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Poor Miss Tallaght had one pleasure just at the last. Halfway down the line, she caught a glimpse of Surrey, who had gone down on duty, and was then in the up-train. And he took off his hat to her. She went Home, and if she is not dead by this time must be living still.—
* * *
Months afterwards, there was a lively dinner at the Club for the Races. Surrey was mooning about as usual, and there was a good deal of idle talk flying every way. Finally, one man, who had taken more than was good for him, said, apropos of something about Surrey’s reserved ways,—‘Ah, you old fraud. It’s all very well for you to pretend. I know a girl who was awf’ly mashed on you—once. Dead nuts she was on old Surrey. What had you been doing, eh?’
Surrey expected some sort of sell, and said with a laugh?:—
‘Who was she?’
Before any one could kick the man, he plumped out with the name; and the Honorary Secretary tactfully upset the half of a big brew of shandy-gaff all over the table. After the mopping up, the men went out to the Lotteries.
But Surrey sat on, and, after ten minutes, said very humbly to the only other man in the deserted dining-room:—‘On your honour, was there a word of truth in what the drunken fool said?’
Then the man who is writing this story, who had known of the thing from the beginning, and now felt all the hopelessness and tangle of it,—the waste and the muddle,—said, a good deal more energetically than he meant:—
‘Truth! O man, man, couldn’t you see it?’
Surrey said nothing, but sat still, smoking and smoking and thinking, while the Lottery tent babbled outside, and the khitmutgars turned down the lamps.
To the best of my knowledge and belief that was the first thing Surrey ever knew about love. But his awakening did not seem to delight him. It must have been rather unpleasant, to judge by the look on his face. He looked like a man who had missed a train and had been half stunned at the same time.
When the men came in from the Lotteries, Surrey went out. He wasn’t in the mood for bones and ‘horse’ talk. He went to his tent, and the last thing he said, quite aloud to himself, was:—‘I didn’t see. I didn’t see. If I had only known!’
Even if he had known I don’t believe . . .
But these things are kismet, and we only find out all about them just when any knowledge is too late.
Soldier’s Three
The Story of the Gadsbys in Black and White (1895)
The God From the Machine
Hit a man an' help a woman, an' ye can't be far wrong anyways.—Maxims of Private Mulvaney.
The Inexpressibles gave a ball. They borrowed a seven-pounder from the Gunners, and wreathed it with laurels, and made the dancing-floor plate-glass, and provided a supper, the like of which had never been eaten before, and set two sentries at the door of the room to hold the trays of programme-cards. My friend, Private Mulvaney, was one of the sentries, because he was the tallest man in the regiment. When the dance was fairly started the sentries were released, and Private Mulvaney went to curry favour with the Mess Sergeant in charge of the supper. Whether the Mess Sergeant gave or Mulvaney took, I cannot say. All that I am certain of is that, at supper-time, I found Mulvaney with Private Ortheris, two-thirds of a ham, a loaf of bread, half a pate-de-foie-gras, and two magnums of champagne, sitting on the roof of my carriage. As I came up I heard him saying—
'Praise be a danst doesn't come as often as Ord'ly-room, or, by this an' that, Orth'ris, me son, I wud be the dishgrace av the rig'mint instid av the brightest jool in uts crown.'
'Hand the Colonel's pet noosance,' said Ortheris. 'But wot makes you curse your rations? This