything 
 on earth, has any conception. 
 
 "They are hunting," went on the youngest; 
 "hunting men, and To' Pangku Mud a and To' Stia 
 are with them." The speaker split up these Malay 
 names into monosyllables, suiting the sounds to the 
 disjointed articulation of his own people. 
 
 The listening Sakai grunted in chorus, in token 
 
134 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 of their dissatisfaction at the presence of these men 
 among their enemies. To' Pangku Muda was the 
 Malay chief of the village of Lasak, the last of the 
 civilised settlements on the banks of the Plus River. 
 His title in Malay means the Junior Lap, because he 
 is supposed to be in charge of the Sakai tribes, and 
 it is upon his knees that the childlike jungle -folk 
 are said to repose as an infant lies in the lap of its 
 mother. Malays have a fondness for picturesque no- 
 tions of this kind, though their attitude towards the 
 forest-dwellers has never been one of either gentleness 
 or protection. Although To' Pangku Muda was a 
 Muhammadan, he had, like most of the Malays of 
 the Plus Valley, a strong strain of Sakai in his blood, 
 and this made him formidable in the jungles when 
 he led the annual raiding- party in person. Moreover, 
 he was greatly feared, by Malays and Sakai alike, 
 for the knowledge of magic and the occult powers 
 which was attributed to him. 
 
 To' Stia, on the other hand, was a Sakai born and 
 bred, but he belonged to the tame tribes, who, in 
 order to save themselves and their women and children 
 from suffering worse things than usual, were accustomed 
 to throw in their lot with the Malays, and to aid them 
 in their slave-raids. The presence of these two men 
 with the party now upon the hunting-path boded ill 
 for the cowering creatures in the camp, for the Sakai's 
 only chance of escape on such occasions lies in his 
 sensitive hearing and in his superior knowledge of 
 wood-craft. But To' Pangku Muda and To' Stia, 
 as the Sakai knew full well, could fight the jungle- 
 dwellers with their own weapons. 
 
 The old Chief, Ka' (the Fish), who had taken the 
 lead in the conversation since the arrival of the scouts, 
 
THE FLIGHT. OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. I35 
 
 presently spoke again, still keeping his tired old eyes 
 fixed upon the smouldering embers. " By what sign 
 did ye learn that To' Pangku and To' Stia were at 
 hand ? " he asked. It was evident from his tone that 
 he was seeking comfort for himself and his fellows in 
 the hope that the young scouts might perhaps have been 
 mistaken. Laish (the Ant), the younger of the two 
 youths, who had until now sat by the fire in silence, 
 answered him promptly. 
 
 " We saw the track of the foot of To' Stia on the 
 little sand -bank below Legap, and knew it by the 
 twisted toe," he said. "Also, as we turned to leave 
 the place, seeking you others, the Familiar of To' 
 Pangku called from the jungle thence," and he indicated 
 the direction by pointing with the tip of his out- 
 stretched chin, as is the manner of his people. 
 
 The poor crouching wretches shuddered in unison 
 like a group of tree-tops when a puff of wind sets the 
 branches rustling. 
 
 " The Grandfather of Many Stripes ! " snarled Ka' 
 under his breath in an awed whisper. Every man and 
 woman present knew of the Familiar Spirit, which, 
 in the form of a tiger, followed its master To' Pangku 
 whithersoever he went, and even the little children 
 had learned to whimper miserably when their elders 
 spoke of the Grandfather of Many Stripes. 
 
 An old crone, shivering in her nakedness, beat her 
 long, pendulous breasts with palsied hands, and 
 whimpered plaintively " E I ke-non yeh, E ke-non yeh! 
 (Oh my child, my child !)," and a young girl who 
 squatted near her pressed softly up against her, seeking 
 to comfort her. The hard tears of extreme old age 
 oozed with difficulty from the eyes of the crone, as 
 she rocked her body restlessly, but the girl did not 
 
136 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 weep ; only her gaze sought that of Laish. She was 
 a pretty girl, in spite of the dirt and squalor which 
 disfigured her, with crisp wavy hair, and a shape 
 lithe and slim and graceful; but her face, which 
 should have been bright and laughing, wore the same 
 frightened, hunted expression as that which was to 
 be marked on the features of all the inhabitants of 
 this unhappy camp. 
 
 Laish seemed to swallow something hard in his 
 throat, before he turned to Ka' and said, " What 
 shall we do, Grandfather ? " 
 
 " Wait till dawn ; then shift camp, up-stream, always 
 up-stream," grunted the Chief. 
 
 The Sakai pressed in more closely than ever about 
 the fire, and the two scouts emptied the contents of 
 their rattan knapsacks on to a couple of large banana 
 leaves. Roots of many kinds were there, some sour 
 jungle-fruits, and a miscellaneous collection of nasti- 
 nesses, which Ka' divided among all the folk present 
 with extreme nicety. Food is so important to the 
 wild Sakai, who never in human memory have had 
 sufficient to eat, that the right of every member of 
 the tribe to have a proportionate share of his fellows' 
 gleanings is recognised by all ; and in time of stress, 
 if a cob of maize has to be shared by a dozen, the 
 starving creatures will eat the grain row by row, pass- 
 ing it from one to the other that each may have his 
 portion. 
 
 As the night wore on the Sakai settled themselves 
 to sleep in the hot, grey ashes of the fires, waking 
 at intervals to warm themselves afresh, to talk dis- 
 jointedly, and then once, more to stretch themselves 
 to rest. The younger men took it in turn to keep 
 watch in the tree-tops on the down-river side; but 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. 137 
 
 no attempt to disturb them was made by their enemies, 
 and at dawn they broke camp and once more started 
 on their weary journey towards the interior. It was 
 their object to throw the Malays off their track, so 
 they walked up the bed of the little brawling torrent, 
 swollen and muddy from the rain of the previous after- 
 noon, and took care never once to set foot on the banks 
 of the stream. It was miserable work, for the water 
 was cold as ice, and the rivulet's course was strewn 
 with ragged rocks, and hampered with fallen timber, 
 but the Sakai passed through all obstructions like 
 flitting shadows. They crept through incredibly narrow 
 places; they scrambled over piles of dry or rotten 
 timber, without breaking a twig or apparently leaving 
 a trace ; and they kept strictly to the bed of the stream 
 until it had nearly reached its source in the lower hills. 
 The men carried their arms, and most of their few 
 and poor possessions; and the women toiled along, 
 their backs bowed beneath the burden of their rattan 
 knapsacks, in which the little babies and carved bamboo- 
 boxes jostled rude cooking-pots and scraps of evil- 
 looking food. Children of more than two years old 
 fended for themselves, following deftly in the footsteps 
 of their elders, many of them even helping to carry 
 the property of the tribe. The oldest woman in the 
 camp, Sem-pak, the Durian, who had cried out in 
 her terror when To' Pangku's Familiar was named 
 by the scouts, tottered along on palsied feet, her lips 
 mumbling ceaselessly, her tired old head shaking from 
 side to side, her eyes restless and wild. She alone 
 carried no burden — it was all that she could do to keep 
 up with her fellows unhampered by a load ; but Te-U 
 (Running Water) her granddaughter, bore upon her 
 strong young shoulders a pack heavy enough for them 
 
I38 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 both, and on the march her hand was ever ready 
 to help the feeble steps of the older woman. Te-U, 
 had times been better, was to have been married to 
 Laish a few days earlier; but the camp had been 
 broken up hurriedly before the simple wedding cere- 
 monies could be completed, for the news of the slave- 
 raiders had driven all thought of anything less urgent 
 than the saving of life and liberty from the minds of 
 the harassed jungle-folk. In their own primitive way 
 these two half-savage people loved one another. Laish 
 was filled with fear for the girl more even than for 
 himself, and she looked to him for protection if the 
 worst came to the worst. Their attraction for one 
 another was strong, but, for the moment, the girl's 
 heart was really more occupied with her old grand- 
 mother than with her lover; and it never occurred 
 to Laish to offer to carry any portion of Te-U's burden, 
 nor did the girl expect him to make such a suggestion. 
 
 The long procession wound its way up the little 
 sinuous stream until the midday sun showed clearly 
 over their heads through the boughs and branches of 
 the trees. They all walked in the same manner, each 
 foot being placed exactly in front of its fellow, and 
 each man treading almost precisely in the footsteps of 
 the Sakai next in front of him. Experience must, in 
 some remote and forgotten past, have taught the 
 forest-dwellers that this is the best and quickest way 
 of threading a path through the jungle, and experience 
 has now become crystallised into an instinct, so that to- 
 day, even when walking in open country, the Sakai still 
 adopts this peculiar gait. You may mark a similar 
 peculiarity in the mode of progression of many wild 
 beasts whose lives have been passed in dense forests. 
 
 At last old Ka' halted, and his followers stood still 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. I39 
 
 in their tracks while he grunted out his orders. A 
 steep hill, some five hundred feet high, rose abruptly 
 on their right. It was covered with jungle through 
 which the eye could not penetrate for more than a few 
 yards ; but all the Sakai knew that its crest was a long 
 spur, or hog's back, which if followed would enable 
 them to pass into a river-basin separate from that up 
 which they had been toiling. By making their way 
 up the stream that they would then strike, they would 
 win to the borders of Pahang ; and when the raiders, 
 if they succeeded in picking up the carefully-veiled 
 trail, found that the fugitives had gone so far, it was 
 possible that they might be discouraged from further 
 pursuit, and might turn their attention to some other 
 band of wandering Sakai. The first thing, however, 
 was to conceal all traces of the route which Ka's party 
 had taken, and he therefore bade his people disperse, 
 breaking up into little knots of two or three, so that 
 no definite, well-defined trail might be left as a guide 
 to the pursuers. The Sakai were well versed in all 
 such tricks, and very few words and no explanations 
 were needed to make them understand what was 
 required of them. In the space of a few seconds the 
 little band of aborigines had broken up and melted 
 away into the forest as swiftly and as silently as a 
 bank of mist is dispersed by a puff of morning wind. 
 Laish attached himself to Te-U and old Sem-pak, 
 and the three, passing up-stream, presently began to 
 scale the steep side of the hill. The earth was black, 
 sodden, and slippery; the jungle was dense, and set 
 with the cruel thorn thickets which cover the slopes 
 of the interior; the gradient was like that of a 
 thatched roof; and the climb made even Laish pant 
 and catch his breath with difficulty, while old Sem-pak 
 
140 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 sobbed painfully, with a noise like that made by a 
 broken-winded horse. Up and up they scrambled, 
 leaving hardly any trace of their ascent, and with that 
 complete absence of sound to which only the beasts 
 of the forest and their fellows, the wild Sakai, can 
 ever attain. They never halted to take breath, but 
 attacked the hill as though it were an enemy whom 
 they were bent upon vanquishing, and at last the 
 summit showed clearly in front of them. Then Laish 
 stopped dead in his tracks, gazed ahead of him with 
 the rigidity of a pointer at work, and the next moment, 
 uttering an indescribable sound, half yell, half scream, 
 he was tumbling down the slope, bearing the two 
 women with him, rolling, falling, scrambling, heedless 
 of rending thorns and the rude blows of branches, 
 until they once more found themselves in the bed of 
 the stream from which they had started to make the 
 ascent. Old Sem-pak fell prone upon the ground, her 
 chest heaving as though it contained some living thing 
 which sought to make its escape, her eyes wild with 
 fear. At that moment the long-drawn moaning howl 
 of a tiger broke out upon the still air of the forest, 
 seemingly just above their heads, and the three Sakai 
 shuddered miserably, their teeth clattering with fear. 
 Laish had caught a glimpse of the great striped body 
 through the sparse jungle near the summit of the hill, 
 and this had been sufficient to send him floundering 
 down into the plain again. The three Sakai were 
 silent, listening intently. Again the howl broke out, 
 farther to the left this time, and it was quickly followed 
 by a scream that could only have been uttered by 
 human lips ; then again silence, it might be for a space 
 of fifteen seconds, — silence dreary, desolate, miserable, 
 during which the tap of a woodpecker could be dis- 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. 141 
 
 tinctly heard, while old Sem-pak's gasps and the 
 throbbing of the listeners' hearts seemed to make a 
 noise like the rhythmical beat of a drum. Then in an 
 instant the whole jungle seemed to have become filled 
 by all the devils in hell. Every member of the little 
 band was sounding the danger-yell, a shrill, far-carry- 
 ing cry, half hoot, half scream, in which the despair 
 of the miserable jungle-folk makes itself heard, calling 
 to the silent heavens and to unpitying man and beast 
 the tale of their thousand sorrows. Te-U and Laish 
 joined in the cry, but above the tumult could be heard 
 the angry, bestial growlings of the unseen tiger worry- 
 ing his prey. 
 
 Presently the frightened Sakai, still screaming as 
 though in the sound they sought protection from the 
 dangers of their surroundings, began to force their 
 way out of the forest, and to cluster together in a 
 trembling, shuddering crowd in the bed of the stream. 
 One of their number, Pie (the Fruit), and the two 
 small children whom she had been carrying in the 
 knapsack slung upon her back, were missing, and 
 the man who had been her husband, staring frightfully 
 with protruding eyes, was making strange clicking 
 noises in his throat, which is the only way in which 
 the male Sakai finds it possible to express deep 
 emotion. Gradually the band was stilled into silence, 
 and sat listening spell-bound to the growlings of the 
 tiger. Then Ka' spoke. 
 
 "'Tis the cursed one," he said. '"Tis he that 
 followeth ever at the heels of To' Pangku. I beheld 
 his navel, yellow and round and swollen; it hath its 
 place in his throat. Because I beheld it he dared not 
 touch me, and he passed by and took Pie and the 
 little ones, her children. Come, my brothers, let us 
 
142 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 cry aloud that we have beheld his navel, and he, being 
 ashamed, will seek safety in flight." 
 
 The men rose to their feet, and taking their time 
 from Ka', raised a cry in chorus imparting the 
 anatomical information in question to the growling 
 monster on the ridge. They made so goodly a noise 
 that for the moment the snarling of the beast was 
 drowned by it; but when they paused to listen, it 
 was heard as distinctly as before. 
 
 " 'Tis the accursed beast of magic," cried Ka', " else, 
 surely, had a great shame overcome him." 
 
 The unabashed tiger continued to snarl and growl 
 over its victims high above the Sakai's heads on the 
 brow of the hog's back. 
 
 " Come, let us cry to him once more," said Ka' to 
 his fellows ; and once again they raised a shrill shout 
 that carried far and wide through the forest, repeat- 
 ing the curious information which they had already, 
 though to no purpose, imparted to the beast. Malays 
 and Sakai alike believe that the tiger is very sensitive 
 upon this subject, and that he will fly before the face 
 of any man who possesses the necessary knowledge of 
 his anatomy. The native theory inclines to the belief 
 that the tiger's navel is located in his neck, and you 
 may search the body of one of these monsters most 
 minutely without finding anything to disprove, or to 
 prove, the notion. 
 
 A third time the Sakai raised their shout, and when 
 they relapsed into silence the tiger had ceased his 
 angry growls ; but another sound, faint and far, came 
 from the direction of the lower reaches of the stream 
 up which the tribe had been toiling. It was like the 
 roar of a rapid, only broader, coarser, gruffer, and 
 when they heard it the heartstrings of the Sakai 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. I43 
 
 tightened painfully, for it recalled to them the 
 memory of a danger which for a moment had well- 
 nigh passed out of their consciousness. It was the 
 sorak, the war-cry of the Malays. The raiders were 
 on their trail, and were pressing up the little stream 
 in pursuit. The yells which the fugitives had been 
 uttering would serve to guide them, and there would 
 be no need for the slow tracking which delays the 
 hunter and gives the quarry his best chance of escape. 
 In their flight from the Familiar of To' Pangku, for 
 such they firmly believed the tiger to be, the Sakai 
 had trampled down the thorn thickets recklessly, and 
 even a European would have found no difficulty in 
 reading the tale which the hasty footmarks told so 
 plainly. 
 
 Ka' called to his people to follow him, and turning 
 his back upon the ascent in front of him, for none 
 dared again face the fury of the Familiar, he plunged 
 into the jungle, worming a way through the packed 
 tree-trunks and the dense undergrowths with incredible 
 speed and deftness. Ka' went at a kind of jog-trot, 
 steady, swift, but careful and unhurried, and his people, 
 young and old, streamed along at his heels adopting 
 the same nimble gait. They were travelling now far 
 faster than any Malay could hope to do through 
 virgin forest ; but they were leaving a trail behind 
 them that any child could follow, and in their passage 
 they were practically clearing a path for the use of 
 their enemies. All day they kept on steadily, only 
 halting now and again for a brief breathing-space when 
 old Sem-pak, overweighted with the load of her 
 seventy years, could no longer keep the same pace 
 as her fellows. At first the sdrak was heard once or 
 twice, still indistinct and very distant, but after the 
 
144 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 first half-hour all human sounds ceased, and nothing 
 was audible save the beast-noises of the surrounding 
 forest. The fugitives had thrown down most of their 
 loads, and now travelled burdened by little save their 
 babies and their weapons : when life is in danger, the 
 value of property sinks into insignificance. Their 
 faces all wore the same expression, tense, fearful, 
 strained, and their eyes were wild, savage, hunted, and 
 filled to their brims with a great fear. Even their 
 movements, and the light touch of their feet upon the 
 ground, betokened that all their muscles were braced 
 for instant flight at the first sign of danger. 
 
 At about three o'clock in the afternoon the heavens 
 opened and the drenching tropical rain fell in sheets 
 of glistening water. But still the Sakai continued 
 their march, pressing resolutely forward, they knew 
 not whither, into jungle-depths which even to them 
 were untrodden lands. They had no objective in 
 sight now ; their one idea was to get away, away from 
 the Malays, from captivity and from death. 
 
 As dusk began to gather the rain ceased, and Ka' 
 cried to his fellows that they must halt for the night. 
 The moon was in its last quarter, and the blackness 
 of the jungle was too absolute for even the Sakai to 
 force a way through the thickets when darkness had 
 fallen upon the land. Not daring to kindle a fire, lest 
 the light should serve as a guide to their pursuers, 
 they squatted in a draggled, woe-begone group, seeking 
 warmth and comfort by physical contact with one 
 another. They were miserably cold; they had eaten 
 nothing since the morning, and they had but a few 
 blackened yams and roots between them with which 
 to assuage their hunger ; their mops of frowsy hair 
 were soaked with rain-water, and their bodies itched 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. I45 
 
 distractingly. But all physical discomforts were 
 forgotten in the desperate agony of the fear which 
 wrung their hearts. 
 
 Shortly after midnight they all awoke suddenly. 
 They had been sleeping in sitting attitudes, with their 
 knees drawn up to their chins, and their heads nodding 
 above them. They spoke no word, but they listened 
 breathlessly. The yowling moan of a tiger was sound- 
 ing about half a mile away to the south. Nearer and 
 nearer came the brute, moaning, howling, drawing out 
 each blood-curdling note with a wanton delight in its 
 own unmusical song. The Sakai cowered miserably, 
 and drew nearer still to one another. For more than 
 half an hour they sat thus in utter silence, while the 
 tiger approached slowly, surely, till presently it ap- 
 peared to be calling from the jungle within a few yards 
 of the quaking wretches. Now it seemed to make a 
 complete circle of the camp, yowling cruelly. Again 
 and again it prowled about and about the shivering 
 creatures, as though herding them ; but they could see 
 nothing through the intense darkness, and the complete 
 loss of the sense of sight served to quicken even their 
 rudimentary imaginations into the conception of a 
 thousand nameless terrors. An hour later the tiger 
 seemed to draw off a little, and then the jungle- 
 people, who had been too intent upon the beast to 
 spare a thought for any other danger, became aware 
 that human beings were in their vicinity. How they 
 knew this it would be impossible to explain : the in- 
 stinct of the wild tribes is as unerring as that of many 
 animals, and they felt rather than heard or perceived 
 through any of their ordinary senses the proximity of 
 their enemies. 
 
 Noiselessly then the Sakai, men and women alike, 
 
 K 
 
146 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 fell to drawing clear from the underwood the long lines 
 of green rattan which grow in such profusion in all the 
 jungles of the Peninsula. These they twisted into 
 great coils the size of large cart-wheels, and the young 
 men of the tribe, some seven or eight in all, with Laish 
 among them, began swarming into the nearest trees. 
 They had gathered and prepared the rattans in ab- 
 solute darkness, guided only by their sense of touch, 
 and the men now climbed unseeing into the impene- 
 trable blackness of the night. Their instinct had told 
 the forest-people not only that their enemies were at 
 hand, but also that the camp had been surrounded by 
 them. They knew that the Malays would not attack 
 them until just before the dawn, therefore it was their 
 object to escape, if they might do so, before daylight 
 came to the earth. 
 
 The Sakai can walk up the bare trunk of a tree with 
 as much ease as you can walk up the door-steps of 
 your house, and when once fairly among the branches 
 they are thoroughly at home. The young men, accord- 
 ingly, had no difficulty in ascending into the tree-tops, 
 and then, swinging themselves lightly from bough to 
 bough, they began to bridge the more difficult places 
 with the lines of rattan, making them fast at each end. 
 In this manner before three quarters of an hour had 
 elapsed they had constructed a path of tight-ropes 
 some fifty yards in length, and had passed over the 
 heads of the Malays who lay encamped all around. 
 Then the young men returned to the Sakai, and gave 
 the word for the start. Old Ka' leading, the long line 
 of jungle-folk climbed slowly into the tree-tops, all 
 treading lightly without making a sound, the anxious 
 mothers striving to still the babies which they bore 
 in their bosoms, Deftly they picked their way through 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. 147 
 
 the pitchy darkness, treading shrewdly on the slender 
 lines of rattan, and for some twenty yards all went 
 well with them. Then one of the babies whimpered 
 plaintively, and at the sound the jungle in front and 
 below them broke into a tumult of familiar yells, and 
 they knew that those of the raiders who belonged to 
 their own race had discovered their attempt at escape, 
 and were doing their best to head the fugitives back 
 and to warn the sleepy Malays. 
 
 Presently old Ka' saw the mop heads of half-a-dozen 
 tame Sakai spring into prominence against the dim 
 sky. His enemies had swarmed up into a tree-top not 
 twenty feet away from him, and were in possession of 
 the other end of the rattan-line upon which his feet 
 were treading. A voice, which he knew to belong to 
 To' Stia of the twisted toe, cried hurriedly "Ok i-odz 
 (give me a knife) ; " and some one in the darkness # 
 grunted " Kod (take it)." At this Ka', screaming a 
 warning to his fellows, turned deftly in mid-air and 
 headed back for the tree from which he had set out. 
 Involuntarily he looked down into the abyss of im- 
 penetrable darkness at his feet, into the fathomless ob- 
 scurity on either hand, and even his eyes, gifted with 
 the marvellous sight of the jungle -folk, could see 
 nothing. A man and two women, the latter bearing 
 little children in their bosoms, had turned to fly when 
 Ka' gave the warning cry, but they were feeling their 
 way along the rattan by the aid of no other sense save 
 that of touch, and even in their panic their movements 
 were slow and cautious. All this happened in the 
 space of a few seconds, and then the rattan jerked 
 sickeningly under the blow of a heavy wood-knife. 
 Another blow, and the brawny creeper groaned like a 
 sentient thing in pain ; a third, and it parted with an 
 
148 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 awful suddenness, and Ka' and the two women were 
 precipitated from a height of nearly eighty feet into the 
 unseen forest below, the man who had been immedi- 
 ately in front of them having just had time to save 
 himself by clutching the branches of the tree to which 
 the nearer end of the rattan was made fast. Old Ka' 
 gave vent to an appalling yell, into which was com- 
 pressed all the passionate despair of his long lifetime 
 and of his down-trodden unhappy race. Each of the 
 women, as she felt her foothold give way beneath 
 her, screamed shrilly sudden abrupt cries which ceased 
 with a jerk as of the breath caught sharply. For 
 the space of a second or so there was silence, and 
 then the crashing sound of heavy bodies falling head- 
 long through leaves and branches, and three thudding 
 sounds, distinct but almost simultaneous, were suc- 
 ceeded by a few low groans far below in the dim 
 darkness. The tame Sakai yelled their triumph to 
 the Malays, and the latter answered with the sorak. 
 Ka's people, sick with the horror of what they had 
 heard and trembling with fear, made their way back 
 to the spot where they had sat encamped all night, 
 and huddled up against one another quaking miser- 
 ably, waiting in dumb despair for the dawn and for 
 death. 
 
 So soon as the slow daylight began to make itself 
 felt in the obscurity of the forest, investing the 
 watchers, as it seemed, with a new and wonderful gift 
 of sight, the hunting-party began to close in around its 
 quarry. One or two of the younger Malays who 
 carried muskets fired a few shots into the thick of 
 their victims, with the object of frightening the last 
 atom of fight out of them, and old Sem-pak rolled over 
 on her back, with her thin knees drawn up against her 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK. T49 
 
 breast, jerking spasmodically. With a cry of pain and 
 despair Te-U threw herself across the old woman's 
 body, calling to her frantically by name, and seemingly 
 trying to pet and coax her back into life by tender 
 words and gentle caresses. Then the raiders rushed 
 into the camp, and for a moment or two all was 
 noise and confusion. The Sakai broke like a herd of 
 frightened deer ; a goodly number made their escape, 
 but Laish was killed with his spear in his hand as 
 he fought to shelter Te-U, who saw him fling away 
 his life in a vain attempt to save her, and felt the 
 cup of her bitterness to be filled to overflowing. In 
 all, the raiders captured Te-U and four other young 
 women, half-a-dozen children, and two young men. It 
 was an unexpectedly successful expedition, and the 
 hunting-party returned to Lasak in great spirits, for 
 slave-chasing was not much to their taste, and with so 
 large a crowd of captives in hand they would not, they 
 knew, find it necessary to make another raid for at 
 least a couple of years to come. 
 
 To' Pangku's oath of fealty to the Sultan of P6rak 
 bound him in those days (and until some thirty 
 years ago) to bring a raft, loaded with jungle-pro- 
 duce, as an offering to his king once every year ; and 
 one of the items of his tribute was a Sakai man 
 and woman, or, failing that, two elephant-tusks of 
 approved weight. The latter were not always easy 
 to procure, so it was more usual to sacrifice the life- 
 long happiness of a couple of human beings. Te-U 
 and a youth named Gaur (the Pig) were selected for 
 the first year's offering, and accordingly they presently 
 found themselves lying on the great raft, bound hand 
 and foot, floating slowly into a land of which they had 
 not dreamed, in company with the jungle-produce and 
 
150 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 the stores of rice and food which have won for the 
 Plus Valley the name of the Rice-pot of the King. 
 
 The remainder of their days was spent in captivity 
 among the people of an alien race, who despised them 
 heartily; but, perhaps, the fullest measure of their 
 sufferings was the aching longing for the jungle, for 
 the wild freedom of the forest-dwellers' life, the life 
 that they were destined never to live again. 
 
 Such was the tale that Kreting, the old Sakai slave- 
 woman, told to me that afternoon long ago as she sat 
 angling for tiny fish on the banks of the Perak River 
 near Sayong. Her kinsmen of the Sakai country all 
 remembered the incidents of her capture and still spoke 
 to me of her as Te-U (Running Water), a name which 
 made the sad-eyed old woman weep most pitifully 
 when, after the lapse of many years, she heard it 
 spoken by my lips together with some broken phrases 
 of her mother-tongue. 
 
CAST" 
 
"CAST." 
 
 T^HE recollection of my earliest impressions con- 
 cerning him is still fresh in my mind. From 
 the moment of our entry into the troubled land one 
 name — the name of Simon Strange, of "Tuan Streng," 
 as the natives called him — had been dinned into our 
 ears with insistent reiteration. We were bored to 
 death by the constant repetition. There seemed to be, 
 in all that wilderness, no soul capable of framing a 
 single sentence in which reference to Simon Strange 
 did not occupy a place. The Chiefs who paid us 
 courtly visits of ceremony to assure us of their loyalty 
 to the alien Power for which we stood — a "loyalty," 
 by the way, which was something curiously like 
 treachery to their own people, and which even the 
 simplest-hearted among us viewed with acute suspicion 
 — invariably introduced themselves as being numbered 
 in the tale of those whom " Tuan Streng " valued and 
 trusted and loved. This bare and unsupported state- 
 ment was evidently regarded by them as an all-sufficing 
 certificate of character, and as a sure key to our own 
 respect, confidence, and affection. 
 
154 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 At those excruciating interviews to which we were 
 subjected by these local potentates, we groaned in 
 spirit whenever Simon Strange, his opinions, customs, 
 predilections, actions, words were quoted to us by our 
 visitors. The Chiefs would sit glaring at us in 
 funereal silence for hours at a time, occasionally 
 punctuating the long embarassing pauses by slow 
 trickles of speech. They emitted their words as 
 grudgingly as drops of water are squeezed from a dry 
 sponge, but as surely as they found voice to speak so 
 surely did they harp upon the one inevitable topic — 
 Tuan Streng. The village headmen who wandered 
 into camp with long tangled tales upon their lips— the 
 hopeless irrelevancies and the panic -born rumours 
 which these worthy folk dignified by the name of 
 "information" — always called loudly upon "Tuan 
 Streng " and upon Allah and His Prophet to witness 
 that they did not lie, and wound up their most 
 palpably incredible statements by declaring roundly 
 that if only one or another of the above-mentioned 
 authorities were in camp their precious news would 
 find instant belief. 
 
 All the brown men, women, and children, who 
 straggled in to us from the mysterious unknown forest 
 country that girt us about, began by asking whether 
 "Tuan Streng" was with us, and expressed their dis- 
 appointment with undisguised and unflattering frank- 
 ness when they learned that they were expected to 
 have dealings with our own unworthy selves. Not a 
 few of them, when the absence of the popular hero 
 was made known, declined absolutely to hold any 
 intercourse with meaner folk than he, and retired in- 
 continently into the wilderness which had spewed 
 them forth. One hoary old ruffian, who had as his 
 
" CAST." 155 
 
 " tail " a following of some of the most sinister-looking 
 and elaborately armed cut-throats that I had ever 
 seen, spat on the ground in the most unblushing 
 fashion in token of his disgust when it was suggested 
 to him that he should transfer his allegiance to us as 
 the friends of the absentee. That was not to be 
 thought of, he said. He and "Tuan Streng" were 
 brothers dunia dkhirat — through time and eternity — a 
 relationship which, I confess, did not move me to 
 envy the unknown Strange. The old fellow also 
 mentioned that his " brother " was not a mere common 
 white man, but a person of distinction, who, moreover, 
 stood possessed of various useful and unusual qualities 
 entitling him to honour. For instance, he was in- 
 vulnerable, could foretell events, and was in close 
 league with the Hantu Utan — the Jungle Demon — a 
 serviceable spirit, it would appear, by whose aid 
 Strange was reputed to be able to cover vast distances 
 on foot in inconceivably short spaces of time. Viewed 
 as samples of local superstition these fragments of 
 modern folk-lore might have a certain interest, but 
 long ere this I, and the other youngsters with the 
 punitive expedition, had learned to cherish a deadly 
 hatred of Simon Strange, the man whom none of us 
 had ever met, from out the shadow of whose haunting 
 personality it yet seemed impossible to emerge. 
 
 And the thing that irked us most was that the 
 leaders of our expedition appeared to have become 
 the thralls of the prevailing possession. It had been 
 understood amongst us that we had been hurried up 
 into the district in which we then lay in order to 
 relieve Strange's stockade, where, with a couple of 
 white men and a handful of Indian soldiers, he had 
 been offering a stubborn resistance to certain hostile 
 
156 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 tribes who had maintained a close investment of the 
 position during several precarious weeks. Why then, 
 we asked, did we not push ahead quickly, and give the 
 beggars the licking they were spoiling for ? After the 
 manner of our kind, we, the young and ardent 
 members of the expedition, had long ago decided that 
 our leaders were " a pack of old women," and this 
 prolonged inaction proved to us the soundness of our 
 immature judgment. We were obliged to keep our 
 opinions more or less to ourselves, but none the less 
 we asked questions. And the answers were always 
 the same. " We must wait for Simon Strange. 
 Strange thinks that we had better not advance yet 
 awhile. Strange thinks that the job can be done more 
 thoroughly if we wait till he gets through to us. 
 Simon Strange says that he can keep his end up all 
 right till the cows come home, so there is nothing to 
 be gained by hurrying matters for a bit. We must 
 wait for Simon Strange, or at any rate until he gives 
 us the route," and much more to a like purpose. 
 
 Could anything be more unsatisfactory, galling, or 
 humiliating ? Here we were, a big, well-equipped force, 
 within "shouting-distance" (as we termed it) of an 
 insolently rebellious population of Asiatics, kicking 
 our heels in dishonourable inactivity while we calmly 
 awaited the coming of the very man to effect whose 
 rescue we had gone upon the war-path! And here 
 were our leaders — men grown old in native warfare, 
 and childish in our irreverent estimation — hanging fire 
 in this ignoble fashion in order that a mere political 
 officer — a civilian, a pekin — might make his way across 
 the danger-zone, and be so obliging, if you please, as 
 to teach us military men how to manage our own 
 particular pidjin ! Can it wondered at if young blood 
 
" CAST." 157 
 
 and hot heads waxed rebellious, if we grumbled 
 furiously among ourselves, and cursed the unknown 
 Simon by every god in the Mythologies? 
 
 Looking out upon the enemy's country from the 
 hill-top upon which our camp was pitched, you could 
 see absolutely nothing except the white-hot sky above 
 — empty save for a solitary kite hanging almost 
 motionless in the still air— and a wide expanse of 
 forest, spreading before and below us, like a great 
 sea of blues and greens blurred and misty in the heat- 
 haze. A big horseshoe range of mountains, their 
 jungle-clad slopes an ethereal azure in the distance, 
 encircled the plain, which here and there was inter- 
 sected by bold dykes of rolling hill-spurs of a deeper 
 tint, those nearest to us resembling giant cauliflowers, 
 since upon their flanks the broken curves of the tree- 
 tops were clearly visible. Now and again the intense 
 sunlight flashed upon a half-hidden reach of river, and 
 at eventide in certain places thin columns of smoke 
 arose marking the existence of villages. But the little 
 we could see — this baffling wilderness of forest, hill, 
 and river — represented practically the sum total of 
 our knowledge concerning the country in which we 
 were about to operate ; and the enemy against whom 
 we were to be pitted was notoriously cunning, passion- 
 ately fond of a stolen fight and a merciless ambush, 
 was skilled beyond aught else in woodcraft, and 
 possessed the tremendous advantage of knowing every 
 inch of the ground. All that, to the younger members 
 of our party, gave the expedition its peculiar fascina- 
 tion. The very difficulties elevated the whole affair 
 into an adventure, a romance. But it was an appreci- 
 ation of these very facts that gave our seniors pause. 
 On our side we said, " Let us explore. Let us organise 
 
158 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 our own intelligence department. Let us trust to the 
 almighty luck of the British Army, and lose no time 
 in giving the rebels a lesson." We were wild to 
 plunge headlong into the Unknown, to splash about 
 for ourselves, to pick up our knowledge of the lie of 
 the land, political and geographical, as we went along 
 — as we needed it. The supreme recklessness which 
 is born of the energy and sublime self-confidence of 
 youth was ours. We jibbed violently against the 
 decrees of our more prudent elders ; but ever the 
 answer came, " Wait for Simon Strange. Strange 
 knows the country like the palm of his hand. If it 
 is possible for a man to get through to us Strange 
 will come. We must sit tight and wait for Simon 
 Strange." 
 
 Concerning the petty local politics of the region we 
 were as ignorant as we were of its geography. Few 
 men in Asia bother their heads about the inter-ravel 
 of tribal complications beyond their immediate sphere 
 of action — the intrigues and counter-intrigues, the 
 family feuds, jealousies, rivalries, relationships, alli- 
 ances, the little ignoble incentives which move men 
 to do or leave undone the hundred and one things 
 which taken together make up the welter of ugly 
 political passions in which the little native States 
 wallow everlastingly. Least of all do men concern 
 themselves with the personal element which enters so 
 largely into these matters — with the characters of the 
 insignificant chieftains and their advisers, men who 
 bulk so big in these microscopic worlds. It is known 
 vaguely that it is the business of some one or another 
 to keep his eye glued to such trivialities, so that when 
 of a sudden a thorough understanding of them becomes 
 an affair of importance the wheels of the greatest 
 
" CAST." 159 
 
 administration in the world may not be stayed or 
 hindered. But men are none too plentiful in Asia — 
 " the grim stepmother of our kind," who uses up her 
 foster-children all too fast; wherefore such special 
 information is often locked away inside one man's 
 brain, and when the moment comes for utilising his 
 knowledge that man for a little space becomes that 
 least common of objects, a man who is indispensable. 
 An appreciation of this fact was doubtless in the mind 
 of our leaders, but they did not condescend to enter 
 into explanations with us. They contented themselves 
 with bidding us wait for Simon Strange, vying with 
 the natives, meanwhile, in lauding him as a person 
 of exceptional endowments. We — I use the pronoun 
 to indicate us youngsters, the fiery and untamed but 
 withal impotent mutineers in the camp — were inclined 
 to despise native politics, and to think only of the 
 glorious rough-and-tumble that awaited us in the 
 valley below, from which we were withheld in the 
 name of Simon Strange. This was the alpha and 
 omega, the base and the pinnacle of the edifice of his 
 offending, and the chorus of extravagant praise which 
 white men and natives around us combined to chant 
 in the fellow's honour made us positively sick. 
 
 We held an indignation meeting one afternoon when 
 the game of " tip-and-run," with which we were wont 
 to solace ourselves during the cool hours before the 
 gloaming, was over. The sun had gone to bed behind 
 the range of western mountains, and the sky was one 
 glory of wonderful crimsons and mauves, with here 
 and there a dash of vivid scarlet, an inlet of ethereal 
 azure, or a delicate streak of opalescent tints. The 
 hills stood out against the brilliant background, look- 
 ing incredibly close at hand and painted an even 
 
l6o TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Prussian blue; the valley, lighted up by the glow in 
 the heavens, was greener than an emerald; and we 
 hated the whole scene with fierce hatred, because we 
 longed to be up and doing, and the mysterious Simon 
 Strange held us in bondage. 
 
 "Old Mark -Time" — this was the nickname by 
 which our Commanding Officer was irreverently known 
 among us — " talks of the chap as though he was a 
 little tin god," growled one of us. 
 
 "For my part, I am full of sympathy with the 
 Athenian citizen who was weary of hearing Aristides 
 called 'the Just,'" said I. 
 
 " I am growing sceptical about the fellow's exist- 
 ence," chimed in another youngster. " I believe he's 
 a myth — a sort of official Mrs Harris. ' I don't believe 
 there's no sich a person ! ' " 
 
 And then, out of the gathering shadows, two tattered 
 scallawags emerged suddenly. "We be men who are 
 of the following of Tuan Streng," said one of them, 
 and from somewhere in the foul rag with which his 
 long, lank hair was bound he produced a soiled and 
 crumpled piece of paper. " This is a letter," he 
 remarked in placid explanation of the obvious. 
 
 " Mrs Harris has materialised sufficiently to write 
 a letter anyhow," I said, and we bore the note off to 
 old " Mark-Time." 
 
 He and the Second-in-Command read its blurred 
 pencilling with anxious eyes, and we all hovered 
 around expectant and excited. The letter was not 
 for us, however, and though its arrival was an event, 
 in that it broke the monotony of our life, and proved 
 that Simon Strange was not a mere figment of old 
 " Mark-Time's " imagination, we were cynically con- 
 vinced that it would only lead to further maddening 
 
" CAST." l6l 
 
 delays. In the meantime we fell to questioning the 
 messengers, and for men who had thought themselves 
 capable of organising a working intelligence depart- 
 ment unaided, the results which we obtained were not 
 inspiring. There could be no doubt as to the loyalty 
 of these natives, for they had come through the enemy's 
 country at the risk of their lives. They were ready 
 and anxious to put us in possession of all the infor- 
 mation which we needed, but their limitations, and 
 perhaps our own, made this a matter of difficulty. 
 They could tell us, of course, that Strange was still 
 holding out, that there seemed to be a sufficiency of 
 supplies in the beleaguered stockade, and that the 
 country lying between us and our goal was in the 
 hands of the enemy, but when it came to details we 
 soon found ourselves hopelessly at sea. What in the 
 wide world, we asked one another, was a sane man 
 to gather from such statements as these : that from 
 one place, which we had never heard of, to another, 
 whose name was altogether unpronounceable, the dis- 
 tance was such that a man, bearing no burden, who 
 started before the flies were on the wing, would arrive 
 at the hour when the kine go down to water; that 
 two other villages with impossible titles were divided 
 from one another by a distance such as a man might 
 cover during the mastication of a quid of betel-nut ; 
 that the pools in the main river, which might have to 
 be bridged or forded, were as deep as a basketful of 
 fishing-lines uncoiled; that one chief was a "file" 
 and another "a head of wind"; that the forces of 
 the enemy were as numerous as the ears of rice in a 
 field ploughed by one yoke of oxen, or perhaps by 
 one yoke and a half? The two messengers disputed 
 warmly as to the precise reply to be given to each of 
 
 L 
 
l62 TALES OF "THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 our questions, and only arrived at answers such as 
 the above after a painstaking effort to ensure mathe- 
 matical accuracy. We laughed feebly, and confessed 
 ourselves beaten. It seemed to us that we had come 
 into a country in which all matters of topography were 
 questions of pure speculation; in which the measure- 
 ment of distance was altogether arbitrary, depending 
 upon the imagination of the individual, and upon a 
 set of picturesque but meaningless phrases ; a land in 
 which arithmetic ceased to be numbered among the 
 exact sciences ; in which every practical thing in life 
 had become nebulous, baffling, and unspeakably ex- 
 asperating. At the mess-table that night old " Mark- 
 Time " and the Second-in-Command were jubilant. 
 They confidently predicted the speedy arrival of Simon 
 Strange, were lavish in their encomiums of his energy, 
 pluck, extraordinarily intimate knowledge of the people 
 and the country, and loud in their self-congratulations, 
 in that they had done wisely to curb a very natural 
 impatience, and to await his coming. We youngsters 
 listened submissively, with our tongues in our cheeks, 
 now and again exchanging furtive winks ; but I think 
 it was beginning to dawn upon some of us that old 
 " Mark-Time," had been right, and that there is truth 
 in Whewell's saying that we are none of us infallible, 
 not even the youngest. 
 
 And then at last, after a further day or two of 
 waiting, Simon Strange came. 
 
163 
 
 II. 
 
 The manner of his coming was in this wise. There 
 was no parade that morning, and we were all assembled 
 in the rickety mess-hut, eating our chota hazri, sitting 
 on empty packing-cases, smoking and swapping lies, 
 as was our custom on such occasions. The sentries 
 had reported that the sound of firing had been heard 
 during the night from one or two of the villages lying 
 directly below our hill, and I had been called before 
 the dawn to look at a number of bonfires which had 
 been lighted up and down the valley. We did not 
 know what these things might portend. We were 
 rather shy of jumping to conclusions concerning the 
 meaning of anything in this mysterious country since 
 our humiliating experiences on the evening when we 
 had tried to pump the men who had brought in 
 Strange's letter. Still, it looked as though things were 
 moving at last, and we were filled with hope that the 
 enemy had made up his mind to attack us, since we 
 showed no signs of assuming the offensive on our own 
 account. That the rebels would be guilty of an act of 
 madness if they made any such attempt was of course 
 obvious, but, the wish being father to the thought, we 
 convicted our foemen of insanity quite light-heartedly 
 and with complete satisfaction to ourselves. 
 
 While we were discussing this aspect of affairs, 
 suddenly a white man marched into the hut. He was 
 a very tall, fine-run young fellow, broad of shoulder, 
 deep of chest, lithe and active as a cat, and blessed 
 with one of the longest, leanest, and most serviceable 
 pairs of legs that a man ever owned. He wore a big 
 
164 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 felt hat, a grey flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, 
 and with its sleeves rolled up above the elbow, a broad 
 leather belt, supporting a holstered revolver and count- 
 less pouches, a pair of discoloured jungle pants, small 
 anklet gaiters, and light canvas shoes. He was tattered 
 and stained with mud, and he was dripping wet from 
 head to heel. Our attention was chiefly claimed, how- 
 ever, by the burden which he bore upon his back, under 
 the weight of which his square shoulders were bowed. 
 It was wrapped in an old and much-soiled native 
 cloth of many colours, and from it emerged two 
 skinny brown arms which were clamped throttlingly 
 around the white man's throat, and two thin brown 
 shanks which dangled limply, one on either side of 
 his hips. 
 
 The new-comer stood for an instant framed in the 
 low doorway of the hut, nodded to us casually, said 
 " Good morning," as though,, having parted from us 
 all on the preceding evening, this meeting was a thing 
 of course, and then, stepping lightly to the only chair 
 which the mess possessed, unshipped his burden skil- 
 fully, and laid it down very softly in the sag of the 
 canvas. The burden gave vent to a low groan, and 
 some unintelligible words in the vernacular broke from 
 it, and were answered by the stranger in the same 
 tongue. Then we noticed that the stains on the cloth 
 in which the native had been slung were great black 
 patches of blood, and, as we watched, these began to 
 spread impartially over the immaculate canvas of the 
 chair. Now this chair, the property of old " Mark- 
 Time," was at once the dearest of his possessions and 
 the only thing whose profanation could move that slow 
 man to wrath ; yet, wonderful to relate, there was no 
 note of anger in the Commanding Officer's voice as 
 
"CAST." 165 
 
 he started up from his seat at the table and cried, 
 "Strange!" 
 
 " How do you do ? " said the new-comer, without 
 even looking up from his task of disposing the limbs 
 of his protege in an attitude of greater comfort. " I 
 suppose one of you chaps is a doctor, eh ? " 
 
 Manwering, our little " Pills," stepped forward. 
 
 " Oh, you are a doctor, are you ? That's all right. 
 Look here. This fellow of mine has been shot through 
 the thigh. No bones broken or arteries cut, I fancy, 
 but he has had time to get stiff, and is in pretty bad 
 pain. Will you just see what you can do for him ? " 
 
 Manwering examined the man's wound tentatively 
 without removing the handkerchiefs with which it was 
 bandaged. " We must get him carried to the hospital. 
 Wait a minute and I'll call " 
 
 "That's all right. You show the way," said the 
 new-comer, lifting the man in his arms firmly but very 
 tenderly, and, without sparing us so much as another 
 look, he carried his patient out of the mess-hut at the 
 doctor's heels. It was very pitiful to see the expression 
 with which the injured brown man looked up into the 
 face of the youngster who stooped above him, bending 
 slightly under the weight of his burden. The native's 
 eyes had in them just that pathetic trustfulness which 
 is to be seen in the eyes of a dog whose master is try- 
 ing to do what he can to relieve its sufferings. I think 
 that in that hour I began to understand something of 
 the secret of the power which Simon Strange exercised 
 over the native population of this wilderness, some- 
 thing of the reasons for the devotion which he inspired, 
 and for the strong appeal which he made to the imagin- 
 ations of his primitive people. 
 
 " So that is the great Strange ! " said one of us when 
 
l66 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 he had disappeared. " He's a pretty substantial myth, 
 anyway." 
 
 Old " Mark - Time " was looking rather ruefully at 
 the stains upon the chair-canvas, and I fancy that he 
 was not best pleased at the discovery that a wounded 
 native seemed to be more important in the new arrival's 
 eyes than the Commanding Officer of an expeditionary 
 force. " It looks as though Master Strange had been 
 getting into one of his scrapes," he said disapprovingly, 
 and then we all sat smoking in a silence only fitfully 
 broken until the stranger came back to us. 
 
 This he did in a matter of half an hour or so, and, 
 after shaking hands with us all, he settled down steadily 
 to devour an enormous meal. He was quite unabashed 
 by the fact that the change of clothes which Manwer- 
 ing had provided for him was a grotesque misfit, in 
 which any one less utterly devoid of self-consciousness 
 would have been painfully aware of cutting a ridiculous 
 figure before a number of complete strangers. He ex- 
 plained his appetite, which certainly seemed to call for 
 explanation, by saying that he had not touched food 
 for four -and -twenty hours, and he also mentioned 
 casually that he had not tasted bread for eight weeks, 
 or seen red meat for nearly a twelvemonth. 
 
 " I shall not trouble you, Strange, with any business 
 to-day," old " Mark-Time " said in his most condescend- 
 ing and pompous manner. " I feel sure that you will 
 require to sleep after your late exertions." 
 
 "That's all right, sir," said Strange cheerfully. 
 " You need not bother about me. I'm as fit as a 
 fiddle, and game for any amount of work. I shall 
 get all the sleep I need to-night, I dare say." 
 
 So, as soon as the meal was over, Simon Strange 
 and the Second-in-Command were closeted with old 
 
" CAST." 167 
 
 " Mark-Time " in the latter's hut, and I was privileged 
 to be present as a sort of secretary. I have very rarely 
 been a spectator of anything that interested me more 
 keenly. The interview lasted the whole of that day, 
 with short breaks only for meals, and was carried on 
 late into the night; and during all that time Simon 
 Strange, alert, instinct with a sort of magnetic energy, 
 a perennial spring of accurate and curious information 
 about the country and the natives, at one moment 
 acutely critical, at another startlingly suggestive and 
 original, and always just a little humorous, inspired, 
 guided, and controlled the decisions of the two older 
 men. He not only had a quite unholy knowledge of 
 this wilderness which spread around us, but he also 
 possessed a queer knack of making those who heard 
 him share his understanding of political questions, 
 details of topography, and the hundred and one other 
 points which must mould our plans for us. Up to the 
 time of his coming we had been enveloped in a perfect 
 mist of uncertainty and mystery; at the end of that 
 day I, for one, felt that I knew more about this 
 troubled land than about any other place on earth. 
 And his body and his brain alike appeared to be tire- 
 less. More than once I detected old " Mark-Time " in 
 a feeble attempt to break out of school, and I thought 
 that the Second-in-Command was not unwilling to aid 
 him, but Strange kept the noses of the pair of them 
 fixed to the grindstone, and dinned into their ears the 
 necessity of acting promptly now that the time for 
 action had arrived. Even I found myself getting 
 weary of sitting in a stuffy hut — yet we, who had been 
 in camp all these days, had come to the council-board 
 fresh from restful nights and hours of ease, whereas 
 Strange had barely finished a terrific tramp over hill 
 
l68 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 and dale, and had certainly spent at least one night 
 out of bed and on his feet. I was already enormously 
 impressed by the force of the man, by the effortless 
 fashion in which he seemed to dominate us, by his 
 boundless powers of work, physical or mental, and by 
 his extreme reticence concerning himself and his own 
 experiences and exploits. 
 
 When at a late hour Strange rose up, stretched 
 himself elaborately, and said that he thought that we 
 were now in a position to begin practical work — doing, 
 not talking — on the morrow, I heard old " Mark-Time " 
 sigh with satisfaction, and I watched him toddle off 
 to his sleeping-mat with the air of one who is quite 
 played out. Strange bade us good -night and went 
 away to a neat shanty which some natives had rigged 
 up for him — natives seemed in this country to spring 
 up out of the ground to serve Simon Strange — and 
 as the Second-in-Command and I walked up and down, 
 smoking our pipes in the moonlight before turning in, 
 we could see him sitting cross-legged under the low 
 thatching of the roof talking to a succession of brown- 
 skinned men. Each of these had come many miles, 
 and had awaited patiently for hours the opportunity 
 of pouring his information or his troubles into the 
 ears of "Tuan Streng." In the dull glare of the 
 hurricane-lamp, swinging from a rafter above his head, 
 Strange's face- showed pale and worn. The sun-tan 
 on cheeks and forehead, arms and neck, which by 
 day gave to him an air of health, showed now only 
 as a sickly pallor ; the lines around his blue-grey eyes 
 and about his firm straight mouth seemed to be 
 furrowed deeply ; his erect figure looked for the moment 
 almost bowed. 
 
 " Well, what do you think of him ? He's a glutton 
 
" CAST." 169 
 
 for work, isn't he?" said the Second -in -Command. 
 Before I could reply we were joined by Manwering, 
 the doctor. 
 
 "I see that Strange has let you out at last, sir," 
 he said to my companion, "though he is still at it 
 himself. I wonder what that fellow's made of ! When 
 you remember that this is a tropical climate, it fairly 
 takes your breath away to think of the amount of work 
 the man asks of himself. Now just take all that he 
 has been through since he left his stockade. That 
 wounded nigger he brought in has been talking to my 
 dressers, and they have passed the yarn on to me. 
 Strange would not take an escort with him, it seems, 
 partly because he thought he would have a better 
 chance of slipping through the enemy's country if he 
 went almost alone, and partly because he couldn't afford 
 to reduce the little force which is holding on to the 
 stockade. Accordingly he set out by himself, unless 
 you count the native who tells the story. The rebels 
 were posted all round the stockade, but Strange crawled 
 through their camps during the dark hours before the 
 dawn, and lay up in a clump of jungle for the day. It 
 poured with rain the whole time, the native says, and 
 he and Strange had to lie out and get soaked. As 
 soon as it was dark they got under way again, and 
 trudged along villainous jungle -paths till the dawn 
 found them in the heart of the enemy's country and 
 about thirty miles distant from any of their friends. 
 Here they lay up in the forest for the day, but the 
 native had managed to lose the bundle which contained 
 their store of food in swimming across a river, so they 
 had nothing to eat, and again the rain poured and 
 poured. It must have been the very devil, you know 
 — drenched to the skin for more than seventy hours, 
 
170 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 a tramp by night over thirty miles of infamous jungle, 
 every tree and bush of which might harbour an enemy 
 with a rifle, and neither food nor drink at the end 
 of it all, but just a ' lie off ' in the pelting rain ! 
 Enough to kill any man in any climate, let alone the 
 tropics. It makes my professional hair stand on end 
 to think of it, and the beggar hasn't even the grace 
 to have fever, or to behave as though he were tired 
 out! 
 
 " However, that's not all. When dark came they 
 started forward again, with another thirty-mile tramp 
 ahead of them before they could reach us, some hills 
 to climb, and the real strongholds of the enemy to 
 avoid. They must have been pretty sorry for them- 
 selves, I should think, fagged and starving and soaking 
 wet, and with their very lives depending upon their 
 not breaking down ; and the native, judging from what 
 he says, felt that they were in a precious tight place, 
 and had not got the spirit of a louse left in him, but 
 just kept on keeping on because Strange had hold 
 of the soul of him and wouldn't let go — at least that's 
 how he puts it. Well, they got through the first 
 five -and -twenty miles of their march somehow, leg- 
 slogging through the darkness, swarming up hills that 
 had a cant on them like the pitch of a thatched roof, 
 and sliding down the other side into the valleys to 
 wade knee-deep through bogs and slush, and to lose 
 themselves in the dense mists rising from the plain. 
 It must have been a beast of a journey through that 
 broken country among the spurs of the foothills, and 
 the native could never have done it, he says, if Strange 
 hadn't just made him hang on and not give in. They 
 came by a short cut, it seems, because though there 
 was a safer way it would have taken them a long tramp 
 
" CAST." 171 
 
 round, and Strange thought the native wasn't up to 
 the extra exertion. Anyhow the route they took led 
 them straight through a cluster of villages in which 
 the enemy was strongly posted. They made their 
 way past five or six of the villages without mishap, 
 with their hearts more or less in their mouths, and 
 one eye cocked on the closed houses, and the other 
 glued to the east, fearing every moment to see the 
 dawn creeping up and giving them away. Then, as 
 bad luck would have it, they ran right into a couple 
 of men who were coming up from taking an early 
 morning dip in the river, and. a minute later the whole 
 place was humming around them like a disturbed 
 bee-hive. 
 
 " Strange broke into a double, but the native was 
 too done to follow suit, and as soon as Strange saw 
 it he slowed down and waited for him. There was 
 a good, deal of promiscuous firing going on, not aimed 
 at anything in particular, but helping to spread the 
 alarm, and presently beacons began to spring up on 
 all the nearest hills to warn the valley that Strange 
 was trying to make his way through." 
 
 "Those must have been the bonfires I saw this 
 morning," I said. 
 
 " The next thing that happened was that they were 
 pursued in force by the men in the village which they 
 had last traversed, and Strange, dragging the native 
 after him, plunged into the jungle. If he had been 
 alone he could have given them the slip easy enough, 
 but the nigger handicapped him, and he never seems 
 to have even thought of letting the poor devil take his 
 chance. From what I can learn the nigger would have 
 been glad enough to be left to die in peace. He says 
 that he was so fagged that he did not want to live, 
 
172 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 and he says he can remember trying to explain this 
 to Strange, as well as his sobbing breath would let 
 him, and getting nothing but a severe shaking for 
 answer. Well, they seemed to have ploughed along 
 like this for a time — for whole aeons of time, the nigger 
 says — and then they knocked up against a little band 
 of the enemy which was out after them. They received 
 a volley before they could duck behind some fallen 
 trees, and a bullet hit the nigger in the thigh. Then, 
 he says, he was almost glad — he didn't feel any pain 
 at the moment, but was conscious of the warm blood 
 trickling down his leg — and now he thought that 
 Strange would let him give in. He lay as still as a 
 mouse, and Strange fired the whole magazine of his 
 Winchester at the rebels, and then snatched up the 
 other repeating-rifie with which the native had been 
 armed. He must have made some pretty shooting, 
 the native thinks, for the party of rebels drew off, 
 shouting war-cries, but evidently having had their 
 bellyful of fighting for the moment. Then the nigger 
 begged Strange to leave him to die in peace and 
 quietude; but no such luck. Strange bound up his 
 wound, rolled him in his waist-cloth, and humped him 
 up on his back — a precious tough job, I should say, 
 for a man who had already been through such a 
 frightful time of hardship and exertion — and after that 
 the native knows very little more except that he 
 thought the journey would never end, and that Strange 
 seemed to be everlastingly splashing up beastly little 
 streams, or forcing his way through scrub and under- 
 wood. Of course he did not dare make use of any 
 proper paths, and if he had not known the country 
 quite marvellously well he never could have struck 
 our camp. Still, he did strike it, as we know, saved 
 
"cast." 173 
 
 his worthy nigger, and has himself been working like 
 a trooper ever since. The man must be made of 
 iron ! " 
 
 " Or grit," said the Second-in-Command. " If he 
 had been in the Service he would have been given the 
 V.C. As it is, I don't suppose it will even be reported, 
 except by old Stubbins " (Stubbins was old " Mark- 
 Time's" rightful name), "and he has not the gift of 
 expressing himself; so I doubt whether his despatches 
 are read as carefully as they ought to be." 
 
 "What a shame it seems," I said, with all the ready 
 indignation of my years. " It was a splendid thing 
 not only to have done, but to have been able to do ! " 
 
 " Splendid enough," said Manwering ; " but what 
 chiefly appeals to me is the extraordinary strength and 
 vitality which make such a thing possible. The fellow 
 is phenomenal — absolutely phenomenal — wrought of 
 cast-iron within and without, compact of force and 
 energy. Fancy going through an experience like that, 
 with all its accompanying strain on mind as well as 
 body, carrying a man — even a small man like the 
 nigger — for a matter of five miles after a tramp of 
 nearly sixty, half of which was done on an empty 
 stomach, and in this climate, and then to come in 
 at the end of it all apparently as fresh as paint ! I 
 tell you that the thing is colossal, but it can't last. 
 The fellow is drawing gigantic cheques upon his con- 
 stitution, and one of these fine days Nature will fore- 
 close, and call upon him to stump up the overdraft. 
 You mark my words." 
 
 It is not my intention to relate the details of the 
 nine months' campaign which followed, but during 
 the whole of that strenuous time Simon Strange did 
 the work of a dozen ordinary men. It was not that 
 
174 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 he made unnecessary work, or that he kept a pack of 
 dogs, but preferred to do the barking himself. On 
 the contrary, he had a wonderful gift for making 
 others " pull up to the collar," as he called it, and his 
 energy was infectious. It so happened, however, that 
 the circumstances in which we were placed, the 
 magnificent ignorance of the country and the people 
 that was ours, threw a heavy burden on his shoulders 
 which none other might bear. Our force was soon 
 divided up into half-a-dozen tiny columns, all more 
 or less groping in the dark, and Strange was the 
 inspiring genius of each one of them. He was 
 eternally dropping down into camp out of the skies, 
 and immediately all was hurry and bustle, and quick 
 movements were followed by some small but, in its 
 way, decisive bit of work. He passed ceaselessly from 
 column to column, always carrying his life more or 
 less in his hand as he went on foot without escort 
 from one party of our people to another, bringing in 
 the information lacking which we were paralysed, 
 organising our transport and commissariat for us, 
 beating up supplies and coolies from out of a seemingly 
 deserted countryside, initiating and almost dictating 
 the strategy which we employed against the enemy, 
 and all the while carrying on his own " political " 
 work, and settling up the districts and their govern- 
 ment as fast as we reduced them to order. He had 
 one or two civilian youngsters to aid him — men who 
 were a sort of rough understudies of himself — but the 
 lion's share of all the work to be done fell to his lot, 
 and we military officers never felt much confidence in 
 anything unless we had Simon Strange's warranty for 
 it. He toiled like a demon, never spared or saved 
 himself, never appeared to be harassed or overdriven, 
 
" CAST." 175 
 
 was always quite calm and happy, and was invariably 
 in the mood for more work. We with the columns 
 were often at rest for days and weeks together, but 
 his labours never seemed to suffer from even a 
 momentary break. He was altogether indifferent to 
 such needs as food or sleep, eating what and when 
 the opportunity offered, or going without for long 
 hours at a stretch with complete good humour, and 
 sleeping on the ground in the rain, or not at all, just 
 as the work to be done rendered necessary or in- 
 evitable. The prejudice which had been born in our 
 minds of the native rumours which had preceded his 
 coming amongst us had died out from the first 
 moment of his arrival. His was a figure to appeal 
 strongly to the imaginations of young and enthusiastic 
 men, and very speedily we youngsters were the veriest 
 hero-worshippers, and Simon Strange, with his force, 
 his strength, his splendid courage, his abnormal power 
 of work, his simplicity, unconsciousness of self, and 
 complete lack of anything resembling "side," was 
 our idol. 
 
 At the end of the nine months of -fitful fighting, 
 marching and countermarching, attacking and destroy- 
 ing villages, ambushing and being ambushed, the 
 rebels were crushed, and our force was withdrawn, 
 Simon Strange being left behind to bring peace and 
 plenty back into the stricken valleys. He bore us 
 company as far as the top of the range which formed 
 his boundary, " to see us off the premises," as he said ; 
 and while our long, snake-like column wriggled down 
 the hillside, en route for civilisation, comfort, and good 
 victuals at last, I took one look back from my position 
 with the rearguard at the man whom we were leaving 
 in the wilderness. 
 
176 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 In fancy I can see him now as he then appeared to 
 me — a big, lean figure silhouetted against the clear sky- 
 line, clad in rough garments, with a group of natives 
 squatting humbly around him — the incarnation, as it 
 were, of England's calm, paternal, unostentatious 
 sovereignty over a savage people in a distant land. 
 He was gazing after us, a little wistfully perhaps ; for 
 were we not marching back to the good things of this 
 world, leaving him to the utter loneliness of his life, 
 to the hard, dull, exacting labour of reconstruction 
 that must ever follow upon the excitement and turmoil 
 of warfare ? Also, the hardships and privations that, 
 even in the milder form in which we had endured 
 them, had been to us an exceptional and not too ac- 
 ceptable experience, though ended for us, were still 
 for him the natural conditions of existence. 
 
 " Poor devil ! " said the man at my side. " I 
 wouldn't be in his shoes for something, plants la in 
 the heart of the wilderness, and the biggest bit of his 
 work still to do, without even the thrill of excitement 
 to aid him." 
 
 " Government looks to its men to take on pretty 
 large contracts out here," I said ; " and the queer 
 thing is that England breeds boys who simply revel 
 in such jobs and are quite content with grub-wages. 
 Simon Strange is not exactly expensive at five hundred 
 a-year ; and I don't suppose they give him a penny 
 more, if as much." 
 
 "It is cheap — dirt-cheap," said my friend, "seeing 
 that it is the price of a man's body, of the best years 
 of his life, and a precious big slice of his soul thrown 
 in." And then we fell to talking, in joyful anticipa- 
 tion, of the delights of the civilisation that awaited us, 
 for which our appetites had been sharpened by our 
 
" CAST." 177 
 
 nine months' campaign. Yet during that time our 
 life, if compared with that to which Strange was 
 doomed in seeming perpetuity, had been almost ease- 
 ful and luxurious. 
 
 III. 
 
 After that I almost entirely lost count of the doings 
 of Simon Strange. Duty carried me far afield, and 
 the very land where I had met the man, in which I 
 had seen my first campaign, had become a dim and 
 distant memory. New scenes, new interests, bigger 
 politics, drove the thought of that little glimpse of 
 the wilderness, and of the solitary Englishman who 
 was therein the dominant figure, into the background 
 of my mind; but occasionally some chance echo of 
 news came to me, telling of peace and plenty duly re- 
 stored to the troubled land, and of a thriving peasantry 
 lounging away their lives contentedly under British 
 rule, or under Simon Strange, its local incarnation. 
 But as the years sped onward my memory recurred 
 less and less frequently to the incidents of those half- 
 forgotten days and to that lonely figure which I had 
 last seen standing outlined against the white-hot 
 Eastern sky. 
 
 I was back in London — back from the ends of all 
 the earth — thrilling with the intoxication of delight 
 which none save the exile knows who finds himself, 
 after many wanderings, in " the only place in the 
 world " — the great, throbbing, tumultuous, strenuously 
 pulsing heart of the Empire ! The roar and rumble of 
 the traffic, the gruff street cries and murmured English 
 speech, the hum of a life, restless, animated, instinct 
 
 M 
 
178 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 with energy and vitality, made music in my ears that 
 gladdened me. I was possessed by a tingling sensation 
 of excitement : I had no need of occupation to com- 
 plete my sense of wellbeing. It was enough just to 
 exist consciously in the midst of the things for which 
 in banishment I had pined, to drink in greedily new 
 impressions of objects old and familiar, to revel in the 
 bare fact that I was once again in the Mecca of my 
 dreams. Therefore, as I walked up Pall Mall that 
 sunny morning, my feet were on the flags, but my 
 head was soaring among the clouds of heaven, and 
 thus I stepped heavily upon the varnished toes of a 
 dapper little man, who forthwith let fly a volley of 
 choice Hindustani expletives. Stopping to apologise 
 for the injury which I had inflicted, I recognised 
 Manwering, the little doctor who had been attached 
 to our column in Simon Strange's country, and, fol- 
 lowing the custom of the East, I bade him drink with 
 me, and led him into my club, which was near at hand. 
 
 For the best part of an hour we sat talking as exiles 
 are wont to talk when they meet far from the land of 
 their banishment, — recalling past times which we had 
 spent in company, memories which we shared, and the 
 figures of men whom we had known under alien skies, 
 the reality of whose existence somehow seemed a thing 
 made shadowy by distance. 
 
 " You remember Strange — Simon Strange ? " asked 
 Manwering presently. "Well, he's at Home — at 
 Home for good, I'm afraid. You ought to go and 
 see him. I can give you his address." 
 
 " Has he chucked the Service ? " I inquired. 
 
 " It has chucked him, poor devil. You remember 
 that evening after he first came into camp lugging 
 that wounded nigger with him, and what I said then ? 
 
" CAST." 179 
 
 Well, I was a true prophet of evil. He was drawing 
 thundering big cheques on his constitution in a villain- 
 ous climate, and now Nature is calling in the overdraft. 
 Go and see him. It don't bear talking about." 
 
 So later I travelled down to a dreary suburb of this 
 great sprawling city — a cheap and nasty suburb, hum- 
 drum and commonplace, a dead level of struggling, 
 poverty-ridden respectability and dulness — there to 
 seek out Simon Strange, the man who of old had 
 played the role of destiny to a wide countryside. I 
 saw his mother first, a sweet -faced, faded woman, 
 with kind, sad eyes, and the lines of a life-long anxiety 
 upon her delicate cheeks and brow. The dingy little 
 house was eloquent of lack of means ; the dress Mrs 
 Strange wore was itself a testimony to the sleepless 
 vigilance which tries so vainly to make sixpence go 
 as far as half-a- crown ; the shadow of a terribly 
 straitened income hovered over the place like an op- 
 pressive cloud. There was no pretence, no trace of 
 false shame ; only the poverty was there, obvious, un- 
 deniable, crippling, emphasising the dreariness and the 
 monotony of a narrow life. 
 
 " It is so good of you to come to see Simon," said 
 Mrs Strange. " It will cheer him up a little. He is 
 wonderfully brave about it all, and he says little 
 enough, but it is breaking his heart." 
 
 " I have heard no details," I said. " They tell me 
 that he has left the Service. Is that so ? " 
 
 "Yes," she sighed. "His health has completely 
 broken down. The doctors declare that he will never 
 be really well again, and that it is out of the question 
 that he should ever go back to the East. He has been 
 retired on pension — a very tiny pension, of course, for 
 he had only served just over twelve years." 
 
l80 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " Seventeen -sixtieths of a microscopic salary," I 
 mentally calculated. "A piteously inadequate price 
 for which to barter away one's health and all the joy 
 of life ! " 
 
 "The Government has done its very best for him," 
 Mrs Strange was saying. "They have written all 
 manner of nice things about him and his work in the 
 past — but, alas ! it is the present, and still more the 
 future, that trouble me for him. You see, he was 
 devoted heart and soul to the people and the country 
 and the work ; they were his one interest — his life. 
 And now it is all at an end. It is hard for a man to 
 see his life brought to a close so early, yet that is what 
 it means to him. You see, he is only three-and-thirty, 
 and a man finds it difficult to say ' good-bye ' to his 
 ambitions so very soon. But this won't do at all," 
 she added quickly, with a brave smile ; " I shall only 
 depress you by my grumblings, and I want you to 
 cheer my poor boy up." 
 
 She rose and led the way to her son's room, where 
 she left me alone with Simon Strange. 
 
 I question whether I should have known him for the 
 man who still lived in my memory — the fierce toiler 
 with body and mind, the fellow who had borne the 
 reputation of being " as hard as nails," of having an 
 exhaustless fund of physical strength and mental 
 energy. He was seated in a big arm-chair, cowering 
 over the fire, though the day was warm. His frame, 
 always lean, was now woefully shrunken and fallen 
 together; his skin was dry and was suffused by a 
 sickly yellow pallor; his eyes, deeply sunken in their 
 sockets, beneath which dark discoloured patches showed 
 like bruises, wore a strained and weary look. His 
 voice, of old so firm and masterful, was thin, and it 
 
"cast." 181 
 
 sounded as though it came from a great distance, but 
 his face lighted up with something of the old humorous 
 smile as he stretched out his hand in greeting. 
 
 " Awfully good of you to come, old man," he said. 
 "You behold in me the miserable remains of an ill- 
 spent life. I have been busy trying to pick up the 
 broken bits for months, but it takes a lot of doing. I 
 am still only fit for the knacker's yard, and yet I must 
 get well soon. I hate being a log, and we want grist 
 for the mill badly. It is terribly rough on the poor old 
 mater. This smash-up of mine has been a dreadful 
 blow to her, poor dear." 
 
 I sat down, and we fell to talking about old times; 
 For a minute or two Simon leaned forward and spoke 
 with much of the fire and eager interest that had been 
 wont to mark his utterance, but very soon he threw 
 himself back in his chair with something like a groan. 
 "It does not do to think about it all," he said; " it 
 only gives me the 'go-fever,' and I shouldn't be worth 
 my salt if I was out there again with my health like 
 this. I don't think even you can understand what a 
 humiliation going phut in this fashion has been to me. 
 Until my constitution turned dog on me I used to 
 fancy that it was made of cast-iron, and I suppose that 
 I didn't give it much of a chance, but you know how it 
 was — there was the work. It had to be put through 
 somehow, and one hadn't much time to bother about 
 anything else. 
 
 " Do ? What do I mean to do ? Get well first, and 
 then look about for a job. A man at the Office tried 
 to comfort me by saying that I must have made friends 
 with some local merchants out in the East, and that, 
 perhaps, if I threw myself upon their charity, they 
 might find me a billet as a clerk in one of their London 
 
182 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 houses. He meant well, poor little snuffy beggar, and 
 I shall act on his advice as soon as I am fit enough, 
 but it isn't exactly a cheerful prospect, is it ? Don't 
 think that I am an ass, or that I am too grand to take 
 any work that any one may be kind enough to offer 
 
 me. It isn't that, only Well, you see the little 
 
 chap who gave that advice has been nailed to a stool 
 all his life; he had never got a glimpse of anything 
 bigger than a bundle of fusty papers in a grimy office. 
 Of course, he didn't understand — how should he? 
 But the sort of life that I have lived doesn't fit one 
 well for the dull grind he seemed to think so attractive. 
 You see, I have wielded power over men — lots of men ; 
 and I have been used to as much responsibility as a 
 fellow knew what to do with. That's it — power and 
 responsibility ! The two combined make a strong 
 drink which, once tasted, you cannot do without. 
 Over here very few try even a sip of it in all their 
 blameless lives, so they don't crave for it, but we 
 who have had our fill time and again find all other 
 drinks insipid. Don't think me an ass. You know 
 something of the life, and I expect you understand." 
 I did not think him an ass, and I did understand. 
 The talk shifted to other more cheerful subjects, but 
 it always wore its way back to the same point — to 
 the past and all that life had held for Simon Strange, 
 the all that it could never hold for him again. His 
 memories tortured him, but they would recur insist- 
 ently. He had been all his life what in the East we 
 call " a doer," but his days for doing were ended ; he 
 had been the Providence, omniscient, almighty yet 
 visible, of a whole countryside — he who for the future 
 was doomed to utter impotence. He had delighted in 
 personal power and the stimulating burden of respon- 
 
"cast." 183 
 
 sibility, not for the satisfaction of his individual 
 ambitions, I fancy, but for the keen interest which 
 they brought him, for the good which they enabled 
 him to effect. Now, at best, if his enfeebled health 
 allowed, he might look forward to monotonous days 
 passed in the dull drudgery of a city clerkship, bending 
 all his splendid energies to the task of trying to pre- 
 serve himself and those who were dear to him from 
 the pinch of a degrading poverty. Later, I learned 
 that there had been a girl whom poor Simon had 
 hoped to make his wife — a girl for whose sake, perhaps, 
 much of his best work had been secretly done — but 
 broken health and straitened means forbade all dreams 
 of marriage. 
 
 Though he was so pitifully worn and aged, he was 
 still young enough for the future to spread away before 
 him in a seeming eternity, blank, hopeless, dreary, 
 interminable! It was nobody's fault. The Govern- 
 ment had done its part, and had written handsome 
 letters. The performance of its proper functions would 
 be impossible were it to concern itself too nearly with 
 all the personal tragedies of its servants. Simon, too, 
 was blameless. The work, as he had said, was work 
 that had had to be done, and it was only evil fortune 
 that caused the price to be so heavy, and made it fall 
 all, all upon him. 
 
 I did my best to " cheer him up," though I knew 
 that the thing was irremediable, and he strove bravely 
 to help me to illusion. He kept a stiff upper lip 
 turned towards his trouble, and spoke of his fate 
 as a derelict, one "cast" for decrepitude, with a grim 
 humour that I found more pathetic than tears. 
 
 I took my leave and was whirled back to London, 
 bearing with me the memory of a brave woman and 
 
184 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 her brave son, and admiring the " grit " of the latter 
 more that day than ever I had done in the time of his 
 achievements and success. 
 
 The great roaring city greeted me — the heart of that 
 Empire which makes and breaks so many things ; but 
 it seemed to me now less human and more mercilessly 
 mechanical than ever before, the great mainspring, 
 as it were, of some vast engine which works gigantic- 
 ally, successfully, but with a wanton prodigality of 
 materials and tools. In common with most English- 
 men who have travelled widely, and have marked 
 things for themselves with a seeing eye, I hold that 
 the British Empire is the mightiest agent for good 
 that God in His infinite wisdom has ever brought into 
 being in this His world; but my heart was heavy 
 within me as I thought of the obscure litter-heaps 
 whereon, neglected and forgotten, are thrown aside the 
 broken instruments of Empire which, having served 
 their turn, are suffered to crumble away into in- 
 glorious dust. 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. 
 
 L' 
 
 ET 'em all come!" said the hospital -orderly 
 despairingly. "Another pack of blooming 
 doolies, and the first batch not 'alf fixed yet ! Gawd 
 help us ! " 
 
 A long slow line of stretchers trickled into the field- 
 hospital. Here and there a face, very white and set, 
 was seen for a minute or two, the teeth gnawing at 
 the under lip to stifle vain cries, or an arm was thrown 
 aloft to drop back again with limp impotence. From 
 some of the canvas troughs a little blood dripped 
 reluctantly, or spread in wide discoloured patches. 
 Now and again an accidental jolt would knock a 
 scream from the occupant of one of the doolies, or the 
 insistent moaning of an unconscious sufferer would be 
 heard, regular as a heart-beat, and inexpressibly fret- 
 ting to the nerves of the stricken folk who lay around. 
 
 A gaunt man, with haggard eyes and deep hollows 
 in his colourless cheeks, raised himself on his elbow 
 from the camp-bed on which he lay, and panted 
 questions to all who passed him. 
 
 " How's it going ? " he asked again and again, gasp- 
 ing between each eddying gust of words. "Are our 
 
I0» TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 fellows holding their own ? For God's sake tell me 
 how it's going ! Tell me — " He fell back exhausted. 
 
 A young soldier, with his right arm in a sling, 
 walked down the ward from the end where the doctors 
 were toiling like men possessed by devils. The sick 
 officer on the bed called to him. " Here," he gasped, 
 his face working with the intensity of his excitement. 
 " Here, I say, come here, you, — you man of B Com- 
 pany, — come here ! " 
 
 The private turned and stared at the speaker. Then 
 he walked to the foot of the bed, jarred his injured 
 arm by the abrupt movement, and emitted a gruff cry, 
 while his face contracted with pain. 
 
 " I've been hit, sir," he said. " My harm's smashed 
 like, and they 'aven't time to look to it yet, but Gawd 
 Almighty, anythink is better than the Hell our chaps 
 is gettin' of up on the 'ill yonder. It won't take long 
 afore their name is Walker. They're getting 'ell, sir, 
 'ell with red pepper to it." His eyes were wild with 
 fear of the death upon which they had looked so re- 
 cently ; his dominant sensation was one of relief that 
 he had escaped from that unspeakable inferno on the 
 summit of the hill where what remained of his 
 regiment still clung to the bullet-smitten earth. The 
 excitement that held him, and was increased by the 
 fever of his undressed wound, made him careless of 
 his words even though he spoke to one of his own 
 officers. Moreover, the emotions of war broke down 
 many artificial barriers between man and man. 
 
 " Damn you, sir ! " cried the sick man, springing up 
 in his cot, and shaking a palsied hand at the private. 
 " How dare you speak like that of the Blankshires, 
 how dare you ? " He raved and gesticulated as though 
 only the lack of strength restrained him from tearing 
 the life out of the soldier before him. 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. l8g 
 
 "I don't want for to say nothink agin the corpse, 
 sir," said the latter sulkily, involuntarily retreating as 
 he spoke from the neighbourhood of the angry officer. 
 " You 'aven't seen what I seed. You 'aven't been in 
 Hell, not like me. My Gawd, it was hawful, hawful ! 
 They're being picked off like rabbits. They can't 
 stand it, 'tain't in 'uman natur. Hi wouldn't say but 
 what they was right if they do bunk it. Gorramercy ! 
 you don't know what it was." 
 
 The officer fell back on his cot, utterly exhausted. 
 The private, eyeing him as men eye a dangerous 
 animal, sidled off on his way down the ward. 
 
 Major Thorns of the Blankshire Regiment, who had 
 been incapacitated from leading his men by a severe 
 attack of dysentery, lay panting feebly while his mind 
 raced. He had learned that the corps, which had been 
 the only home that he had known for twenty years, 
 had formed part of a column which had seized a hill 
 in the very heart of the Boer lines before dawn that 
 morning. Soon after daybreak, when the fog had 
 rolled away, their presence had been greeted by the 
 crackle of rifle-fire, furious, continuous, and increasing 
 in volume, punctuated at short intervals by the louder 
 reports of big guns and the sobbing of the pom-poms. 
 From a mile or two to the rear of the field-hospital the 
 British guns roared a response, but the tumult around 
 the hill-top yonder had not been even temporarily 
 checked. All this Thorns knew, and the never-failing 
 stream of shattered men that flowed past him, that 
 blocked the doorways, that flooded into pools of 
 wounded without the tents, told him the rest. The 
 column, clinging despairingly to the hill-top, was being 
 mowed down by a converging fire. But to Major 
 Thorns the column represented only the Blankshires, 
 and the Blankshires were to him everything that 
 
19° TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 mattered, — that he cared for. He writhed as his 
 thoughts tortured him, and his accursed weakness 
 nailed him to the cot. The private had spoken of 
 the regiment as shaken, broken, perhaps, ready to 
 run or at least surrender. The bare notion of such 
 a thing happening to his fellows, the men whom he 
 had bred and trained, turned him sick with horror. 
 He sat erect, and threw his thin legs over the side 
 of his cot. He leaned a little of his weight upon his 
 feet, tentatively, inquiringly, and his face wore the 
 expression of an over-anxious experimenter. 
 
 " I must," he said to himself, and held his breath for 
 a mighty effort. He had not tried to stand erect for 
 days, but now he staggered to his feet, though his legs 
 felt as weak as pen-holders, and his shin-bones ached 
 maddeningly. He stood for a moment or two, holding 
 to the side of his bed for support. His head swam 
 dizzily, and the world went out before his eyes in a 
 film of grey mist, but he clung on resolutely. It 
 seemed to him that he was standing there in a mirky 
 darkness, utterly isolated from all created things, while 
 he fought manfully against superhuman forces for life, 
 for all that life held worth the having, — for the right to 
 rejoin his regiment. 
 
 Slowly but surely the mist eddied away, and the 
 string of laden bearers still passed on up the ward. 
 Every one was engrossed by the labour or the pain 
 of the moment ; nobody noticed the sick man groping 
 his way towards the nearest exit. He went as he was, 
 bare-footed and in his pyjamas, clinging first to one 
 cot and then to another, and more than once he 
 grasped the arm or the shoulder of a dooly-bearer, 
 who threw him off roughly without even sparing him 
 a look. Thus, after what seemed an incredibly long 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. igi 
 
 space of time, he won clear of the tent, wormed his 
 way through the throng of whole and wounded men 
 without, and crawled into some low scrub twenty yards 
 distant from the door through which he had emerged. 
 Here for a space he lost consciousness. 
 
 " Major Thorns is missing from 'is cot, sir," reported 
 a hospital-orderly, saluting stiffly. 
 
 " How do you mean missing ? " asked the doctor to 
 whom he spoke, never raising his eyes from the 
 mangled limb upon which he was operating. 
 
 "He ain't in his cot, sir," said the orderly. 
 
 "Well, we can't spare the time to look for him 
 now. Bear it in mind when we have got through 
 the pressing cases, if we ever do, and report to me 
 again." 
 
 A gaunt face, with two hectic patches of colour burn- 
 ing like sullen embers in the deep hollows of the 
 cheeks, reared itself out of the scrub, and looked with 
 the eyes of a maniac at the hill-top whence the roar of 
 battle came. Before those eyes there lay a long slope, 
 covered with rust-coloured grass or mean scrub, and 
 spattered with boulders. Here and there the slope was 
 broken by facets of earth or rock bare of vegetation, 
 grey, brown, or almost black. Rising abruptly from 
 the further extremity of this long hill, and standing out 
 prominently from the range to which it belonged, was 
 a bold bluff whose sides had a steeper grade and ap- 
 peared in many places to be almost perpendicular. On 
 the crest of this tiny clouds of white smoke were visible 
 like snowy soap-bubbles forming and vanishing with 
 extraordinary rapidity. It was to this point that 
 Major Thorns' eyes were glued ; it was towards this 
 that he began to crawl slowly; it was here that his 
 heart was fixed, upon this that it was set so firmly that 
 
192 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 it seemed to have flown ahead of him, and was now 
 dragging his frail body after it with an overpowering 
 force. 
 
 Once safe from the observation of those within the 
 hospital, Thorns rose to his feet and staggered un- 
 steadily up the long slope. His strength had to some 
 extent returned to him, but in truth it was only the 
 soul within the man that pushed him forward. His 
 body was a thing of infinite weight, ponderous, awk- 
 ward, yet so light that it took but the swish of a grass- 
 blade to knock it off its feet. He was conscious of 
 numbed pain, of achings in every limb that annoyed 
 him vaguely, much as a disturbing noise repeated often 
 annoys a sleepy man. He knew that he was fighting 
 desperately with some unseen influence, with outraged 
 nature; he knew that his breath was tearing through 
 his lungs, bursting from his lips in gusts that were 
 agonising; that his sight was dim, that sounds came 
 to him as from an impossible distance; that he was 
 light-headed, that he raved and gesticulated as he 
 struggled onward. But all the while he was perfectly 
 aware of what he was doing. Never for an instant did 
 he lose sight of the object of all this furious effort ; 
 never once did the desire to rejoin his men weaken or 
 fade. The strain, the weary toiling, the agony, the 
 supreme physical exertion, all were things realised, felt, 
 noted with a sort of wonder ; yet they were to him for 
 the moment only worthy of consideration because they 
 held him back, impeded him, postponed the fulfilment 
 of his purpose. It never so much as occurred to him 
 that such sufferings could defeat his design, that he 
 could surrender to them. They, and the thought 
 which he spared to them, were only, as it were, a dull 
 background against which the idea that dominated 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. I93 
 
 his mind stood out in bold relief. This was the notion 
 that he, Ralph Thorns, was the one man in the world 
 in whom the rank and file of the Blankshires believed 
 intensely, that he above all others would have the 
 power to rally them, to keep them steady, if — if he 
 could only get to them quick enough ! He saw a 
 vision, as vivid as though it had in truth presented 
 itself to his eyes, of his men, — his men — decimated, 
 wounded, maimed, mangled, killed, stricken down in 
 heaps, and of their fellows, mad-afraid as the young 
 private in the hospital had been, shirking and skulking, 
 ready for flight or for surrender. The thought of such 
 an awful culmination to the punishment which the 
 regiment was receiving, to the agony it was enduring 
 (the memory of which hurt Thorns worse than any 
 mere physical pang could do), drove him forward re- 
 lentlessly. The honour of the corps must be saved, 
 disaster must be averted, no matter what the cost. 
 And so, tripping and staggering, stumbling headlong, 
 crawling on all-fours, rising to run unsteadily to fall 
 once more, Major Thorns of the Blankshires wrestled 
 his way in sore travail towards the hill-top. 
 
 Often as he went he was forced to hide, lying pant- 
 ing in the grass, while doolies and their bearers trailed 
 past him. Now and again, as he began to creep up the 
 stiffer ascent and to draw nearer to the scene of con- 
 flict, he saw stragglers from many regiments limping 
 painfully to the rear. Some walked with an arm hang- 
 ing useless, some were helped along by uninjured men 
 who had seized the opportunity of getting out of the 
 death-trap above ; and once a corporal, who had been 
 overlooked by the bearers, crawled by dragging his legs 
 after him, his face uplifted and tense with agony, while 
 blood from a bullet -wound through his cheeks poured 
 
 N 
 
194 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 on to his breast so that the front of his tunic was 
 blackened. Once Thoms saw three men of his own 
 regiment hurry down the hill, their helmets gone, their 
 rifles thrown aside, their eyes fixed upon the path, their 
 shoulders hunched as though in expectation of a blow, 
 their lips mumbling nonsense as they fled stunned and 
 dazed from the carnage which they dared face no 
 longer. It was all Thoms could do to restrain himself 
 from ordering these fugitives to rejoin the firing-line, 
 but he was afraid that they might combine to carry 
 him off to hospital again, and he feared to show 
 himself. 
 
 The grade was very steep now, and the hillside was 
 strewn with big boulders, rock piled on rock, over 
 which the sick man crawled laboriously with pants and 
 groans. His feet and knees were cut and covered 
 with blood ; the sweat was pouring from his body ; his 
 hands gripped convulsively at everything within their 
 reach ; his teeth were set fast as a vice ; his eyes were 
 fixed, desperate, brimful of the agony born of the un- 
 natural effort. With a series of dogged spurts he 
 climbed and climbed till strength failed him, when he 
 would lie motionless to recover force for another spasm 
 of exertion. It seemed to him that, as in some awful 
 nightmare, he was propelling a vast dead weight up 
 an endless staircase. A tag of old heroic verse rang in 
 his head, keeping time to the sledge-hammer beatings 
 of his heart, to the fury of his labour : — 
 
 " With many a weary step, and many a groan, 
 Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone ; 
 The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, 
 Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground." 
 
 The printed page on which he had read it, during the 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. I95 
 
 days when he was studying Johnson's ' Lives of the 
 Poets' for his examination for the Service, rose up 
 before his eyes. He remembered the exact spot, near 
 the top on the right-hand side, which the quotation 
 had occupied, and the incongruity of such learning as 
 a preparation for the struggle that was being fought 
 upon the hill-top struck him as vaguely humorous. 
 The words came to him again and again, punctuated 
 by his sobbing gasps for breath. The line seemed to 
 have become entangled with his thoughts, his hopes, 
 his fierce battle with exhaustion and pain, with the 
 very essence of his being. The words maddened him, 
 torturing his mind with their persistent repetitions; 
 they added to his sufferings and to his labour, yet they 
 would not be still. 
 
 Two or three centuries crawled past after this, — 
 centuries packed with pain, made ghastly by frenzied 
 efforts which attained to but a moiety of the object 
 for which he struggled, centuries during which he 
 wrestled against all created things blindly, breathlessly, 
 fiercely, — against the craggy boulders which were en- 
 dowed with a strange power to bruise and smite him, 
 against the steep ascent, against the oppression of 
 his pumping lungs, against the dizzy swimming of 
 his head, against his mind which broke loose from all 
 control and ran hither and thither in mazes of incon- 
 sequence exhausting him by its wanderings, against 
 the very atmosphere around him which weighed upon 
 him with an awful heaviness, against Nature and 
 against himself. Then, almost suddenly, the lip of 
 the tableland above him showed very near. Below it 
 reserves were massed. The men, lying on their faces, 
 and resting their chins upon their folded arms, were 
 silent, or spoke only in short jerky sentences. Some 
 
I96 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 among them were quivering from head to heel like 
 terriers, a few were seemingly asleep, some were dazed 
 and bewildered, some were sunk in a stupid stolidity, 
 some were grimly alert. From time to time, as the 
 word was passed back from the firing-line, and a sharp 
 order was given, little bodies of these men sprang to 
 their feet, and doubled in a thin spray over the hill- 
 crest, vanishing into the unseen battle beyond. Those 
 left behind grunted, and elbowing their neighbours, 
 edged towards the places which had been occupied 
 by the men who had disappeared. Whatever the 
 attitudes, whatever the appearance of these waiting 
 soldiers, whether they lay still, whether they crawled 
 and jostled clumsily, whether they quivered with 
 excitement or seemed immovable as the dead, they 
 all were a prey to the same emotions, — expectation, 
 suspense, dread of what lay before them. If you 
 could have looked into their minds you would have 
 found that this period of waiting and inactivity, 
 although they lay in safety, was more appalling to 
 them than any battle could be. In the grip of a hard- 
 fought action men are busy, are so occupied in doing 
 the thing which lies to their hands, that little time is 
 left for thought; but now, their imaginations were 
 running free, were conjuring up pictures of the horrors 
 hidden by the ridge above, were forecasting risks, and 
 milking the manhood out of them drop by drop. 
 
 From over the crest, beyond which the little waves 
 of reinforcements had vanished, there crawled a ghastly 
 company. They came slowly, creeping, writhing or 
 limping, — mangled creatures with wild eyes glaring 
 out of ashy, blood-flecked faces, faces drawn with pain. 
 Here was a man with a shattered jaw, his chin hang- 
 ing loosely on his breast, his silent mouth wide open 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. 197 
 
 as though he shouted ; there a tortured wretch rolled 
 over and over in his agony calling upon his friends 
 by name, and upon the God who made him to strike 
 him dead, to put him out of his misery ; here a man 
 walked nursing an injured arm, which he examined 
 curiously, as though it were some unusual object upon 
 which he had lighted by chance ; there another dragged 
 paralysed legs behind him, and propelled himself for- 
 -ward by his arms with slow effort; another halted 
 every few paces to retch and vomit violently and with 
 much noise. One man, running at the extremity of 
 his speed, topped the hill suddenly, and pitched head- 
 long into the reserve. He was lashing out with arms 
 and legs, and foaming at the mouth in strong con- 
 vulsions. He had neither bruise nor scratch upon 
 him, but his mind had given way under the terrible 
 strain which all were sharing on the bullet-swept table- 
 land yonder. And still the word came back with 
 monotonous regularity, " Reinforce the right ! " " Re- 
 inforce the left ! " and still the little sprays of men, 
 their rifles trailed, their bodies bent double, sprang 
 forward to join the fighting-line. 
 
 No one took any note of Thorns, for all were too 
 entirely engrossed by the emotions of the moment 
 to spare a thought or a look for anything save the ridge 
 ahead of them. The sick officer crept on steadily, till 
 he was abreast of the front line of reserves. Then he 
 lay flat for a space, recovering his breath, and gather- 
 ing his forces for a final effort. The hill-crest which 
 lay so near, yet so completely hid the battle, appealed 
 to him as a thing awe-inspiring, as a vast curtain, 
 drawn by the hand of God Himself to shroud some 
 terrific mystery. He tried to picture to himself in 
 imagination what the place was like that lay concealed 
 
198 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 behind that grim barrier, and in a moment his mind 
 had conceived a scene, complete to its least detail, 
 and he was convinced that he saw, as in a vision, the 
 battle-field that was hidden from his physical sight. 
 The clamour and uproar of the fight was borne to him, 
 and it stirred him strangely. It was as though there 
 was something superhuman in the rattle of the 
 musketry, the detonation of the guns, above which 
 rose cries and shouts. He was possessed by a curious 
 feeling that the men who fought yonder were not mere 
 men, but beings of some separate creation, apart from 
 their kind, beings diabolical and awful. He was 
 pricked by an eager curiosity to see them, to see the 
 scene of conflict, to join in this Titanic warfare, to 
 share the emotions of the demons who waged it ; but 
 for the time he lay still, consciously husbanding his 
 strength in preparation for a final effort. And all the 
 while he was aware that his mind, racked by the 
 physical strain to which his whole being had been 
 subjected ever since he left the hospital, was playing 
 him queer tricks, was cutting fantastic antics, was 
 juggling with ideas which were absurd and nonsensical. 
 He found himself watching the motions of this mind 
 of his, as though he were completely detached from it, 
 as though it were something apart from him, over 
 which he exercised no sort of control; and yet the 
 knowledge that his men were close at hand now, and 
 were needing him sorely, never left him for a moment, 
 and his determination to join them, to help them, to 
 endure with and for them, never slackened. 
 
 " The Blankshires is gettin' merry hell," said a 
 wounded man, as he threw himself down near the 
 reserves, and within a yard or two of Thorns. He 
 had a slight wound on his left elbow, enough to swear 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. I99 
 
 by, enough to serve him as an excuse for quitting the 
 firing-line. " It's bloomin' 'ot everywhere, but it's 
 'ottest on the right, and the Blankshires is being 
 punished somethink awful ! " 
 
 " Reinforce the right ! For Gawd's sake reinforce 
 the right ! " cried a voice from somewhere beyond the 
 ridge, and thirty men sprang to their feet and leaped 
 at the hill-crest like demons. Their, movements were 
 swift, but marked by a certain stiffness. They were 
 instinct with a kind of furious determination, a hurried 
 recklessness such as denotes an inward struggle, when 
 a man dare not give himself time to hesitate lest he 
 should be vanquished by his meaner self. The drawn 
 faces of these men mirrored that feeling; they were 
 set hard and tense ; every motion of their limbs bore 
 witness that the mind within them was driving the 
 shuddering body forward relentlessly, against instinct, 
 inclination, will. 
 
 Thorns, forgetful of his weakness now that the 
 supreme moment had come, rushed forward some 
 yards in advance of the scattered, scuttling line of 
 crouching men. As he reached the crest he was 
 struck with sudden astonishment, for the place was 
 wholly unlike what he had pictured to himself. It 
 was a broad table-land, dipping slightly in the centre 
 to rise again at the farther end where a fringe of grey 
 boulders stood out grotesquely against the sky-line. 
 Just beyond the dip some shallow trenches had been 
 scratched in the hard ground, and in these lay pros- 
 trate khaki-coloured figures, stretched flat behind 
 barking rifles. Here and there a boulder or two 
 afforded shelter, and the men were herded behind 
 them. On the right was another trench, equally 
 shallow, and filled with the quick and the dead. The 
 
200 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 table-land was being played upon by big guns from 
 the front and from the right and left flanks. The 
 enemy's marksmen were in hiding, not only upon the 
 slopes of the boulder- strewn hills in front and on either 
 hand, but behind the shelter of the rocks at the far 
 end of the table-land itself. The whole surface of the 
 hill-top which the British held was covered with tiny, 
 pecking dust -flecks, that leaped upward much as 
 water may be seen to do when rain falls heavily upon 
 it. Wounded men were creeping painfully towards 
 the rear, and the dead lay about in every direction, 
 like rabbits after a big drive. Shells burst continuously 
 over every part of the flat. 
 
 Ralph Thorns, unarmed, bare-footed, bare-headed, 
 and in his pyjamas, ran across the open to the trench 
 on the right in which the Blankshires lay. He had 
 no sense of weakness now, and his limbs served him 
 loyally. He seized a rifle and a handful of cartridges 
 from a dead man. He had a wide field for choice, 
 for on the lip of the trench the dead were tumbled 
 here, there, everywhere — some curled up like dogs, 
 some extended as though at rest, some with peaceful, 
 some with distorted, agonised faces. 
 
 No one spared so much as a look at Thorns as he 
 threw himself into the firing-line. Every man was 
 feverishly busy, shooting at those cruel boulders, for 
 the enemy were invisible, trying to keep alive, if pos- 
 sible, distracted by the noise, and half maddened by 
 the awful tension of the ordeal which all were enduring. 
 A murderous converging fire was being brought to 
 bear upon the shelter-trench, which in its poor two 
 feet of depth afforded a miserable protection, and the 
 enemy's riflemen were enfilading it from the right 
 flank. Every minute or so a man gasped, and lay 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. 201 
 
 still for ever, or fell backward with feebly kicking legs. 
 Now and again a wounded soldier gave vent to a dull 
 grunt, to a sharp exclamation, to a curse, or to a scream 
 of pain. A private near Thorns threw himself flat in 
 despair and ceased firing. 
 
 "We can't stand this 'ere," he shouted. "We've 
 done all we blooming well can. The devils is right 
 round us ! Give in, boys ; it ain't no good to be killed 
 for nothink ! " 
 
 He drew a foul handkerchief from his sleeve, and 
 began to knot it round his rifle muzzle with feverish 
 haste. " Stand up, boys," he shouted again. " Stand 
 up, and hold your 'ands above your 'eads. It'll be a 
 surrender then, and the beggars won't 'urt us ! " 
 Following his example, fully twenty men got up, and 
 stood stiffly with empty hands aloft — but with them 
 rose Ralph Thorns, his eyes flashing, his face dis- 
 torted with passion, his rifle clubbed. He brought 
 the heavy butt down upon the head of the private 
 who had instigated the surrender, and the man was 
 felled like an ox, subsiding in a limp heap at the 
 bottom of the trench. 
 
 "You dogs! " yelled Thorns, standing fearless and 
 erect, and trembling with fury. " Lie down, and fight 
 like men. My God ! haven't you enough pluck to 
 stand a little punishment for the honour of the 
 corps ? " 
 
 The men were back at their duty in an instant. 
 
 " My Gawd ! " ejaculated one of them in a scared 
 whisper. " It's old Thorns' ghost, so 'elp me ! " 
 
 "Come to lead the regiment, 'e 'as, now the 
 Colonel's- dead ! " said another. In that appalling 
 shambles, where the laws of God and man seemed for 
 the time to be suspended, everything was possible 
 
202 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 and natural to the strained minds of the men, even 
 the sudden appearance in their midst of the ghost of 
 their grim Major. 
 
 " Stick to it, boys ! " cried a sergeant, wiping the 
 blood from his face. "Stick to it! We're right as 
 rain now the Major has tooked charge." He looked 
 askance at the officer, believing firmly in his existence, 
 but no less firmly in his ghostly nature. 
 
 The men did not stop to reason ; they fought. The 
 presence of that gaunt figure in his hospital kit filled 
 them with a quite inconsequent feeling of security, 
 much as a frightened child is comforted by the know- 
 ledge that some trusted elder is near to it. For the 
 moment fear left them, and Thorns never suffered it 
 to regain the mastery. From the instant when his 
 men became aware he was among them, he held 
 them as in a vice. It was he who called to them to 
 follow him when he led the headlong rush which 
 freed the trench from the enfilading fire of the enemy ; 
 it was he who seized the fringe of boulders behind 
 which the murderous riflemen had lurked, and threw 
 his men forward to hold it ; it was he who nailed the 
 Blankshires to the ground which they had won, and 
 forced them to cling to it through the whole of that 
 strenuous afternoon ; it was he who led, directed, con- 
 trolled, heartened, inspired the men of the Blankshires 
 till the merciful darkness brought peace to the battle- 
 rent hill ; and it was the Blankshires, so men say, who 
 saved the situation, and alone prevented the disaster 
 which at one time was imminent. 
 
 But when the night had fallen, four privates of his 
 regiment bore slowly to the rear an emaciated form 
 in stained pyjamas, with feet, knees, and hands cut 
 and bruised, with its face blackened with dirt where 
 
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE CORPS. 203 
 
 the dust and sweat had caked, and with limbs that 
 hung with the limp heaviness of the dead. No wound 
 was found upon his body; the danger which had in- 
 spired him removed, he had succumbed to sheer 
 exhaustion, outraged nature taking its final toll in 
 payment for his defiance of her will. 
 
 Men do deeds that live, and are rewarded by 
 honours and decorations, by mention in despatches, 
 and by speedy promotion ; but Ralph Thorns was 
 destined to receive none of these things. It was only 
 known that he had quitted his cot in hospital in the 
 face of all regulations; that he was found dead and 
 unwounded on the battle-field — a fate which is no 
 more than the deserts of one who refuses to be guided 
 by the advice of his physician — and the doctors were 
 prepared to swear that he could not have reached the 
 hill-top unaided. Therefore Major Ralph Thorns of 
 the Blankshires was buried and forgotten, save by the 
 men of his regiment who have their reasons for keep- 
 ing silent ; but perhaps to him there was guerdon 
 enough in the fact that he, and he alone, had saved 
 the honour of his corps. 
 
SET ON EDGE" 
 
 " The fathers have eaten sour fruit, and the teeth of the children are set 
 on edge." 
 
SET ON EDGE." 
 
 Weep not — but when years are over, 
 
 And thine arm is strong and sure, 
 And thy foot is swift and steady 
 
 On the mountain and the muir — 
 Let thy heart be hard as iron, 
 
 And thy wrath as fierce as fire, 
 Till the hour when vengeance cometh 
 
 For the race that slew thy sire ! 
 
 — Aytoun. 
 
 " ALLAH! . . . Allah! . . . Al . . . lah! " 
 
 ■^^ The terrible sound, the very bitter outcry of a 
 man, despairing, impotent, and in agony, calling upon 
 the God that made him, not for aid or for deliverance, 
 but to witness the extremity of his suffering, rent the 
 heavy stillness of the morning. 
 
 Out there, beyond the parade-ground's bare and 
 trodden expanse, where the great river, shrunken by 
 drought, crept sullenly through a maze of sand-banks, 
 the heat-haze was already dancing like a host of souls 
 in torment. More distant still, the dreary wastes of 
 sandy plain spread away and away to a horizon misty 
 with heat, blinding with their aching glare the eye that 
 traversed them. Here and there a charred ruin rose 
 
208 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 like a spectre from the flatness of the sand-stretch, 
 emphasising its melancholy. 
 
 Nearer at hand also were marks of devastation — 
 buildings blackened by fire, heaps of ashes, crumbling 
 walls, piles of unsightly debris, above which rose the 
 shattered domes of Hindu temples and the broken 
 minarets of the mosques. For in this town of Cawn- 
 pur the awful wrath of the white men had been 
 written large for unlettered folk to read as they ran 
 headlong, and punishment had been dealt out un- 
 sparingly to the professors of all creeds, to raja and 
 to m'iat, to serf and prince, to all whose skins were 
 brown, with an indiscriminate, passionate fury, which 
 only the deeds that aroused it, and the latent savagery 
 of human nature could explain, and that nothing could 
 excuse or justify before the dreadful Judgment Seat 
 of God. 
 
 Near the Well, whence after their third victory the 
 hard-bit British veterans, weeping like hysterical 
 women, or cursing brokenly with shameful, bitter 
 blasphemies, had drawn out the mangled bodies of 
 English ladies, and of little soft-limbed children — that 
 Well whence the conquerors drew such an inex- 
 haustible stream of hatred and lust of vengeance — 
 there stood a rude scaffold. It was constructed of 
 new, untrimmed timber, but it had seen much service 
 since the flight of the Nana Sahib, and already it wore 
 an air, business-like and efficient, as of an object in 
 frequent use. In front of it was the awful charnel- 
 house which every white man shunned, passing it 
 with averted eyes, and with muttered oath or prayer 
 upon his lips. The tremendous fascination of tragedy 
 had drawn each one of them with irresistible force to 
 the doorway of that whitewashed prison-house, and 
 
2og 
 
 peeping through it each in turn had seen fearful things 
 reveal themselves — the scars left by the hacks of 
 sword-blades on the walls and in the corners, where 
 trembling women and wailing children had crouched 
 and cowered, seeking in vain to escape the cruel 
 deaths that threatened them; a fair wisp of some 
 poor, pretty, tender creature's hair, shorn from her 
 head by the stroke that had been directed at her 
 neck; the little woollen shoes of a baby, piteous 
 things, torn and stained dreadfully; and everywhere 
 blood, blood, blood — blood splashed high upon the 
 walls, flooding them low down in great red wave- 
 marks, and feeding the millions of flies that buzzed 
 noisily above the stone floor, which was red and 
 slippery. And each spectator had turned away from 
 these sights, some sobbing, and with the hard tears 
 of manhood on their cheeks, some grimacing hideously 
 as they uttered furious curses and incoherent words, 
 but one and all with the kind founts of pity and 
 mercy dried up within them, with everything that 
 they had possessed of humanity throttled in the grip 
 of an overpowering hate, the very souls of them 
 maddened by a longing for indiscriminate retaliation 
 upon those whose skins proved them akin to the 
 devils who had wrought these \hings. 
 
 "Allah! . . . Allah! . . . Al . . . lahl" 
 Again that passionate outcry broke forth, and carried 
 far and wide, appealing to the God of the Muham- 
 madans, the God, Merciful and Compassionate, to 
 behold the extremity of this lone man's agony. 
 
 Around the scaffold the men of two British regi- 
 ments stood in hollow square, lean, hard fellows, with 
 bronzed, bearded faces, clad in inappropriate scarlet 
 uniforms, with shakos on their heads, and with nothing 
 
 
 
210 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 better than linen curtains hanging about their ears to 
 protect them from the fierce rays of an Indian sun. 
 Behind them a multi-coloured mob of natives was 
 gathered, Hindus, Muhammadans, men of many castes 
 and creeds, dressed in all descriptions of costumes 
 from loosely flowing draperies to loin -clouts, silent, 
 awed, sullen, scowling, but instinct with a horrible 
 eagerness. The eyes of white men and brown men 
 alike were fixed upon one thing — the figure upon the 
 scaffold. The soldiers' faces wore a number of varying 
 expressions : some gazed with an indifference born of 
 familiarity with what was going forward ; some looked 
 away from time to time, as though loth to watch 
 longer the sufferings of that tortured man, but a terrible 
 fascination drew their eyes back, again and again, to 
 the spectacle of terror ; in the faces of a few there was 
 a jeering triumph, in those of others there was a stern 
 delight ; in none could pity be discerned, though one 
 or two of the younger men trembled and shook, 
 sickened by a weakness which they strove to conceal, 
 and of which they were mightily ashamed. 
 "Allah! . . . Allah! . . . Al . . . lah!" 
 A third time that cry of man to his Maker rang out 
 shattering the stillness, and a kind of tremulous wave, 
 accompanied by a dull, barely audible murmur, swept 
 over the mob of native spectators. 
 
 The man who uttered that strenuous outcry stood 
 high above the ground on the platform of the rude 
 scaffold. His arms were tied behind his back, and 
 ropes had been bound about his chest. His legs were 
 made fast by stout cords securely knotted above the 
 knees and about the ankles. He stood there, pinioned 
 and fettered, his whole body rigid and immovable. 
 Only the head, with that awful face upturned to- 
 
" SET ON EDGE. 211 
 
 wards the Heaven upon which its owner cried, was 
 free. 
 
 The condemned man was clad in the flowing gar- 
 ments of the Muhammadan, garments which had once 
 been white, but which were now crumpled and foul. 
 The knees and elbows were stained red, and his beard 
 was soiled with clots of human blood, for, in accord- 
 ance with the sentence passed in that terrible hour of 
 barbarous vengeance, he had been forced to lick clean 
 with his tongue one square foot of the pavement in 
 that place of murder and death. The back of his coat, 
 where it stood out against his shoulder-blades, which 
 the ropes drew into prominence, or where it fell slack 
 between them, was spotted with streaks and dots of 
 the same colour, for this pure-bred Muhammadan had 
 been savagely scourged by Sweepers, low -caste folk, 
 whose very touch is a defilement. 
 
 His tense face was ashen-grey — that hideous tint to 
 which brown skins alone can blanch under the stress 
 of mighty emotion — and the ghastliness of its hue was 
 enhanced by contrast with the ragged fringe of black 
 beard which framed those pallid features. The eyes, 
 starting from their sockets, were strained upward to 
 the unpitying heavens ; the pale lips were drawn back, 
 as in a snarl, exposing livid gums, and teeth that 
 ground loudly against each other ; deep lines of agony 
 seamed his face. 
 
 Yet, in the eyes of this doomed wretch, the death 
 that awaited him was as nothing. He was mad with 
 terror, stricken wild with despair ; but it was not the 
 fear of death that tortured him, not despair, born of a 
 knowledge of the inexorable hatred of his foes, that 
 stretched him there, in the gaze of all men, as upon an 
 invisible rack. His terror was of the eternal damnation 
 
212 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 that surely awaited him beyond the awful Bourne, 
 despair of salvation, since that is denied to those who 
 go to their death thus outrageously defiled, whose very 
 bodies are doomed to be reduced to ashes and scattered 
 to the four winds, past the power of human or angelic 
 gathering ! 
 
 "Allah! . . . Allah! . . . Al . . . lahl" 
 Once more that terrible outcry split the silence, 
 and now it was followed by a gush of fierce words — 
 words that stumbled over one another in the impetuous 
 torrent of their outflow, words spoken by one who 
 knew that his time was short, words that sent a thrill 
 like a cold shudder passing over the sea of upturned 
 brown faces that spread away from the scaffold to the 
 ruined walls of Cawnpur. " Brothers, my brothers, I 
 die ! I, Mir Abdullah ! These dogs have defiled my 
 body . . . my corpse they will burn with fire . . . 
 they will strew mine ashes on the ground . . . and 
 the Resurrection, the Awful Kiamah, the Last Great 
 Day of all, shall not find Mir Abdullah among the tale 
 of the Sons of the Faith ! . . . Hear me, oh my 
 brothers ! Hear this, the cry of Mir Abdullah who 
 dieth now before your eyes, and dieth body and soul ! " 
 The stream of passionate words, broken at first by 
 gasps and sobs — hard sobs that brought with them no 
 gentle relief of tears — flowed now in fierce spate from 
 the lips of that ghastly figure, which stood high above 
 the heads of the listening throng, its body rigid, the 
 very incarnation of agony, its livid face still straining 
 towards the Heaven which man in his malice had 
 denied to him. " A legacy ! " he cried. " A legacy I 
 leave to my son — my little son Mir Akhbar ! Ye who 
 listen to my words go forth, I bid you, go forth from 
 this place of sin, and bear the tidings of what hath 
 
213 
 
 befallen me to the widow woman who will mourn for 
 me in Delhi City, in the alley by the Jumna Musjid ! 
 Tell to her the doings of these dog-folk, tell to her 
 how, robbed of salvation by the foul defilements of my 
 body, my soul went forth shrieking to Naraka, and 
 calling upon Allah to pity and avenge ! Bid her breed 
 the boy, my son, so that in the appointed hour he, 
 propelled by the finger of Allah, may accomplish that 
 vengeance ! Bid her train him with a hatred of these 
 dog-folk in his heart, with curses of them upon his 
 lips ! Bid her teach him to pray for their destruction 
 at each bowing down, aye from the Fajr to the Isa ! 
 Bid her train him till his hand is cunning with the 
 weapons that slay ! Bid her instil but a single idea, a 
 single duty into his mind — the idea of vengeance, the 
 duty of taking the life of the man who hath dishonoured 
 and slain his father! Brothers, I had nought to do 
 with the killing that went forward in that place of 
 death! Am I, Mir Abdullah, a paid butcher that I 
 should sully my hand with such work as that ? But 
 for a crime in which I had no share, here die I body 
 and soul ! Oh, my brothers, bear to my son full tid- 
 ings of this thing. He is very little, but presently he 
 will know and understand ! And above all other 
 names let him cherish and remember the name of Bari 
 Sahib, the war chief, who hath condemned me to the 
 double death ! " 
 
 " What's the old beggar jawing about ? " asked the 
 officer in charge of the execution party of a young 
 civilian who stood near him to the right of the 
 scaffold. 
 
 " I can't quite make out," was the answer. " He's 
 talking so infernally fast that it's difficult to follow 
 him, but it's something about a son of his who is ap- 
 
214 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 parently in Delhi, and I think he says that he's innocent, 
 but they all say that." 
 
 "Yes, damn them," said the officer. "Hadn't we 
 better get to work, eh ? " 
 
 "I should think so," said the civilian. "There are 
 half a dozen others to be slung up before noon." 
 
 " I charge you, brothers, to bear these my words to 
 the widow and to my man-child ! " The passionate 
 voice was still pealing forth in commanding tones, 
 speaking with all the grim majesty of death. " In 
 the name of Allah I charge you ! In the name of 
 Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah ! Allah ! . . . 
 Allah! . . ." 
 
 "Slip the bolt, Bill," growled the sergeant to the 
 hangman, in obedience to a word from his officer. 
 
 "Allah! . . . Al . . ." 
 
 The trap-doors fell inward suddenly ; the rigid figure 
 which they had supported dropped like a bolt, was 
 arrested with a mighty jerk, shuddered, just as a steam- 
 launch shudders when an unseen rock brings it to an 
 abrupt standstill from racing at full speed, was con- 
 vulsed for an instant by quick, short spasms, and then 
 swung slowly to and fro at the end of the rope. The 
 head was canted over the left shoulder, but the 
 blackened face was still fixed upon the skies, the 
 swollen tongue lolling out as though in derision of 
 the heaven that had been denied to the passing 
 soul. 
 
 A sound like a groan ran through the mob of natives, 
 and some one on the outskirts of the crowd screamed 
 shrilly, calling, as the dead man had done, upon the 
 name of Allah and his Prophet. The soldiers, well 
 used to their work, began to make the engine of ven- 
 geance ready for its next victim. A kite, high up in 
 
215 
 
 the heavens, hovered with motionless wings, scenting 
 the carrion which it dared not approach. 
 
 In the scanty shade of the parched trees which 
 flanked the parade-ground on the right, a Muham- 
 madan mendicant sat cross-legged in seeming contem- 
 plation. He was dressed in a long, green cotton jubah, 
 stained with age, and tattered through much service. 
 A heavy turban of the same material was bound about 
 his head, and from beneath its frowsy folds two wild, 
 fierce eyes glared forth above a nose shaped like the 
 beak of a bird of prey. His body was wasted by long 
 fasting and the observance of many ascetic practices. 
 His lips moved perpetually though no sound came from 
 them. The rest of his body was still, rigidly still, only 
 as the drop fell, over there at the scaffold, his fingers 
 twisted a string, which he held like a Catholic's rosary, 
 into a big, hard knot. The cord was already marked in 
 this manner in more than a dozen places, but the knot 
 which the holy man's fingers now fashioned, though his 
 eyes never glanced at it, was double the size of those 
 that had preceded it. 
 
 II. 
 
 Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet 
 Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat ; 
 But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, 
 When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from 
 the ends of the Earth ! 
 
 — Kipling. 
 
 " Accursed one ! Again he hath escaped us ! But, 
 Sahib, he is sore stricken, and in very truth he is the 
 father of many bulls. In all the jungle there be none, 
 I trow, mightier than he." 
 
2l6 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " We must follow him up once more." 
 
 "Have patience, Sahib. Suffer him to grow stiff, 
 for the two bullets within him will do their work, and 
 later we may slay him with ease, ordering all things 
 with decency and to our convenience." 
 
 "No, Mir Akhbar, he has flouted us twice. I will 
 give him no more time, lest he escape. I shall follow 
 him. Say, wilt thou come with me, or wilt thou wait 
 here with these jungle-folk ? " 
 
 The young Muhammadan looked his officer frankly 
 in the eyes. " I follow whithersoever thou leadest, 
 Sahib," he said simply. 
 
 They were splendid specimens of the races that had 
 bred them, this young Englishman and the Punjaubi 
 Muhammadan at his side. The former, Philip Barry, 
 was a subaltern in a native cavalry regiment, trim, 
 smart, lithe, active, lean, with the clean, quick eye, 
 and the nervous, obedient hand which go to the mak- 
 ing of the " good all-round man " in the British world 
 of sport. He stood about five feet eleven inches, and 
 his wiry build made him look taller than he was. He 
 had not yet been long enough in the East to have lost 
 the ruddy hue of his skin above the slanting line which 
 marked the angle of his forage-cap. His eyes were 
 blue, his hair crisp and inclined to curl. His small 
 head was poised lightly on his shoulders — not the head 
 of a scholar or a statesman, but the face was that of 
 the man of action, resolute, plucky, alert, venturesome. 
 
 The young Muhammadan at his side was a private 
 in Barry's troop, a man whose love of sport had first 
 attracted the notice of the Englishman. His dark 
 hair was cut short, and, now that the soldier was in 
 mufti, was surmounted by a round velvet cap. He 
 was clothed in stained khaki which had seen much 
 
217 
 
 service in the jungle. His face was clean shaven, 
 save for a black moustache. His eyes were large, 
 lustrous, and at times very soft; his features were 
 clean-cut and handsome; his tall, erect figure had 
 about it an air of activity that resembled that of a 
 wild cat. Courage, impetuosity, dash, a keen eye for 
 the beauty of many women, a love of all manly things, 
 and an arrogant pride of race — these were the qualities, 
 the qualities of the fighting Muhammadan of India, 
 which might be read in the face and carriage of this 
 young native soldier. 
 
 He turned now to the headman of the little hill 
 village whose men had been called out to beat for 
 Barry, and he spoke to the old grey-bearded country- 
 man much as he might have spoken to a dog. 
 
 " My Sahib and I go forward now to track this 
 wounded gaur," he said. "Thy folk have climbed 
 down from the trees, into which, like the apes that 
 bred them, they hurried when danger threatened. 
 Will any of the pig -men come onward with me and 
 my Sahib ? " 
 
 The headman, cringing before the youngster, broke 
 forth into profuse apologies and explanations. " His 
 men were very weary," he said ; " they had thought- 
 lessly neglected to eat their morning rice. If they went 
 forward now on the track of the wounded buffalo, 
 they would surely faint by the way, thus bringing 
 disgrace upon their hamlet, and arousing the righteous 
 wrath of the Sahib yonder, and of the heaven -born 
 warrior who was as a father and a mother to these 
 so worthless. - . ." 
 
 The old man's fluent excuses were cut short at this 
 point by the trooper, who uttered a coarse phrase in 
 the vernacular, and then turned to Barry. 
 
2l8 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 "Jackals, Sahib, jackals," he said, indicating the 
 abashed villagers with a graceful gesture of arm and 
 hand. "They hunt not for pleasure, but for food, 
 and they follow mightier folk that they may gather 
 their leavings. When danger be afoot they scuttle 
 to their lairs. So be it, Sahib. What need have we 
 of these low-caste animals ? Let us go forward alone, 
 we two." 
 
 " Come," said Barry, who had been listening to the 
 talk, most of which was unintelligible to him, with 
 growing impatience. "We must get him this time, 
 Mir Akhbar." 
 
 The youngsters walked quickly to the edge of the 
 grazing-ground in which they had been standing, and 
 entered the jungle which enclosed it. A few minutes 
 earlier they had seen the big gaur, a splendid specimen 
 of the great wild buffalo of India, bolt headlong into 
 these thickets, and the path that at first they followed 
 was that which the vast bulk of the brute had torn 
 and crushed for itself through the broken underwood. 
 On either hand the bruised boughs and twigs oozed 
 sap which formed in slow drops ; in places clusters of 
 leaves were still very gradually raising themselves from 
 the ground to which they had been crushed violently ; 
 the air was heavy with resinous scents. After scram- 
 bling, during some minutes, along this furrow in the 
 greenery, which the big beast had ploughed for itself, 
 Barry and Mir Akhbar came out on to a game-path, 
 a mere ribbon of russet-coloured track, winding in and 
 out between the boles of huge trees. The carpet of 
 sodden leaves revealed the slot of the gaur, and here 
 and there a fleck of scarlet on earth or leaf bore witness 
 to the bullets which had been planted in him. Over- 
 head the boughs met, forming a kind of tunnel through 
 
2ig 
 
 the woodland, a place of perpetual dusk, uncertain and 
 mysterious. The air was dank and heavy ; all things 
 were moist and clammy to the touch ; a hushed still- 
 ness, as of intense expectancy, pervaded the gloom. 
 The men moved forward slowly and with infinite 
 caution. 
 
 The path led presently into a tiny oasis of sparser 
 growths, and Barry, halting at its edge, glanced over 
 his shoulder and whispered a word or two to his 
 companion. " See," he said. " He has yet much life 
 in him. Look, his tracks run on and on yonder." He 
 pointed to the slot ahead, which was visible for many 
 yards. Mir Akhbar, standing on tip-toe, peeped at 
 the spoor over Barry's shoulder, and at that instant 
 the melancholy silence of the jungle was broken 
 rudely. 
 
 The noise seemed to leap out of the stillness, full- 
 formed and monstrous, a great volume of sound which 
 had for its abrupt beginning no gradual crescendo. It 
 was close at hand, a mighty crashing and rending, 
 through which vast hoofs thudded their drum-beat. 
 It was bewildering, seeming to approach from every 
 direction at once ; it was upon the men, overwhelming 
 them, almost before they had realised that it had 
 reached their sense of hearing. For the fraction of a 
 second Barry stood gripping his rifle and staring into 
 the eyes of his comrade, while hosts of trivial ir- 
 relevant thoughts crowded through his mind. He 
 turned about with the quickness of a startled man, 
 and a cry from Mir Akhbar sent him whirling back 
 again into his old position. Then he was aware of 
 a bulky shadow tearing through the jungle from 
 behind. It came with the speed of a flash of light, a 
 hunched mass of heavy grey -black shoulders, from 
 
220 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 which two long, sharp horns projected like a brace of 
 sickles, the whole propelled at a furious pace by gallop- 
 ing limbs and hoofs that thundered. 
 
 The thing was seen for a moment, with something 
 of the instantaneous distinctness with which an object 
 is revealed by a lightning-flash ere the blind darkness 
 swallows it again. Barry saw the monster as it charged 
 Mir Akhbar; he saw the Panjaubi leap to one side; 
 he saw him slip and fall prostrate ; he saw the gaur 
 whirl by, missing him by a hair's-breadth ; he saw the 
 brushwood sway and duck as the monster passed into 
 it and vanished; and then, and only then, did the 
 power to move and think return to him. 
 
 A second later he had leaped to Mir Akhbar's side, 
 and stood straddle -legged above him, gazing at the 
 spot where the gaur had disappeared. The noise of 
 the brute's rush diminished as quickly as it had begun. 
 A loud snort followed, then a cracking and groaning 
 of broken boughs as the beast wheeled about, and in 
 an instant was once more charging furiously. Barry, 
 aware now of the direction from which destruction 
 menaced him, stood, crouching slightly, peering through 
 the tangle of living greenery. Again he saw that vast, 
 shadowy form, growing momentarily more distinct, 
 more appalling, heaving through the gloom, and spurn- 
 ing the brushwood with tremendous force ; again the 
 tumult of its onslaught deafened him. He saw certain 
 death rushing towards him, awful, inexorable. Dimly 
 he was conscious that Mir Akhbar crept away, with 
 awkward sprawlings, in the direction of his rifle, but 
 his every faculty was centred in that charging enemy. 
 It filled the world for him. He was alone with it, 
 all the universe standing at gaze, holding its breath, 
 awaiting the catastrophe. An incredibly short space 
 
" SET ON EDGE. 221 
 
 of time had elapsed since the gaur, which had doubled 
 back upon its spoor, as wounded buffaloes will, and 
 had been lurking in concealment, lying in wait for its 
 pursuers, first began its charge; yet the instants had 
 been so crowded with impressions and emotions, had 
 been so strenuous, so intense, that to Barry time had 
 lost its meaning. It was a measure by which these 
 minutes could not be gauged then or later. 
 
 As the bull approached Barry' fired once — twice. 
 He heard the bullets tell loudly through the clangs of 
 the reports; a thick cloud-bank of smoke hung low 
 before his eyes in the damp, heavy air, and through it 
 the labouring onrush of the brute was seen veiled and 
 indistinct. Instinctively Barry leaped aside, throwing 
 himself into the bushes on his left. Something smote 
 him violently on the thigh, though he was conscious 
 only of a shock, accompanied by no pang of pain. 
 Wild with excitement he sat up, and as he did so he 
 saw his enemy stumble heavily on to its knees, recover 
 itself clumsily, trip once more, and then fall with a 
 crash that rang through the jungle, awaking the 
 clanging echoes of the woodland. 
 
 Barry struggled to rise, but his right leg was useless. 
 He put his hand to his thigh, and it came away 
 drenched and sticky. Suddenly a consciousness of 
 great pain accompanied by acute nausea turned him 
 giddy, and a groan was wrung from him. The gaur, 
 not twenty yards away, was floundering helplessly in 
 its death-agony, then lying very still ere it began to 
 flog the earth again with its mighty limbs. 
 
 Mir Akhbar, very crestfallen and shamefaced, with 
 all his wonted swagger milked out of him for the 
 moment, opened his coat, and drew a long silk waist- 
 band from around his body. Stooping low, as he 
 
222 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 squatted on his heels, he bound the wound carefully. 
 The delicate sense of touch which belonged to his 
 slender fingers told him that the bone below was 
 broken. 
 
 Barry's eyes were gazing at the tree-tops with a 
 dazed stare in them when Mir Akhbar, his task done, 
 leaned over him tenderly as a woman. 
 
 " Sahib, I go to call the village folk to bear thee 
 to the camp. I will be gone but a minute, and when 
 I return all will be well. Sahib, from this day forward 
 I am thy man to thee ! Thy hand saved my life ! 
 I am thy bondsman, bought by thine own valour, thy 
 chattel, Sahib, while the life that thou hast given is 
 quick in me. Folk such as I, black men, have little 
 use for words. Let my deeds speak for me, Sahib, 
 for the rest of the life which thou hast purchased, 
 and purchasing hast bestowed upon me, a worth- 
 less one, is thine, Sahib, thine ! Doth it pain thee 
 sorely ? " 
 
 But only a groan answered him. 
 
 III. 
 
 Shall we take good at God's hands and not be content to take evil? — The 
 Book of Job. 
 
 " An alms, my sons, an alms, in the name of Allah, the 
 Merciful, the Compassionate, that giving of your sub- 
 stance you may acquire merit. An alms, my sons, to 
 the honour of the Prophet of God ! " The human 
 skeleton, squatting in the dust at the road's side, 
 shook his outstretched begging-bowl, and piped his 
 prayer for a dole in high falsetto. The face that 
 
223 
 
 peeped from under the untidy pilgrim's turban — a 
 shapeless roll of green cotton stuff, tattered and soiled 
 and filthy — was lighted by deep-set eyes that glared 
 with the ferocity of madness or religious fanaticism. 
 The nose was long, and was crooked, thin and pointed, 
 like the beak of a hawk. The arm that held the bowl 
 was withered and shrunken, the nails of the hand were 
 horny talons. Dirty garments of green hung about the 
 lean figure in sodden folds. The man resembled some 
 unclean night-fowl which had alighted on the road and 
 squatted there in a grotesque heap with its moulting 
 plumage draping it. "An alms, an alms ! " he croaked 
 with discordant reiteration. 
 
 Down the long road which led from the bazaar to 
 the cantonments irregular strings of natives passed and 
 repassed in contending streams — sellers of sweetmeats 
 crying their wares in dreary sing-song, water-coolies 
 with their splashing buckets, bullock -cart drivers 
 perched drowsily upon the clumsy shafts of their 
 vehicles, countrymen returning to their homes, stroll- 
 ing men chattering listlessly, and swaggering native 
 soldiers in the picturesque mufti of the East. The 
 afternoon was waning, and the -soft, mellow light of 
 the hour before sundown hallowed the land. 
 
 A trooper in a cavalry regiment, dressed in tight 
 white trousers, a brilliant pink turban, a spotless shirt, 
 half covered by a gorgeous sleeveless coat embroidered 
 curiously, paused for a moment by the begging priest, 
 fumbled in the wallet at his belt, and threw a handful 
 of small coins into the bowl. 
 
 " May Allah reward thee, my son," droned the 
 mendicant. "Tell me thy name that in my prayers 
 I may remember it." 
 
 "My name is Mir Akhbar, son of Mir Abdullah," 
 
224 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 said the young trooper. He looked with reverent, 
 pitying eyes, half admiring, half scornful, at the figure 
 in the dust at his feet. It was doubtless well, he 
 thought, that the land should hold such saints as this 
 to pray for those who needed prayer, but none the less 
 he thanked Allah that, in His mercy, He had not 
 destined His servant Mir Akhbar for a calling so little 
 to his liking. 
 
 The priest looked up at the handsome youngster 
 before him with a curious gleam in those hungry eyes 
 of his. Then he plunged his hand into the recesses of 
 his bosom, and fingered something that lay hidden 
 there. 
 
 "Mir Akhbar, son of Mir Abdullah," he said, "the 
 day is near its ending. Thy father hath no place in 
 which to lay him down to rest. Say, may I lodge with 
 thee ? " 
 
 " Come, holy one," said Mir Akhbar simply. The 
 use of his father's name in addition to his own struck 
 him as peculiar, but these saints had queer conventions 
 concerning which he, a muscular young Muhammadan 
 who troubled himself little about religious matters, 
 knew nought. 
 
 Without further speech the wild-eyed mummy of a 
 man drew himself to his feet, still fumbling that in- 
 visible something in his breast, and his bent and 
 shrunken figure followed the upright young soldier 
 down the road towards the barracks. As he went his 
 lips moved ceaselessly as though in prayer, but no 
 sound came from them. 
 
 " How goes it, old man ? " The speaker was a tall 
 young Englishman in tennis flannels, who walked 
 lightly into the room swinging a racquet in his hand. 
 
225 
 
 Philip Barry, his right leg extended and held rigid 
 by splints, his left crooked up almost to his nose, as he 
 lay propped against a mound of pillows, dropped the 
 book which he had been trying to read, and looked at 
 his brother officer cheerily. 
 
 " Going strong, thanks," he said. " Have a drink ? " 
 
 Barry's servant brought glasses on a tray, and passed 
 with noiseless tread into the bedroom beyond. The 
 two youngsters fell to talking of the things which fill 
 the thoughts of their kind — the doings and the gossip 
 of the station, the "gup" of the regiment; how poor 
 old So-and-So was as a pavid lamb in the talons of Mrs 
 Whats-her-name ; how that ass Thingamy had taken 
 too much on board before the lotteries, had conse- 
 quently bought every " stiff 'un " entered for the races, 
 and was now going about like a bear with a sore head ; 
 the chances of the regimental team in the coming polo- 
 match with the Blue Lancers ; the humours of the 
 orderly-room; the "telling off" that the Colonel had 
 administered to Smith for clubbing his troop ; the traits 
 of the white officers and of the brown men who filled 
 the narrow world of the cantonment. 
 
 " What has become of Mir Akhbar ? " asked Barry 
 presently. " He hasn't been near me for a week." 
 
 " Sick, I expect," was the answer. " His gratitude 
 was rather a nuisance at first. We couldn't keep him 
 away from your quarters, and he used to sit outside 
 your door for all the world like that whacking great 
 boar-hound in the picture by What-d'you-call-him." 
 
 " He's a good chap," said Barry, " and I miss him. 
 Perhaps his gratitude is beginning to wear a trifle thin ? 
 He hadn't much to be grateful for anyway. He'd have 
 done as much for me if he had had the chance." 
 
 "That's rot, old chap. You did an infernally plucky 
 
226 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 thing, and the men are wild with enthusiasm. You 
 should have heard old Subadar Mir Maluk on the 
 subject. It would have made your ears burn, I tell 
 you. When you come on parade for the first time we 
 shall have a job to keep the beggars in their ranks — 
 they will want to carry you shoulder-high, and all that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 " Bosh," said Philip, but a glow of pleasure warmed 
 him. He liked those about him to think well of him. 
 
 " As for Mir Akhbar, I'm sure he must be ill if he 
 hasn't been to see you lately. There's no mistaking 
 the chap's feelings on the matter. Anyway, I'll find out 
 and let you know." 
 
 And, indeed, Mir Akhbar was sick — sick unto death, 
 not with any mere disease of the body, but sore 
 stricken by a rage that was akin to insanity ; for into 
 his soul, swept and garnished by a lifetime of clean 
 training and manly tradition, seven devils had entered 
 to riot wantonly. 
 
 Late at night, in the dim shadows of the barrack 
 verandah, where the priest had been invited to spread 
 his mat, the message that had waited five-and-twenty 
 years for its deliverance reached at last the son of the 
 man who died at Cawnpur. Against a background of 
 sound — the quiet noises inseparable from the hours of 
 darkness in all these lands of Asia, punctuated by the 
 heavy breathing of the sleeping men within the barrack 
 — the fateful whisper of the priest had stood out, as it 
 were, a tremendous reality amid things familiar and 
 commonplace, that in a moment had become strange, 
 blurred, and indistinct. The holy man, a mere patch 
 of denser blackness bulking big and shapeless in the 
 obscurity, sat telling his tale pitilessly, with the graphic 
 
" SET ON EDGE. ' 227 
 
 force that belongs by right to one who has dealt in 
 words during all the days of his life. His tones vi- 
 brated with excitement, thrilled with hate ; he spared 
 no detail of that grim narrative, omitted no touch that 
 might serve to awaken the indignant horror of the 
 Muhammadan, that might be calculated to spur to 
 madness the youngster who sat listening to the story 
 of his father's tragedy. The long pipe of his hookah 
 had fallen from Mir Akhbar's grip, and lay coiled upon 
 the matting of the floor beside a tiny mirror in which, 
 half an hour earlier, the yoHng trooper had been gazing 
 complacently at the reflection of his own handsome 
 face. In the bowl of the hookah a coal still glowed 
 dully, casting a sullen gleam around it, like the eye of 
 an angry monster, and lighting up the lean face of the 
 ascetic sufficiently to show those angry pits of fire 
 whence his hungry soul looked forth upon a world 
 ' which he had learned to hate. 
 
 Mir Akhbar crouched before him, strained, tense, 
 and agonised. The hue of health had faded from his 
 cheeks, leaving them ashen grey ; his face was drawn, 
 and the taut muscles throbbed and contracted like 
 those of a man stretched upon the rack; his hands 
 clenched till the nails ate into the flesh of his palms, 
 and then unclenched, the fingers writhing and groping 
 impotently ; his dry lips were restless, and his tongue 
 sought to moisten them in vain. Spellbound, fascin- 
 ated, a prey to a hideous conflict of emotions, he sat 
 listening in silence, while his heart turned sick and 
 his brain reeled. To the ordinary onlooker he had 
 been a mere shadow in the gloom, but the holy man 
 possessed in common with many of his kind a strange 
 power of seeing in the dark, and he watched his 
 victim narrowly. He was like a skilled anatomist 
 
228 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 marking the effect of the shocks which he was ad- 
 ministering to his patient's nerves, and glowing with 
 vile triumph as each operation produced the antici- 
 pated result ; only the instrument upon which he 
 played was not the mere tangle of tissues that together 
 make up the body, but a man's living soul which he 
 tortured mercilessly. 
 
 Till now Mir Akhbar had heard little of his father 
 except his name. When Delhi fell, the little naked 
 brat had been found beside the dead body of his 
 mother in the alley by the Jumna Musjid, and a native 
 officer, to whom Allah had not granted the blessing 
 of children, had taken him for his own. Mir Abdullah 
 had been known to the boy's adopted father, but as 
 the latter learned to love the child, the memory of 
 the fact that he was sprung from another man's loins 
 had become distasteful to him, and Mir Akhbar had 
 quickly discovered that inquiries concerning his real 
 parents were apt to get him into trouble. Never, 
 therefore, had the young trooper had an inkling of the 
 manner in which Mir Abdullah had been done to 
 death, until the priest related that grim history to him 
 with studied crudeness and brutality, playing alike 
 upon his pride of race, his prejudices and beliefs as a 
 Muhammadan, and upon that spirit of independence 
 and self»esteem which a lifetime passed among the 
 men of a high-caste regiment had bred in him. 
 
 "Thus he died, the man, thy father," whispered 
 the priest. "Thus died he, body and soul! Thus, 
 and in no other manner, was he defiled and tortured 
 ere they took from him his life ! Thus went he forth 
 from the body, shrieking, to the Terrible Place, and 
 crying upon thy name, Mir Akhbar, to avenge him 
 upon those who doomed him to the double death ! " 
 
22g 
 
 Mir Akhbar, breathing heavily like one spent with 
 running, ground his teeth, and a hollow groan broke 
 from him. 
 
 " Think of it, my son, think of it ! " continued the 
 priest. His voice, which throbbed with intense ex- 
 citement, seemed to lash his listener to a fresh agony 
 of restlessness. " Think of him, the father from 
 whose loins thou art sprung, burning for ever in the 
 fires of Jehannam— for ever ! During all the days of 
 thy life that thou hast lived joyously it hath been thus 
 with him ! Think of it! Think of his poor body 
 defiled by the scourges of sweepers, low folk such as 
 thou seest daily ! When thou dost behold a sweeper, 
 remember that it was men such as that who, at the 
 behest of Infidels, flogged a man such as thou art ! 
 Think of his body all cut and bleeding from those 
 scourges, think of his beard smeared with the blood 
 of the dead Infidels in whose killing he had had no 
 hand ! Think of his reverend corpse burned with fire, 
 even as his soul burneth now — even now — and of the 
 ashes scattered broadcast so that when the Great 
 Kiamah dawns he shall not be numbered among the 
 hosts of the Faithful ! Think of the wrong, the 
 cruelty, the injustice, the shame, my son ! Doth thy 
 blood not spurt up within thee at the memory of these 
 things, at the knowledge that the wrong done to thy 
 sire is a wrong that can never end ? In thy heart 
 is there no cry for vengeance ? Doth thy soul raise 
 no shout to heaven for the justice that was denied, 
 even as his voice pealed forth upon that terrible day, 
 calling Allah and his Prophet to witness his impotence 
 and his agony ? Have the Infidels made thee quite 
 emasculate? Have they taken from thee the power 
 to feel, as the men of the fighting breed from which 
 
23O TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 thou art sprung were wont of old to feel when their 
 religion was desecrated, even when a father's blood, 
 and the voice of a father damned eternally and calling, 
 calling from the Pit, rang not in their ears to urge 
 them on and on ? " 
 
 He paused for an instant in the furious outflow of 
 his speech, watching the effect of his words upon the 
 man who sat, mouthing and inarticulate, before him. 
 Then he broke out into further oratory, speaking 
 always in that passionate whisper, from which now 
 and again his voice, wrenching itself free from control, 
 leaped up in a shrill, discordant treble. 
 
 " The thought of such nameless outrages wrought 
 by Infidels upon a man of our Faith setteth the blood 
 curdling in my veins like sour milk, maketh life itself 
 an insolence, a bitterness, a woe, a putridity! AM! 
 AM! AM! Yet that which befalleth the body is 
 nought, nought, nought ! And the victim was no mere 
 co-Muhammadan, but the sire from whom issued the 
 life that quickeneth thee ! If I am sickened and 
 moved, how should it fare with thee, Mir Akhbar, son 
 of Mir Abdullah ? To me the man whom the Infidels 
 defiled and abused was but a brother in the Faith ; 
 to thee he was a father, thy flesh is his flesh, thy 
 blood is his blood, thy heart beateth frOm his tor- 
 tured heart ! In any True Believer the knowledge of 
 what he endured might well breed a madness, ferment- 
 ing the seething brain; what then is thy feeling, Mir 
 Akhbar, Mir Akhbar? But the body is nought, is 
 nought, is nought! It is of thy father's soul that I 
 bid thee think— the poor, lost, naked, suffering soul, 
 that waileth, waileth, waileth ever, out there in the 
 darkness of the night of nights ! Listen, my son, dost 
 thou hear nought ? " 
 
231 
 
 He paused in theatrical fashion, with a long thin 
 finger uplifted solemnly, a bar across the faint lumin- 
 osity of the night beyond the verandah, and to Mir 
 Akhbar, his every nerve on edge, it seemed that a 
 weird cry came out of the stillness to ring despairingly 
 in his ears ere it sobbed itself back into desolate 
 silence. Quivering in every muscle the young Muham- 
 madan threw his arms aloft in a passionate gesture, 
 eloquent of the tumult of emotions that rent him. 
 Again and again he opened his dry lips, fighting for 
 his speech, but his parched tongue refused to serve 
 him. The priest crept a little nearer to him, and once 
 more his tense whisper thrilled the night. 
 
 " Since that day, that terrible day, he, thy father, 
 hath been in torment, broiling in the raging flames, 
 racked with thirst, parched and mangled and tortured 
 and rent by the devils into whose grip these fiends of 
 Infidels did deliver him, and through all those years, 
 those piled-up hours and days and months, he hath 
 watched thee unceasingly — he is watching thee now ! 
 He hath known from the beginning that one drop of 
 comfort only remained for him, and that it was within 
 thy gift, Mir Akhbar — vengeance upon the murderers 
 who so foully did him to death ! That alone will 
 assuage in some little sort the misery which is his 
 doom. Hungrily, eagerly hath he watched and 
 waited for the dawning of the appointed hour, for 
 the coming of the moment foreordained by Allah 
 in which thine arm, my son, shall arise to wreak 
 that vengeance ! Now that time, that acceptable 
 time, is near at hand ! Wilt thou fail thy father, 
 Mir Akhbar? Wilt thou add yet one more pang to 
 the tortured spirit of thy sire, and thus earn for thy- 
 self the contempt of Allah, of the Holy Prophet, and 
 
232 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 of thy fellow-men in this life, and in the next an 
 eternity of damnation ? " 
 
 A choking cry broke from Mir Akhbar, and he smote 
 his breast mercilessly. Then words came to him, 
 broken and incoherent. 
 
 " I can do nought, nought, nought ! " he moaned, 
 wringing his hands. " Had I been . . . there ! . . . 
 Had I seen . . . Willingly would I have flung away 
 the life I hate . . . but now ? I am impotent, impo- 
 tent ! . . . The men who slew . . . tortured . . . 
 defiled . . . him ! They have passed away. . . . 
 I have eaten the salt of the Sirkar ! I will eat it no 
 longer, but . . . what can I do ? Allah, Allah, Allah, 
 what can I do, what can I do ? " 
 
 He dropped his face upon his folded arms, and 
 rocked his body to and fro, agonised by a sense of his 
 impotence. He could not direct his vengeance against 
 all white men indiscriminately, and no victim lay ready 
 to his hand. 
 
 " The name of the Sahib who condemned thy father 
 to the double death, the death of body and soul, hath 
 not yet been told to thee," whispered the fanatic. " It 
 was Bari Sahib, a general who led their armies in the 
 Terrible Year. He, truly, hath passed away to his 
 own country beyond the black waters, but his son, his 
 only son, is here, here in this camp. Nay, he is an 
 officer in thy regiment. So much did I discover ere 
 ever I came to this place. Mir Akhbar, vengeance 
 upon the man who slew thy sire may best fall through 
 his son who is known to thee ! " 
 
 In the silence that followed Mir Akhbar raised a face 
 in which the eyes were wild with horror, and looked 
 upon the priest with the glare of a maniac. 
 
 " Bari Sahib," he panted. " It was Bari Sahib who 
 
233 
 
 saved my life when I lay helpless at the mercy of the 
 wounded bull ! " 
 
 " Therein, my son, is made plain the finger of Allah, 
 the Merciful, the Compassionate ! " hissed the holy man. 
 " He hath watched over thee, He hath preserved thy 
 life during the days of thine infancy, and through the 
 perils of manhood, to the end that thou mightest 
 accomplish the task allotted to thee even from the 
 beginning ! Behold, how surely all things are ordered 
 by the will of the Most High God ! In the past thou 
 hast profited by His mercies, wilt thou now decline to 
 perform the duty for which He quickened thy clay, 
 and ordained thy being ? Choose now 'twixt thy love 
 of this Infidel, and all that is due by thee to the poor 
 lost soul who was thy father — he whose cries reach 
 thee from the Pit ! " 
 
 Mir Akhbar leaped to his feet, tearing his garments, 
 flogging his breast, his face distorted by spasms, and 
 hideous to look upon. Then with a terrible cry he 
 darted from the verandah and plunged headlong into 
 the night. It seemed to the wretched man that all the 
 devils in hell were abroad, bearing him company. 
 
 IV. 
 
 All-good, All-True, His Reed of Destiny, 
 Drew in the womb the earliest lines of thee ; 
 
 He set the Sun and Moon from East to West 
 Speeding, and bent the blue arch o'er the Sea. 
 
 — With Sa'di in the Garden. 
 
 The night was hot and still, and the air close and 
 heavy, as Mir Akhbar rushed through it, going 
 whither he knew not ; but high up overhead a strong 
 wind was blowing, and vast masses of cloud were drift- 
 
234 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 ing hurriedly across the dim sky like shadowy Garudas 
 of Eastern myth. 
 
 Mir Akhbar stumbled forward through the gloom, 
 now throwing his arms aloft and uttering a passionate, 
 inarticulate cry, now wringing his hands with the self- 
 abandonment of the Oriental in hours of grief, again 
 clenching them by his sides, and straining upward with 
 agonised face, just as that other tortured man had 
 done on the scaffold of Cawnpur. Taking no heed of 
 where he set his feet, he tripped, and staggered onward, 
 till at last, utterly exhausted, he dropped upon the 
 warm earth within the ring of darkness cast by the 
 overhanging branches of a big pipal tree. He did not 
 throw himself prone upon his face, as a white man 
 might have done, but sat huddled up in a squatting posi- 
 tion, rigid and immovable, hour after hour, while the 
 gongs in the cantonments told the slow passage of the 
 night. 
 
 And here, alone and in darkness, the young Muham- 
 madan fought the battle of his life. It is not easy for 
 a Christian man to understand what the bare notion of 
 such defilement as had been heaped upon Mir Abdullah 
 means to a follower of the Prophet. Picture to your- 
 self the most hideous sacrilege that you can conceive ; 
 add to it an outrage upon the purity of a woman ; 
 make the insult personal ; then, and not till then, can 
 you imagine some portion of what the tidings which 
 the priest had borne to him signified to Mir Akhbar. 
 But there was more than that to goad and madden 
 him, for did he not hold the conviction that the eternal 
 damnation of his father's soul followed as a necessary 
 consequence of that brutal punishment ? The cry of 
 his father, lost and in perpetual agony, seemed to ring 
 in Mir Akhbar's ears; the voice that he had never 
 
"set on edge." 235 
 
 heard in life seemed to speak to him from beyond the 
 grave, bidding him do unflinchingly the duty that 
 Allah had laid upon him. Opposing itself to this arose 
 the thought of Philip Barry, the man who had risked 
 his own life to save that of a mere trooper, and of the 
 love which had been born within the latter from 
 admiration and gratitude. But these thoughts came 
 to Mir Akhbar now in the guise of a temptation, luring 
 him from the awful duty imposed on him by Fate. He 
 cared nothing for his own welfare, for his own salva- 
 tion. Gladly would he have sacrified both, if so he 
 might have saved Barry from the doom that threatened 
 him ; but he was nought — only the wretched instrument 
 designed to avenge his dead father, and so to grant to 
 him some measure of the tardy justice that man in his 
 cruelty had denied. The training and discipline of a 
 lifetime were forgotten ; the whole structure of his 
 world had fallen crazily about his ears ; he was thrown 
 back suddenly upon elemental passions, the distorted 
 code of honour that had ruled his forebears, upon the 
 vindictive traditions of his race. It seemed to him 
 that he was called upon to immolate himself for the 
 father that he had never known ; that a mighty sacri- 
 fice was demanded of him ; that these things were 
 written in the Book of Fate, and that he was powerless 
 to alter or amend. s 
 
 Just before the reveille sounded, he rose up stiffly, 
 and made his way back unobserved to his barrack- 
 room. His vigil was over, the struggle ended. It 
 remained for him now to act his part with craft and 
 cunning, that most difficult part which a man can play, 
 of trying, while conscious of a radical change in his 
 heart and soul, to appear in the eyes of others to be no 
 whit different from what he has ever been. 
 
236 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 V. 
 
 For the gods very subtly fashion 
 
 Madness with sadness upon earth, 
 Not knowing in any wise compassion, 
 
 Nor holding pity of any worth. 
 
 — Atalanta in Calydon. 
 
 In the cool crispness of the early morning, half-a- 
 dozen young cavalry officers were strolling across the 
 open space before the mess-house on their way to 
 the parade-ground, the swords they carried under their 
 arms glinting in the bright sunlight. 
 
 " By Jove, it is good to be about again ! " exclaimed 
 Philip Barry as he snuffed the fresh air joyously. " It 
 is just ripping ! Oh, it's good, good, good, to be alive ! " 
 
 "You bet," said one of his companions. "It don't 
 take an overpowering lot of brains, Barry, to find 
 out that it is pretty bad to be a ' stiff 'un.' " 
 
 " I know what Barry means all the same," said 
 another. "It's like getting home on leave after five 
 years of the 'Shiny.' It is so awfully good because 
 what has gone before has been so awfully bad, don't 
 you know." 
 
 " Oh, shut up, Casey. We all know that you are 
 due for a long skrimshank next month, but you 
 needn't rub it in. We aren't going home on leave, 
 anyhow." 
 
 Casey laughed, then he ran his hand through the 
 crook of Barry's arm and pressed it affectionately. " I 
 say, young 'un," he said, "you're a hell of a hero, 
 you know. Mind you make ready your very best 
 court curtsey — you'll want it sure when you get on 
 
" SET ON EDGE. 237 
 
 parade. Now don't begin blushing already. By Jove, 
 you fellows, look how pink he's getting ! " 
 
 " Rot, I'm not," said Barry, very red in the face ; and 
 as the others laughed, he shook off the hand on his 
 arm and dealt its owner a sounding punch in the ribs. 
 
 " If I wasn't afraid of crumpling up that rotten leg 
 of yours, I'd give you something to play with for that, 
 young man," said Casey laughingly. " Now then, 
 stop skylarking. Steady, the Buffs ! If we aren't 
 careful we shall be late for parade, and the Colonel 
 will raise Cain." 
 
 They hurried on, and presently, turning an angle 
 of a building, came in sight of the regiment, dis- 
 mounted, and drawn up in double line. As they ap- 
 proached, the Subadar Major cried shrilly in Hin- 
 dustani some excited sentences in which the name 
 Bari Sahib was alone distinguishable to the Europeans. 
 Then the long line of brown faces was suddenly split 
 in two by a gash of glistening white teeth, as the men, 
 grinning through their black beards, yelled their ap- 
 plause in raucous native voices. Philip Barry, su- 
 premely uncomfortable, was pushed forward by his 
 brother officers, who joined in the cheering. He stood 
 there as handsome a young Englishman as one might 
 wish to see, glowing inwardly with the pleasure which 
 the approval of his little world gave him, but sorely 
 embarrassed by being involved in something so very 
 like a scene. Shamefacedly he spoke a few words of 
 thanks to the Subadar Major, and again the men 
 roared frantically. Then the Colonel, who had pur- 
 posely kept himself hidden while these irregular things 
 were happening, appeared suddenly, and an end was 
 put to the disorder. Mechanically the officers began 
 to tell off their men. 
 
238 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Philip Barry, limping ever so slightly, walked over 
 to the spot where his troop was drawn up. The glow 
 of pleasure was still upon his face, and his eyes were 
 bright with excitement and emotion. " How the 
 incident would have pleased the dear old dad ! " he 
 was thinking. 
 
 As he neared the ranks, Mir Akhbar stepped quietly 
 forward. All eyes were fixed upon him. His action 
 was quite against the regulations, but the circum- 
 stances were peculiar. Even the iron-handed Colonel, 
 men thought, would forgive lack of discipline inspired 
 by a desire to pay a personal tribute to the man who 
 had saved his life, since he could not be supposed 
 to be satisfied by a single share in the roar of approval 
 in which all his fellows had joined. Philip smiled 
 at him, half in amusement, half in embarrassment. 
 
 " Get back to your place, Mir Akhbar," he said. 
 
 But Mir Akhbar halted with his hand at the salute. 
 For an instant he gazed with wild despairing eyes 
 at the face of the young Englishman. Then, very 
 quietly and deliberately, he raised his carbine and 
 shot him through the head. 
 
 Without a sound, save the clash and jingle of his 
 accoutrements, Philip collapsed upon the ground in 
 a limp heap. From every side men darted forward to 
 seize the murderer, but Mir Akhbar, his grim duty 
 done, stood rigidly to attention, and made no resist- 
 ance when the angry excited troopers, handling him 
 after the manner of their kind with brutal roughness, 
 dragged him away to the cells. 
 
 "Mad, of course," said everybody; for did not Mir 
 Akhbar owe his very life to the man whom he had 
 killed, and neither then nor later could he be induced 
 to furnish any explanation of the motives that had 
 
" SET ON EDGE. 239 
 
 actuated him. Madness of this type, however, is not a 
 healthy thing to encourage in a native regiment, where- 
 fore, when the preliminaries dear to the heart of 
 modern British justice had been enacted, Mir Akhbar 
 was hanged by the neck until he was dead. 
 
 To a little house, with its sweep of smooth lawn, 
 and its clustering rose-bushes above the red lane, in 
 the soft West Country, the tidings of that morning's 
 work upon the parade-ground in Northern India came 
 to dim the sunshine and to bow a grey head in sorrow 
 towards the grave. Here General Sir Rupert Barry, 
 after a strenuous life of action, had retired to spend 
 the evening of his days in drowsy rest, while he lived 
 again in the son who was the centre of all his hopes 
 and dreams. Now, during a few dreary months, ere 
 the shock of his trouble killed him, he sat, an old 
 and feeble man, broken-hearted and borne down with 
 sorrow, fumbling ever with shaking fingers those 
 letters bearing Indian post-marks which sought to 
 comfort him by praises of his dead boy. Grief had 
 bewildered him, but he wondered dimly why God had 
 seen fit to pluck that bright young life and leave his 
 world so empty. He never thought to trace the 
 calamity that had overwhelmed him to an act of his 
 own, wrought five -and -twenty years before, in that 
 hour when justice was not only blind, but drunken 
 with passion, and pity had shrunk away fearful and 
 ashamed. 
 
 One man only possessed the key of the enigma, and 
 that man held his peace. The murder was a nine- 
 days' wonder, and the newspapers wrote acre-long 
 screeds of rubbish concerning it, interspersed with 
 hopelessly crude speculations upon the obscurity of 
 
240 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 Oriental motives, and the difficulties surrounding any 
 attempt to comprehend the psychology of the Asiatic. 
 But the secret, the true explanation, was hidden for 
 ever from official inquirers and from the public press, 
 for, as the report of Mir Akhbar's carbine rang out, 
 telling that the deed was done, a Muhammadan mendi- 
 cant, sitting alone in expectation, fumbled in his breast, 
 and drew forth a foul string that had hung about his 
 neck for a quarter of a century. There was a knot upon 
 his cord, worn hard and round as a strung bean, and 
 this, after much struggling, the priest unravelled with 
 his teeth. Then, casting the twine aside as a thing 
 whose use was ended, he performed his ablutions with 
 scrupulous care, and rising up with his face turned 
 toward Mecca, burst forth into resonant praises of 
 Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate God. 
 
GREATER LOVE" 
 
 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life 
 for his friend." 
 
GREATER LOVE." 
 
 A THREADY chorus of war-whoops sounded from 
 out the jungle, its volume, at each repetition, 
 growing fainter and mellower with distance. The little 
 band of dakaits, having wrought by its stolen ambush 
 such mischief as it might, was drawing off exulting 
 and triumphant. Hidden securely by the tangle of 
 greenery, the foemen knew themselves to be safe from 
 pursuit, knew that the baffled white men, whom they 
 had smitten so shrewdly, must accept their check with 
 what meekness they could command, and would have 
 their hands full for the present, patching up their 
 wounded and burying their dead. It was this know- 
 ledge that made the savage war-yells tingle with such 
 insolent glee, ring with such mockery, such contempt. 
 
 Tommy Burton, the political officer, stood in what 
 a few moments earlier had been the foremost firing- 
 line, with his useless revolver still undischarged in his 
 hand, staring about him like a man in a dream. All 
 around, the bearded Indian soldiers, sweating from 
 their recent exertions, their khaki uniforms torn by 
 the thorn-thickets through which their rush had been 
 
244 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 made, were forming up in little groups upon the jungle- 
 smothered hill-cap whereon their enemy had so lately 
 been posted. Their teeth glistened as they grinned 
 nervously at one another; they drew breath with 
 sobbing pants, but already their tongues were begin- 
 ning to wag, discussing in raucous, falsetto speech the 
 fight that was just ended. Between the soaring trunks 
 of the forest trees the smoke of the rifle-fire still hung 
 in a thin mist, the edges of which writhed away in 
 slow contortions. 
 
 Already the incidents with which the last ten 
 minutes had been packed seemed to Tommy as unreal, 
 as incredible as though they belonged to the memories 
 of some former life ; the start from camp, made barely 
 two hours ago in the chill of the early morning, was 
 part and parcel of a very distant past, had had its 
 being, with all other happy and light-hearted things, 
 in a period infinitely remote. Since then, it seemed 
 to Tommy, the very face of the earth had suffered 
 change. It was impossible to identify the world in 
 which he now stood with that other sane and whole- 
 some world in which hitherto it had been good to live. 
 
 And as he stood thus, numb and dazed, now that 
 the need for action was ended, his memory was busy 
 mechanically conjuring up a picture of all that had 
 befallen, re-enacting every incident of the last few 
 minutes. Walter Fairleigh and he, with Oliver 
 Salmon, the newly-arrived subaltern, had been walking 
 briskly along the narrow jungle foot-path in single file. 
 They had been stepping out with the springy gait, 
 laughing and jesting with the gaiete de cceur which, in 
 the tropics, come to even the healthiest s>i white men 
 only with the cool fragrance and cheerfulness of the 
 early morning hour. They had all three been instinct 
 
"greater love." 245 
 
 with the sheer joy of being alive, with the delight of 
 drawing breath, of snuffing the scented forest air, of 
 feeling the tingle of young blood, the rhythmic move- 
 ment of tireless young limbs. The small detachment 
 of armed natives that formed their escort had been 
 tramping before and behind them, the men marching 
 at ease and chatting as they went. Although the 
 district was in a state of disturbance the white men 
 had had no reason to believe that any party of the 
 enemy was near at hand, wherefore a sudden spurt 
 of rifle-fire, bursting with an angry crackle from the 
 forest-clad hill which skirted the path some twenty 
 yards to their right, had taken them completely un- 
 awares. Salmon, who had been walking immediately 
 in front of Tommy, had wheeled sharply round upon 
 him with anger in his face. " Damn it all ! " he had 
 cried, "can't you take care what you are doing with 
 your stick ? " and an instant later he had squatted on 
 the ground, examining with interested curiosity a hole 
 in his thigh, from which the blood was trickling 
 grudgingly. While Tommy still watched him, barely 
 realising what had happened, Salmon had attempted 
 to flounder on to his feet again, and then had sunk 
 back with a groan. "They've winged me, the 
 beggars ! " Tommy had heard him cry. 
 
 Heavy firing was going on now on all sides, the 
 dakaits blazing away joyously from behind the trunks 
 of trees and the dense curtain of thorn-brake, while the 
 native soldiers loosed off their carbines as fast as they 
 could cram in cartridges, without aim or direction. 
 The towering walls of forest that hemmed in the 
 slender track hid the enemy loyally, and his hiding- 
 places were indicated only by little clouds of smoke 
 which leaped forth hurriedly, stopping short with a 
 
246 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 jerk, as though arrested by the sound of the clanging 
 reports. Deafened by the din, half-stunned by the 
 shock, dazed and bewildered by the suddenness of the 
 attack, Tommy had stood where he was, gazing about 
 him with a kind of paralysis of despair at the hopeless 
 confusion into which the men had been thrown by 
 the ambush, and as he gazed a hideous weakness had 
 seized him. Death, of a sudden, had seemed very near, 
 inevitable, imminent, and more ghastly than ever he 
 had dreamed it. One or two of the sepoys had pitched 
 headlong into the scrub, some lying limp and still, 
 others flogging the ground wildly with arms and legs. 
 Their fellows were plainly demoralised, and a cold fear 
 had clutched at Tommy's heart, for the conviction had 
 been on him that irreparable disaster had smitten the 
 little force, and that he too was involved in its ruin. 
 He had felt physically sick, and through his mind 
 there had stormed a jostling crowd of sensations, new 
 to his inexperience, while the chill magic of fear held 
 him spellbound. Then he had caught sight of Walter 
 Fairleigh — the man who above all others was his 
 chosen friend, the man whom he loved, admired, 
 " swore by " with all a lad's enthusiastic hero-worship — 
 and forthwith every other emotion had been swallowed 
 up by a veritable passion of horror and dismay. For 
 Fairleigh had been cowering behind the bole of a huge 
 tree, his face drawn and white to the lips, his eyes 
 alive with terror, his empty hands clawing at nothing 
 with spasmodic, nervous gropings, while, he cried to 
 the men to seek shelter in a voice that was tremulous 
 and wellnigh inarticulate. 
 
 One glance had sufficed to burn into Tommy's per- 
 ception the incredible truth that Walter Fairleigh, of 
 all men in the world — Walter Fairleigh, who in the 
 
247 
 
 pursuit of big game had given tokens, not once, but 
 many times, of a reckless courage, was now, in this 
 moment of supreme stress, rendered impotent and 
 shameless by ungovernable fear ! " And am I looking 
 like that too ? " Tommy had thought. Then he had 
 turned away his eyes, loth to gaze longer upon a 
 spectacle that held for him such a poignancy of pain, 
 feeling that to pry into the soul of his friend, now that 
 it was stripped to such pitiful nakedness, was an out- 
 rage, an indecency — ashamed to his very marrow to 
 have seen what he had seen, and desperate suddenly, 
 with a smarting rage that drove out fear, because the 
 man whom he loved, in whom he had believed in- 
 tensely, had failed him. And, as he turned, Salmon's 
 voice, quivering with anger, sharp and strident with 
 physical suffering, had sounded in his ears. 
 
 "Look at the damned coward, sneaking there behind 
 the tree ! " it had cried. " Lead the men yourself, 
 Burton, for God's sake ! Don't wait for him ! " And 
 the voice had broken in a splutter of almost hysterical 
 imprecations. 
 
 Those words had stung Tommy like so many whip- 
 lashes laid across his face. It was horrible to him that 
 any living soul should have witnessed Walter Fairleigh's 
 shame — the shame which, Tommy felt, was his own in 
 equal measure — most horrible of all that that witness 
 should be Salmon. The new subaltern's forced in- 
 trusion upon their long comradeship had been resented 
 by Fairleigh and Tommy alike; they had been pre- 
 judiced against him from the first, and more intimate 
 acquaintance had led them to write him down a cad, a 
 bounder, and a Jew-boy. All this had been vividly, yet 
 vaguely, present to Tommy's mind as, tingling with 
 rage, he had thrown himself headlong into the firing- 
 
248 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 line, yelling to the men in the vernacular, and by the 
 sheer force of his own impetuosity had borne them 
 forward with him, through those cruel thorn-thickets, 
 in a furious charge upon the hill-crest whence the 
 dakaits were firing. As they breasted the slope several 
 of the men had pecked and stumbled, some to squat 
 limply, some to writhe in dreadful contortions, others 
 with arms and legs wide-flung in a horrible abandon; 
 but, Tommy's fighting blood fairly up now, he had 
 carried his men with him, straight at the ambushed 
 enemy, with the blind fury of a charging bull. During 
 that rush he had had no thought of his own safety, no 
 fear of danger ; he had recked nothing what might be- 
 fall him, since that had happened to Walter and to 
 him which made life a thing detestable. He had been 
 possessed throughout the onslaught by a veritable in- 
 sanity of anger, by a mad hunger for retaliation upon 
 the dakaits whose attack had precipitated so terrible a 
 disaster — a calamity, undreamed-of by them, beside 
 which, in Tommy's estimation, the total blotting out 
 of the little force had been as nothing! But the dakaits 
 had clung to cover with their wonted skill, had drawn 
 off into the wilderness at precisely the right moment, 
 and when the deserted hill-cap had been reached and 
 the delirium of action was past, Tommy stood still, 
 listening to the mockery of the receding war-whoops, 
 feeling as though he had dreamed an evil dream. The 
 insistent, unreal reality of all that had happened preyed 
 upon him, chilling him to the heart, depressing him 
 with a cold despair, weighing him down with a burden 
 of unmitigable misery. The abject fear, of which he 
 had so lately been the victim, still shook him with a 
 tremor which he could not restrain. That he had 
 conquered it, he knew, was owing not to any virtue of 
 
"greater love." 249 
 
 his own, but to the shame and horror which had seized 
 him when he had discovered that Walter Fairleigh was 
 similarly beset. Fairleigh had come very near to being 
 his ideal of all that a man should be, and behold, his 
 ideal had failed him ! Staggered by the blow which 
 had thus been dealt him, Tommy, as he stood dazed 
 and wretched on the hill-top, could take no comfort 
 from the knowledge that he himself, his first panic 
 forgotten, had " come again." 
 
 Then, very slowly and reluctantly, he turned about 
 and began to make his way down to the path below, 
 back to the narrow world to which he belonged, back 
 to the old life which, he miserably felt, could never 
 again be quite as it had been. 
 
 II. 
 
 A week had passed since the morning of the scrimmage 
 in the forest — seven whole days and nights — of which 
 each leaden-footed minute that had made up the wak- 
 ing hours seemed to Tommy, who had slept ill, to have 
 crawled with torturing slowness. Oliver Salmon, his 
 eyes and cheeks already flaming with fever, had been 
 lifted, limp and spent, into the sag of a doolie, and had 
 been carried out of camp en route for the nearest base 
 hospital. This had happened six days earlier, and 
 since then Tommy Burton and Walter Fairleigh had 
 been alone, terribly alone, left to make the best they 
 might of an embarrassing tete-a-tete which was like the 
 mocking wraith of their former honest comradeship. 
 And during all this dreary time the one subject that 
 was uppermost in both their minds had not been so 
 
250 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 much as named between them. It is the habit of the 
 men of the Outskirts, when such an incident as the 
 brush with the dakaits has broken the dead monotony 
 of their days, to discuss the thing endlessly, to fight 
 and re-fight the " scrap " in imagination, to canvass, 
 this way and that, its countless might-have-beens. 
 Burton and Fairleigh both knew this, and their avoid- 
 ance of the topic, the silence concerning it which each 
 kept by unspoken compact with the other, told, more 
 eloquently than words, how heavy was their conscious- 
 ness that their world had gone woefully awry. 
 
 Tommy had threshed the matter out in his own mind 
 over and over again, constantly, ceaselessly, with dreary 
 reiteration. The facts were there, damning and stub- 
 born ; there was no twisting them into such guise that 
 they should be made capable of bearing some other 
 interpretation. There was no blinking the truth : 
 Walter Fairleigh, in the face of all his previous 
 splendid record, had shown the white feather, had 
 "funked" shamelessly, past all forgiveness, in the hour 
 of trial. No one of the three white men had ever been 
 under fire before, and the experience, when endured for 
 the first time, holds many curious and unpleasant sen- 
 sations calculated to search the soul of the bravest, and 
 to make him conscious of hitherto unsuspected weak- 
 nesses. Tommy, fresh from this ordeal, for all he had, 
 in the end, carried himself manfully, knew enough now 
 to be convinced that the proverbial man "who does 
 not know what fear is " has no existence save in the 
 popular fancy ; and that if such a one did or could exist 
 he would of necessity be a singularly stupid person, 
 devoid alike of mind, soul, and the very rudiments of 
 an imagination. Tommy knew what fear was, he told 
 himself — none better! He had felt it in all its raw 
 
"greater love." 251 
 
 crudeness on that fatal morning when the sudden out- 
 burst of rifle-fire had clanged from the underwood, 
 bringing him with a jerk out of his careless light- 
 heartedness into a raging turmoil of strenuous emotions. 
 For a minute or two — for how long exactly he did not 
 know — he had been the most abject coward alive, and 
 when at last he had rushed forward and taken a grip of 
 the men, he had been driven by the goad of a private 
 pain that made him reckless, not by such courage as 
 heroes use. He felt no pride in the little that he had 
 done, because he knew that the deed, such as it was, 
 belonged by rights not to him, but to Walter Fairleigh. 
 After all, he had been as "badly funked" as Fairleigh — 
 for a time — and the only difference between man and 
 man, he thought, lay in the fact that fear, which was 
 universal, affected various people in sundry fashions. 
 Some it quickened and stimulated ; some it paralysed, 
 as it had paralysed him and Fairleigh, though for 
 longer or shorter periods in individual cases. And, 
 seemingly, it acted with strange caprice, for Walter, in 
 the past had given unmistakable proofs of courage, and 
 Tommy still clung to the belief that his friend was at 
 bottom a far braver man than he. Yet this sudden, 
 this dismal failure — how account for it ? Dimly Tommy 
 felt that it must be due to some enigmatical, psycho- 
 logical crook in Walter's nature, a puzzle to which the 
 former was for ever seeking the key. 
 
 He reviewed again and again all the facts concerning 
 his friend's past achievements of which his recollection 
 held the record. He recalled how he had seen Walter 
 insist upon following up a wounded gaur, the terrible 
 wild buffalo of eastern Asia, which had already charged 
 him twice; how he had refused to give the brute's 
 injuries time to stiffen, and how coolly he had awaited 
 
252 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 and repelled its savage onslaught. Tommy remem- 
 bered, too, how, at the time of the trouble down at 
 Prang Damit the year before, Walter had faced an 
 insolent and more than half-rebellious population for 
 weeks together, unsupported by any sufficient force, 
 with perfect nerve, and had bluffed the hectoring chiefs 
 into complete submission by the sheer weight of his 
 unmoved courage. The natives told many stories of 
 the way in which Fairleigh had chaffed his enemies, 
 jesting, as it were, in the very face of death, and 
 how his gay unconcern had inspired his opponents 
 with the belief that this calm young white man 
 must surely have something at his back of the ex- 
 istence of which they were unaware. On that occa- 
 sion, at any rate, Walter, standing almost alone, had 
 looked death quite steadily between the eyes, day 
 after day, night after night, and had never so much 
 as shown a sign of flinching. He had proved then 
 that he possessed high courage, courage of the most 
 difficult kind for a man to command — the courage 
 which can sit still and wait, that does not grow cold 
 with the suspense of inaction, that owes nothing to 
 momentary excitement, that requires neither enthusi- 
 asm nor romance to quicken and stimulate it. The 
 memory of these things recurred to Tommy now, and 
 he felt, as he had always felt, that in similar circum- 
 stances he would not be able to play the man half so 
 triumphantly. Pondering upon Fairleigh's past record, 
 it was almost ludicrous to look upon him as a coward, 
 a poltroon; but how then account for the ghastly 
 fiasco of a week ago ? The picture of Walter Fairleigh 
 cowering behind the tree, every line of his figure 
 eloquent of fear, haunted him persistently, and gradu- 
 ally, dimly, gropingly, Tommy began to lay hold upon 
 
"greater love." 253 
 
 something in the nature of an explanation. Both when 
 pursuing the buffalo and when facing a hostile country- 
 side Fairleigh had been prepared, forewarned. In 
 each case he had known every aspect of the danger 
 to which he was exposed, had been able to forecast 
 its risks, to steel his heart against its every contin- 
 gency, to hold himself in readiness, to get his nerves 
 thoroughly under control, to be completely on his 
 guard. And, given this grace of preparation, Walter 
 had acquitted himself splendidly. But the ambush 
 had been unexpected, sudden; the danger had burst 
 upon the little force without an instant's warning, like a 
 thunderbolt hurled from a cloudless sky ; not a second 
 had been allowed in which to steel the heart, control 
 the nerves, — and the result had been what it had been. 
 Yes, Fairleigh had been guilty of cowardice, gross, 
 shameless, unsubdued, but it had been the cowardice 
 of a moment, born of a shock which had thrown him 
 off his balance, had held him in temporary thrall, body 
 and soul ; and to Tommy, grown suddenly introspec- 
 tive, it seemed that his own failure differed from that of 
 his friend, not in kind or in degree, but simply in the 
 fortuitous circumstance of its duration. Salmon's sting- 
 ing words, added to the appalling spectacle of Walter 
 utterly unmanned, had put a period to Tommy's sur- 
 render to fear ; but the fear had been there, paralysing 
 and besetting, and he had given way to it as completely 
 until a force outside himself had taken hold of him and 
 driven him forward. Tommy could not feel that there 
 was anything to choose between his own conduct and 
 that of his friend; and was the latter's momentary 
 seizure to weigh against years of tried and patient 
 courage — to obliterate in an instant all the record of 
 Walter's heroic struggle to conquer an innate weakness, 
 
254 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 against all the tremendous self-repression which must 
 have been needed to make his past acts of daring a 
 possibility ? 
 
 Lying on his mat in the little mess-hut which he 
 shared with Fairleigh, Tommy Burton resolved these 
 things in his mind, making pretence to read the while 
 as an excuse for the silence which had fallen as a 
 curtain between him and his friend. As he had now 
 taught himself to understand the matter, Walter's 
 lapse amounted to little more than a prolonged start, 
 such as robs the strongest momentarily of control over 
 mind and limb. He could not doubt that Walter — 
 given the one essential of time — would have "come 
 again," — would have acted once more with all his old 
 coolness and dash. But time, alas ! had been denied 
 him ; the golden opportunity had been let slip ; and that 
 minute or two of weakness, if the secret leaked out, 
 would suffice to brand Fairleigh for all the days of his 
 life. Tommy was convinced that he now judged the 
 matter rightly, that he had fathomed the whole problem, 
 that he, at least, completely understood ; but how could 
 he hope to make others see as he saw ? and would that 
 clearness of vision, that leniency of judgment ever 
 have been his but for the fact that he too had shared 
 Walter's weakness, had felt the grip of fear about his 
 heart, and for more seconds than he cared to count 
 had stood shaking and impotent, in dread of imminent 
 death ? That which was utterly convincing to him, 
 that which seemed at once an explanation and an ex- 
 tenuation, would be scouted by others as arrant non- 
 sense : for Tommy knew that men are wont to judge 
 their fellows on the bald facts, without seeking to get 
 at the psychological complications behind them, and 
 prize nothing so highly as mere brute courage, despise 
 
"greater love." 255 
 
 nothing so much as the lack of it. Tommy longed to 
 speak to Fairleigh of his trouble, to tell him that one 
 living being, at any rate, understood and was ready to 
 absolve him, since tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. 
 But the fact that what had befallen stood unconfessed 
 between them, added to the shy awkwardness of the 
 young Englishman even with his closest friend, his 
 hatred of a scene, and his shame at seeming to be 
 betrayed into anything resembling sentimentality, all 
 combined to hold him dumb. Wherefore, as the lagging 
 days crept by, no word was spoken, the breach be- 
 tween the younsters grew wider, and their forced 
 companionship became hourly more embarrassing. 
 
 III. 
 
 A little convoy straggled into camp, the sweating 
 coolies dumping down their loads with grunts of satis- 
 faction, the escort of native soldiers standing around 
 in their stained khaki uniforms, leaning on their rifles, 
 and exchanging news of the outside world with the 
 crowd of sepoys and camp-followers gathered about 
 them. A soiled canvas mail-bag was carried into the 
 mess-hut, and as soon as directions had been given for 
 the housing of the stores brought in by the convoy, 
 and the billeting of the new arrivals, Burton and 
 Fairleigh fell to sorting out their letters. There were 
 a few parcels of newspapers and magazines, a book or 
 two, some precious bundles of home letters — the best 
 and most perfect gift that ever the exile knows — half-a- 
 dozen long envelopes containing instructions or formal 
 information as to stores despatched, a dozen local 
 
256 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 news-sheets, and a handful of private letters franked 
 " On Service." Burton and Fairleigh, each bearing an 
 armful of his correspondence, retired to their sleeping- 
 mats, and fell to the rending of envelopes and the 
 devouring of letters in an absorbed silence. It was 
 Tommy's practice to save his home letters to the very 
 end, and therefore he began by examining the less in- 
 teresting piles whose envelopes bore local post-marks. 
 One, two, three, four of these he opened, glanced at, 
 read a line or two, and tossed aside, but the fifth riveted 
 his attention. It was in the well-known scrawl of 
 John Thurston, the man who held the post of District 
 Officer in the little up-country station whither the 
 wounded Salmon had been sent. It was dated a day 
 or two earlier, and ran as follows : — 
 
 My dear Tommy, — I am sending this up by the convoy 
 which starts at daybreak. We are hustling things all we can 
 down here, and ought to have four decent columns in the 
 field to co-operate with your fellows by the end of the month. 
 Until then, I fancy, you will have to sit tight; but old 
 Stiggings who is here, and very much the busy worker — you 
 know his winning way — is sending you detailed instructions, 
 he tells me, by this mail. When the time comes for scrapping 
 I very much fear that I shall be out of it, stuck down here 
 doing nothing but base-work, which is a sell ; but I am trying 
 my damnedest to get put on to one of the columns as political 
 officer. You, anyway, will be in the thick of the fun — you 
 always were one of the lucky ones ; so if I am not there, rub 
 it into the worthy dakaits with my love, and make the little 
 beggars sit up and snort. You owe them one in the eye on 
 your own account for ambushing you the other day. 
 
 That reminds me. Salmon got in here all right, and 
 Seaton is as pleased with his wounded thigh as a child with 
 a new toy. He says the bullet-hole is "quite beautiful." 
 Salmon had pretty high fever on him when he came in, and 
 
"greater love." 257 
 
 he talked the most awful rot to Seaton and the hospital 
 dressers both then and later when he came to after the 
 chloroform. He did the same when old Stiggings went to 
 see him. I was present, and longed to give the bounder the 
 kicking he deserved, in spite of his game leg. After that Mrs 
 Arthur and Mrs Grant undertook to nurse him, and he talked 
 to them too ; so now, as you may imagine, the yarn is all 
 over the place. He is full of a cock-and-bull story about 
 Fairleigh, of all men — utter bosh, of course. He swears that 
 Fairleigh funked badly when the dakaits went for you ; that 
 he got behind a tree himself, tried to call the men off, and 
 played the fool generally. Of course, any one who knows 
 Fairleigh (and Salmon) doesn't need to be told that this is 
 about as bad a lie as they make ; but that cad Salmon has 
 been gassing to every soul he has seen since he was brought 
 in, and now the thing has contrived to make its way even into 
 old Stiggings's understanding, and nothing can prise the notion 
 that there " must be something in it " out of that thick skull 
 of his. I would have written to Fairleigh myself, but it 
 seemed like an insult, so I pass it on to you instead ; and do, 
 for God's sake, do something to put a stop once for all to this 
 woman's tattle. You know how a story of this sort clings — 
 how it sticks to a man for all his service, unless it is squashed 
 right on the nail. Now that that bounder Salmon — the chap 
 always was an outsider of the most outrageous breed — has 
 gone and made all this mess, and old Stiggings is sticking 
 his nose into it, it just has to be wiped up and the sooner 
 the better; so wade in like a good fellow, and put matters 
 square again. Keep your tail up. With heaps of luck. — 
 Yours always, John Thurston. 
 
 Tommy read this letter through twice with a heavy 
 heart, and then passed on to the perusal of the rest of 
 his correspondence ; but Thurston's news rose up again 
 and again, like an obscuring mist, between his under- 
 standing and the scribbled pages, and even home 
 letters were powerless to lure his mind away from the 
 one absorbing subject that engrossed his every faculty. 
 
258 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 So Salmon had been talking — talking like the babbling 
 Jew-boy that he was ! He had not contented himself 
 with " firing in " an official report (in the circumstances 
 some men might have thought themselves bound in 
 duty to do that, no matter how odious the task might 
 be), but must needs yarn at large about Fairleigh, well 
 pleased, doubtless, as small natures are wont to be, 
 to discover flaws in those who are their moral superiors. 
 So at least thought Tommy Burton, musing in bitter- 
 ness over "the mess that must be wiped up." And 
 what a mess it was ! An official report might or might 
 not have been treated seriously ; but it had got beyond 
 that, for, with Salmon gossipping with the women, 
 "gassing" to the native dressers, and making a cad 
 and a beast of himself in every conceivable way, the 
 story must by now have become a thing of public 
 notoriety, no longer to be shirked or blinked. Tommy 
 had half expected something of the sort, but the im- 
 mensity of the disaster, now that it had actually 
 befallen, overwhelmed him, and the sting of it all lay 
 in the fact that, curse him though he might, Salmon 
 had in the main spoken only the ugly, naked truth as 
 he understood it ! 
 
 It was not until after the lights had been put out, 
 and the two men were settling down to sleep, each on 
 his mat at opposite sides of the little mess-hut, that 
 Tommy at last broached the subject of the letter to 
 his friend. 
 
 " Fairleigh," he said — and even to his own ears his 
 voice in the darkness sounded strange and harsh — " I 
 got a letter from Thurston to-day." 
 
 "Did you?" said Fairleigh. Tommy fancied that 
 his voice, too, was constrained and unnatural. 
 
 " Salmon has been talking — talking all over the shop." 
 
"greater love." 259 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 " About the fight." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Tommy tried again. 
 
 " Upon my soul, that chap is a bounder ! " he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " He is all that," Fairleigh assented. 
 
 " He has sent in an official report, of course. I felt 
 sure he would do that." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But he has been talking at large too, to the doctor, 
 to the dressers, to Mrs Arthur and Mrs Grant." 
 
 " Has he ? What has he been saying ? " Tommy 
 could hear Walter breathing hard and tugging at his 
 extinguished pipe with all his might. 
 
 " For God's sake, man, don't make it harder than 
 it is already," cried Tommy, jerking himself into a 
 sitting posture on his mat, and speaking with a 
 passionate ring in his voice. "You must know what 
 he has been saying." 
 
 "lam not sure that I do. You had better tell me," 
 said Fairleigh chillingly. 
 
 " He says that you funked, then, if you want to 
 know; that you got behind a tree, and tried to call 
 the men off; that you wouldn't lead them; that you 
 showed the white feather." 
 
 There was a silence, and then Fairleigh spoke sud- 
 denly. " Did you see me ? " he asked, and his voice 
 choked in the darkness. 
 
 Then Tommy Burton told one of the few deliberate 
 lies of his life. " No," he said huskily, " I didn't see 
 you." 
 
 Again silence fell upon the hut, a silence broken 
 only by the hard breathing of the two men and by 
 
260 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 the ticking of the jungle-insects in the forest, without 
 the camp. 
 
 " You are a good little beggar, Tommy, as staunch 
 and as loyal as they make 'em," said Walter presently. 
 " But — but you are a poor liar. So you saw too, did 
 you?" 
 
 Once more the silence fell heavily, and Tommy could 
 hear his friend refilling his pipe. Presently the flare of 
 a match lit up his drawn, fixed face, the light cast from 
 below painting it with tints ghastly as those of a corpse. 
 Some men would smoke tobacco, from sheer force of 
 habit, even on the rack ; Walter Fairleigh was one of 
 them. 
 
 " We've been good pals, you and I, Tommy," he 
 said at last, " and we've seen times together, good and 
 bad. That is all ended now, like everything else. 
 Don't interrupt, old man; talking won't mend it. I 
 don't suppose that there ever were two men, thrown 
 together in a God-forgotten cranny of the world as we 
 have been, with only their two selves for company, and 
 with nothing to break the blank monotony of it all, 
 who hit it off much better than we have done." 
 
 "They could not have got on better," said Tommy, 
 with conviction. 
 
 "I know; and that means that we have given each 
 other, well, say, fifty per cent of our confidence, which 
 is about a hundred times more than one friend usually 
 gives another. But even when a man is closest to you 
 there is always the little hard ring of self fencing you 
 about; the impassable barrier which encircles each 
 soul, walls in the appalling solitude of each individual 
 identity, the barrier that nothing can win through. 
 I have felt it, have brought up sheer against it, scores 
 of times, even with you, Tommy ; and I have always 
 
"greater love." 261 
 
 known more than a bit of the ugly secrets which in 
 my case it guarded. One of these — the worst, I hope 
 and believe — is out now, a secret no longer. It is that 
 I am a funkstick! Don't interrupt, Tommy, don't 
 perjure yourself unnecessarily; let us call things by 
 their right names for once. Do you think that I 
 don't know? Do you think that I haven't known it 
 all along?" 
 
 " But, Walter," Tommy protested vehemently, " your 
 pluck has been proverbial. You have given proofs, 
 any number of times. You have never shown a trace 
 of the white feather in all your life until — until " 
 
 " I know ! " interrupted Fairleigh savagely. " I 
 know ! What rot it all is ! I tell you that I have 
 known myself for an arrant coward any time these 
 ten years past; only the occasion has been wanting 
 to convince others of that which I already knew. 
 Now the occasion has come." 
 
 Again the silence fell. 
 
 "You remember the Vardons ? " Walter presently 
 resumed. "But of course you do; we have spoken 
 of them scores of times. And you remember Elsie 
 Vardon ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Tommy, " I remember Elsie Vardon." 
 
 " We have not spoken of her so much." 
 
 " No," echoed Tommy huskily, " we have not spoken 
 of her so much." 
 
 " Well, I am letting you into all my secrets to-night, 
 so I may as well tell you this one too. Elsie and I 
 had meant to marry one another some day. That is 
 all ended now too, I suppose, like everything else." 
 
 "Do you mean that you were actually engaged?" 
 asked Tommy, who still, seemingly, found it difficult 
 to command his voice. 
 
262 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " Yes. We were waiting to break it to her people 
 until I had got my company. It was bound to be a 
 blow to them, you see, any way; but I could have 
 come forward with a trifle less indecency then, as I 
 had a good chance of getting my step with barely six 
 years' service, and so should have been pretty safe to 
 command the regiment, if I did nothing better." Al- 
 ready, unconsciously, he spoke in the past tense. 
 
 " But you weren't engaged to her when we were 
 home together on leave?" 
 
 " No ; not regularly. But you remember how I ran 
 down to Craddock to say ' Good-bye ' to the Vardons a 
 day or two before we sailed ? Well, I spoke to her then." 
 
 " I see," said Tommy, more huskily than ever. 
 
 " Oh, Tommy boy, you don't know what a saint, 
 what a little brick that girl is ! " cried Walter, his voice 
 in the darkness vibrating with the intensity of his en- 
 thusiasm. " She always was worlds too good for me, 
 or for any man ; but you can't think how many tight 
 places the thought of her has pulled me through ! I 
 should have been shown up scores of times, . . . but 
 for her, but for what the memory of her made of me ! 
 Down at Prang Damit I — the real / — was in a shudder- 
 ing funk every hour of the day and night ; but Elsie, 
 in spirit, was at my elbow all the while, and I was 
 playing to the gallery, the gallery of which she was 
 the sole occupant; and so I brought the thing off — 
 in spite of myself! I got kudos for that, but it wasn't 
 mine by rights. It was hers, every bit of it, and I 
 knew it, if nobody else did. It was the same with big- 
 game shooting. I had always plenty of time — time 
 in which to remember Elsie and what she would have 
 had me do, time in which to feel her close beside me, 
 making a man of me, bless her ! And fellows thought 
 
263 
 
 that I was a good plucked 'un, thanks to her — even 
 you thought so who knew me better than most; but 
 I never had any illusions on the subject. And then in 
 that beastly little scrap the other morning I hadn't a 
 second in which to think of anything except my own 
 infernal skin, and for once the real I came uppermost 
 and made an indecent exhibition of itself." 
 
 " It wasn't your real self," said Tommy loyally, 
 though the words cost him much. "Your real self 
 was the man who faced his fears squarely, and beat 
 them every time till . . . The brush with the dakaits 
 doesn't count. It was a chance, an accident. You 
 hadn't time to come out — not the real self in you. You 
 hadn't time ! " 
 
 "Thank you, Tommy," said Walter gratefully, but 
 his tone had in it no conviction, no throb of relief. 
 The movement of the glow cast from his pipe-bowl 
 upon the darkness showed that he was shaking his 
 head in lugubrious despair. 
 
 " What do you mean to do ? " asked Tommy, after 
 a long pause. 
 
 " Do ? What is there left for me to do ? I shan't 
 send in my papers, though I mayn't be fit to hold the 
 King's commission. I shall ask for a Court of Inquiry, 
 and shall make as good a fight of it as I can, as every 
 man must do when he is fighting for his life. Then, 
 in the fulness of time, I shall be ' broken ' decently and 
 according to Cocker and the King's Regulations, as 
 many a better and a worse man than I has been 
 broken before me." 
 
 "Yes," said Tommy meditatively, "I suppose you 
 must apply for an inquiry — that there is no other way 
 out of it. It is the soundest thing you can do." 
 
 "Quite. And if one has to go under, one may as 
 
264 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 well do it in order and with due ceremony. Salmon 
 will have got thoroughly into practice for telling that 
 pretty story of his by that time," said Fairleigh, with a 
 spiritless attempt to treat his tragedy lightly. 
 
 " Damn him ! " cried Tommy, with hearty emphasis. 
 
 " Damn him by all manner of means, but his evi- 
 dence will serve to damn me first. He will cook my 
 hash right enough, and that, I suppose, is all that the 
 beggar wants." 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that. Courts of this kind are 
 very chary of bringing in a verdict of ' Guilty.' Be- 
 sides, Salmon will have prejudiced his case badly by 
 blabbling about it to Tom, Dick, and Harry. If he 
 had behaved like any one else, and had just sent in an 
 official report, he would have been far more dangerous. 
 He is your junior to begin with ; they know that he 
 made a row about having to serve under you; and 
 now he has played the cad for all the world to see. 
 His part of the business will look uncommon ugly in 
 the eyes of any board they may appoint." 
 
 "Yes — perhaps," admitted Fairleigh dubiously. 
 " But any stick is good enough to flog a coward with. 
 Besides, he won't be the only witness." 
 
 "They won't call native evidence," said Tommy 
 quickly. " They never do in cases where a white man 
 is concerned. It is bad for discipline. I bet you any- 
 thing you like that not a single one of the men is ex- 
 amined. Even if they were called they wouldn't give 
 you away." 
 
 " I wonder. But, Tommy, you'll have to give 
 evidence." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you'll have to tell the truth too, mind," said 
 Fairleigh excitedly, almost savagely. " You'll be on 
 
"greater love." 265 
 
 oath. You won't be able to lie then, as you lied just 
 now to me. God bless you for it, though it wasn't 
 any sort of use." 
 
 " Yes," answered Tommy, with a catch in his voice. 
 " Yes, God help me, I shall have to tell the truth — as 
 I know it ! " 
 
 And after that the silence of the night fell and re- 
 mained unbroken till the dawning of the day. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The conversation in the darkness which, mercifully 
 hiding the faces of the speakers, had made Walter's 
 confessions and confidences unwontedly easy to make, 
 drew the two friends together closer than ever before. 
 On the morrow, though the sense of catastrophe still 
 weighed upon them, depressing their spirits and 
 robbing life of its spring, its joyousness, the unendur- 
 able constraint, which had made of the past week a 
 veritable nightmare, had vanished. Each went about 
 his work with a certain mechanical energy, but neither 
 tried now to spin out the hours that could thus be 
 occupied because he dreaded to find himself alone 
 with his friend. Instead the old familiar comradeship 
 was renewed with more than its ancient strength, with 
 an intimacy greater than of yore ; for Walter, now that 
 the flood-gates of his reserve had been once flung 
 wide, was able to talk openly of all that he had hoped, 
 of all that he had dreamed and longed for, of all 
 that he had so nearly won, of all that he deemed he 
 had lost hopelessly through one moment of fear and 
 weakness. And Tommy, who believed himself to be 
 
266 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 tasting all the bitterness of the world, listened patiently 
 and with understanding, although many of Walter's 
 confidences hurt him badly. He had lain awake, 
 tossing on his mat, till the daybreak thrust long grey 
 fingers into the tumble-down mess-hut and the bugle 
 blew a discordant reveille through the camp, and 
 during all those lonely, silent hours he had been torn 
 by pain and doubt. The thought of Elsie Vardon had 
 been with him first ; for little by little, imperceptibly, 
 almost unknown to him, the dream of her had crept 
 into his heart till her girlish figure had become the 
 centre round which all things revolved, the beginning 
 and the end of the life which for him had been made 
 cleaner and more honest by the memory of her purity. 
 The extent to which the thought and hope of her had 
 come to fill his horizon had never been realised until 
 Walter's words had suddenly shattered the aerial 
 castle in which he had placed her ; but now he knew 
 that these things had become for him the very soul 
 of life, that lacking them existence were a dead, un- 
 happy waste. At first the sheer pain of it numbed and 
 absorbed him ; he was conscious only of a great self- 
 pity because the best gift of God (for such he held it) 
 had been denied to him. He was very young, and 
 the loss seemed irreparable. He was too inexperienced 
 to know how quickly the deepest love-wounds heal for 
 the most of men, how very easily so many broken 
 hearts are mended, and it seemed to him, lying wide- 
 eyed in the darkness, that life, or all of life that 
 mattered, was ended for him here and now. He could 
 never love any one like that again (here once more 
 spoke youth and inexperience); and, mourning over 
 the extinction of his own farthing dip, he fancied that 
 the sun's light had failed in the heavens. 
 
"greater love." 267 
 
 But very soon his mind fitted itself into the new 
 groove, and he began to make terms with the in- 
 evitable. It never so much as occurred to him that 
 Walter's disgrace might mean his own opportunity. 
 Elsie Vardon was still the ideal that his fancy had 
 painted her, and her love once given to his friend, he 
 felt convinced that that gift was made for all time. 
 She had chosen Walter, preferring him before his 
 fellows; she loved him, and this knowledge invested 
 the matter of Walter's welfare with a new and tre- 
 mendous importance. No man lived who could be 
 found worthy of Elsie Vardon, Tommy thought ; yet if 
 Fairleigh had been all that a week earlier Tommy had 
 dreamed him, he had been less unworthy than the 
 rest of the men he knew. And even now, with that 
 ugly blemish on his fair repute, was he not a better 
 man than Tommy, a better man than ninety per cent 
 of his fellows ? And did it matter much what he was 
 since Elsie loved him, and Tommy knew him to be 
 one well fitted to love and cherish her? 
 
 Tommy's talk with his friend had left him more 
 convinced than ever that Walter, let his faults be what 
 they might, approximated more nearly to the hero of 
 his imagination than to the poltroon who had dis- 
 graced himself on that terrible morning. Tommy had 
 idealised him, of course, and knew now that this was 
 so ; but he felt that he was sure of him, could vouch 
 for his soundness at bottom, and since Elsie loved him, 
 since her happiness was bound up in his, did aught 
 else matter ? Tommy had never spoken a word to 
 her of love, though he had dreamed that that word 
 would one day be spoken. She would never know 
 how he had loved her, Fairleigh too would never 
 guess; yet was it not in his power to save her and 
 
268 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 him from heavy sorrow? He, to all intents and 
 purposes, since Salmon had prejudiced his case, was 
 the only witness against his friend, against Elsie's 
 lover, which the Court would call. It was over this 
 knowledge that Tommy fought out his bitterest 
 struggle. 
 
 " Yes, God help me, I must tell the truth — as I know 
 it!" he had said, and now "What is truth?" he 
 asked, as hopelessly, as little mirthfully as "jesting 
 Pilate " himself, like him addressing his question to the 
 living God. 
 
 For truth is this to thee, and that to me, 
 And truth, or clothed or naked, let it be ! 
 
 he thought. It seemed to him that, in the light of 
 the full understanding of his friend's blended strength 
 and weakness which he alone possessed, something 
 very near to the abstract truth had been revealed ; yet 
 how to make that truth, as he saw it, plain to others ? 
 For this, the essential truth, was none the less truth 
 clothed and draped, while truth, mother-naked, as 
 those would judge it who did not really know, was 
 still the truth, damning and terrible, although, he 
 miserably felt, it was by no means the whole truth. 
 The impossibility of putting Fairleigh's case before 
 his judges in such a fashion that they should see it 
 aright, as Tommy was convinced he saw it, was 
 patent, and during the long watches of the night 
 Tommy tossed restlessly upon his mat, wondering 
 what he could do. Then, just before the dawn, an 
 idea came to him, and as he turned it over in his 
 mind, his cheek was flushed by the glow that comes 
 with the magnanimity of a splendid self-immolation. 
 It was for Elsie's sake, and for her sake nothing was 
 
"greater love." 269 
 
 too hard; moreover, he would he fulfilling his duty 
 and telling the truth — as he knew it ! 
 
 And so, with the breaking day, peace came to 
 Tommy Burton. 
 
 V. 
 
 Another week crawled away, and then once more a 
 convoy straggled into camp. In command of it came 
 an officer to relieve Fairleigh, so as to set him at 
 liberty to attend the sittings of the Court of Inquiry 
 for which he had applied. Mr Burton, the orders 
 stated, could not be spared from his post, as in time 
 of trouble a political officer possessed of local know- 
 ledge cannot easily be replaced. Mr Burton, there- 
 fore, must send in a written statement for the infor- 
 mation of the Court. Tommy had foreseen this, but 
 he was glad that his anticipations had been fulfilled. 
 His written statement, unknown to Fairleigh, was 
 ready, and Fate was making smooth the path which 
 he had determined to tread. 
 
 Walter left the camp next morning, and Tommy 
 bore him company a mile or two upon his way. Then 
 they parted with a firm hand-grip and a few words, 
 each looking into the other's eyes with a new-born 
 gravity, and some foreknowledge, perhaps, that they 
 would never meet again. 
 
 " Remember, you have promised to breathe no word 
 of all this trouble in your letters to Miss Vardon tfntil 
 the Court has brought in its finding," were almost the 
 last words that Tommy spoke. " Remember that, 
 and keep your pecker up. You'll come out on the 
 top all right." 
 
270 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 " Not I ! " said Walter stolidly. This parting with 
 his friend — the one man who understood and to some 
 extent forgave — seemed to him like the weighing of 
 the last anchor that still held him to the old life. 
 Ahead lay a sea of darkness, upon which for the re- 
 mainder of his days he would drift and toss a human 
 derelict. 
 
 " Keep a stiff upper lip, old man, and don't give 
 yourself away," said Tommy, his slang covering more 
 deep feeling than he knew what to do with. " Good- 
 bye, and good luck go with you ! " 
 
 " Good-bye, Tommy," said Walter huskily. " You've 
 been a brick. Whatever happens, you've helped me 
 tremendously all these days. But remember, you've 
 made a promise too — to tell the truth." 
 
 " Yes," said Tommy, as he turned to go. " To tell 
 the truth." And so they separated. 
 
 And in the mail-bags with Fairleigh's escort went 
 Tommy's official statement, and this is how it read : 
 
 Banat Camp, April 15, 19 — . 
 
 Sir, — In accordance with instructions received, I have the 
 honour to make the following statement for the information 
 of the Court of Inquiry applied for by Lieutenant Fairleigh, 
 concerning the action which took place on the 1st instant. 
 
 2. We left Lepas at 6.30 a.m. on that day, with fifty men 
 of — th Native Infantry, the party being under the command 
 of Lieutenant Fairleigh, with Lieutenant Salmon as second 
 in command. I accompanied the force as political officer. 
 
 3. At about 7.30 a.m. a succession of volleys was fired into 
 us by the enemy posted in thick thorn-scrub on a hill some 
 twenty yards to our right flank. I saw Lieutenant Salmon fall 
 at the first volley. He seemed to think that I had struck 
 him with my stick, and he shouted in a very excited manner. 
 None of us had ever been under fire before, the attack was 
 
"greater love. 271 
 
 very sudden, and we were taken completely by surprise. 
 Speaking for myself, I am obliged to admit that the shock 
 of the attack bewildered and unnerved me. I remember 
 standing quite still, looking about me, hardly understanding 
 what had happened, and I confess that I was afraid. I 
 caught sight of Lieutenant Fairleigh at this moment, but 
 after what I have had to admit concerning my own sensations, 
 I think the Court will understand that I was not in a con- 
 dition to form any opinion as to the behaviour of others. 
 After that, I believe, I ran forward to where the men were 
 firing, and we all made our way through the thorn jungle 
 to the top of the hill, which the dakaits made no attempt to 
 hold. During this advance I did not see Lieutenant Fair- 
 leigh. The underwood was very dense, and it is quite 
 possible that he may have taken part in the charge without 
 my seeing him. 
 
 4. I have known Lieutenant Fairleigh for the last three or 
 four years, and I have always had good reason to believe him 
 to be a man of high courage. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 Thomas Barrington Burton, 
 Political Officer attached to A. Column. 
 
 Tommy had read this statement through more than 
 once before he signed it, and as he read he had winced 
 as though the words hurt him. At the last, however, 
 he had scrawled his name at its foot with a firm pen, 
 and had watched the convoy which bore the mail-bag 
 containing it pass out of camp almost without a pang, 
 and with barely so much as a strangled wish to recall 
 it. After all, he thought, it was the truth; he had 
 been frightened, badly frightened, and who was he 
 to judge of the conduct of others? Besides, it was 
 the only way in which the Court could be brought 
 to the one conclusion which (or so Tommy persuaded 
 himself) was the true finding concerning Walter Fair- 
 
272 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 leigh. And what did it matter if it entailed the sacri- 
 fice of himself, and his reputation for the virtue which 
 all men prize above aught else ? Nothing mattered 
 very much now, Tommy thought, except the happiness 
 of a girl far away across the seas — happiness which 
 was bound up in that of his friend, and in which 
 Tommy himself could never have a share. 
 
 The Court of Inquiry held its sittings in private, 
 acquitted Walter Fairleigh, and furnished a con- 
 fidential report recommending that Salmon should 
 be severely reprimanded. His allegations, the Court 
 declared, had broken down hopelessly, the only un- 
 prejudiced witness having himself admitted that he 
 was too much under the influence of fear to be able 
 to judge of the conduct of those about him, and there 
 being no shred of evidence, beyond Salmon's bare 
 statement, to show that Fairleigh had belied on this 
 occasion the reputation which he had already won. 
 The fact that Salmon had been wounded, and was 
 presumably beside himself with pain, was urged in 
 extenuation of his action in bringing so serious a 
 charge upon such flimsy grounds, and the Court re- 
 minded its superiors that "Mr Burton was present 
 in a civil capacity, and that taking an active part in 
 the engagement formed no portion of his duty." The 
 Court made mention, too, of the statements concern- 
 ing Tommy's dash and boldness volunteered by Salmon 
 and Fairleigh alike ; but they preferred to accept the 
 youngster's own version, partly because it afforded 
 them an easy escape from the performance of an un- 
 pleasant duty, partly because, to the military mind, 
 lack of courage in a mere civilian is a matter of slight 
 importance, and partly because they could not conceive 
 of a man gratuitously "giving himself away" in this 
 
"greater love." 273 
 
 fashion in any circumstances that could present them- 
 selves to their imaginations unless he were impelled 
 to do so by remorseful conscience. 
 
 Walter Fairleigh had protested furiously against 
 Tommy's self-accusations, but the Court had smiled 
 at his generous enthusiasm, and had calmly refused to 
 listen. Even when he was publicly and triumphantly 
 acquitted he did not wholly understand the grounds 
 upon which the Court had acted, but he promised 
 himself that he would "have it out with Tommy" 
 when chance next threw them into each other's com- 
 pany. The opportunity, however, never came, for, 
 during the troubles that followed, Tommy Burton, 
 exposing himself with wanton recklessness in the 
 foremost firing-line (where, as political officer, he had 
 no sort of business to be), rolled over suddenly into 
 the under -scrub with a dakaifs bullet through his 
 skull, and so passed onward to put his anxious query 
 " What is truth ? " to God upon His judgment-seat. 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN 
 
 For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so ; 
 To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad? 
 
 — Maud. 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 (~\N two sides of the bay — an elbow of blue water 
 ^"^ thrust by the sea into the waist of the island — 
 the waves lapped slowly against the tangled roots of 
 mangroves which stood ankle-deep in the black slime. 
 Farther inland were low hills smothered in mean forest, 
 the ragged foliage on their crests fretting the sky-line. 
 On the third side of the bay the white and blue plaster, 
 with which the Chinese smear the fronts of their shops, 
 gave up their crude tints to the sun-glare, and the 
 squalid town looked like a fungous growth which had 
 fastened itself to the face of the island. Behind it also 
 were low hills, thin jungle, and a pale, uneven horizon. 
 At the point on the extreme right as you faced the 
 shore a cliff rose from the sea abruptly, like the massive 
 side of a portal the fellow to which was lacking. 
 Through a sparse curtain of tattered greenery patches 
 of red soil showed like the naked flesh of the land. On 
 the summit of this cliff stood a rude stone building, 
 the civil prison of the place; at its feet there was a 
 tiny streak of shining white sand, marking the spot 
 
278 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 where the beach and the fringe of casuarina trees 
 replaced the dingy mangrove -swamps, which cannot 
 face the fury of an open sea. 
 
 Before the town half-a-dozen Chinese junks, with 
 small red flags a-flutter, lay rocking and creaking by 
 the rickety wharves ; a few native dug-outs passed to 
 and fro laden with fruit and garden produce; and a 
 quarter of a mile from the shore the white bulk of a 
 British man-o'-war squatted on the green waters with 
 all the ponderous shapelessness of a toad. 
 
 In the captain's cabin aft four men sat at luncheon. 
 Through one of the great square ports, unoccupied 
 now by the big blunt-nosed gun which, in time of strife, 
 it was designed to accommodate, a few islands covered 
 with forest — long smears of hazy black upon the face 
 of the sunlit sea — were visible, and beyond them an 
 irregular blue line, mixing with the clouds and sur- 
 mounting a low smudge of dim grey-green, marked the 
 coast and the nearest mountain-chain of the mainland 
 of Borneo. 
 
 The captain of the man-o'-war and his first lieutenant 
 were dressed in cool white uniforms ; their guests, the 
 Governor of the island and Walter Tracy, who, with a 
 doctor and a few native understrappers, made up the 
 entire civil service of the colony, wore riding-breeches 
 and neat khaki tunics. A couple of Chinese servants 
 passed to and fro waiting upon the Europeans. 
 
 " Well, we shall always have a very pleasant recol- 
 lection of our stay here, anyway," said the captain. 
 " We have all had a capital time of it, thanks to you, 
 and shall be sorry when we turn our backs upon you 
 this afternoon. All the same, I must say that I should 
 not, for choice, select Labuan for my permanent 
 home." 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 279 
 
 The Governor laughed. " I don't fancy that that is 
 a selection which any one would make of his own free 
 will," he said. "Tracy and I are good little boys who 
 go where we are bidden, and do what we are told, and 
 as a reward we are, like good little boys, given our 
 bread and butter, and ever so little a scrape of jam 
 with it. That is what keeps us here, that and the 
 magnificent prospect of some day being transferred to 
 a hole on the west coast of Africa, or some equally 
 delightful place, where we may extend our experience 
 by sampling another kind of fever." 
 
 " Talking of fever," said the captain, " I hope that 
 you will tell Mrs Tracy how very disappointed we are 
 not to have seen her here to-day. I trust that she is 
 better ? " 
 
 "Thank you," answered Tracy. "She was a trifle 
 better when I left her, but until we drain the swamps 
 round the town the place will never be really healthy. 
 The site chosen was about the worst that could have 
 been hit upon." 
 
 "And draining costs money," said the Governor. 
 "Our death-rate is a good deal better than it used 
 to be in the beginning of things, and it has never 
 approached the magnificent figures of the West Coast, 
 but all the same it is capable of improvement without 
 a doubt." 
 
 "Whatever can have induced the British Govern- 
 ment to plant a colony in such an unlikely place as 
 this ? " asked the captain. " It was a desert island in 
 those days, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied the Governor. " It was uninhabited 
 and uninviting, but great things were hoped of it. 
 The first Rajah of Sarawak was mainly responsible. 
 He thought that it would grow into a second Singa- 
 
280 f ALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 pore, and with the example of Sir Stamford Raffles' 
 success before his eyes, he was dazzled by his dreams 
 of what Labuan might become. There is coal of sorts 
 on the island, the harbour, as you see, is a good one, 
 and the mainland of northern Borneo was an unknown 
 quantity in those days, which, for aught they knew to 
 the contrary, might possess all the wealth of the world. 
 It was a chance, and as such worth taking ; but it has 
 been a pretty bad break from the first. Very few ships 
 call here ; we produce nothing ; and the people of the 
 mainland are mostly Muruts, an unpleasant race of 
 homicidal maniacs, who are possessed by a passion for 
 owning other folks' skulls and bones. Therefore the 
 prospects of Labuan ended where they began — in a 
 dream. You have only to look at the island to see 
 that its seon-long rest should never have been broken, 
 that it has now fallen fast asleep again, and that it is 
 never going to wake up for a second time." 
 
 " Labuan isn't asleep. It's dead, dead and begin- 
 ning to putrefy ! Can't you smell it ? " said Tracy 
 grimly, as a whiff of foul air came from the swamps. 
 
 " Have another B. and S.," said the captain, with 
 some vague idea of comforting the youngster, with 
 whose depression he sympathised heartily. It must 
 be a truly awful thing, he thought, to be chained for 
 years to the corpse of this lifeless colony ! 
 
 " No, thank you," said Tracy. " We have a hot 
 ride in the sun before us, and one has to be careful 
 in this delightful country. There isn't any point in 
 filling the graveyards quicker than we can help. As 
 it is, headstones would be about our biggest article 
 of import, if we ran to such luxuries." 
 
 " If I were going to be buried in Labuan, I shouldn't 
 care about such frills as headstones," said the first 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 281 
 
 lieutenant. " But I think I should ask my pals to 
 keep a certain amount of earth over me, and to scare 
 away the wild swine." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked the Governor, whose 
 face had suddenly become very grave. 
 
 "Oh, nothing — only when I was riding past the 
 cemetery this morning it struck me that things were 
 a trifle slack, don't you know ; but I suppose it can't 
 be helped in a place where there are so many funerals. 
 All the same, I should prefer a deeper grave myself." 
 
 "Let us change the subject," said the Governor 
 abruptly. "Tracy, here, is giving us all a fit of the 
 blues. We are talking as though we were the keepers 
 of a Morgue." 
 
 So the conversation drifted off into other and more 
 cheerful channels : tales of places beyond the narrow 
 seas which gird Labuan around, and jests about the 
 men who lived there ; talk of home, and stubble and 
 covert, and good days spent in the land of lands to 
 which the exile's heart sets constantly; and so the 
 time slipped by, and the hour came for departure. 
 The Governor walked past his guard of marines, bade 
 farewell to his hosts, and followed by Tracy went 
 down the ladder into his gig. In silence the two men 
 rowed ashore, and as they went the pipe of the boat- 
 swain sounded on board the ship and the rattle of 
 the anchor-chain filled the quiet bay with rude noise. 
 After landing on the wharf the Governor and Tracy 
 stood for a few moments watching the ship get under 
 way. The younger man looked at the big screws 
 churning up the waters at her stern as she began to 
 sweep seaward, and his eyes were filled with a kind 
 of angry despair, for in her going he saw the snapping 
 of yet another of the wofully few links that still bound 
 
282 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 him and his to the life that lay beyond the limits of 
 the narrow island world. A deepened sense of isolation 
 and loneliness, and a pang of acute nostalgia smote 
 him anew with the force of blows, not for himself, — 
 he was case-hardened, inured to exile, he did not 
 matter, — but for the little ailing wife whom an in- 
 credible selfishness had doomed to a lifetime *of this 
 dreary banishment. What right had he had to ask 
 any girl to share with him such a lot as this? It 
 seemed to him that he laid upon the shoulders of the 
 woman he loved a burden too heavy to be borne, that 
 he had robbed her of all that made existence worth 
 having, and in exchange had given her nothing — only 
 his own worthless self. And now her very health was 
 being filched from her to complete the sacrifice ! She 
 must leave him, she must go home. He knew how 
 she would resist the mere notion of it, but he shut 
 his lips firmly. Labuan was no place for a woman. 
 They must postpone their married life until a cold- 
 blooded Government saw fit to move him to some 
 more congenial spot. And when would that be? 
 Never, perhaps; not for years, certainly. 
 
 The voice of the Governor broke in upon his 
 melancholy reverie. 
 
 " Did you hear what that man said about the 
 cemetery ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Tracy. 
 
 " Well, I want you to ride up there with me before 
 you go home." 
 
 " Do you think that anything is wrong, sir ? " 
 
 " I think all manner of things, but we'll talk about 
 that when we get there. You are new to this place, 
 and do not yet know all the charming habits of the 
 gentle Murut. Come along." 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 283 
 
 They walked to the end of the pier, and mounted 
 their sturdy Borneo ponies, little flea-bitten roans which 
 had the air of being all head and feet. The two men 
 cantered through the town, and up the long avenue 
 which cuts inland towards the heart of the island, 
 passing the white gates of Government House, and so 
 to the flat hill at the back of all things upon which the 
 European burial-ground is situated. 
 
 There are few things more sad in all the world than 
 these out-of-the-way graveyards of Asia, in which such 
 of our folk as have dropped out of the ranks of the 
 Empire's foremost skirmishing - line are laid to rest. 
 Trim white posts and rails fence them in, symbols of 
 the narrow life that killed the sleepers ; the rank, 
 crudely-coloured grasses grow with a horrible luxuri- 
 ance that defies all attempts at decency and neatness ; 
 the pitiless sun-glare smites down upon those comfort- 
 less resting-places, cracking the dry earth till it gapes 
 hideously through a thousand parched mouths; the 
 abomination of utter desolation reigns here supreme. 
 
 From these woful spots no poet could draw gentle 
 inspiration, such as might spring from the contempla- 
 tion of quiet God's acres in the dear home country, for 
 about them there is no air of peace, no restful, holy 
 calm whereof the sadness is so chastened that it only 
 serves to hallow and make beautiful : instead there is 
 here a sense of ugly banishment even in the grave, of 
 exposure to the cruel sun-glare, a nerve-torturing feel- 
 ing of discomfort and unrest. Looking upon these 
 melancholy places a man needs no imagination to set 
 him wondering whether the uncared-for dead can find 
 any peace amid surroundings which harrow with their 
 ugly melancholy even the most callous of the living. 
 
 As they neared the cemetery gate, the Governor's 
 
284 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 pony shied half across the road at some white object in 
 the grass 5by the wayside. His rider dismounted and 
 hitched him to a tree, and Tracy, after following suit, 
 turned towards his Chief, and saw him bending over 
 the thing which had startled the pony. 
 
 " Look here," said the Governor. 
 
 Peeping over his senior's shoulder, Tracy saw lying 
 in the grass the thigh-bone of a man, to which some 
 discoloured fragments of flesh and muscle still adhered. 
 An abominable reek sickened the hot air. 
 
 " What is the meaning of it ? " asked Tracy. Un- 
 consciously he dropped his voice to a whisper, and 
 spoke as men speak in the presence of the dead. 
 
 " Muruts," said the Governor laconically, and as he 
 turned away and entered the burial-ground, he cursed 
 bitterly through his set teeth. The desecration of the 
 dead of one's own race by people of an inferior breed is 
 ever a terrible thing to behold, and it has the power to 
 stir up strange tumults of passion in a white man's 
 heart. 
 
 Within the cemetery fence all was confusion — a 
 shapeless, empty excavation occupied the place where 
 the most recent grave-mound had been ; around it were 
 piles of earth, heaps of broken glass bottles, the rotting 
 planks of a coffin that had been torn roughly asunder, 
 to which fragments of the black cloth that had covered 
 it clung like foul fungi ; and strewn hither and thither 
 were the bones of a human being. 
 
 "It is poor Faber," said the Governor, naming an 
 officer who had died of the island fever some three 
 months earlier. He pointed to an object lying in the 
 rank grass behind the overturned wooden cross that 
 had marked the head of the grave. It was a part of 
 the dead man's backbone, to which some of the ribs 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 285 
 
 were still attached — thin yellow- green hoops, dis- 
 coloured and unsightly, that obtruded themselves 
 upon the sight beneath a cloud of noisy flies. 
 
 Tracy looked for an instant, and turned away choking 
 and coughing. "Great God ! " he cried, and his words 
 were broken by a sob. " What devils, what devils ! " 
 
 " See," said the Governor. " I made them put a 
 thick layer of broken bottles above him, hoping that 
 that would keep him safe, but it has been no sort of 
 use. The Muruts must have lifted them off bit by bit 
 till they got at the bones, and they have scattered him 
 broadcast, broadcast ! " 
 
 Tracy, quite unmanned, sat down on a neighbouring 
 grave, with his back to the horror, and the Governor 
 strode over to him and laid a kindly hand upon the 
 young fellow's shoulder. 
 
 " Buck up," he said. " I want you to go down to 
 the hospital and find Jenkins for me. Only a doctor 
 can tell us what bones are missing, though the skull 
 has gone, of course. Don't trouble to come back here ; 
 there is nothing that you can do. Take my advice : go 
 straight home after you have found Jenkins, and drink 
 a strong B. and S., it will help to pull you together." 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Tracy. He rose stiffly, and 
 walked towards his pony, stepping cautiously lest he 
 should unwittingly spurn some part of what had been 
 the body of a friend, and keeping his eyes averted from 
 the terrible things that lay strewn about his path. In 
 this distant land, Death was a fearful spectre that 
 grinned at the exiles constantly — imminent, triumphant, 
 threatening. The thought of it haunted men waking, 
 and pursued them in their dreams. The horror of 
 dying out here in obscure banishment, dying like rats 
 in holes, was an ever-present dread ; but if death were 
 
286 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 to be followed by nameless outrages such as had been 
 perpetrated upon the body of poor Faber, it became in 
 an instant doubly hideous, doubly terrible. 
 
 So thought Walter Tracy as he galloped towards 
 the hospital, and again a feeling of desperation seized 
 him, wringing him with a pain that was all the more 
 keen because it was suffered not for himself, but for 
 another. If she were to die out here, and to be buried 
 in that awful place ! The green earth about him turned 
 hazy and reeling as he looked at it through the 
 sun-glare. 
 
 The Governor seated himself upon a grave, and 
 lighted his pipe. The futility of the task which had 
 been set him, the administration of this worthless 
 island with its obscure past, its hopeless future, and 
 its ugly present, smote him with deep depression. If 
 he could have felt that any good were likely to come 
 of all this suffering and sacrifice, he could have borne 
 it cheerfully ; but the conviction that he and his fellows 
 were wasting some precious years of life, were risking 
 health and happiness to no purpose, made him resent- 
 ful and melancholy. His energetic nature was cramped 
 by this life of enforced inaction, his spirits were 
 weighed down to the earth by the dead monotony of 
 the island days, which was broken only by such acts 
 of savagery as this outrage on the dead. Among his 
 fellows it was part of his duty to keep a brave face, 
 and to hearten up those who lacked his strength. 
 Now that he was alone, alone with the dead, he threw 
 his arms aloft in a passionate gesture, and broke out 
 into the bitterest of all human cries : — 
 
 " ' Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the 
 night in which it was said, There is a man child con- 
 ceived. Let that day be darkness ; let not God regard 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 287 
 
 it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Why 
 died I not from the womb ? For now should I have 
 lain still and been quiet, I should have slept : then had 
 I been at rest.' As it is," he grumbled, " it does not 
 promise much stillness or quiet or rest if one is to be 
 buried in Labuan ! " He bit hard upon the mouth- 
 piece of his pipe, and broke the amber short off in his 
 teeth. 
 
 " Damn ! " he said mechanically. " What a poor 
 plucked one I am to whine like this ! It will be all 
 the same, I suppose, a hundred years hence ! " 
 
 His evil hour was upon him, and he fought it out 
 doggedly and alone, with only those scattered bones 
 of the man who had been his friend, and the dreary 
 grave-mounds, for witnesses of his weakness. When 
 Jenkins, the doctor, joined him half an hour later, 
 the Governor was as calm, as resolutely cheerful, as 
 seemingly callous, and as practical as ever. 
 
 II. 
 
 The heat of the tropical noontide poured down from 
 the colourless sky, gleaming, hard, pitiless as the 
 tempered blade of a weapon. 
 
 The fronds of the cocoa-nut trees stiffened and lifted 
 as it parched them ; almost every living thing had 
 sought shelter, and the land was profoundly still, 
 wrapped in the heavy, restless silence of pain; the 
 only sound was the occasional trickle of dry soil, as 
 fragments broke off from bank or mound, and slipped 
 downward with a tiny rustle. A few disconsolate crows 
 sat perched upon the trees with gaping beaks, gasping 
 
288 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 for air. All about the island the sea lay like a sheet 
 of pale blue glass, its surface oily and unrefreshing to 
 the eye. Its horrible, sickly expanse, blindingly re- 
 fracting the vertical rays, conveyed no suggestion of 
 cooling waters : it was a white-hot floor upon which 
 the island rested, baking agonisingly beneath the 
 white-hot sky. 
 
 The shutters of Tracy's little bungalow were close 
 shut. Without, a score or so of tired-looking fruit- 
 trees stood in despondent groups, their branches droop- 
 ing languidly, albeit the earth about the roots had been 
 recently upturned to stimulate the flow of sluggish 
 sap. Within the bungalow a dull dusk reigned — not 
 the dim religious light which falls so gratefully behind 
 closed blinds on a hot summer's day in England, but a 
 breathless, airless, quivering darkness, split across and 
 across by blinding bars of light wherever a crack in 
 the shutters or a tiny rift in the walls enabled a ray 
 to penetrate. The stifling twilight and the oppressive 
 stillness brought no sense of calm or peace — they did 
 not woo to slumber : rather they created an atmosphere 
 of unrest, a painful feeling of divorce from the bare 
 possibility of sleep, a feverish discomfort that set every 
 nerve on edge. 
 
 In the airless gloom of the bedroom Pearl Tracy lay 
 stretched upon the bed, with the heavy folds of the 
 mosquito-net looped up unevenly around the canopy 
 above her head. Her cheeks were hollow, and in the 
 centre of each a scarlet patch burned in awful contrast 
 to the pallor of her face. Her lips were parted, and 
 she drew her breath noisily, with a laboured monotony 
 of sound that was as the very voice of restlessness. 
 Her wide grey eyes, that in health were wont to be 
 so soft and so changing in their expression, were open 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 289 
 
 to their full extent, hard, gleaming, and fixed in a 
 sightless glare. Her dark hair was plaited in a long 
 tail that lay across her breast. Her form was wasted 
 dreadfully, and her little slender arms showed the stiff 
 lines of the bones, and were swollen into unsightly 
 bosses at wrists and elbows. Once in. a while she would 
 essay to move them, and they would lift ever so feebly 
 ere they fell back again on to the sheet. Now and 
 again, too, her head would roll from side to side upon 
 her pillow, with a motion eloquent of impotence that 
 seeks escape from pain, and at such times she would 
 murmur broken words and sentences, mere fragments 
 of inarticulate complaint, very pitiful to hear. 
 
 By the bedside Walter Tracy sat watching her, 
 rising now and then to moisten her parched lips, to 
 arrange her pillow more comfortably with clumsy 
 masculine touch, or to smooth the sheet upon which 
 she lay. He had maintained this watch now un- 
 brokenly for many hours, and his form was bowed 
 with fatigue, his eyes were hollow with misery and 
 sleeplessness, his face was aged and drawn with 
 suffering. 
 
 The close atmosphere, the dead unrestful quiet of 
 the room, the dim twilight which yet was powerless 
 to decrease the appalling heat, all preyed upon his 
 nerves, while the sorrow that was gnawing at his 
 heart, his love and pity for his little wife, and the 
 maddening consciousness of his utter impotence to 
 aid or save her, combined to well-nigh unhinge his 
 mind. The power of consecutive thought had deserted 
 him. Again and again trifling, irrelevant memories of 
 his childhood obtruded themselves upon his conscious- 
 ness, dogged him with inconsequent persistence. Over 
 and over again he dwelt upon the recollection of the 
 
 1 T 
 
290 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 days in which he had wooed the stricken girl before 
 him, not with pleasure, but with a horrified surprise 
 at his own monstrous selfishness — for had he not 
 known the sort of life to which marriage with him 
 would condemn her, the sort of death to which his 
 love might doom her, the death which she now was 
 dying, here, before his very eyes? 
 
 And though this train of thought recurred with 
 merciless reiteration it was interrupted at every turn 
 by all sorts of inconsequences, whose irritating in- 
 trusion he was powerless to control. At one moment 
 he would see Pearl's face as it had looked during some 
 tender passage of their love-story ; at another the face 
 of a school-comrade, long since forgotten, would come 
 between him and his vision with elfish cruelty. He 
 strained every nerve to concentrate his mind upon 
 the one all-important matter that engaged his thoughts 
 — his own share of responsibility and blame for the 
 tragedy that was robbing him of his darling; but his 
 every effort was futile, and his mind, broken away 
 from all control, stumbled hither and thither in mazes 
 of irrelevancy, and refused to obey his will. 
 
 Yet through all he never for an instant lost con- 
 sciousness of the misery that was overwhelming him, 
 of the still form upon the bed, and of his inability to 
 do aught to relieve Pearl's sufferings. He was tortured 
 by the knowledge that her sick-room lacked everything 
 which in Europe tends to relieve the intensity of dis- 
 comfort, that the appliances at the disposal of this 
 wretched colony were hopelessly inadequate, that the 
 doctor who tended her was no specialist upon whose 
 genius and intuition he could rely, that even the diet 
 and the drugs supplied were things that a cottage- 
 hospital at home would regard with scant favour, that 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 29I 
 
 fate itself was against him, the stars in their courses 
 conspiring to rob him of his love. That the best the 
 circumstances permitted was being done for Pearl was 
 a fact that held no comfort. She was all the world 
 to him, his love, his wife, his darling, and she lay there 
 in torture under his very eyes, and he could do nothing 
 to alleviate her pain, only watch it in impotent agony, 
 cursing himself for a useless brute, and longing for the 
 skill of nurse and doctor, which might have turned the 
 balance in her favour but for the ruthless facts of 
 distance and of time. 
 
 These were the thoughts which had borne him 
 company during two whole days and one endless night 
 of watching, and the afternoon of the second day 
 found him wild with rage against all the world, fierce 
 as a trapped beast, hating himself, and filled with a 
 savage fury against fate. Jenkins, the doctor, stole 
 into the room, cannoning clumsily against a chair 
 and a bed-side table, for his eyes were blinded from 
 the glare through which he had been riding. He 
 drew a clinical thermometer from its case and took 
 Pearl's temperature. He gazed at the clambering 
 mercury and shook his head ruefully. 
 
 " You have given her the medicines ? " he asked. 
 
 " Of course," whispered Tracy hoarsely. 
 
 Jenkins shook his head again, and passed out of 
 the room. Tracy rose and followed him. 
 
 " What do you think ? " he questioned fiercely. 
 
 "The temperature keeps up. The fever does not 
 yield. If only we had some ice ! " said the doctor. 
 
 Tracy swore aloud. "What in the wide world is 
 the good of talking about if? " he cried. " Man alive, 
 can't you do something ? " 
 
 " I have been doing all I can, my dear fellow," 
 
2g2 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 began the doctor soothingly, but Tracy cut him 
 short. 
 
 " And what good have you done ? " he asked brutally. 
 " You've tried a lot of useless drugs, and what effect 
 have they had ? You have only added to her pain, 
 poor child. O my God ! If only I could get a decent 
 doctor and a proper nurse they might save her ! " 
 
 " My dear Tracy," Jenkins protested. " It is no 
 good blaming me. I have done the best I can for her. 
 I can't give life." 
 
 "Of course you can't," said Tracy brokenly. " I beg 
 your pardon. It is not your fault. You did not bring 
 her to this hole of a place. Thank God upon your 
 knees for that ! " and he turned and re-entered the 
 sick-room. 
 
 The afternoon crept on, and at last a little puff of 
 cooler air from off the sea set the branches of the fruit- 
 trees rustling without the bungalow, and told that the 
 brief coolness of the hour before the dusk had come at 
 last. Tracy rose, and moving stiffly across the room 
 flung the windows wide. A refreshing breath of air in 
 motion fanned his cheek. Pearl stirred upon the bed. 
 
 He turned toward her, and saw that her eyes had 
 lost the fixed look that they had worn so long. He 
 bent over her, and very faintly her voice whispered his 
 name. A wild hope sprang up in his heart, and some- 
 thing in his throat choked him as he stooped and kissed 
 her. Then for a few minutes he busied himself with 
 the thin milk which he tried to induce her to swallow. 
 The fever, as sometimes happens at the very last, had 
 left her, but all too soon even Tracy's scant knowledge 
 told him that the consciousness that had been given to 
 her was but the preface to the long sleep which would 
 have no ending in this life. 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 293 
 
 He lay down beside her, holding her wasted hands in 
 his strong clasp, and for one priceless hour these two, 
 whom love had bound together, whom death was soon 
 to separate, spoke heart to heart and soul to soul. 
 What each said to each as they lay there, nearer than 
 ever before, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, is 
 not for alien ears to hearken to, and the secret is 
 one that is locked in the heart of a single human 
 being, an old and lonely man, who all his life since 
 has drawn strength and comfort from the words that 
 then came to him from the lips of a dying girl. 
 
 III. 
 
 The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the after- 
 noon was waning, when at last Walter Tracy rose from 
 his knees at the bedside of his dead wife, and moved 
 slowly to the window. 
 
 He stood there looking out upon the quiet evening 
 landscape, the splendour of the western sky, the cool, 
 melancholy dusk that was stealing up over the land 
 and plunging it in misty shadows, and upon all the 
 familiar things that of a sudden had become strange 
 to his sight. From the direction of the sea came the 
 broken-hearted cries of gulls; nearer at hand little 
 birds, hidden in the foliage, were piping and cheep- 
 ing sleepily ; bats were flitting hither and thither, 
 swift and noiseless as swallows. The soft breeze that 
 awakes with the twilight was whispering in the 
 branches of the fruit-trees. 
 
 Walter Tracy leant against the frame of the long 
 window, inert and listless. The magnitude of the 
 
294 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 calamity that had befallen him had numbed his facul- 
 ties. Mechanically he noted the marvellous tints with 
 which the heavens were stained, the sounds that came 
 to his ears, the sights that met his eyes, yet one and all 
 of these things were shrouded in a haze of unreality. 
 He knew that Pearl was dead, that she had gone from 
 him for ever, that never again would he look upon her 
 living face, listen to her voice, or feel the touch of her 
 little hand upon his arm. This knowledge was beating 
 itself in upon his brain ; he was striving to understand 
 it with a painful effort, as though it were some fact that 
 he was trying to commit to memory ; yet all the time 
 it was meaningless to him, like some conundrum pro- 
 pounded in a dream, more unreal even than the 
 shadowy landscape upon which his unseeing eyes 
 were fixed. 
 
 He was spent and exhausted by grief and long 
 watching. He had not tasted food for many hours ; 
 he had had many broken nights of late, and since early 
 in the morning of the previous day he had not closed 
 an eye. From the first he had been agonised by the 
 sight of Pearl's sufferings, of which he had been the 
 impotent witness ; he had been haunted by terrible 
 apprehensions ; had been driven half mad by despair 
 and misery; had been oppressed by the dread certainty 
 that her illness would surely end in death ; had been 
 racked by the knowledge that she might perhaps have 
 been saved had circumstances been other than they 
 were ; and had been filled with blind rage against fate 
 and against all mankind. His very soul had been rent 
 and tortured by all these conflicting emotions ; and now 
 that his worst fears had been realised, now that his 
 Pearl, his love, had been taken from him for ever, utter 
 exhaustion had deprived him even of the power to feel. 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 295 
 
 The darkness crept up, obscuring the world, merging 
 all things within and without the bungalow into huge 
 misshapen shadows, and still Walter Tracy leant 
 against the window-frame, numb and dazed, conscious 
 only of a dull ache at his heart, and of a mind that, 
 baffling his efforts to control it, flew ceaselessly from 
 one triviality to another. Yet through this mental 
 haze an idea began to take form — vague and incon- 
 sequent, but persistent. 
 
 There was some duty to be performed, some act of 
 service to his love that still remained to be done. He 
 was conscious that the thing had been present in his 
 mind since Pearl was first seized by the fever; that 
 it had oppressed him dreadfully ; yet now, in madden- 
 ing fashion, it eluded him. What was it ? He asked 
 the question of his weary brain, and fought with almost 
 a physical effort to wring from it an answer. It was 
 something that he knew to be painful, horrible, yet 
 necessary. What was it ? What was it ? 
 
 He turned from the window, and groped his way 
 through the darkness towards the bedside. A white 
 figure standing by the door suddenly made itself 
 seen, and, with all his nerves a-quiver, Tracy jumped 
 aside, his heart beating like a drum. A second later 
 he had recognised the apparition as the white dressing- 
 gown which Pearl had been wont to wear, that now- 
 hung on a hook against the door, but the shock which 
 it had given him had set his dulled brain working, had 
 fired a train of thought. He had shied like a horse 
 at the sight of that white object, just as the Governor's 
 pony had shied at — at what ? Ah, now he knew ! 
 
 In an instant he saw in his mind's eye that dismal, 
 unrestful graveyard, with the yellow soil upturned 
 above a new grave, the pitiless sun-glare beating down 
 
296 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 upon it, and those awful fragments of poor Faber's 
 dishonoured body scattered about among the rank 
 growths. In a flash imagination painted for him a 
 mob of squalid savages routing in the grave with busy 
 fingers, their ghoulish faces eager with hideous excite- 
 ment ; and it was not the corpse of Faber or another 
 with whom they grappled so horribly, but the body 
 of his darling ! The impression was so vivid, the 
 horror so intense, that Tracy reeled back against the 
 bedpost as though he had been struck. He turned 
 suddenly giddy, and a great nausea was upon him. 
 It seemed to him that the outrage had actually been 
 committed, and blazing with wrath he uttered a short 
 cry, throwing out his arms wildly. 
 
 Then his hand encountered the still, cold hand of 
 his dead wife, and immediately his calmness was 
 restored. The act of desecration had not yet hap- 
 pened, and must not happen. That was the one 
 service that he could still render to his love. The 
 necessity for action, immediate action that called for 
 a sustained physical effort, awoke him from the species 
 of stupor in which he was plunged, and saved, perhaps, 
 his toppling reason. At once he was thinking clearly, 
 consecutively, forming a plan : an instant later he was 
 toiling to put that plan into execution. 
 
 Stooping in the darkness to kiss Pearl upon the 
 forehead, he whispered to her to have no fear. Then 
 he passed from the room and out of the bungalow. 
 He groped and stumbled to the tool-house, and selected 
 a large spade and a big native hoe. Next, taking 
 elaborate precautions to avoid noise, he set to work 
 to dig a grave at the root of one of the fruit-trees in 
 his compound. He was weak with want of food, and 
 the sweat poured from him, but he dug on doggedly. 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 297 
 
 Great blisters rose on his hands, but he did not heed 
 them. Under the stress of the physical toil his mind 
 resumed its wonted clearness. He realised at last all 
 that Pearl's death meant to him. He saw the long 
 empty years stretching away before him, and a great 
 self-pity made the lump rise in his throat, and tears 
 gather to his eyes. But never did he slacken his 
 efforts. The hard work was grateful to him because 
 it was borne for Pearl, because it was the last act of 
 love that he might do for her dear sake. 
 
 At the end of a strenuous hour the grave was com- 
 pleted, and Tracy passed into the bungalow and helped 
 himself to a whisky-and-soda. Then he returned to 
 the garden and fell to delving anew. Hour after hour 
 he toiled. No sooner was one grave made at the foot 
 of a fruit-tree than he set to work tearing at the earth 
 about the roots of its nearest neighbour. From time 
 to time he rested a little, and the chill night air smote 
 coldly on his drenched clothing. The palms of his 
 hands were flayed; he groaned as he dug; he toiled 
 like a demon, casting an anxious glance now and 
 again at the eastern horizon. *'He was working against 
 time — working for Pearl — and he would not allow 
 weariness to overcome him till his allotted task was 
 accomplished. 
 
 The third of the small hours had come and gone 
 when at last he straightened his back and looked with 
 satisfaction at the grave which he had just completed. 
 It was the fifteenth. He re-entered the bungalow, 
 bathed himself in the bathroom, changed his clothes, 
 and then made his way to the bedside of his dead wife. 
 Very tenderly he lifted her in his arms, crooning to her 
 as though she still could hear him, and bore her out 
 into the garden, casting about him the while nervous 
 
 u 
 
2g8 TALES OF THE OUTSKIRTS. 
 
 glances of half-insane suspicion. He selected a grave 
 somewhat deeper than its fellows, in the bottom of 
 which he had already placed a sheet. 
 
 With great difficulty, and with such clumsy reverence 
 as he could command, he lowered Pearl's body into 
 the pit, clambered down and disposed the limbs care- 
 fully, kissed her cold lips again and again, and then 
 reluctantly drew a second sheet over her from head 
 to heel. Next he fell to shovelling in the earth. Ah, 
 how those falling clods hurt him as they fell upon her ! 
 How he winced at the sound of their dull impact ! 
 But it must be done — it was for her sake ; he set his 
 teeth, and dug with furious energy. 
 
 At last the grave was filled to the brim, and Tracy, 
 shaken by dry sobs, passed mechanically on to the 
 next, and then the next. In this manner, in less than 
 an hour, he had covered in every one of his excava- 
 tions, and so cunningly had he worked that there was 
 nothing whereby an observer could distinguish between 
 that which Pearl's body occupied and the others which 
 were empty. To a casual stranger it would have ap- 
 peared that the soil about the roots of all the fruit- 
 trees had been upturned with a care and energy very 
 unusual in a native gardener, but the secret which was 
 locked in Walter Tracy's bosom was one which not 
 even Murut curiosity would be able to discover. 
 
 The dawn was breaking greyly when, his heavy task 
 accomplished, Tracy stood bareheaded in the centre 
 of his compound, and read in the wan light the solemn 
 words of the Burial Service. Then, with the daybreak 
 anthem of the birds ringing through the shady grove, 
 he walked back into his empty bungalow. He stumbled 
 to his bedroom, worn out in body and mind, threw 
 himself down upon the sheets, and fell at once into a 
 
A TALE OF OLD LABUAN. 299 
 
 deep, dreamless sleep. It was not only Pearl Tracy's 
 body, perhaps, which that night of strenuous toil had 
 saved from destruction. 
 
 Walter Tracy has fared far since that day, has 
 garnered much honour and fame, such measure of 
 wealth as may fall to the lot of a Colonial civil ser- 
 vant, and a whole comet's-tail of capital letters after 
 his name. Promotion has borne him far away from 
 Labuan to other and happier lands, yet that little sun- 
 baked island, cast away upon the coast of northern 
 Borneo, is more dear to him, I think, than any spot 
 on earth. It is true that its memories haunt him as 
 the scene of the overshadowing tragedy of his life ; 
 but none the less he often revisits in spirit the name- 
 less grave, hidden beneath the shade of the fruit-trees 
 that cluster about an ancient bungalow — the grave, 
 the site of which is known to him alone, wherein lies 
 buried very peacefully the treasure of his heart. 
 
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