A Nine Days' Wonder

A tall grey-haired soldier, with a professionally straight back, stood looking out of an upper window in the “Rag” one wet October afternoon. His hands were buried in his pockets, and his face was clothed with an expression of almost mediæval gloom. The worldly wise mask their emotions so that those who run may not read, but Colonel Doran had lived so many years among a primitive race that he made no effort to conceal his feelings, and all the world was welcome to see that he was bored to death. To tell the truth, he had been too long in the East to appreciate club life. Other men were undoubtedly contented, interested, occupied; it was different in his case. The palatial dignity, solemnity, luxury of the place failed to stir his pride; even its traditions left him as cold as the marble statue on the great staircase. He would have felt ten times more at home in a Bombay chair, on a brick verandah, with the old Pioneer in his hands and a “Trichy” in his mouth.

The big smoking-room below had presented a most animated scene; groups of old brother officers were discussing various burning questions, and topics ranged, from the new Hussar boot, to the North-west Frontier. Colonel Doran knew a good deal about the frontier, but made no effort to enter the lists. What were possible campaigns to him now? He wandered aimlessly up to the library, and turned over some books; he tried to read—it was no use. Ashamed to appear a sort of no man’s friend, and stray, he made his way to the upper smoking-room, which he was tolerably certain to find empty at that hour. He sauntered round it, gazing indifferently at the pictures and mementoes. A sketch of two elephants in a dust-storm arrested his attention. How he wished himself on the back of one of the old beggars—dust-storm and all! At last he strolled over to the window, and as he stood looking out on a dismal vista of wet slates and an iron-grey sky he heaved an involuntary sigh. So this was the end of his career—idleness, boredom, solitude!

The career of Ulick Doran had commenced at eighteen, when as a cadet he had landed in India—that hospitable godmother of younger sons—and the kindly East had adopted and made him her own for the better part of thirty-four years. He had been gazetted as a mere boy to a crack regiment of Bengal cavalry known as “Holland’s Horse,” and in this corps, his home, he had lived and fought and nearly died: had seen his comrades come and go, marry, and retire. Now it was his own turn. At fifty-two his career was ended, and the curtain rung down. Good-bye to everything he cared for—to the sowars, his children, to the mess, to the horse lines, aye, to the very horses, half of which he had selected—good-bye to all that had made life worth living. Naturally he could not remain in India, that unseemly spectacle, a mere camp follower of the regiment he had so ably commanded, hovering around it like a departed spirit. He must return to England, and range himself decently on the shelf along with most of his contemporaries. Unfortunately Colonel Doran had but few resources apart from his profession; he was a fine horseman, a noted swordsman, a keen and capable officer, and here he stood, a stranded and unhappy pensioner, the very typical dragoon without his horse! What made his position still worse, he was alone in the world. His mother had died when he was a small boy—he scarcely remembered her; his father, on the other hand, had lived to a great age, a red-faced, irascible old gentleman, whose eldest son predeceased him by many years; and thus the family place had come to the Indian officer, after all.