Miss Leah De Silva was quiet and ladylike enough when talking to the Docker. But she could be fierce and sudden when someone in her family did anything she thought not right. Perhaps her parents had been something less than keen as mustard about the Docker. He was only a corporal. Did they feel that their daughter should look higher? A sentence like a shower of swords from Leah, in a language which had once been Portuguese, silenced them.
One afternoon, when the barracks were almost deserted, the Docker summoned Owen and the Mouse to consult with. He produced a bottle and offered it.
“And risk my stripe? Thanks, my boy, but no thanks,” said Owen. The Mouse took a small sip. The Docker’s manner was very odd, he thought. He was proud and he was abashed; he was happy and he was uneasy.
“’Ere’s the thing,” he said. “I mean to marry Miss De Silva." And he gave them a challenging look.
“Good!” said the Mouse.
“I know she’ll ’ave me,” the Docker went on. “But… well… there’s Susanna.”
“Oh, ah,” agreed Owen. “There’s Susanna.”
Susanna was a girl who had a little house of her own, often visited by soldiers, one of whom had been the Docker. Her mother was a woman of some tribe so very deep in the Hills that they were neither Hindu nor Moslem. Heaven only knew how she had come to Lahore, or where she had gone after leaving it — for leave it she did, after her baby was born; and Heaven, presumably, knew who the father had been.
Susanna had been raised and educated by the Scottish Mission and had once been employed in the tracts department of its Printing Establishment. The officials of the Mission had been willing to forgive Susanna once, then twice — they had even been willing to forgive Susanna a third time — but not to retain her in the Printing Establishment. Whereupon Susanna had renounced the Church of Scotland and all its works, and had gone altogether to the bad.
“I’m going to break off wiv ’er,” said the Docker determinedly. “I shan’t give ’er no present, neither — no money, I mean. I know it’s the custom, but if I’m going to be married I shall need all the money I’ve got.”
“That's rather hard on Susanna,” said Owen.
“Can’t be ’elped,” said the Docker briefly. “Now I’m going to write ’er a letter.” He wanted assistance, but he also was strong for his own style. The letter, in its third and least-smudged version, was brief.
Dear Friend,
It’s been a great lark but now it's all over, for I am getting married to someone else. Best not to see each other again. Keep merry and bright.
Respectfully.
“That’ll do it,” the Docker said, with satisfaction. “Here’s two annas — give ’em to a bearer, one of you, and send the letter off directly. I’m going to start tidying up me-self and me kit, as I mean to speak to Mr. De Silva tonight.”
But he never spoke to Mr. De Silva that night. Sergeant-Major came striding in, big as Kachenjunga, and swollen with violent satisfaction, and found the bottle in with the Docker’s gear. The Docker drew three weeks, and was lucky not to lose his stripes.
There was a note waiting for him when he came out.
Dear Docker,
I hope you will take it in good part but Miss De Silva and I are going to be married Sunday next. Perhaps it was not quite the thing for me to do — to speak during your absence — but Love knows no laws as the poet says and we do both hope you will be our friend,
Sincerely,
For a long time the Docker just sat and stared. Then he said to the Mouse, “Well, if it must be. I should ’ave known a girl of ’er quality wouldn’t ever marry a brute like me.”
“Ah, but Docker,” the Mouse said. Then in a rush of words: “It isn’t that at all! Don’t you see what it was? The note you meant for Susanna — Owen sent it off to Miss Dr Silva instead! And then went and proposed ’imself! And it must’ve been ’im who peached that you ’ad the bottle.”
The Docker’s face went dark, but his voice kept soft. “Oh,” he said, “that was how it was.” And said nothing more. That night he got drunk, wildly, savagely drunk, wrecked twenty stalls in the little bazaar, half killed two Sikhs who tried to stop him, and coming into the sleeping barracks as silently as the dust, took and loaded his rifle and shot Harry Owen through the head…
“Yarn, yarn, yarn!” said Tom. “I don’t believe you was ever in India in your life!”
The Gaffer, who had been sipping his beer silently, fired up.
“Ho, don’t you! One of you fetch that pict’re — the one directly under the old king’s—”
He gestured toward the rear room. In very short time someone was back and handed over an old cardboard-backed photograph. It was badly faded, but it showed plainly enough three soldiers posed in front of a painted backdrop. They wore ornate and tight-fitting uniforms and had funny, jaunty little caps perched to one side of their heads.
“That ’un’s me,” said the Gaffer, pointing his twisted old finger. The faces all looked alike, but the one in the middle was that of the shortest.
When it was passed to me I turned it over. The back was ornately printed with the studio’s name and sure enough, it was in Lahore — a fact I pointed out, not directly to Tom, but in his general direction; and in one corner, somehow bare of curlicues, was written in faded ink a date in the late '80s, and three names: Lance-Corporal Harry Owen, Corporal Daniel Devore, Private Alfred Graham.
“. . young chap from newspaper was talking about it to the Padre Sahib,” the Gaffer was saying. “Earnest young fellow, ’ad spectacles, young’s ’e was. ‘But a thing like that, sir,’ says ’c, ’so unlike a British soldier — what could’ve made him do a thing like that?’ And the Chaplain looks at ’im and sighs and says, ‘Single men in barracks don’t turn into plaster saints.’ The writing-wallah thought this over a bit, then, ‘No,’ ’c says, ‘I suppose not,’ and wrote it down in ’is notebook.”
“Well,” Tom said grudgingly, “so you’ve been to India. But that doesn't prove the rest of the story.”
“It’s true, I tell you. I’ve got cut-tin’s to prove it. Civil And Military Gazette of Lahore.”
Tom began singing:
Someone laughed. Tears started in the old man’s weak blue eyes, and threatened to overflow the reddened rims. “I’ve got cuttin’s.”
Tom said, “Yes, you’ve always got cuttin’s. But nobody does see ’em but you.”
“You come ’ome with me,” the Gaffer said, pushing his nobby old hands against the table top and making to rise. “You come ’ome with me. The cuttin’s are in my old trunk and you ask my missus — for she keeps the keys — you just ask my missus.”
“What!” cried Tom. “Me ask your missus for anything? Why, I’d as soon ask a lion or a tiger at Whipsnade Zoo for a bit o’ their meat, as ask your missus for anything. She’s a Tartar, she is!”