PAGE 4
The Man Who Was
by
The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
“Caught a man stealin’ carbines, sir,” said the corporal. “Leastways ‘e was crawlin’ towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an’ the sentry ‘e sez, sir -“
The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of the man’s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of brandy.
“What does the sentry say?” said the colonel.
“Sez ‘e speaks English, sir,” said the corporal.
“So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you’ve no business -“
Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
“Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,” said he to the colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel’s eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably as little children weep.
Hira Singh leapt to his feet. “Colonel Sahib,” said he, “that man is no Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh! Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!”
“Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?” said the captain of the Lushkar team.
“Hear him!” said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that wept as though it would never cease.
“He said, ‘My God!” said little Mildred. “I heard him say it.”
The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top – of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
“Poor devil!” said the colonel, coughing tremendously. “We ought to send him to hospital. He’s been man-handled.”
Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted rebelliously: “I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he’s built that way. But I can’t understand his crying. That makes it worse.”
The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room, this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
“Is he going to cry all night?” said the colonel, “or are we supposed to sit up with little Mildred’s guest until he feels better?”
The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. “Oh, my God!” he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the Victoria Cross – distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel’s chair to say, “This isn’t our affair, you know, sir,” led them into the verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.