Part 10 (1/2)
”And you shall give me a lesson, Doctor,” Captain Doolan, who had also retired, said.
”It would be time thrown away by both of us, Doolan. You would never make a pool player if you were to practice all your life. It is not the eye that is wrong, but the temperament. You can make a very good shot now and then, but you are too harum scarum and slap dash altogether.
The art of playing pool is the art of placing yourself; while, when you strike, you have not the faintest idea where your ball is going to, and you are just as likely to run in yourself as you are to pot your adversary. I should abjure it if I were you, Doolan; it is too expensive a luxury for you to indulge in.”
”You are right there, Doctor; only what is a man to do when fellows say, 'We want you to make up a pool, Doolan'?”
”I should say the reply would be quite simple. I should answer, 'I am ready enough to play if any of you are ready to pay my losses and take my winnings; I am tired of being as good as an annuity to you all,'
for that is what you have been for the last ten years. Why, it would be cheaper for you to send home to England for skittles, and get a ground up here.”
”But I don't play so very badly, Doctor.”
”If you play badly enough always to lose, it doesn't matter as to the precise degree of badness,” the Doctor retorted. ”It is not surprising.
When you came out here, fourteen or fifteen years ago, boys did not take to playing billiards, but they do now. Look at that little villain, Richards. He has just cleared the table, and done it with all the coolness of a professional marker. The young scoundrel ought to have been in bed two hours ago, for I hear that tat of his is really a good one. Not that it will make any difference to him. That sort of boy would play billiards till the first bugle sounds in the morning, and have a wash and turn out as fresh as paint, but it won't last, Doolan, not in this climate; his cheeks will have fallen in and he will have crow's feet at the corners of his eyes before another year has gone over. I like that other boy, Wilson, better. Of course he is a cub as yet, but I should say there is good in him. Just at present I can see he is beginning to fancy himself in love with Miss Hannay. That will do him good; it is always an advantage to a lad like that to have a good honest liking for a nice girl. Of course it comes to nothing, and for a time he imagines himself the most unhappy of mortals, but it does him good for all that; fellows are far less likely to get into mischief and go to the bad after an affair of that sort. It gives him a high ideal, and if he is worth anything he will try to make himself worthy of her, and the good it does him will continue even after the charm is broken.”
”What a fellow you are, Doctor,” Captain Doolan said, looking down upon his companion, ”talking away like that in the middle of this racket, which would be enough to bother Saint Patrick himself!”
”Well, come along downstairs, Doolan; we will have a final peg and then be off; I expect Bathurst is beginning to fidget before now.”
”It will do him good,” Captain Doolan said disdainfully. ”I have no patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard as a black n.i.g.g.e.r.”
”Well, I don't think, Doolan,” the Doctor said dryly, ”you are ever likely to be driven to suicide by any such cause.”
”You are right there, Doctor,” the other said contentedly. ”No man can throw it in my teeth that I ever worked when I had no occasion to work.
If there were a campaign, I expect I could do my share with the best of them, but in quiet times I just do what I have to do, and if anyone has an anxiety to take my place in the rota for duty, he is as welcome to it as the flowers of May. I had my share of it when I was a subaltern; there is no better fellow living than the Major, but when he was Captain of my company he used to keep me on the run by the hour together, till I wished myself back in Connaught, and anyone who liked it might have had the whole of India for anything I cared; he was one of the most uneasy creatures I ever came across.”
”The Major is a good officer, Doolan, and you were as lazy a youngster, and as hard a bargain, as the Company ever got. You ought to thank your stars that you had the good luck in having a Captain who knew his business, and made you learn yours. Why, if you had had a man like Rintoul as your Captain, you would never have been worth your salt.”
”You are not complimentary, Doctor; but then n.o.body looks for compliments from you.”
”I can pay compliments if I have a chance,” the Doctor retorted, ”but it is very seldom I get one of doing so--at least, without lying. Well, Bathurst, are you ready to turn in?”
”Quite ready, Doctor; that is one of the advantages of not caring for races; the merits and demerits of the horses that run tomorrow do not in the slightest degree affect me, and even the news that all the favorites had gone wrong would not deprive me of an hour's sleep.”
”I think it a good thing to take an interest in racing, Bathurst. Take men as a whole: out here they work hard--some of them work tremendously hard--and unless they get some change to their thoughts, some sort of recreation, nineteen out of twenty will break down sooner or later. If they don't they become mere machines. Every man ought to have some sort of hobby; he need not ride it to death, but he wants to take some sort of interest in it. I don't care whether he takes to pig sticking, or racing, or shooting, or whether he goes in for what I may call the milder kinds of relaxation, such as dining out, billiards, whist, or even general philandering. Anything is better than nothing--anything that will take his mind off his work. As far as I can see, you don't do anything.”
”Therefore I shall either break down or become a machine, Doctor?”
”One or the other certainly, Bathurst. You may smile, but I mean what I say. I have seen other young fellows just as full of work and enthusiasm as you are, but I have never seen an exception to the rule, unless, of course, they took up something so as to give their minds a rest.”
”The Doctor has just been scolding me because I am not fond enough of work,” Captain Doolan laughed.
”You are differently placed, Doolan,” the Doctor said. ”You have got plenty of enthusiasm in your nature--most Irishmen have--but you have had nothing to stir it. Life in a native regiment in India is an easy one. Your duties are over in two or three hours out of the twenty-four, whereas the work of a civilian in a large district literally never ends, unless he puts a resolute stop to it. What with seeing people from morning until night, and riding about and listening to complaints, every hour of the day is occupied, and then at night there are reports to write and doc.u.ments of all sorts to go through. It is a great pity that there cannot be a better division of work, though I own I don't see how it is to be managed.”
By this time they were walking towards the lines.
”I should not mind taking a share of the civil work at the station,”
Captain Doolan said, ”if they would make our pay a little more like that of the civilians.”
”There is something in that, Doolan,” the Doctor agreed; ”it is just as hard work having nothing to do as it is having too much; and I have always been of opinion that the tremendous disproportion between the pay of a military man and of a civilian of the same age is simply monstrous.