Twenty-One Days in India Part 11

There, through the summer day, Cool streams are laving; There, while the tempests sway, Scarce are boughs waving; There thy rest should'st thou take, Parted for ever, Never again to wake: never, O never!"

With tender hand we would have traced on his memorial urn some valediction--not without hope--of love and friends.h.i.+p.

It was otherwise. He was buried during a dust-storm in a loathsome Indian cemetery. No friend stood by the grave. A hard priest reluctantly pattered an abbreviated service: and people whispered that it was not well with the Collector's soul. He is now forgotten.

But, dear friend, thy memory blossoms in my heart for ever, thy merry laugh will still sound in my ear:--

"Abiding with me till I sail To seek thee on the mystic deeps, And this electric force, that keeps A thousand pulses dancing, fail."

No. x.x.xVIII

THE GRYPHON'S ANABASIS

[March 29, 1880.]

For some days the moustaches had been a.s.suming a fiercer curl; more and more troopers had been added to the escort; the Lord whispered in the unreluctant ear softer and softer nothings; the scarlet runners bowed lower and lower; and it was rumoured that the Lord had given the Gryphon a pot of his own club-mutton hair-grease. It would be a halo.

This development of glory must have a limit: a feeling got abroad that the Gryphon must go.

The Commander-in-Chief would come up to him bathed in smiles and say nothing; at other times with tears in his eyes he would swear with far resounding, mult.i.tudinous oaths to accompany the Gryphon. One day Wolseley's pocket-book and a tooth-brush would be packed in tin; next day they would be unpacked. The vacillation was awful; it amounted to an agony; it involved all the circles; the newspapers were profoundly moved.

The Gryphon starts. Editors forget their proofs; Baboos forget Moses; mothers forget their cicisbeos. The mind of Calcutta is turned upon the Gryphon.

A thousand blue eyes and ten thousand black focus him. He takes his seat. A double-first cla.s.s carriage has been reserved. The Superintendent-General of Balloons and Fireworks appears on the platform: the Gryphon steps out, takes precedence of him, and then returns to his carriage. The excitement increases. Pre-paid telegrams are flashed to Bombay, Madras, Allahabad, and Lah.o.r.e; the engine whistles "G.o.d save the Queen-Empress and the Secretary to the Punjab Government;" and the train pours out its glories into the darkness.

My Lord is deeply stirred. He believes the Asian mystery has been solved. He returns to Government House and gives vent to his overwrought feelings in smoke--Parascho cigarettes; then he telegraphs himself to sleep. Dreams sweep over him, issuing from the fabled gates of s.h.i.+ning ivory.

Meanwhile the Gryphon speeds on, yearning like a G.o.d in pain for his far-away aphelion in Kabul. Morning bashfully overtakes him; and the train dances into stations festooned with branches of olive and palm.

A _feu-de-joie_ of champagne corks is fired; special correspondents in clean white trousers enliven the scene; Baron Reuter's ubiquitous young man turns on rapturous telegrams; and a faint smile dawns darkly on the Gryphon's scorn-worn face.

Merrily shrieks the whistling engine as the Punjab comes sliding down, the round world to welcome its curled darling. It spurns with contemptuous piston the vulgar corn-growing provinces of Couper; it seeks the fields that are sown with dragon's teeth; it hisses forward with furious joy, like the flaming chariot of some Heaven-booked Prophet. Already Egerton antic.i.p.ates its welcome advent. He can hardly sit still on his pro-consular throne; he smiles in dockets and demi-officials; he walks up and down his alabaster halls, and out into his gardens of asphodel, and snuffs the air. It is redolent with some rare effluvium; pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His Honour's face, a summer cloud dissolving into suns.h.i.+ne. "It is the pomade of Saul:--but it is our own glorious David whose unctuous curls carry the Elysian fragrance." Then taking up his harp and dancing an ecstatic measure, he sings--

"He is coming, my Gryphon, my swell; Were it ever so laden with care, My heart would know him, and smell The grease in his coal-black hair."

The whole of the Punjab is astir. Deputy Commissioners, and Extra a.s.sistant Commissioners, and Kookas, and Sikhs, and Mazhabi-Sikhs crowd the stations; but the Gryphon pa.s.ses fiercely onwards. The light of battle is now in his eye; he is in uniform; a political sword hangs from his divine waist; a looking-gla.s.s poses itself before him. Life burns wildly in his heart: time throbs along in hot seconds; Eternity unfolds around her far-receding horizons of glory.

The train emits telegrams as it hurls itself forward: "the Gryphon is well:--he is in the presence of his Future:--History watches him:--he is drinking a peg:--the _Civil and Military Gazette_ has caught a glimpse of him:--glory, glory, glory, to the Gryphon, the mock turtle is his wash-pot, over Lyall will he cast his shoe."

Earthquakes are felt all along the line from Peshawar to Kabul.

Strings of camels laden with portmanteaus stretch from the rising to the setting sun. The whole of the Guides and Bengal Cavalry have resolved themselves into orderlies, and are riding behind the Gryphon.

Tens of thousands of insurgents are lining the road and making holiday to see the Gryphon pa.s.s.

Kabul is astir. Roberts, with bare feet and a rope round his neck, comes forward, performs _Kadambosi_ and presents the keys of Sherpur to the Gryphon, who hands them graciously to his Extra a.s.sistant Deputy Khidmatgar General. The wires are red hot with messages: "The Gryphon is taking a pill; the Gryphon is bathing; the Gryphon is breakfasting; the Gryphon is making a joke; the Gryphon has been bitten by a flea; the wound is not p.r.o.nounced dangerous, he is recovering slowly:--Glory, glory to the Gryphon--Amen, amen!"-- YOUR POLITICAL ORPHAN.

No. x.x.xIX

THE ORPHAN'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS

[June 8, 1880.]

Part I.--Persons I will try to avoid.

" II.--Things I will try to avoid.

" III.--Habits I will try to avoid.

" IV.--Opinions I will try to avoid.

" V.--Circ.u.mstances I will try to avoid.

PART I.--BAD COMPANY.

PERSONS I WILL TRY TO AVOID.

1.

He has a villa in the country; but his place of business is in town; somewhere near Sackville Street. Vulgarity had marked him for her own at an early age. She had set her mark indelibly on his speech, his manners, and his habits. When ten years old he had learned to aspirate his initial vowels; when twelve he had mastered the whole theory and practice of eating cheese with his knife; at seventeen his mind was saturated with ribald music of the Vaudeville type.

Reader, you antic.i.p.ate me? You suppose I refer to one of Mr.

Gladstone's new Ministers, or to one of Lord Beaconsfield's new Baronets?

You are, of course, mistaken. My man is a tailor; one of the best tailors in the world. He has made hundreds of coats for me; and he has sent me hundreds of circulars and bills.

Now, however, he has lost my address, and there seems a coolness between us. We stand aloof; the scars remaining.

His name is Sartor, and I owe him a good deal of money.

2.