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The
Ivory Trail
ESTIMATES of
ease and affluence vary with the point of view.
While his older brother lived, Monty had
continued in his element, a cavalry officer, his
combined income and pay ample for all that the
Bombay side of India might require of an English
gentleman. They say that a finer polo player, a
steadier shot on foot at a tiger, or a bolder
squadron leader never lived.
But to Monty's infinite disgust his brother died
childless. It is divulging no secret that the
income that passed with the title varied between
five and seven thousand pounds a year, according
as coal was high, and tenants prosperous or not—a
mere miserable pittance, of course, for the Earl
of Montdidier and Kirkudbrightshire; so that all
his ventures, and therefore ours, had one avowed
end—shekels enough to lift the mortgages from
his estates.
Five generations of soldiers had blazed the
Montdidier fame on battle- grounds, to a
nation's (and why not the whole earth's) benefit,
without replenishing the family funds, and Monty
(himself a confirmed and convinced bachelor) was
minded when his own time should come to pass the
title along to the next in line together with
sufficient funds to support its dignity...
 The
Eye of Zeitoon
IT is written with authority of Tarsus
that once it was no mean city, but that is a
tale of nineteen centuries ago. The Turko-Italian
War had not been fought when Fred Oakes took the
fever of the place, although the stage was
pretty nearly set for it and most of the leading
actors were waiting for their cue. No more
history was needed than to grind away forgotten
loveliness.
Fred's is the least sweet temper in the universe
when the ague grips and shakes him, and he knows
history as some men know the Bible—by fathoms;
he cursed the place conqueror by conqueror,
maligning them for their city's sake, and if
Sennacherib, who built the first foundations,
and if Anthony and Cleopatra, Philip of Macedon,
Timour-i-lang, Mahmoud, Ibrahim and all the rest
of them could have come and listened by his
bedside they would have heard more personal
scandal of themselves than ever their
contemporary chroniclers dared reveal.
All this because he insisted on ignoring the
history he knew so well, and could not be held
from bathing in the River Cydnus. Whatever their
indifference to custom, Anthony and Cleopatra
knew better than do that. Alexander the Great,
on the other hand, flouted tradition and set
Fred the example, very nearly dying of the ague
for his pains, for those are treacherous, chill
waters...

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