"She may pass me by and never know
She was the girl for me!"
When he reached the villa gate he looked up inquiringly. The incandescent lamp projecting from the keystone was out. Usually this burned until dawn. Mathison gave it a passing thought—wires burned out, probably—unlocked the gate and marched down the bamboo-lined path to the villa door. Here again he paused. No lights.
"I see. Beggar's gone to bed, and that rogue Paolo has sneaked off to a cock-fight. Bob ought to give him the boot."
He climbed the stairs silently and went to his room. He did not cross the center of the house to accomplish this; he merely followed the veranda corridor. He tossed his cap on the bureau, yawned luxuriously, for he was tired, and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes; but he immediately ceased all movement. The parrakeet was talking—vulgar Hindustani and equally vulgar English.
"Mat, you lubber, where's my tobacco? Chup!" Which is Hindustani for "Stop your noise!"
Mathison stared, his expression one of puzzlement. Malachi never made a racket at night unless he was profoundly disturbed. What ailed the bird? And where the devil was Bob? He decided to investigate.
"Mat!... Bahadur Sahib! ... Chota Malachi! ... Bounder, take that ace out of your sleeve!... To hell with the Ki!... Mathison, Hallowell, and Company, and be damned to you!... Malachi!" in a singular kind of wail.
A word about this parrakeet. He was well known in Manila, at least among the younger officers in the navy and the army stationed there. Certain parrots and parrakeets talk fluently. The brain, about the size of your finger-tip, is memory in the concrete. Men of science are still pulling their beards over the talking parrot, but their phrases haven't fooled anybody; they are just as much in the dark as you and I. The birds are childlike in some respects. You teach the feathered emeralds this or that; and then, some day, in trying to show them off, they confound you (and regale your company) by rattling the family skeleton. Like children, they store away a good many things not intended for their ears.
Malachi—I believe they named him after Mulvaney's elephant—had been taught many phrases which pass in wardrooms but are taboo in parlors. Only, Malachi did not know it. Why men teach birds to swear I don't know, unless it be that a ribald oath uttered by innocence in the absolute is a man's idea of humor. Malachi's masters had taught him to memorize the names of a few cronies who occasionally dropped in for poker or bridge: and there was always a hilarious uproar when the bird gravely and unexpectedly demanded that So-and-so drop the ace he was hiding in his sleeve.