The Hundred Days & The Woman Ayisha

"They said You Have a Tale for Me; and so, by Allah, I am Here to Listen."



They kept this out of the papers at the time, there being a
fine-meshed censorship in force. Enough months have elapsed
since, and enough events have happened to smoke-screen this one
as effectually as if Julius Caesar and the Gauls had played the
leading parts. The Prince went home alive. India resumed worrying
about the price of homespun cotton, the next monsoon, and whether
rupee-paper was likely to rise or fall. The _Pioneer_ found
front-page space for an account of spooks in a planter's bungalow.
And all was well again.

"Set it down, why don't you?" King said; and Grim nodded. I
demurred. Either King or Grim could have told the story better.
But as they sat on the end of my bed in the little white-washed
ward, the one cleaning spurs and the other resplicing the
wire-woven handle of a Persian scimitar, it was small use
arguing with them.

King's excuse, that he had sore fingers and could not punch a
typewriter, was possibly half-valid. It was why he was cleaning
spurs, for instance, instead of playing polo to get fit for the
next adventure Fate might hold in store for him. Grim's argument,
that he should not write the account because he had a hand in the
affair, was more ridiculous, but just as useful, since it cloaked
his incurable delight in doing lots and saying nothing, or,
rather, less than nothing. What he does say usually adds to
his obscurity.

"Write it, and omit me," Grim suggested. But you might as well
omit Hamlet from the play.

Well, here I am, with a month of convalescence still ahead
of me, sore from head to foot, sick of reading, and still
more sick of the Peshawar climate, hospital diet, the squeak
of a punkah, and the view of Allah's Slagheap from the window.
So they've set a table for me in a corner where the flap of
the punkah won't scatter the paper all over the place. My
jaw being bandaged, the sweat, in all likelihood, won't drop
down and make the ink run. Lord knows there's paper enough;
the genial sawbones who runs this outfit (between bouts of
preaching to wounded border-thieves) seems to think I propose
to rewrite the Encyclopaedia--or one of his sermons. He has
lent me his dictionary and a big jar of tobacco. Here begins:

Joan Angela came to India. That's the prelude to anything
whatever except common-place. I believe she is twenty-six. I will
bet she has twenty-six hundred admirers, including me, who would
like to act Herod and kill off eligibles in order to destroy
beforehand the inevitable lucky, but as yet unknown, blade who
will some day persuade her to marry. And I daresay twenty-six
million dollars would look rather small beside her fortune
since they brought in oil on her land in California. (Not that
that matters; she would be Joan Angela Leich if she had only
twenty-six cents.)

She came because the Prince's visit was likely to prove spectacular,
and when we're young most of us will go a long way to see a
circus. But it soon palled. The home papers got wind of it, too,
and drew conclusions, the Prince being still a bachelor and
about her age. So she cut short the round of visits and started
to see India for herself, without so much as a by-your-leave
or a hint to the Indian Government, which was a great deal too
busy just then to notice much that wasn't obviously dangerous.

In times like that a Government falls back on odds and ends of
stray resources. Undesirables are given short shrift, with
apologies in the proper quarter later on, if called for. Men
whose courses up and down the earth will bear investigation find
surprising details forced on them, without much explanation and
no insurance. You carry unexpected overloads at your own expense
and risk, with no more prospect of reward than any decent fellow
gets who likes to know he did not grudge the gift of manliness
and muscle.

So Athelstan King, James Schuyler Grim and I--an Englishman and
two Americans--with Narayan Singh, who is a Sikh and was a sepoy
once, were under canvas by the left bank of Jumna River, swatting
flies, smoking much more than was wholesome, and wishing the
Prince were in London in the care of Scotland Yard.

There was a brigade of Indian Cavalry camped on our left hand,
about two miles away; we could hear the horses neighing, as bored
as we felt. On our right, two miles away again, was a regiment of
Bombay Infantry.