IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.
"Stopped in the straight when the race was his own! Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!" "Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden, What did he carry and how was he ridden? Maybe they used him too much at the start; Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart."
Life's Handicap.
When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on theSenior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all thejest left out. This is that tale:
Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither bylandlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl sonearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was justthe least little bit in the world below it. This happened a monthbefore he came out to India, and five days after his one-and-twentiethbirthday. The girl was nineteen--six years older than Dicky in thethings of this world, that is to say--and, for the time, twice asfoolish as he.
Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing more fatallyeasy than marriage before the Registrar. The ceremony costs less thanfifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking into a pawn-shop. Afterthe declarations of residence have been put in, four minutes willcover the rest of the proceedings--fees, attestation, and all. Then theRegistrar slides the blotting-pad over the names, and says grimly, withhis pen between his teeth:--"Now you're man and wife;" and the couplewalk out into the street, feeling as if something were horribly illegalsomewhere.
But that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his undoing justas thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" curse from thealtar-rails, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice thatbreathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off. In this manner was Dicky Hattkidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he had received anappointment in India which carried a magnificent salary from the Homepoint of view. The marriage was to be kept secret for a year. Then Mrs.Dicky Hatt was to come out and the rest of life was to be a gloriousgolden mist. That was how they sketched it under the Addison RoadStation lamps; and, after one short month, came Gravesend and Dickysteaming out to his new life, and the girl crying in a thirty-shillingsa week bed-and-living room, in a back street off Montpelier Square nearthe Knightsbridge Barracks.
But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land, where "men" oftwenty-one were reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was expensive.The salary that loomed so large six thousand miles away did not go far.Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and remitted more than thefair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square. One hundred and thirty-fiverupees out of three hundred and thirty is not much to live on; butit was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt could exist forever on the 20pounds held back by Dicky, from his outfit allowance. Dicky saw this,and remitted at once; always remembering that Rs. 700 were to be paid,twelve months later, for a first-class passage out for a lady. When youadd to these trifling details the natural instincts of a boy beginning anew life in a new country and longing to go about and enjoy himself, andthe necessity for grappling with strange work--which, properly speaking,should take up a boy's undivided attention--you will see that Dickystarted handicapped. He saw it himself for a breath or two; but he didnot guess the full beauty of his future.
As the hot weather began, the shackles settled on him and ate into hisflesh. First would come letters--big, crossed, seven sheet letters--fromhis wife, telling him how she longed to see him, and what a Heavenupon earth would be their property when they met. Then some boy of thechummery wherein Dicky lodged would pound on the door of his bare littleroom, and tell him to come out and look at a pony--the very thing tosuit him. Dicky could not afford ponies. He had to explain this. Dickycould not afford living in the chummery, modest as it was. He had toexplain this before he moved to a single room next the office wherehe worked all day. He kept house on a green oil-cloth table-cover, onechair, one charpoy, one photograph, one tooth-glass, very strong andthick, a seven-rupee eight-anna filter, and messing by contract atthirty-seven rupees a month. Which last item was extortion. He had nopunkah, for a punkah costs fifteen rupees a month; but he slept on theroof of the office with all his wife's letters under his pillow. Now andagain he was asked out to dinner where he got both a punkah and an iceddrink. But this was seldom, for people objected to recognizing a boy whohad evidently the instincts of a Scotch tallow-chandler, and who livedin such a nasty fashion. Dicky could not subscribe to any amusement, sohe found no amusement except the pleasure of turning over his Bank-bookand reading what it said about "loans on approved security." That costnothing. He remitted through a Bombay Bank, by the way, and the Stationknew nothing of his private affairs.
Every month he sent Home all he could possibly spare for his wife--andfor another reason which was expected to explain itself shortly andwould require more money.
About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the nervous, haunting fearthat besets married men when they are out of sorts. He had no pension tolook to. What if he should die suddenly, and leave his wife unprovidedfor? The thought used to lay hold of him in the still, hot nights on theroof, till the shaking of his heart made him think that he was going todie then and there of heart-disease. Now this is a frame of mind whichno boy has a right to know. It is a strong man's trouble; but, comingwhen it did, it nearly drove poor punkah-less, perspiring Dicky Hattmad. He could tell no one about it.
A certain amount of "screw" is as necessary for a man as for abilliard-ball. It makes them both do wonderful things. Dicky neededmoney badly, and he worked for it like a horse. But, naturally, the menwho owned him knew that a boy can live very comfortably on a certainincome--pay in India is a matter of age, not merit, you see, and iftheir particular boy wished to work like two boys, Business forbid thatthey should stop him! But Business forbid that they should give him anincrease of pay at his present ridiculously immature age! So Dicky woncertain rises of salary--ample for a boy--not enough for a wife andchild--certainly too little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that heand Mrs. Hatt had discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with thishe was forced to be content.
Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in Home drafts and thecrushing Exchange, and the tone of the Home letters changed and grewquerulous. "Why wouldn't Dicky have his wife and the baby out? Surely hehad a salary--a fine salary--and it was too bad of him to enjoy himselfin India. But would he--could he--make the next draft a little moreelastic?" Here followed a list of baby's kit, as long as a Parsee'sbill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his wife and the little sonhe had never seen--which, again, is a feeling no boy is entitledto--enlarged the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half-man letters,saying that life was not so enjoyable after all and would the littlewife wait yet a little longer? But the little wife, however much sheapproved of money, objected to waiting, and there was a strange, hardsort of ring in her letters that Dicky didn't understand. How could he,poor boy?
Later on still--just as Dicky had been told--apropos of anotheryoungster who had "made a fool of himself," as the saying is--thatmatrimony would not only ruin his further chances of advancement, butwould lose him his present appointment--came the news that the baby, hisown little, little son, had died, and, behind this, forty lines ofan angry woman's scrawl, saying that death might have been averted ifcertain things, all costing money, had been done, or if the mother andthe baby had been with Dicky. The letter struck at Dicky's naked heart;but, not being officially entitled to a baby, he could show no sign oftrouble.
How Dicky won through the next four months, and what hope he keptalight to force him into his work, no one dare say. He pounded on, theseven-hundred-rupee passage as far away as ever, and his style of livingunchanged, except when he launched into a new filter. There was thestrain of his office-work, and the strain of his remittances, and theknowledge of his boy's death, which touched the boy more, perhaps, thanit would have touched a man; and, beyond all, the enduring strain ofhis daily life. Gray-headed seniors, who approved of his thrift and hisf
ashion of denying himself everything pleasant, reminded him of the oldsaw that says:
"If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art, He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart."
And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every trouble that a man ispermitted to know, had to laugh and agree; with the last line of hisbalanced Bank-book jingling in his head day and night.
But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. There arrived aletter from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others ifDicky had only known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone witha handsomer man than you." It was a rather curious production, withoutstops, something like this:--"She was not going to wait forever and thebaby was dead and Dicky was only a boy and he would never set eyes onher again and why hadn't he waved his handkerchief to her when he leftGravesend and God was her judge she was a wicked woman but Dicky wasworse enjoying himself in India and this other man loved the ground shetrod on and would Dicky ever forgive her for she would never forgiveDicky; and there was no address to write to."
Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky discoveredexactly how an injured husband feels--again, not at all the knowledgeto which a boy is entitled--for his mind went back to his wife as heremembered her in the thirty-shilling "suite" in Montpelier Square, whenthe dawn of his last morning in England was breaking, and she was cryingin the bed. Whereat he rolled about on his bed and bit his fingers. Henever stopped to think whether, if he had met Mrs. Hatt after thosetwo years, he would have discovered that he and she had grown quitedifferent and new persons. This, theoretically, he ought to have done.He spent the night after the English Mail came in rather severe pain.
Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to work. He argued that he hadmissed the pleasure of youth. He was tired, and he had tasted all thesorrow in life before three-and-twenty. His Honor was gone--that was theman; and now he, too, would go to the Devil--that was the boy in him. Sohe put his head down on the green oil-cloth table-cover, and wept beforeresigning his post, and all it offered.
But the reward of his services came. He was given three days toreconsider himself, and the Head of the establishment, after sometelegraphings, said that it was a most unusual step, but, in view of theability that Mr. Hatt had displayed at such and such a time, at such andsuch junctures, he was in a position to offer him an infinitely superiorpost--first on probation, and later, in the natural course of things,on confirmation. "And how much does the post carry?" said Dicky. "Sixhundred and fifty rupees," said the Head slowly, expecting to see theyoung man sink with gratitude and joy.
And it came then! The seven hundred rupee passage, and enough to havesaved the wife, and the little son, and to have allowed of assured andopen marriage, came then. Dicky burst into a roar of laughter--laughterhe could not check--nasty, jangling merriment that seemed as if itwould go on forever. When he had recovered himself he said, quiteseriously:--"I'm tired of work. I'm an old man now. It's about time Iretired. And I will."
"The boy's mad!" said the Head.
I think he was right; but Dicky Hatt never reappeared to settle thequestion.