Ch. 9: Slaves of the Lamp Part II

That very Infant who told the story of the capture of Boh Na Ghee
[_A_Conference_ _of_the_Powers_: "Many Inventions"] to Eustace
Cleaver, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast
revenues, resigned the service, and became a landholder, while his
mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl.
But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a
full-sized magazine-rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of
his estate, and the surrounding families, who lived in savage
seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an erring
maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and Infant
was cast out from the society of J.P.'s and decent men till such time
as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He
took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old
schoolmates home on leave--affable detrimentals, at whom the
bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to
look from afar. I knew when a troop-ship was in port by the Infant's
invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal
seniority; at others, young and blushing giants whom I had left small
fags far down in the Lower Second; and to these Infant and the elders
expounded the whole duty of man in the Army.

"I've had to cut the service," said the Infant; "but that's no reason
why my vast stores of experience should be lost to posterity." He was
just thirty, and in that same summer an imperious wire drew me to his
baronial castle: "Got good haul; ex _Tamar_. Come along."

It was an unusually good haul, arranged with a single eye to my
benefit. There was a baldish, broken-down captain of Native Infantry,
shivering with ague behind an indomitable red nose--and they called
him Captain Dickson. There was another captain, also of Native
Infantry, with a fair mustache; his face was like white glass, and
his hands were fragile, but he answered joyfully to the cry of
Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had
evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and
cat-like, but still Abanazar for all that he adorned the Indian
Political Service; and there was a lean Irishman, his face tanned
blue-black with the suns of the Telegraph Department. Luckily the
baize doors of the bachelors' wing fitted tight, for we dressed
promiscuously in the corridor or in each other's rooms, talking,
calling, shouting, and anon waltzing by pairs to songs of Dick Four's
own devising.

There were sixty years of mixed work to be sifted out between us, and
since we had met one another from time to time in the quick
scene-shifting of India--a dinner, camp, or a