Stalky & Co. - Rudyard Kipling (ebooks children's books free TXT) š
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āBut oā course he was blind squiffy when he wrote the paper. I hope you explained that?ā said Stalky.
āOh, yes. I told Tulke so. I said an immoral prefect anā a drunken housemaster were legitimate inferences. Tulke nearly blubbed. Heās awfully shy of us since Maryās time.ā
Tulke preserved that modesty till the last momentātill the journey-money had been paid, and the boys were filling the brakes that took them to the station. Then the three tenderly constrained him to wait a while.
āYou see, Tulke, you may be a prefect,ā said Stalky, ābut Iāve left the Coll. Do you see, Tulke, dear?ā
āYes, I see. Donāt bear malice, Stalky.ā
āStalky? Curse your impudence, you young cub,ā shouted Stalky, magnificent in top-hat, stiff collar, spats, and high-waisted, snuff-colored ulster. āI want you to understand that Iām Mister Corkran, anā youāre a dirty little schoolboy.ā
āBesides beinā frabjously immoral,ā said McTurk. āWonder you arenāt ashamed to foist your company on pure-minded boys like us.ā
āCome on, Tulke,ā cried Naughten, from the prefectsā brake.
āYes, weāre cominā. Shove up and make room, you Collegers. Youāve all got to be back next term, with your āYes, sir,ā and āOh, sir,ā anā āNo sirā anā āPlease sirā; but before we say good-by weāre going to tell you a little story. Go on, Dickieā (this to the driver); āweāre quite ready. Kick that hat-box under the seat, anā donāt crowd your Uncle Stalky.ā
āAs nice a lot of high-minded youngsters as youād wish to see,ā said McTurk, gazing round with bland patronage. āA trifle immoral, but thenāboys will be boys. Itās no good tryinā to look stuffy, Carson. Mister Corkran will now oblige with the story of Tulke anā Mary Yeo!ā
SLAVES OF THE LAMP.
Part II.
That very Infant who told the story of the capture of Boh Na Ghee [_A_Conference_ _ofthePowers_: āMany Inventionsā] to Eustace Cleaver, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast revenues, resigned the service, and became a landholder, while his mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl. But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a full-sized magazine-rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of his estate, and the surrounding families, who lived in savage seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an erring maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and Infant was cast out from the society of J.P.ās and decent men till such time as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old schoolmates home on leaveāaffable detrimentals, at whom the bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to look from afar. I knew when a troop-ship was in port by the Infantās invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal seniority; at others, young and blushing giants whom I had left small fags far down in the Lower Second; and to these Infant and the elders expounded the whole duty of man in the Army.
āIāve had to cut the service,ā said the Infant; ābut thatās no reason why my vast stores of experience should be lost to posterity.ā He was just thirty, and in that same summer an imperious wire drew me to his baronial castle: āGot good haul; ex Tamar. Come along.ā
It was an unusually good haul, arranged with a single eye to my benefit. There was a baldish, broken-down captain of Native Infantry, shivering with ague behind an indomitable red noseāand they called him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian Political Service; and there was a lean Irishman, his face tanned blue-black with the suns of the Telegraph Department. Luckily the baize doors of the bachelorsā wing fitted tight, for we dressed promiscuously in the corridor or in each otherās rooms, talking, calling, shouting, and anon waltzing by pairs to songs of Dick Fourās own devising.
There were sixty years of mixed work to be sifted out between us, and since we had met one another from time to time in the quick scene-shifting of Indiaāa dinner, camp, or a race-meeting here; a dak-bungalow or railway station up country somewhere elseāwe had never quite lost touch. Infant sat on the banisters, hungrily and enviously drinking it in. He enjoyed his baronetcy, but his heart yearned for the old days.
It was a cheerful babel of matters personal, provincial, and imperial, pieces of old callover lists, and new policies, cut short by the roar of a Burmese gong, and we went down not less than a quarter of a mile of stairs to meet Infantās mother, who had known us all in our school-days and greeted us as if those had ended a week ago. But it was fifteen years since, with tears of laughter, she had lent me a gray princess-skirt for amateur theatricals.
That was a dinner from the āArabian Nights,ā served in an eighty-foot hall full of ancestors and pots of flowering roses, and, what was more impressive, heated by steam. When it was ended and the little mother had gone awayā(āYou boys want to talk, so I shall say good-night nowā)āwe gathered about an apple-wood fire, in a gigantic polished steel grate, under a mantelpiece ten feet high, and the Infant compassed us about with curious liqueurs and that kind of cigarette which serves best to introduce your own pipe.
āOh, bliss!ā grunted Dick Four from a sofa, where he had been packed with a rug over him. āFirst time Iāve been warm since I came home.ā
We were all nearly on top of the fire, except Infant, who had been long enough at home to take exercise when he felt chilled. This is a grisly diversion, but much affected by the English of the Island.
āIf you say a word about cold tubs and brisk walks,ā drawled McTurk, āIāll kill you, Infant. Iāve got a liver, too. āMember when we used to think it a treat to turn out of our beds on a Sunday morningāthermometer fifty-seven degrees if it was summerāand bathe off the Pebbleridge? Ugh!ā
āāThing I donāt understand,ā said Tertius, āwas the way we chaps used to go down into the lavatories, boil ourselves pink, and then come up with all our pores open into a young snow-storm or a black frost. Yet none of our chaps died, that I can remember.ā
āTalkinā of baths,ā said McTurk, with a chuckle, āāmember our bath in Number Five, Beetle, the night Rabbits-Eggs rocked King? What wouldnāt I give to see old Stalky now! He is the only one of the two Studies not here.ā
āStalky is the great man of his Century,ā said Dick Four.
āHow dāyou know?ā I asked.
āHow do I know?ā said Dick Four, scornfully. āIf youāve ever been in a tight place with Stalky you wouldnāt ask.ā
āI havenāt seen him since the camp at Pindi in ā87,ā I said. āHe was goinā strong thenāabout seven feet high and four feet through.ā
āAdequate chap. Infernally adequate,ā said Tertius, pulling his mustache and staring into the fire.
āGot damā near court-martialed and broke in Egypt in ā84,ā the Infant volunteered. āI went out in the same trooper with himāas raw as he was. Only I showed it, and Stalky didnāt.ā
āWhat was the trouble?ā said McTurk, reaching forward absently to twitch my dress-tie into position.
āOh, nothing. His colonel trusted him to take twenty Tommies out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Suakin, and Stalky got embroiled with Fuzzies five miles in the interior. He conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of āem. He knew jolly well heād no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the āpaucity of support accorded to him in his operations.ā Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slanginā another! Then he went into the Staff Corps.ā
āThatāisāentirelyāStalky,ā said Abanazar from his arm-chair.
āYouāve come across him, too?ā I said.
āOh, yes,ā he replied in his softest tones. āI was at the tail of thatāthat epic. Donāt you chaps know?ā
We did notāInfant, McTurk, and I; and we called for information very politely.
āāTwasnāt anything,ā said Tertius. āWe got into a mess up in the Khye-Kheen Hills a couple oā years ago, and Stalky pulled us through. Thatās all.ā
McTurk gazed at Tertius with all an Irishmanās contempt for the tongue-tied Saxon.
āHeavens!ā he said. āAnd itās you and your likes govern Ireland. Tertius, arenāt you ashamed?ā
āWell, I canāt tell a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts bukhing. Ask him.ā He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug.
āI knew you wouldnāt,ā said Dick Four. āGive me a whiskey and soda. Iāve been drinking lemon-squash and ammoniated quinine while you chaps were bathinā in champagne, and my headās singinā like a top.ā
He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, his teeth chattering in his head, began: āYou know the Khye-Kheen-Maloāt expedition, when we scared the souls out of āem with a field force they darenāt fight against? Well, both tribesāthere was a coalition against usācame in without firing a shot; and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, Pussy dearāā
āI was at Simla,ā said Abanazar, hastily.
āNever mind, youāre tarred with the same brush. On the strength of those tuppenny-haāpenny treaties, your asses of Politicals reported the country as pacified, and the Government, being a fool, as usual, began road-makināādependinā on local supply for labor. āMember that, Pussy? āRest of our chaps whoād had no look-in during the campaign didnāt think thereād be any more of it, and were anxious to get back to India. But Iād been in two of these little rows before, and I had my suspicions. I engineered myself, summaingenio_, into command of a road-patrolāno shovellinā, only marching up and down genteelly with a guard. Theyād withdrawn all the troops they could, but I nucleused about forty Pathans, recruits chiefly, of my regiment, and sat tight at the base-camp while the road-parties went to work, as per Political survey.ā
āHad some rippinā sing-songs in camp, too,ā said Tertius.
āMy pupāāthus did Dick Four refer to his subalternāāwas a pious little beast. He didnāt like the sing-songs, and so he went down with pneumonia. I rootled round the camp, and found Tertius gassing about as a D.A.Q.M.G., which, God knows, he isnāt cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Coll. at base-camp (weāre always in force for a frontier row), but Iād heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help me. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we wentāforty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties. Macnamaraāsāāmember old Mac, the Sapper, who played the fiddle so damnably at Umballa?āMacās party was the last but one. The last was Stalkyās. He was at the head of the road with some of his pet Sikhs. Mac said he believed he was all right.ā
āStalky is a Sikh,ā said Tertius. āHe takes his men to pray at the Durbar Sahib at Amritzar, regularly as clockwork, when
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