No More Learning

He had gone away to die like a
poisoned rat!

The Major said to himself softly: "Poor Boy! Poor, POOR devil! " Then he
turned away from the bed and said: "I want your help in this business. "

Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, I saw exactly what that help
would be, so I passed over to the table, took a chair, lit a cheroot,
and began to go through the writing-case; the Major looking over my
shoulder and repeating to himself: "We came too late! --Like a rat in a
hole! --Poor, POOR devil! "

The Boy must have spent half the night in writing to his people, and to
his Colonel, and to a girl at Home; and as soon as he had finished, must
have shot himself, for he had been dead a long time when we came in.

I read all that he had written, and passed over each sheet to the Major
as I finished it.

We saw from his accounts how very seriously he had taken everything.
He wrote about "disgrace which he was unable to bear"--"indelible
shame"--"criminal folly"--"wasted life," and so on; besides a lot of
private things to his Father and Mother too much too sacred to put into
print. The letter to the girl at Home was the most pitiful of all; and
I choked as I read it. The Major made no attempt to keep dry-eyed.
I respected him for that. He read and rocked himself to and fro, and
simply cried like a woman without caring to hide it.
The letters were so
dreary and hopeless and touching. We forgot all about The Boy's follies,
and only thought of the poor Thing on the charpoy and the scrawled
sheets in our hands. It was utterly impossible to let the letters go
Home.

They would have broken his Father's heart and killed his Mother after
killing her belief in her son.

At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said: "Nice sort of thing
to spring on an English family! What shall we do? "

I said, knowing what the Major had brought me but for: "The Boy died
of cholera. We were with him at the time. We can't commit ourselves to
half-measures. Come along. "

Then began one of the most grimy comic scenes I have ever taken part
in--the concoction of a big, written lie, bolstered with evidence, to
soothe The Boy's people at Home. I began the rough draft of a letter,
the Major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered up all the
stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in the fireplace. It was a
hot, still evening when we began, and the lamp burned very badly. In due
course I got the draft to my satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy was
the pattern of all virtues, beloved by his regiment, with every promise
of a great career before him, and so on; how we had helped him through
the sickness--it was no time for little lies, you will understand--and
how he had died without pain. I choked while I was putting down these
things and thinking of the poor people who would read them.

Then I laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, and the laughter
mixed itself up with the choke--and the Major said that we both wanted
drinks.