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CHAPTER XII.

STATION LIFE IN OUDH.

WHIST-PLAYING-GAMBLING-DERBY SWEEPS-LORD WILLIAM BERESFORD-NAUTCHES-INDIAN JUGGLERS-PUPPET-PLAYS-A MACHAN

INCIDENT.

REAT always are the

pleasures of anticipation, and more especially so were the prospective joys of station life that thrilled me when I turned stationwards from the Terai. I was leaving behind me the sweltering heat, the plague of flies, the daylong sun-glare, and that exacting thirst which had to be denied or to be barely assuaged with

tepid and too partially cooled drinks; and before me was the prospect of darkened rooms, in whose

kindly shelter I should escape from every ray of sunlight and breathe an atmosphere chastened by thermantidote and punkah to a summer heat-cool and dusk day-refuge, where air should be rendered odorous by the kus-kus, while the splash of water upon the tatties, suggesting the drip of perfumed fountains, made sweetest and most soothing music. Then before me was the promise of abundant ice, and unstinted draughts of cold fluid, and the diurnal plunge into the waters of the Chutter Munzil swimming-bath, and racquets and whist, and all the other delights of civilisation-delights that, while yet afar from me, seemed bewilderingly perfect, yet that came to be infinitely uninteresting after a few weeks' enjoyment of them. After a while followed satiety and a longing for jheel and jungle.

Not that whist ever staled in its infinite variety in those Lucknow summers of many years, even though occasionally the variety ran into extremes, and was distinguished by revokes and other pranks trying to human patience. We had a whist club for afternoon play, and we played after dinner at mess or the United Service Club or elsewhere, and not unfrequently we played until the break of day, when the soldier hurried off to morning parade and the civilian to his couch. For three summers. I effectually avoided the sun by systematically turning night into day, and, although hypercritical people may pronounce this a dissipated habit of

life, it had its hygienic advantages and was attended by satisfactory results. I lived mostly at the 55th mess during those years, played whist all night, did my day's work at dawn, and slept through the sunlit hours until the time arrived for racquets.

India has produced some admirable whistplayers, if none quite equal to Da Costa and Lewis of the St James's. Colonel Drayson (I suppose he is now a General, like everybody else), who has written a book on this subject, or given his name to (or had it taken by) a Melbourne club; Hornsby, the gunner; Peters, and one or two others, made fame for themselves in AngloIndian whist circles; and many others played a game far above the Portland average, albeit that club counts among its members the mighty Cavendish, who in the world he lives in is known by a less aristocratic name. I have played a good deal at the St James's, and seen there infinitely worse play than that of the Tasmanian Club, Hobart, to say nothing of India. At the St James's I met with an experience that is unique in my card career that is to say, when on one occasion I lost a rubber, one of my adversaries offered to pay me, he not having grasped the fact that he had won.

In Lucknow our ordinary points were rupees and chicks (four rupees), rising exceptionally to chicks and gold - mohurs. At the hill stations gold-mohurs were the ruling standard, and a

goodly number of these would sometimes change hands at the end of a rubber. There was in those days some heavy betting both by players and outsiders, and whist came very expensively to some who indulged in it. But they were mostly good gamblers who played at Simla, Naini, or where not on the slopes of the ice-crowned Himalaya: they took their beating kindly, and kept their heads and tempers whichever way their fortunes trended. I have seen an outside bettor lose a heavy stake because the two players he was backing failed to count their honours and so score the second game of the rubber. He made no sign, that interested onlooker. He did not scold when, whist unforgiving, the rubber went against him he paid and looked pleasant.

If the play was heavy at those hill clubs, it was mostly engaged in by men who could afford to pay what they lost, and was carried on as amicably as honourably by those concerned. At rare intervals the ordinary harmony of these meetings was disturbed-as, for instance, when the following highly dramatic incident occurred. A difference of opinion arose between two players, and one of them, rising angrily from the table, went to the door with the intention of leaving the room; but having opened the door, he changed his mind, slammed the door to, and was still inside. The other belligerent, sitting with his back to that door and hearing it close, concluded that his opponent had gone out, and thought it safe to unbosom himself of some

highly uncomplimentary matter regarding him who should have been absent but was unfortunately present. Then that one who was inconveniently within earshot of those unfavourable comments seized by the throat the utterer thereof and nearly throttled him; and I do not know that society would have been injured in the slightest degree if the throttling had been effectual.

Although India has been discredited with an evil reputation as to gambling, I do not believe that play has been at any time as dangerously high there as it has been in England. It has been more general, perhaps, because Anglo-Indian society is more homogeneous than English, and more likely to indulge collectively in any amusement. It has been more widely known, because everybody in India knows at least as much about his neighbour as the neighbour does about himself, and because for the Briton in Hindostan there is no Monte Carlo to fly to for a good and unnoticed flutter. But India has never known any equivalent of Crockford's, and the almost universal tone of the Anglo-Indian world is such as would make an imitation of Crockford's difficult, and the deliberate fleecing of some pigeon to the tune of thousands impossible.

Many, many years ago a case of such pigeoning occurred in Calcutta. A young fellow just about to come of age and into possession of some £10,000 was pounced upon by a genial rascal whose possessions were a minus quantity, and who, if he had