Then came the reaction after the year’s strain,
and Wressley went back to the Foreign Office and his
“Wajahs,” a compiling, gazetteering, report-writing
hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees
a month. He abided by Miss Venner’s review.
Which proves that the inspiration in the book was
purely temporary and unconnected with himself.
Nevertheless, he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn,
five packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense
from Bombay, of the best book of Indian history ever
written.
When he sold off before retiring, some years later,
I was turning over his shelves, and came across the
only existing copy of Native Rule in Central India—the
copy that Miss Venner could not understand. I
read it, sitting on his mule-trunks, as long as the
light lasted, and offered him his own price for it.
He looked over my shoulder for a few pages and said
to himself drearily—
“Now, how in the world did I come to write such
damned good stuff as that?”
“Take it and keep it. Write one of your
penny-farthing yarns about its birth. Perhaps—perhaps—the
whole business may have been ordained to that end.”
Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office
was once, struck me as about the bitterest thing that
I had ever heard a man say of his own work.
Did ye see John Malone, wid his shinin’,
brand-new hat?
Did ye see how he walked like a grand
aristocrat?
There was flags an’ banners wavin’
high,
an’ dhress and shtyle
were shown,
But the best av all the company was Misther
John Malone.
There had been a royal dog-fight in the ravine at
the back of the rifle-butts, between Learoyd’s
Jock and Ortheris’s Blue Rot—both
mongrel Rampur hounds, chiefly ribs and teeth.
It lasted for twenty happy, howling minutes, and then
Blue Rot collapsed and Ortheris paid Learoyd three
rupees, and we were all very thirsty. A dog-fight
is a most heating entertainment, quite apart from
the shouting, because Rampurs fight over a couple
of acres of ground. Later, when the sound of belt-badges
clicking against the necks of beer-bottles had died
away, conversation drifted from dog to man-fights
of all kinds. Humans resemble red-deer in some
respects. Any talk of fighting seems to wake
up a sort of imp in their breasts, and they bell one
to the other, exactly like challenging bucks.
This is noticeable even in men who consider themselves
superior to Privates of the Line: it shows the
Refining Influence of Civilization and the March of
Progress.
Tale provoked tale, and each tale more beer.
Even dreamy Learoyd’s eyes began to brighten,
and he unburdened himself of a long history in which
a trip to Malham Cove, a girl at Pateley Brigg, a
ganger, himself and a pair of clogs were mixed in
drawling tangle.
