A certain poet, who was no fool, bade men take the cash and let the credit go. I find this good advice, albeit difficult to follow. Nevertheless, it is easier than what most men attempt. They seek to take the cash and let the debit go, and that is utterly impossible; for as we sow, we reap.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER VI
“MISSISH-ANBUN IS MAD.”
Even since the Armistice, when military glory topped the rise and started on the down-grade of a cycle, there are still worse fates than being wealthy in your own right and the wife of a colonel commanding a Lancer regiment—even if your children have to go to Europe to be schooled, and your husband is under canvas half the time. And there are much worse fates than dining with Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, anywhere, in any circumstances. To be in a position to invite yourself to dinner at her Delhi bungalow means that, whatever your occupation, you may view life now and then from the summit, looking downward. Viceroys come and go. Mrs. Cornock-Campbell usually educates their wives.
They say she knows everything—even why the German Crown Prince once cut short a tour of India; and that, of course, means she is no longer in the bloom of youth, and never indiscreet, for you don’t learn state secrets by being young and talkative.
Ommony is one of her pet cronies, though they rarely meet (which is the way things happen in India). He looks such a blunt old-fashioned bachelor in a dinner jacket dating from away before the war, the contrast he creates with modern artificial cynicism is so satisfying, and he so utterly lacks pose or pretense, that he brings out all her vivacity (which is apt to be chilled when imitation people assume manners for the sake of meals).
The talk, for the hour while dinner lasted, was of anything in the world but Ringding Lamas and the Ahbor country. Ommony was probed for epigrams, coined in the depths of his forest, that should make John McGregor wince and laugh—such statements as that “You can look for faults or virtue. Vultures prefer ullage. Suit yourself. A man sees his own vices and his own virtues reflected in his neighbor—nothing else! Another’s crimes are what you yourself would commit under equally strong pressure. His virtues are greater than your own, if only because they’re less obvious. The most indecent exhibition in the world is virtue without her cloak on!” Not polite exactly, (particularly not to the chief of the Secret Service), but not tainted by circumlocution. And again: “They say the fact that people work entitles them to vote. Horses work harder than men! Soap-box nonsense! The only excuse for work is that you like it, and the only honest objection to loafing is that it’s bad for you.”
John McGregor, in the rare hours when he is not feeling the pulse of India’s restless underworld, is an addict of the Wee Free Kirk with convictions regarding the devil.
“A personal devil?” said Ommony. “I wish there was one! Hell breeds more dangerous stuff than that! If I thought there was a devil, I’d vote for him. He’d clean up politics.”