I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:
"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my heart, Charlie smiled, but did not answer.
"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.
I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth.
"Isn't it—isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't think—it came like a thunderclap."
"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"
"My God—she—she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk–work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past lives.
"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.
"I don't care a damn what she says."
At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by a man before.
Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.
"Now, about that galley–story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech.
Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley—what galley? Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious it is!"
Grish Chunder was right, Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.
With the Main Guard
"Mary, Mother av Mercy, fwhat the divil possist us to take an' kepe this melancolius counthry? Answer me that, sorr."
It was Mulvaney who was speaking. The time was one o'clock of a stifling June night, and the place was the main gate of Fort Amara, most desolate and least desirable of all fortresses in India. What I was doing there at that hour is a question which only concerns M'Grath the Sergeant of the Guard, and the men on the gate.
"Slape," said Mulvaney, "is a shuparfluous necessity. This gyard'll shtay lively till relieved." He himself was stripped to the waist; Learoyd on the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which Ortheris, clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open–mouthed in the glare of the great guard–lantern. The heat under the bricked archway was terrifying.
"The worrst night that iver I remimber. Eyah! Is all Hell loose this tide?" said Mulvaney. A puff of burning wind lashed through the wicket–gate like a wave of the sea, and Ortheris swore.
"Are ye more heasy, Jock?" he said to Learoyd. "Put yer 'ead between your legs. It'll go orf in a minute."
"Ah don't care. Ah would not care, but ma heart is plaayin' tivvy–tivvy on ma ribs. Let me die! Oh, leave me die!" groaned the huge Yorkshireman, who was feeling the heat acutely, being of fleshly build.
The sleeper under the lantern roused for a moment and raised himself on his elbow,—"Die and be damned then!" he said. "I'm damned and I can't die!"
"Who's that?" I whispered, for the voice was new to me.
"Gentleman born," said Mulvaney; "Corp'ril wan year, Sargint nex'. Red–hot on his C'mission, but dhrinks like a fish. He'll be gone before the cowld weather's here. So!"
He slipped his boot, and with the naked toe just touched the trigger of his Martini. Ortheris misunderstood the movement, and the next instant the Irishman's rifle was dashed aside, while Ortheris stood before him, his eyes blazing with reproof.
"You!" said Ortheris. "My Gawd, you! If it was you, wot would we do?"
"Kape quiet, little man," said Mulvaney, putting him aside, but very gently; "'tis not me, nor will ut be me whoile Dina Shadd's here. I was but showin' something."
Learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman–ranker sighed in his sleep. Ortheris took Mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked gravely for a space while the dust–devils danced on the glacis and scoured the red–hot plain.
"Pop?" said Ortheris, wiping his forehead.
"Don't tantalize wid talkin' av dhrink, or I'll shtuff you into your own breech–block an'—fire you off!" grunted Mulvaney.
Ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of ginger ale.
"Where did ye get ut, ye Machiavel?" said Mulvaney. "'Tis no bazar pop."
"'Ow do Hi know wot the Orf'cers drink?" answered Ortheris. "Arst the mess–man."
"Ye'll have a Disthrict Coort–martial settin' on ye yet, me son," said Mulvaney, "but"—he opened a bottle—"I will not report ye this time. Fwhat's in the mess–kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially whin that mate is dhrink, Here's luck! A bloody war or a—no, we've got the sickly season. War, thin!"—he waved the innocent "pop" to the four quarters of Heaven. "Bloody war! North, East, South, an' West! Jock, ye quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink."
But Learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins of his neck, was pegging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, and the giant revived.
"An' Ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' Ah divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. Hear now, lads! Ah'm tired—tired. There's nobbut watter i' ma bones, Let me die!"