Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/42

 queerer. "Matter!" said Tick, and he almost screamed. "You'd ask what was the matter if you'd seen what I have!" Then he turned on the youngster. "What the this and the that do you mean, you young this and t'other thing "—[It's no good putting down the words he used. They weren't pretty.]—"By asking me a question like that?" There would have been decanters flying about on the wings of love if we hadn't stopped the shindy at once; and when Tick came to himself again he began apologising all he knew, and calling himself all sorts of hard names for raising the row. And that astonished us more than anything else. Tick wasn't given that way as a rule. 'Said the Colonel from his side of the table: "What in the name of everything, lunatic, is the matter? Have you gone mad, Boileau?" Then Tick chucked up his head like a horse when it's going to bolt, and began to speak. Goodness knows what he said exactly; but he gave us to understand that, if he wasn't off his head, he was next thing to it; and that any man would have been the same in his place; and, if we cared to listen, he'd tell us all about it. You bet we did care, for we were on needles to know the reason of the sudden change in the fellow. Tick half filled his peg-tumbler with port—it was the nearest decanter,—and told us this story. I can put it down word for word as he said it, not because I've got a good memory, but because—well, I'll tell you later. This is what Tick said in a shaky, quivery voice, while we smoked and listened:—

"You know I took three months' leave the other day, don't you? And that I went into Kashmir? You mayn't know"—[We didn't]—"that I put in the first month of my time at Mussoorie. I kept very quiet while I was up there, for I had gone up on purpose to follow a girl that you men don't know. She came from Pachmarri; and she was the daughter of a doctor there. I used to know her very well when I was stationed out Naogong way, and from knowing her well I got to falling in love with her."

He pulled up half a minute at that, and glared all round the table to see how we took it. We aren't whales exactly on falling in love with unmarried girls in our Mess. The Colonel doesn't hold with it, and he's quite right. But none of us moved a finger, and Tick went on.

"She was absolutely the most perfect girl on the face of this earth; and I'd knock any beggar's brains out who denies it."