Books: The Light That Failed
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Rudyard Kipling >> The Light That Failed
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Among the seniors--those who knew every shift and change in the
perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest
Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk a
telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of a newly
appointed staff-officer when press regulations became burdensome--was
the man in the flannel shirt, the black-browed Torpenhow. He
represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the campaign, as he had
represented it in the Egyptian war, and elsewhere. The syndicate did not
concern itself greatly with criticisms of attack and the like. It supplied
the masses, and all it demanded was picturesqueness and abundance of
detail; for there is more joy in England over a soldier who
insubordinately steps out of square to rescue a comrade than over twenty
generals slaving even to baldness at the gross details of transport and
commissariat.
He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a recently
abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a clump of
shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.
'What are you for?' said Torpenhow. The greeting of the correspondent
is that of the commercial traveller on the road.
'My own hand,' said the young man, without looking up. 'Have you any
tobacco?'
Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had looked
at it said, 'What's your business here?'
'Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be doing something
down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else I'm in charge of the
condenser on one of the water-ships. I've forgotten which.'
'You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with,' said Torpenhow, and took
stock of the new acquaintance. 'Do you always draw like that?'
The young man produced more sketches. 'Row on a Chinese pig-boat,'
said he, sententiously, showing them one after another.--'Chief mate
dirked by a comprador.--Junk ashore off Hakodate.--Somali muleteer
being flogged.--Star-shelled bursting over camp at Berbera.--Slave-dhow
being chased round Tajurrah Bah.--Soldier lying dead in the moonlight
outside Suakin.--throat cut by Fuzzies.'
'H'm!' said Torpenhow, 'can't say I care for Verestchagin-and-water
myself, but there's no accounting for tastes. Doing anything now, are
you?'
'No. I'm amusing myself here.'
Torpenhow looked at the sketches again, and nodded. 'Yes, you're right
to take your first chance when you can get it.'
He rode away swiftly through the Gate of the Two War-Ships, rattled
across the causeway into the town, and wired to his syndicate, 'Got man
here, picture-work. Good and cheap. Shall I arrange? Will do letterpress
with sketches.'
The man on the redoubt sat swinging his legs and murmuring, 'I knew
the chance would come, sooner or later. By Gad, they'll have to sweat for
it if I come through this business alive!'
In the evening Torpenhow was able to announce to his friend that the
Central Southern Agency was willing to take him on trial, paying
expenses for three months. 'And, by the way, what's your name?' said
Torpenhow.
'Heldar. Do they give me a free hand?'
'They've taken you on chance. You must justify the choice. You'd better
stick to me. I'm going up-country with a column, and I'll do what I can
for you. Give me some of your sketches taken here, and I'll send 'em
along.' To himself he said, 'That's the best bargain the Central southern
has ever made; and they got me cheaply enough.'
So it came to pass that, after some purchase of horse-flesh and
arrangements financial and political, Dick was made free of the New and
Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all possess the
inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and getting as much
for it as Providence and their owners shall please. To these things are
added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that
neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question,
the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a bullock,
the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all
circumstances. But many die before they attain to this degree, and the
past-masters in the craft appear for the most part in dress-clothes when
they are in England, and thus their glory is hidden from the multitude.
Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to lead him,
and between the two they managed to accomplish some work that almost
satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under its
influence the two were drawn ver closely together, for they ate from the
same dish, they shared the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie of all,
their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make
gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second
Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed himself of
some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded by a
confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful
duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said
that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent
descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was
Torpenhow who--but the tale of their adventures, together and apart,
from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill
many books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly
fear of being shot by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with
baggage-camels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence under
blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had
floundered on the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in which they
had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her
bottom-planks.
Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were
bringing up the remainder of the column.
'Yes,' said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his
over-long-neglected gear, 'it has been a beautiful business.'
'The patch or the campaign?' said Dick. 'Don't think much of either,
myself.'
'You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't you?
and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite satisfied with my
breeches.' He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the manner
of a clown.
'It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T. Government
Bullock Train. That's a sack from India.'
'It's my initials,--Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on purpose.
What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?' Torpenhow
shaded his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.
A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms
and accoutrements.
'"Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,"' remarked Dick, calmly.
'D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy
it. That scrub's alive with enemy.'
The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to them, and
a hoarse shouting down the river showed that the remainder of the
column had wind of the trouble and was hastening to take share in it. As
swiftly as a reach of still water is crisped by the wind, the rock-strewn
ridges and scrub-topped hills were troubled and alive with armed men.
Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time, to shout and
gesticulate joyously. One man even delivered himself of a long story. The
camel-corps did not fire. They were only too glad of a little
breathing-space, until some sort of square could be formed. The men on
the sand-bank ran to their side; and the whale-boats, as they toiled up
within shouting distance, were thrust into the nearest bank and emptied
of all save the sick and a few men to guard them. The Arab orator ceased
his outcries, and his friends howled.
'They look like the Mahdi's men,' said Torpenhow, elbowing himself into
the crush of the square; 'but what thousands of 'em there are! The tribes
hereabout aren't against us, I know.'
'Then the Mahdi's taken another town,' said Dick, 'and set all these
yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us your glass.'
'Our scouts should have told us of this. We've been trapped,' said a
subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry up, you
men!'
There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves panting
against the sides of the square, for they had good reason to know that
whoso was left outside when the fighting began would very probably die
in an extremely unpleasant fashion. The little hundred-and-fifty-pound
camel-guns posted at one corner of the square opened the ball as the
square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of rising
ground. All had fought in this manner many times before, and there was
no novelty in the entertainment; always the same hot and stifling
formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of the
enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of
hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only by
the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to purse. They
had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and the square
slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then came the
attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that it is
impossible for troops in close order to attack against breech-loading fire.
A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led,
but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and armed
with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there is
always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was the
weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled them
as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst, most
like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when the
train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the opportune
moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No civilised troops in
the world could have endured the hell through which they came, the
living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at their heels, the
wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fell--a torrent black as
the sliding water above a mill-dam--full on the right flank of the square.
Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead
went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground ant
the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for
men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things,
counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and
branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the
men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square at
once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet
in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag down the
slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging gun-butt.
Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew
unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack was
repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest side
of the square. There was a rush from without, the short hough-hough of
the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse, followed by thirty or forty
others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right flank of the
square sucked in after them, and the other sides sent help. The wounded,
who knew that they had but a few hours more to live, caught at the
enemy's feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a discarded
rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the square.
Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his
helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked face
which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that
Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to 'collar
low,' and was turning over and over with his captive, feeling for the
man's eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a
helmetless soldier fired over Dick's shoulder: the flying grains of powder
stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by instinct. The
representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had shaken himself
clear of his enemy, and rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The Arab,
both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched up his spear
and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick's
revolver. Dick fired twice, and the man dropped limply. His upturned
face lacked one eye. The musketry-fire redoubled, but cheers mingled
with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were flying. If the heart of the
square were shambles, the ground beyond was a butcher's shop. Dick
thrust his way forward between the maddened men. The remnant of the
enemy were retiring, as the few--the very few--English cavalry rode
down the laggards.
Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab spear cast aside
in the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and beyond this again the
illimitable dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and turned
it into a red disc. Some one behind him was saying, 'Ah, get away, you
brute!' Dick raised his revolver and pointed towards the desert. His eye
was held by the red spash in the distance, and the clamour about him
seemed to die down to a very far-away whisper, like the whisper of a
level sea. There was the revolver and the red light. . . . and the voice of
some one scaring something away, exactly as had fallen somewhere
before,--a darkness that stung. He fired at random, and the bullet went
out across the desert as he muttered, 'Spoilt my aim. There aren't any
more cartridges. We shall have to run home.' He put his hand to his head
and brought it away covered with blood.
'Old man, you're cut rather badly,' said Torpenhow. 'I owe you
something for this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can't be ill
here.'
Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the
whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the
sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead,--was
dead,--was dead,--that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile outside
the city, and that of all their crews there remained not one; and
Khartoum was dead,--was dead,--was dead!
But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called aloud to
the restless Nile for Maisie,--and again Maisie!?
'Behold a phenomenon,' said Torpenhow, rearranging the blanket. 'Here
is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of one woman
only. And I've seen a good deal of delirium, too.--Dick, here's some fizzy
drink.'
'Thank you, Maisie,' said Dick.
CHAPTER III
So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers.--A Dutch Picture. Longfellow
THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick's broken head had been some months
ended and mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had paid Dick a
certain sum on account for work done, which work they were careful to
assure him was not altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the
letter into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the draft in the same town, and bade
a warm farewell to Torpenhow at the station.
'I am going to lie up for a while and rest,' said Torpenhow. 'I don't know
where I shall live in London, but if God brings us to meet, we shall meet.
Are you starying here on the off-chance of another row? There will be
none till the Southern Soudan is reoccupied by our troops. Mark that.
Good-bye; bless you; come back when your money's spent; and give me
your address.'
Dick loitered in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, and Port Said,--especially
Port Said. There is iniquity in many parts of the world, and vice in all,
but the concentrated essence of all the iniquities and all the vices in all
the continents finds itself at Port Said. And through the heart of that
sand-bordered hell, where the mirage flickers day long above the Bitter
Lake, move, if you will only wait, most of the men and women you have
known in this life. Dick established himself in quarters more riotous than
respectable. He spent his evenings on the quay, and boarded many ships,
and saw very many friends,--gracious Englishwomen with whom he had
talked not too wisely in the veranda of Shepherd's Hotel, hurrying war
correspondents, skippers of the contract troop-ships employed in the
campaign, army officers by the score, and others of less reputable trades.
He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and the
advantage of seeing his subjects under the influence of strong excitement,
at the gaming-tables, saloons, dancing-hells, and elsewhere. For
recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal, the blazing sands,
the procession of shipping, and the white hospitals where the English
soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and white and colour all that
Providence sent him, and when that supply was ended sought about for
fresh material. It was a fascinating employment, but it ran away with his
money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred and twenty pounds to
which he was entitled yearly. 'Now I shall have to work and starve!'
thought he, and was addressing himself to this new fate when a
mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow in England, which said,
'Come back, quick; you have caught on. Come.'
A large smile overspread his face. 'So soon! that's a good hearing,' said
he to himself. 'There will be an orgy to-night. I'll stand or fall by my
luck. Faith, it's time it came!' He deposited half of his funds in the hands
of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and ordered
himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was shaking with
drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically--
'Monsieur needs a chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will sketch;
Monsieur amuses himself strangely.'
Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. 'I
understand,' he quavered. 'We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist,
as I have been.' Dick nodded. 'In the end,' said Binat, with gravity,
'Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.' And he
laughed.
'You must come to the dance, too,' said Dick; 'I shall want you.'
'For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my
degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or
at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.' The excellent Binat began
to kick and scream.
'All things are for sale in Port Said,' said Madame. 'If my husband comes
it will be so much more. Eh, 'how you call--'alf a sovereign.'
The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled
courtyard at the back of Madame Binat's house. The lady herself, in
faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders, played
the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked
Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat sat
upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of the
dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that took the
place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick took him by the
chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat looked
over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the
wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to smell, and
the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground. Then he
shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his
elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was once an artist, even I!' Dick
showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed. 'Will you take
that away with you and show all the world that it is I,--Binat?' He
moaned and wept.
'Monsieur has paid for all,' said Madame. 'To the pleasure of seeing
Monsieur again.'
The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the
nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. 'If the luck holds, it's
an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.' He placed his money picturesquely
about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did. The luck held.
Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went
down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed
cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his
pocket than he cared to think about.
A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for
summer was in England.
'It's a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much,' Dick
thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. 'Now, what must I
do?'
The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless
streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. 'Oh, you rabbit-hutches!' said
he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached residences. 'Do
you know what you've got to do later on? You have to supply me with
men-servants and maid-servants,'--here he smacked his lips,--'and the
peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I'll clothes and boots, and presently
I will return and trample on you.' He stepped forward energetically; he
saw that one of his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to make
investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. 'All right,' he said.
'That's another nick in the score. I'll jostle you later on.'
Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with the
certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with only
fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks, and
lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were almost
audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go to bed at
all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern Syndicate
for Torpenhow's address, and got it, with the intimation that there was
still some money waiting for him.
'How much?' said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.
'Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to you,
of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle accounts
monthly.'
'If I show that I want anything now, I'm lost,' he said to himself. 'All I
need I'll take later on.' Then, aloud, 'It's hardly worth while; and I'm
going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and I'll see
about it.'
'But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your
connection with us?'
Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker
keenly. 'That man means something,' he said. 'I'll do no business till I've
seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming.' So he departed, making no
promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was the
seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with awful
distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!?
It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for
twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the
experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings
a week for his lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for
food and drink. Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of his
craft; he had been without them too long. Half a day's investigations and
comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed
potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages once or
twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with
mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are
impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going,
forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as cheap
as it looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to
sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself entirely to
mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his
inside. Then he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought regretfully
of money thrown away in times past. There are few things more edifying
unto Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and Dick in his few walks
abroad,--he did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could not be
satisfied--found himself dividing mankind into two classes,--those who
looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who looked
otherwise. 'I never knew what I had to learn about the human face
before,' he thought; and, as a reward for his humility, Providence caused
a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick fed that night to leave half
eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took it,--would have fought all the
world for its possession,--and it cheered him.
The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with
impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to
Torpenhow's address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the
corridors of the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick
burst into his room, to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his
ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him tot he light and spoke of twenty
different things in the same breath.
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