Ch. 18: The Man Who Was - Page 2

should run side by side and the great
mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory,
because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West.
There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of
many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.
She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords
for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his
own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia,
and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his
years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than
careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and
organisation of Her Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a
regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already
married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar. Wherefore
she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature
contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their
arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining
the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern,
who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled
them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the
devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet
in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill
their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines--beautiful Martini-
Henri carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy's camp at one
thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore
they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably
breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk