Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

to a little whipped dog," the word bombardier had only been introduced to get a word that scanned and fitted the metre. Not on your life! In the

Bengal Horse Artillery, and also in the Royal Artillery years ago, the lead driver was always an acting bombardier.

THE TRUCE OF THE BEAR.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

But though I never met Adamzad, I came across his trail returning one day from Sipi Fair, the fair in the valley below Mashobra in the hillway behind Simla, when the hill folk make merry for three days and come a-courting. Coming back up the hillside by a short cut to the Lower Forest Road which leads away to Thibet, I heard a whimper, a half-strangled call for pity, as from some beast in a trap. I looked towards the sound, and saw, leaning on a staff, a

[ocr errors]

.

man, or at least I thought it was a man, and then it for now I saw he was an "it' ... coughed a muffled cough, and joined its hands and pleaded for alms. There was a man's figure and head, yes, it certainly was a head, a head without a face. no nose, no eyes, hardly even an eye socket, and a hole like a rotten medlar where the mouth should have been: "Flesh like slag in the furnace, knobbed and withered and grey." I have seen something that reminded me of it since, two Belgian soldiers coming to hospital at Tunbridge in the early days of the war, faces covered in a dirty bandage with two eye slits only in the surface.

As it whimpered again, my groom, a hillman, said to me,

[ocr errors]

A bear has done that, sahib, an old black bear, torn his face off with his claws, a Kala balu.” Yes, there it was as Kipling met it years before

"Eyeless, noseless, and lipless, asking

a dole at the door,

Matun the old blind beggar, he tells it o'er and o'er."

MAHBUB ALI.

If you turn into the Sultan Serai at Lahore you will pass under an ancient gateway into the particular part of the serai or travellers' rest frequented by Afghan traders, horse-traders for choice, where used to sit the sons of Mahbub Ali, the Afghan horse-dealer of Kim' fame. There were three of them: Wazir Khan, a typical old Afghan; the elder brother, fat old Afzul Khan; and the youngest, Aslam, now the sole survivor. Rows of horses are tethered in the yard or under the arched recesses of the serai walls. They used to export the horses of Central Asia, Turcomani, Badakshani, and Kandahari, and would again but for the Amir of Kabul, who of late years has forbidden export. In some pitch-dark stable, perhaps underground, thin horses would be gobbling chopped green food the day long, to put soft deceptive flesh on their none too good bones; getting fat as butter in the process, so that you can hardly feel where the missing rib should be, and taking the fancy of some buyer who likes his horses round. Now and again the Turcomani horses would fight, heels and teeth, till some groom would read the riot act, emphasising his admonishings with blows from a tent-peg.

But young Aslam, who is now old Aslam, quarrelled with his brothers in the serai, and

VOL. CCXXII.-NO. MCCCXLII.

[ocr errors]

split the business as Mahbub Ali knew he would, and lives elsewhere. Now mark the generations and the process of evolution. Mahbub Ali's father was an honourable Kabuli horse thief in a gentlemanly way, who had espoused the British fortunes in 1839 in the great adventure" of those days, which was then called the "great game," no less an undertaking than the crossing of the foreign Punjab and the penetration of Afghanistan. When the British left the land, then he left the land, lest a halter be his guerdon and six feet of Afghan soil his patrimony. Mahbub Ali of 'Kim ’ and his sons were horse-dealers of Lahore pure and simple, and purveyed polo ponies to all and sundry, and mules and horses for the cavalry. I once asked Mr James Daly of Liffey Bank outside Dublin if he was a Home Ruler, a foolish question. "Sorr," said he, "I am a harse dealer," and much the same answer would Mahbub Ali have given if you touched on Kabul politics. "Kabul ki bat mut pucho, sahib "Don't even ask, sir, of affairs in Kabul." Now again watch the process of evolution. Young Aslam sent his son to Cambridge to take a veterinary degree and make a speciality of trading in screws, but the lad would not do a day's work at the 'Varsity, and sits at home in Lahore in ease demanding more money of

[ocr errors]

F 2

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

A MORNING AT PETTY SESSIONS.

BY SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.

"If the commission of the Peace finds him out, he faithfully discharges it. I say, finds him out, for a public office is a quest which receives the best usage from them who never invited it. And though he declines the place, the country knew to prize his worth, who would be ignorant of his own. He compounds many petty differences betwixt his neighbours, which are easier ended in own Porch than in Westminster Hall; for many people think if once they have fetched a warrant from a Justice, they have given earnest to follow the suit, though otherwise the matter be so mean that the next night's sleep would have bound both parties to the peace and made them as good friends as ever before."THOMAS FULLER: The Holy State.

Ir takes me, walking briskly, just an hour to reach the Petty Sessional Court of T from my front door, and I have usually preferred to walk for love of the familiar landscapes. Twenty minutes uphill to the cross-roads of Four Turnings, where the sepulchral stone of a soi-disant Roman Emperor stands erect in a triangle of turf on past one friendly blacksmith's shop to another's, over a high undulating ridge; then sharp to the left by a duck-pond, and downhill all the way, with five minutes in hand to check one's stride and pause at a gate to calculate a crop or admire the view.

(our elected chairman being in bed after a hunting fall) I find myself, as the senior present, elevated to his place, and the proceedings begin.

A. B., C. D., and E. F. are charged with riding bicycles or driving cars after dark without lights-ten shillings, with an extra five for C. D., who has not turned up,-G. H. for allowing cattle to stray on highway or, it may have been, for keeping a dog without licence. These are trifles, and, the charge proved, fined according to precedent. I. J. pleads guilty to having at a certain date and on a certain highway made use of obscene language within the hearing of the public. I. J. is a welldressed lady-like woman, who curtseys to me. The Deputy Chief Constable passes up a folded sheet of paper enclosing her reported words. at them, and pass them over to the magistrate on my right. They are inconceivable; but the lady has to pay ten shilOn this particular morning lings, and accepts the award

At the door of the courthouse in the village below a punctual policeman awaits me, myself punctual; and after a brief chat with my fellowmagistrates on the weight of the crops and the charge-sheet, we pass into the Hall of Justice, where every one rises to receive us, and we promptly become "Your Worships."

I glance

with another curtsey, not to roundabouts, defendant struck

be bettered if she were being presented at Buckingham

Palace.

Cases more serious await our hearing (1) a string of summonses and cross-summonses for assault with violence; (2) an application from a wife to be separated, by order, from her husband; (3) a charge of trespass "in pursuit of conies."

No. 1 turns out to be the afterclap of a row at a country fair. Apparently it all happened just after the shows were closed, and police evidence is so scant as to be practically naught. We are plainly in for a set-to of cross-swearing by witnesses, between and among whom the stringency of an oath is unteachable, as is the meaning of a lie one inch beyond serving its immediate purpose. Knowing this, we brace ourselves to the inquest. The prosecutrix in the impending case is a tall dark female, strong of jaw under a hat profusely feathered; the sort of woman who hands you a gun at a Shooting Gallery; the defendant a whipper-snapper of a youth, with a sardonic smile and a countless number of buttons running down a blue plush waistcoat. Being commanded by the Bench to remove his hands from his trouserpockets, he nods pleasantly and removes them, but still keeps his air of being wholly at ease in Sion. Prosecutrix gives evidence that after a financial dispute on the close of the

her a blow, knocking her down and causing a contusion of the left eye, to which a doctor in court would presently bear testimony. She tells her story in detail and confidently, yet not so as to inspire me with her own confidence that she had given no provocation. When she has ended, I ask the defendant if he has any question to ask the witness, adding, of course, that he must confine himself to questions; that he will have an opportunity later on to state his own case. The following conversation ensues:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »