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Updated: May 31, 2025
Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has been digged and descending thither.
He returned just in time to hear Dirkovitch conclude, 'Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted. Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
My dear friends, is that road shut?" He pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass. "By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all right. Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch." "Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. "Of all the unmitigated!"
The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission. And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a night train.
The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered alternately. The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment to make a speech.
'But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side, though THEY, again his eye sought Dirkovitch,'though THEY I say have fifty ponies to our one horse. And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.
This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy the green and yellow and white liqueurs did not count was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely even more than among the Black Tyrones. But he remained distressingly European through it all.
"But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side, though they," again his eye sought Dirkovitch, "though they, I say, have fifty ponies to our one horse." And with a deep- mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.
Dirkovitch rose with his "brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point.
He grunted rebelliously: 'I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's built that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse. The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin.
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