Soldiers Three

BLAYNE. No one that I know of; but Gaddy’s hooked at last!

DROPPING CHORUS. How much? The Devil! Markyn was pulling your leg. Not GADDY!

BLAYNE. (Humming.) ‘Yea, verily, verily, verily! Verily, verily, I say unto thee.’ Theodore, the gift o’ God! Our Phillup! It’s been given out up above.

MACKESY. (Barrister-at-Law.) Huh! Women will give out anything. What does accused say?

BLAYNE. Markyn told me that he congratulated him warily – one hand held out, t’other ready to guard. Gaddy turned pink and said it was so.

CURTISS. Poor old Gaddy! They all do it. Who’s she? Let’s hear the details.

BLAYNE. She’s a girl – daughter of a Colonel Somebody.

DOONE. Simla’s stiff with Colonels’ daughters. Be more explicit.

BLAYNE. Wait a shake. What was her name? Three – something. Three —

CURTISS. Stars, perhaps. Gaddy knows that brand.

BLAYNE. Threegan – Minnie Threegan.

MACKESY. Threegan! Isn’t she a little bit of a girl with red hair?

BLAYNE. ‘Bout that – from what Markyn said.

MACKESY. Then I’ve met her. She was at Lucknow last season. ‘Owned a permanently juvenile Mamma, and danced damnably. I say, Jervoise, you knew the Threegans, didn’t you?

JERVOISE. (Civilian of twenty-five years’ service, waking up from his doze.) Eh? What’s that? Knew who? How? I thought I was at Home, confound you!

MACKESY. The Threegan girl’s engaged, so Blayne says.

JERVOISE. (Slowly.) Engaged – engaged! Bless my soul! I’m getting an old man! Little Minnie Threegan engaged. It was only the other day I went home with them in the Surat– no, the Massilia– and she was crawling about on her hands and knees among the ayahs. ‘Used to call me the ‘Tick Tack Sahib’ because I showed her my watch. And that was in Sixty-seven – no, Seventy. Good God, how time flies! I’m an old man. I remember when Threegan married Miss Derwent – daughter of old Hooky Derwent – but that was before your time. And so the little baby’s engaged to have a little baby of her own! Who’s the other fool?

MACKESY. Gadsby of the Pink Hussars.

JERVOISE. ‘Never met him. Threegan lived in debt, married in debt, and’ll die in debt. ‘Must be glad to get the girl off his hands.

BLAYNE. Gaddy has money – lucky devil. Place at Home, too.

DOONE. He comes of first-class stock. ‘Can’t quite understand his being caught by a Colonel’s daughter, and (looking cautiously round room) Black Infantry at that! No offence to you, Blayne.

BLAYNE. (Stiffly.) Not much, tha-anks.

CURTISS. (Quoting motto of Irregular Moguls.) ‘We are what we are,’ eh, old man? But Gaddy was such a superior animal as a rule. Why didn’t he go Home and pick his wife there?

MACKESY. They are all alike when they come to the turn into the straight. About thirty a man begins to get sick of living alone —

CURTISS. And of the eternal muttony-chop in the morning.

DOONE. It’s dead goat as a rule, but go on, Mackesy.

MACKESY. If a man’s once taken that way nothing will hold him. Do you remember Benoit of your service, Doone? They transferred him to Tharanda when his time came, and he married a platelayer’s daughter, or something of that kind. She was the only female about the place.

DOONE. Yes, poor brute. That smashed Benoit’s chances of promotion altogether. Mrs. Benoit used to ask: ‘Was you goin’ to the dance this evenin’?’

CURTISS. Hang it all! Gaddy hasn’t married beneath him. There’s no tar-brush in the family, I suppose.

JERVOISE. Tar-brush! Not an anna. You young fellows talk as though the man was doing the girl an honour in marrying her. You’re all too conceited – nothing’s good enough for you.

BLAYNE. Not even an empty Club, a dam’ bad dinner at the Judge’s, and a Station as sickly as a hospital. You’re quite right. We’re a set of Sybarites.

DOONE. Luxurious dogs, wallowing in —

CURTISS. Prickly heat between the shoulders. I’m covered with it. Let’s hope Beora will be cooler.

BLAYNE. Whew! Are you ordered into camp, too? I thought the Gunners had a clean sheet.

CURTISS. No, worse luck. Two cases yesterday – one died – and if we have a third, out we go. Is there any shooting at Beora, Doone?

DOONE. The country’s under water, except the patch by the Grand Trunk Road. I was there yesterday, looking at a bund, and came across four poor devils in their last stage. It’s rather bad from here to Kuchara.

CURTISS. Then we’re pretty certain to have a heavy go of it. Heigho! I shouldn’t mind changing places with Gaddy for a while. ‘Sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the Town Hall, and all that. Oh, why doesn’t somebody come and marry me, instead of letting me go into cholera camp?

MACKESY. Ask the Committee.

CURTISS. You ruffian! You’ll stand me another peg for that. Blayne, what will you take? Mackesy is fine on moral grounds. Doone, have you any preference?

DOONE. Small glass Kummel, please. Excellent carminative, these days. Anthony told me so.

MACKESY. (Signing votucher for four drinks.) Most unfair punishment. I only thought of Curtiss as Actaeon being chivied round the billiard tables by the nymphs of Diana.

BLAYNE. Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs. Cockley’s the only woman in the Station. She won’t leave Cockley, and he’s doing his best to get her to go.

CURTISS. Good, indeed! Here’s Mrs. Cockley’s health. To the only wife in the Station and a damned brave woman!

OMNES. (Drinking.) A damned brave woman!

BLAYNE. I suppose Gaddy will bring his wife here at the end of the cold weather. They are going to be married almost immediately, I believe.

CURTISS. Gaddy may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all detachment and no headquarters this hot weather, or he’d be torn from the arms of his love as sure as death. Have you ever noticed the thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It’s because they are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here, they would have been out in camp a month ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gaddy.

MACKESY. He’ll go Home after he’s married, and send in his papers – see if he doesn’t.

BLAYNE. Why shouldn’t he? Hasn’t he money? Would any one of us be here if we weren’t paupers?

DOONE. Poor old pauper! What has became of the six hundred you rooked from our table last month?

BLAYNE. It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising tradesman got some of it, and a shroff gobbled the rest – or else I spent it.