SOLDIERS THREE.*
As a wholesome corrective to what may be called the oleo- graphic style of depicting military life, now so much in vogue, Mr. Kipling's brilliant sketches of the barrack-room, realistic in the best sense of the word, deserve a hearty welcome. Here be no inanities of the officers' mess, no apotheosis of the gilded and tawny-moustachioed dragoon, no languid and lisping lancer, no child-sweethearts,—none, in fact, of the sentimental paraphernalia familiar to readers of modern military fiction. Here, instead, we have Tommy Atkins as the central figure ; and not Tommy Atkins on parade, but in those moods when the natural man finds freest expression—amorous, pug- nacious, and thievish—a somewhat earthy personage on the whole, but with occasional gleams of chivalry and devotion lighting up his clouded humanity. Too many so-called realists seem to aim at representing man as continuously animal, without any intervals in which his higher nature emerges at all. But Mr. Kipling happily does not belong to this school. The actualities of barrack-room life are not extenuated, but the tone of the whole is sound and manly. The author does not gloss over the animal tendencies of the British private, but he shows how in the grossest natures sparks of nobility may lie bid. He has taken three widely different types of British soldier, a Yorkshireman, a Cockney, and a " Paddy from Cork ;" and in spite of the savagery of the first, the cynicism of the second, and the thrasonical complacency of the third, we can fully comprehend the attractions which their company is supposed to have offered to the narrator. Of a truth, it must, indeed, have been " better to sit out with Mulvaney than to dance many dances," if Mulvaney in the flesh was at all like his literary representation. " Hit a man an' help a woman, and ye can't be far wrong, anyways "—one of his own maxims—sums up very adequately the philosophy of this combative but chivalrous warrior, whose voluble tongue and droll humour render him the most conspicuous figure of • Soldiers Three : a Collection of Stories setting forth Certain Passages in the Lives and Adventures of Privates Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Orthens, and John Learoyd. Done into type and eeited by Radyard Kipling. Allahabad: Pioneer Press. this quaintly assorted but most attached trio. Private Mulvaney—he was " a Corp'ril wanst," but he was rejuced aftherwards "—is really a humorist of a very high order, witness the following passage:— "I tuk up my cap and wint out to canteen, thinkiu' no little av mesilf, an' there I grew most ondacintly dhrunk in my legs. My head was all reasonable. Houligan,' I sez to a man in E Comp'ny, that was by way av being a frind av mine, 4 I'm overtuk from the belt down. Do you give me the touch av your shoulther to preserve my formation an' march me acrost the snaidan into the high grass. I'll sleep ut off there,' sez I."
Mr. Kipling has a genius for reproducing quaint and characteristic Hibernicisms. How expressive, for example, are the words in which Mulvaney describes the court paid by an unscrupulous officer to a girl whom he wished to elope with him :—" So he went menowderin', and minanderin', and blandandherin' round an' about the Colonel's daughter." In another place he speaks of some men who " can swear so as to make green turf crack." Who but an Irishman, again, would think of addressing a ghost as " ye frozen thief of Genesis," or would speak of a "little squidgereen " of an officer? Some of the stories in this collection introduce us to the realities of warfare in a surprisingly vivid fashion, and here also Mulvaney's sayings are full of life and originality. For example, he tells how in a peculiarly bloody engagement with some hill-tribes, an Irish soldier was anxious to avenge a comrade Tim Coulan '11 slape aisy to-night,' sez he, wid a grin [after bayoneting a Pathan] : and the next minut his head was in two halves, an' he wint down grinnin' by sections." There is strange power in the following grim picture of another episode of the same fight :-
" Thin another man av the Tyrone came up; wid the fog av fightin' on him.'—` The what, Mulvaney ?'—' Fog av fightin'. You know, Son., that, like makin' love, ut takes each man diff'rint. Now I can't help bein' powerful sick whin I'm in action. Orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time that Learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other peoples' heads ; for he's a dirty fighter is Jock Learoyd. Recruities sometime cry, an' sometime they don't know fwhat they do, an' sometime they are all for cuttin' throats an' such like dirti- ness ; but some men get heavy-dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. This man was. He was staggerin', an' his eyes were half shut, an' wo cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards away. He sees the little orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an' drowsy to himsilf. " Blood the young whelp ! " he sez ; " Blood the young whelp ! " an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun round an' dropped at our feet, dead as a Paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. They said 'twits his heart was rotten, but 0 'twas a quare thing to see !' " Mr. Kipling is equally at home in the Yorkshire and White- chapel dialects ; and perhaps the most purely humorous narrative in the book is " Private Learoyd's Story," a tale of successful imposture, in which the dog-fancying instinct of the Yorkshireman has full scope. The victim is thus described by the narrator ; the last sentence speaks volumes :- "' Ortheris, as allus thinks he knaws more than other foaks, said she wasn't a real laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. I don't gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. But she was a laady. Why, she rode iv a carriage, an' good 'oases too, an' her 'air was that oiled as you could see your faits in it, an' she wore dimond rings an' a geoid chain, an' silk an' satin dresses as mun 'a cost a deal, for it isn't a cheap shop as keeps enough o' one pattern to fit a figure like hers.' " Another very happy touch is Private Learoyd's contemptuous dismissal of the caressing nonsense which womenkind lavish upon dogs, as " thot sort o' talk, 'at a dog o' sense mebbe thinks nowt on, tho' he bides it by reason o' his breedin'." The point of this story consists in the successful substitution of a very vicious cur for a fox-terrier, for the theft of which the Eurasian lady described above had offered a heavy bribe to the narrator. How this was done is best described in the words of two of the conspirators. Mulvaney was the first to conceive the idea of palming off another dog on their covetous friend:— "'Isn't our frind Orth'ris a Taxidermist, an' a rale artist wid his nimble white fingers ? An' fwhat's a Taxidermist but a man who can thrate shkins ? Do ye mind the white dog that belongs to the Canteen Sargint, bad tees to him—he that's lost half his time an' snarlin' the rest? He shall be lost for good now ; an' do ye mind that he's the very spit in shape an' size av the Colonel's, barrin' that his tail is an inch too long, an' he has none av the colour that diversifies the rale ' Rip,' an' his timper is that av his masther an' worse ? But fwhat is an inch on a dog's tail ? An' fwhat to a professional like Orth'ris is a few ringstraked shpots av black, brown, an' white ? Nothin' at all, at all.'—Then we meets Orth'ris, an' that little man bein' sharp as a needle, seed his way through t' business in a minute. An' he went to work a piectisin"air-dyes the very next day, beginnin' on some white rabbits he had, an' then he droved all Rip's' markin's on t' back of a white Commissariat bullock, so as to get his 'and in an' be sure of his colours ; shadin' off brown into black as nateral as life. If 'Rip' hed a fault it was too mich markin', but it was straingely regular, an' Orth'ris settled himself to make a fost-rate job on it when he got haud o' t' Canteen Sargint's dog. Theer niver was sich a dog as thot for bad temper, an' it did nut get no better when his tail hed to be fettled an inch an' a half shorter. But they may talk o' theer Royal Academies as they like. I niver seed a bit o' animal paintin' to beat t' copy as Orth'ris made of Rip's' marks, wal t' picter itself was snarlin' all t' time an' tryin' to get at Rip' standin' theer to be copied as good as goold."
The perusal of these stories cannot fail to inspire the reader with the desire to make further acquaintance with the other writings of the author. They are brimful of humanity and a drollery that never degenerates into burlesque. In many places a note of genuine pathos is heard. Mr. Kipling is so gifted and versatile, that one would gladly see him at work on a larger canvas. But to be so brilliant a teller of short stories is in itself no small distinction.
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