Читать книгу The Happy Warrior - A. S. M. Hutchinson - Страница 5

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A CHANGE IN THE PEERAGE

This hazard foundation of life! As a stone tossed down a hillside dislodges others and sets them rolling, themselves dislodging more till the first light pitch will gather to a rumble where was peace, the first stone cause to jump and shout many score that might have held their place long after the thrower's idle hand was equal dust with the dust of their descent—so it is with the lightest action that the least of us may idly toss upon our small affairs. We cannot move alone. Life has us in a web, within whose meshes none may stir a hand but he pulls here, loosens there, and sets a wave of movement through a hundred tangles of the coil.

This hazard foundation of life! Egbert Hunt was made to lean wearily over the gate that evening and the toads and "tyrangs" whose oppression had cost him a bitter day were set in his path by a movement in the web, leagues upon leagues of land and sea from Miller's Field. Life has us in a web. In one remote corner an Afridi tribesman shot a British officer: that was his movement in the meshes, and swift, swift, the chain of tugs set up thereby acted upon a morose page-boy in another remote corner, rendering him bone-tired through ushering the visitors come to congratulate those who had stepped into the dead man's shoes.

This hazard touch even in the billet that the Afridi tribesman selected for his bullet! In sheeting rain, behind a rock above a pass on the northwestern frontier of India, Multan Khan—Afridi, one-time sepoy, deserter from his regiment, scoundrel, first-class shot—snuggled his cheek against his stolen rifle, hesitated for a moment between the heads of three British officers, drew a line on one, pressed the trigger; and, while he chuckled over his success, himself pitched dead with a bullet through the incautious skull he had craned over the rock the better to enjoy the fruits of his skill.

Brief his pleasure but lusty the tug he had given the web. The news of it reached London just in time to catch the final edition of the evening papers as they went to press, just in time to supply a good contents-bill for an uncommonly dull night.

PEER

KILLED IN

FRONTIER

FIGHTING

went flaming down the streets, substantiated in the news columns by a brief message announcing Lord Burdon's name among the casualties of a brisk little engagement in the Frontier Campaign.

The morning papers did better with it, particularly that which Egbert Hunt took in from the doorstep of Hillside. This paper's "Own Correspondent" with the British force, eluding vigilance, had enjoyed the fortune of getting among the party detailed for clearing the rocks whence Multan Khan and his friends had made themselves surprisingly unpleasant; and his long despatch, well handled in Fleet Street, bravely headlined above:

Gallant Young Peer

Lord Burdon Killed in Sharp Frontier Engagement

Leads Dashing Charge

and nicely rounded off below with a paragraph written up from "cuttings about Lord Burdon" in the newspaper's library, was distributed far and wide on the morrow. The journalists dished it up, the presses hammered it out, the carts, the trains, and the boys galloped it broadcast over the country. To some it fetched tragedy (as we shall see); to others idle interest; to Egbert Hunt a bone-aching day and cruel indignities (as have been shown); to Mrs. Letham bewildering excitement.