Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of LifeWren, Percival Christopher
History
Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life
Wren, Percival Christopher
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
To a servant or child who spoke so to me and with equal reason, I would
reply:--
"Compensation is due to you and not 'forgiveness'--much less
punishment," and I would act accordingly.... Why should I cringe to
God--and why should He love a cringer more than I do?
God help Men and Women--and such Children as are doomed to grow up to be
Men and Women.
As I finish this sentence I shall put my revolver in my mouth and seek
Justice or Peace....
* * * * *
"Bad luck," murmured Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, "that was the man of all
men for me! A gentleman, wishful to die.... That is the sort that _does_
things when swords are out and bullets fly. Seeks a gory grave and gets
a V.C. instead. He and Mike Malet-Marsac and I would have put a polish
on the new Gungapur Fusiliers.... Rough luck...."
He was greatly disappointed, for his experiences in the bazaars,
market-places, secret-meeting houses, and the bowers of Hearts'
Delights,--the Rialtos of Gungapur (he disguised, now as an Afghan
horse-dealer, now as a sepoy, now as a Pathan money-lender, again as a
gold-braided, velvet waistcoated, swaggering swashbuckler from the
Border)--his experiences were disquieting, were such as to make him push
on preparations, perfect plans, and work feverishly at the "polishing"
of his re-organized Corps.
Also the reports of his familiar, a Somali yclept Moussa Isa, were
disquieting, disturbing to a lover of the Empire who foresaw the Empire
at war in Europe.
Moussa Isa also knew that there was talk among Pathan horse-dealers and
_budmashes_ of the coming of one Ilderim the Weeper, a mullah of great
influence and renown, and talk, moreover, among men of other race, of a
Great Conspiracy.
Moussa was bidden to take service as a mill-coolie in one of Colonel
Dearman's mills, and to report on the views and attitude of the
thousands who laboured therein. This he did and there learnt many
interesting facts.
§ 4. MR. AND MRS. CORNELIUS GOSLING-GREEN.
It was Sunday--and therefore John Bruce, the Engineering College
Professor, was exceptionally busy. On a-week-day he only had to deliver
his carefully prepared lectures, interview students, read and return
essays, take the chair at meetings of college societies, coach one or
two "specialists," superintend the games on the college gymkhana ground,
interview seekers after truth and perverters of the same, write letters
on various matters of college business, visit the hostel, set question
papers and correct answers, attend common-room meetings, write articles
for the college magazine and papers for the Scientific, Philosophical,
Shakespearean, Mathematical, Debating, Literary, Historical, Students',
Old Boys', or some other "union" and, if God willed, get a little
exercise and private study at his beloved "subject" and invention,
before preparing for the morrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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