Under the Deodars / Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

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Title:  Under the Deodars

Author:  Rudyard Kipling

September, 2001  [Etext #2828]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]

The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling
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Contents

The Education of Otis Yeere
At the Pit's Mouth
A Wayside Comedy
The Hill of Illusion
A Second-rate Woman
Only a Subaltern
In the Matter of a Private
The Enlightenments of Pagett. M. P.

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Under the Deodars

by Rudyard Kipling




Contents

The Education of Otis Yeere
At the Pit's Mouth
A Wayside Comedy
The Hill of Illusion
A Second-rate Woman
Only a Subaltern
In the Matter of a Private
The Enlightenments of Pagett. M. P.




Under the Deodars

The Education of Otis Yeere

I

In the pleasant orchard-closes
   'God bless all our gains,' say we;
But 'May God bless all our losses,'
   Better suits with our degree.
       The Lost Bower.

This is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that
it might be an instructive tale to put into print for the benefit of the
younger generation. The younger generation does not want
instruction, being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen
to it. None the less, here begins the story where every right-minded
story should begin, that is to say at Simla, where all things begin
and many come to an evil end.

The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder
and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever
woman's mistake is outside the regular course of Nature and
Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only
infallible thing in this world, except Government Paper of the '79
issue, bearing interest at four and a half per cent. Yet, we have to
remember that six consecutive days of rehearsing the leading part
of The Fallen Angel, at the New Gaiety Theatre where the plaster
is not yet properly dry, might have brought about an unhingement
of spirits which, again, might have led to eccentricities.

Mrs. Hauksbee came to 'The Foundry' to tiffin with Mrs. Mallowe,
her one bosom friend, for she was in no sense 'a woman's woman.'
And it was a woman's tiffin, the door shut to all the world; and
they both talked chiffons, which is French for Mysteries.

'I've enjoyed an interval of sanity,' Mrs. Hauksbee announced, after
tiffin was over and the two were comfortably settled in the little
writing-room that opened out of Mrs. Mallowe's bedroom.

'My dear girl, what has he done?' said Mrs. Mallowe sweetly. It is
noticeable that ladies of a certain age call each other 'dear girl,' just
as commissioners of twenty-eight years' standing address their
equals in the Civil List as 'my boy.'

'There's no he in the case. Who am I that an imaginary man should
be always credited to me? Am I an Apache?'

'No, dear, but somebody's scalp is generally drying at your
wigwam-door. Soaking rather.'

This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in the habit of
riding all across Simla in the Rains, to call on Mrs. Hauksbee. That
lady laughed.

'For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told me off to The
Mussuck. Hsh! Don't laugh. One of my most devoted admirers.
When the duff came some one really ought to teach them to make
puddings at Tyrconnel The Mussuck was at liberty to attend to me.'

'Sweet soul! I know his appetite,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'Did he, oh
did he, begin his wooing?'

'By a special mercy of Providence, no. He explained his
importance as a Pillar of the Empire. I didn't laugh.'

'Lucy, I don't believe you.'

'Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side. Well, as I was
saying, The Mussuck dilated.'

'I think I can see him doing it,' said Mrs. Mallowe pensively,
scratching her fox-terrier's ears.

'I was properly impressed. Most properly. I yawned openly. ''Strict
supervision, and play them off one against the other," said The
Mussuck, shovelling down his ice by tureenfuls, I assure you.
''That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government." '

Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily. 'And what did you say?'

'Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet? I said: ''So I have
observed in my dealings with you." The Mussuck swelled with
pride. He is coming to call on me to-morrow. The Hawley Boy is
coming too.'

' ''Strict supervision and play them off one against the other. That,
Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government." And I daresay if
we could get to The Mussuck's heart, we should find that he
considers himself a man of the world.'

'As he is of the other two things. I like The

Mussuck, and I won't have you call him names. He amuses me.'

'He has reformed you, too, by what appears. Explain the interval of
sanity, and hit Tim on the nose with the paper-cutter, please. That
dog is too fond of sugar. Do you take milk in yours?'

'No, thanks. Polly, I'm wearied of this life. It's hollow.'

'Turn religious, then. I always said that Rome would be your fate.'

'Only exchanging half-a-dozen attach‚s in red for one in black, and
if I fasted, the wrinkles would come, and never, never go. Has it
ever struck you, dear, that I'm getting old?'

'Thanks for your courtesy. I'll return it. Ye-es, we are both not
exactly how shall I put it?'

'What we have been. ''I feel it in my bones," as Mrs. Crossley says.
Polly, I've wasted my life.'

'As how?'

'Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power before I die.'

'Be a Power then. You've wits enough for anything and beauty!'

Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon straight at her hostess. 'Polly, if
you heap compliments on me like this, I shall cease to believe that
you're a woman. Tell me how I am to be a Power.'

'Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating and slimmest
man in Asia, and he'll tell you anything and everything you please.'

'Bother The Mussuck! I mean an intellectual Power not a
gas-power. Polly, I'm going to start a salon.'

Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her head on her
hand. 'Hear the words of the Preacher, the son of Baruch,' she said.

'Will you talk sensibly?'

'I will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a mistake.'

'I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I couldn't
explain away afterwards.'

'Going to make a mistake,' went on Mrs. Mallowe composedly. 'It
is impossible to start a salon in Simla. A bar would be much more
to the point.'

'Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy.'

'Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever women are there
in Simla?'

'Myself and yourself,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a moment's
hesitation.

'Modest woman! Mrs. Feardon would thank you for that. And how
many clever men?'

'Oh er hundreds,' said Mrs. Hauksbee vaguely.

'What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are all bespoke by the
Government. Take my husband, for instance. Jack was a clever
man, though I say so who shouldn't. Government has eaten him up.
All his ideas and powers of conversation he really used to be a
good talker, even to his wife in the old days are taken from him by
this this kitchen-sink of a Government. That's the case with every
man up here who is at work. I don't suppose a Russian convict
under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our
men-folk here are gilded convicts.'

'But there are scores '

'I know what you're going to say. Scores of idle men up on leave. I
admit it, but they are all of two objectionable sets. The Civilian
who'd be delightful if he had the military man's knowledge of the
world and style, and the military man who'd be adorable if he had
the Civilian's culture.'

'Detestable word! Have Civilians culchaw? I never studied the
breed deeply.'

'Don't make fun of Jack's Service. Yes. They're like the teapoys in
the Lakka Bazar  good material but not polished. They can't help
themselves, poor dears. A Civilian only begins to be tolerable after
he has knocked about the world for fifteen years.'

'And a military man?'

'When he has had the same amount of service. The young of both
species are horrible. You would have scores of them in your salon.'

'I would not!' said Mrs. Hauksbee fiercely.

'I would tell the bearer to darwaza band them. I'd put their own
colonels and commissioners at the door to turn them away. I'd give
them to the Topsham Girl to play with.'

'The Topsham Girl would be grateful for the gift. But to go back to
the salon. Allowing that you had gathered all your men and women
together, what would you do with them? Make them talk? They
would all with one accord begin to flirt. Your salon would become
a glorified Peliti's a ''Scandal Point" by lamplight.'

'There's a certain amount of wisdom in that view.'

'There's all the wisdom in the world in it. Surely, twelve Simla
seasons ought to have taught you that you can't focus anything in
India; and a salon, to be any good at all, must be permanent. In two
seasons your roomful would be scattered all over Asia. We are
only little bits of dirt on the hillsides here one day and blown down
the khud the next. We have lost the art of talking at least our men
have. We have no cohesion '

'George Eliot in the flesh,' interpolated Mrs. Hauksbee wickedly.

'And collectively, my dear scoffer, we, men and women alike, have
no influence. Come into the verandah and look at the Mall!'

The two looked down on the now rapidly filling road, for all Simla
was abroad to steal a stroll between a shower and a fog.

'How do you propose to fix that river? Look! There's The Mussuck
head of goodness knows what. He is a power in the land, though he
does eat like a costermonger. There's Colonel Blone, and General
Grucher, and Sir Dugald Delane, and Sir Henry Haughton, and Mr.
Jellalatty. All Heads of Departments, and all powerful.'

'And all my fervent admirers,' said Mrs. Hauksbee piously. 'Sir
Henry Haughton raves about me. But go on.'

'One by one, these men are worth something. Collectively, they're
just a mob of Anglo-Indians. Who cares for what Anglo-Indians
say? Your salon won't weld the Departments together and make
you mistress of India, dear. And these creatures won't talk
administrative ''shop" in a crowd your salon because they are so
afraid of the men in the lower ranks overhearing it. They have
forgotten what of Literature and Art they ever knew, and the
women '

'Can't talk about anything except the last Gymkhana, or the sins of
their last nurse. I was calling on Mrs. Derwills this morning.'

'You admit that? They can talk to the subalterns though, and the
subalterns can talk to them. Your salon would suit their views
admirably, if you respected the religious prejudices of the country
and provided plenty of kala juggahs.'

'Plenty of kala juggahs. Oh my poor little idea! Kala juggahs in a
salon! But who made you so awfully clever?'

'Perhaps I've tried myself; or perhaps I know a woman who has. I
have preached and expounded the whole matter and the conclusion
thereof '

'You needn't go on. ''Is Vanity." Polly, I thank you. These vermin'
Mrs. Hauksbee waved her hand from the verandah to two men in
the crowd below who had raised their hats to her  'these vermin
shall not rejoice in a new Scandal Point or an extra Peliti's. I will
abandon the notion of a salon. It did seem so tempting, though. But
what shall I do? I must do something.'

'Why? Are not Abana and Pharpar '

'Jack has made you nearly as bad as himself! I want to, of course.
I'm tired of everything and everybody, from a moonlight picnic at
Seepee to the blandishments of The Mussuck.'

'Yes that comes, too, sooner or later. Have you nerve enough to
make your bow yet?'

Mrs. Hauksbee's mouth shut grimly. Then she laughed. 'I think I
see myself doing it. Big pink placards on the Mall: ''Mrs.
Hauksbee! Positively her last appearance on any stage! This is to
give notice!" No more dances; no more rides; no more luncheons;
no more theatricals with supper to follow; no more sparring with
one's dearest, dearest friend; no more fencing with an inconvenient
man who hasn't wit enough to clothe what he's pleased to call his
sentiments in passable speech; no more parading of The Mussuck
while Mrs. Tarkass calls all round Simla, spreading horrible stories
about me! No more of anything that is thoroughly wearying,
abominable, and detestable, but, all the same, makes life worth the
having. Yes! I see it all! Don't interrupt, Polly, I'm inspired. A
mauve and white striped ''cloud" round my excellent shoulders, a
seat in the fifth row of the Gaiety, and both horses sold. Delightful
vision! A comfortable arm-chair, situated in three different
draughts, at every ball-room; and nice, large, sensible shoes for all
the couples to stumble over as they go into the verandah! Then at
supper. Can't you imagine the scene? The greedy mob gone away.
Reluctant subaltern, pink all over like a newly-powdered baby,
they really ought to tan subalterns before they are exported, Polly,
sent back by the hostess to do his duty. Slouches up to me across
the room, tugging at a glove two sizes too large for him I hate a
man who wears gloves like overcoats and trying to look as if he'd
thought of it from the first. ''May I ah-have the pleasure 'f takin'
you 'nt' supper?" Then I get up with a hungry smile. Just like this.'

'Lucy, how can you be so absurd?'

'And sweep out on his arm. So! After supper I shall go away early,
you know, because I shall be afraid of catching cold. No one will
look for my 'rickshaw. Mine, so please you! I shall stand, always
with that mauve and white ''cloud" over my head, while the wet
soaks into my dear, old, venerable feet, and Tom swears and
shouts for the mem-sahib's gharri. Then home to bed at half-past
eleven! Truly excellent life helped out by the visits of the Padri,
just fresh from burying somebody down below there.' She pointed
through the pines toward the Cemetery, and continued with
vigorous dramatic gesture 

'Listen! I see it all down, down even to the stays! Such stays!
Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel or list, is it? that they put
into the tops of those fearful things. I can draw you a picture of
them.'

'Lucy, for Heaven's sake, don't go waving your arms about in that
idiotic manner! Recollect every one can see you from the Mall.'

'Let them see! They'll think I am rehearsing for The Fallen Angel.
Look! There's The Mussuck. How badly he rides. There!'

She blew a kiss to the venerable Indian administrator with infinite
grace.

'Now,' she continued, 'he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the
delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy
will tell me all about it softening the details for fear of shocking
me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of
recommending him to throw up his commission and go into the
Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey me. Happy,
happy child!'

'Never again,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an affectation of
indignation, 'shall you tiffin here! ''Lucindy your behaviour is
scand'lus." '

'All your fault,' retorted Mrs. Hauksbee, 'for suggesting such a
thing as my abdication. No! jamais! nevaire! I will act, dance, ride,
frivol, talk scandal, dine out, and appropriate the legitimate
captives of any woman I choose, until I d-r-r-rop, or a better
woman than I puts me to shame before all Simla, and it's dust and
ashes in my mouth while I'm doing it!'

She swept into the drawing-room. Mrs. Mallowe followed and put
an arm round her waist.

'I'm not!' said Mrs. Hauksbee defiantly, rummaging for her
handkerchief. 'I've been dining out the last ten nights, and
rehearsing in the afternoon. You'd be tired yourself. It's only
because I'm tired.'

Mrs. Mallowe did not offer Mrs. Hauksbee any pity or ask her to
lie down, but gave her another cup of tea, and went on with the
talk.

'I've been through that too, dear,' she said.

'I remember,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, a gleam of fun on her face. 'In
'84, wasn't it? You went out a great deal less next season.'

Mrs. Mallowe smiled in a superior and Sphinx-like fashion.

'I became an Influence,' said she.

'Good gracious, child, you didn't join the Theosophists and kiss
Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they
cast me out for a sceptic without a chance of improving my poor
little mind, too.'

'No, I didn't Theosophilander. Jack says '

'Never mind Jack. What a husband says is known before. What did
you do?'

'I made a lasting impression.'

'So have I for four months. But that didn't console me in the least. I
hated the man. Will you stop smiling in that inscrutable way and
tell me what you mean?'

Mrs. Mallowe told.

'And you mean to say that it is absolutely Platonic on both sides?'

'Absolutely, or I should never have taken it up.'

'And his last promotion was due to you?'

Mrs. Mallowe nodded.

'And you warned him against the Topsham Girl?'

Another nod.

'And told him of Sir Dugald Delane's private memo about him?'

A third nod.

'Why?'

'What a question to ask a woman! Because it amused me at first. I
am proud of my property now. If I live, he shall continue to be
successful. Yes, I will put him upon the straight road to
Knighthood, and everything else that a man values. The rest
depends upon himself.'

'Polly, you are a most extraordinary woman.'

'Not in the least. I'm concentrated, that's all. You diffuse yourself,
dear; and though all Simla knows your skill in managing a team '

'Can't you choose a prettier word?'

'Team, of half-a-dozen, from The Mussuck to the Hawley Boy, you
gain nothing by it. Not even amusement.'

'And you?'

'Try my recipe. Take a man, not a boy, mind, but an almost mature,
unattached man, and be his guide, philosopher, and friend. You'll
find it the most interesting occupation that you ever embarked on.
It can be done you needn't look like that because I've done it.'

'There's an element of risk about it that makes the notion attractive.
I'll get such a man and say to him, ''Now, understand that there
must be no flirtation. Do exactly what I tell you, profit by my
instruction and counsels, and all will yet be well." Is that the idea?'

'More or less,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an unfathomable smile.
'But be sure he understands.'

II

Dribble-dribble trickle-trickle 

   What a lot of raw dust!

My dollie's had an accident

   And out came all the sawdust!

       Nursery Rhyme.

So Mrs. Hauksbee, in 'The Foundry' which overlooks Simla Mall,
sat at the feet of Mrs. Mallowe and gathered wisdom. The end of
the Conference was the Great Idea upon which Mrs. Hauksbee so
plumed herself.

'I warn you,' said Mrs. Mallowe, beginning to repent of her
suggestion, 'that the matter is not half so easy as it looks. Any
woman even the Topsham Girl can catch a man, but very, very few
know how to manage him when caught.'

'My child,' was the answer, 'I've been a female St. Simon Stylites
looking down upon men for these these years past. Ask The
Mussuck whether I can manage them.'

Mrs. Hauksbee departed humming, 'I'll go to him and say to him in
manner most ironical.' Mrs. Mallowe laughed to herself. Then she
grew suddenly sober. 'I wonder whether I've done well in advising
that amusement? Lucy's a clever woman, but a thought too
careless.'

A week later the two met at a Monday Pop. 'Well?' said Mrs.
Mallowe.

'I've caught him!' said Mrs. Hauksbee: her eyes were dancing with
merriment.

'Who is it, mad woman? I'm sorry I ever spoke to you about it.'

'Look between the pillars. In the third row; fourth from the end.
You can see his face now. Look!'

'Otis Yeere! Of all the improbable and impossible people! I don't
believe you.'

'Hsh! Wait till Mrs. Tarkass begins murdering Milton Wellings;
and I'll tell you all about it. S-s-ss! That woman's voice always
reminds me of an Underground train coming into Earl's Court with
the brakes on. Now listen. It is really Otis Yeere.'

'So I see, but does it follow that he is your property!'

'He is! By right of trove. I found him, lonely and unbefriended, the
very next night after our talk, at the Dugald Delanes' burra-khana. I
liked his eyes, and I talked to him. Next day he called. Next day
we went for a ride together, and to-day he's tied to my
'richshaw-wheels hand and foot. You'll see when the concert's
over. He doesn't know I'm here yet.'

'Thank goodness you haven't chosen a boy. What are you going to
do with him, assuming that you've got him?'

'Assuming, indeed! Does a woman do I  ever make a mistake in
that sort of thing? First'  Mrs. Hauksbee ticked off the items
ostentatiously on her little gloved fingers 'First, my dear, I shall
dress him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace, and he
wears a dress-shirt like a crumpled sheet of the Pioneer. Secondly,
after I have made him presentable, I shall form his manners his
morals are above reproach.'

'You seem to have discovered a great deal about him considering
the shortness of your acquaintance.'

'Surely you ought to know that the first proof a man gives of his
interest in a woman is by talking to her about his own sweet self. If
the woman listens without yawning, he begins to like her. If she
flatters the animal's vanity, he ends by adoring her.'

'In some cases.'

'Never mind the exceptions. I know which one you are thinking of.
Thirdly, and lastly, after he is polished and made pretty, I shall, as
you said, be his guide, philosopher, and friend, and he shall
become a success as great a success as your friend. I always
wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck come to you
with the Civil List and, dropping on one knee no, two knees, ˆ la
Gibbon hand it to you and say, ''Adorable angel, choose your
friend's appointment"?'

'Lucy, your long experiences of the Military Department have
demoralised you. One doesn't do that sort of thing on the Civil
Side.'

'No disrespect meant to Jack's Service, my dear. I only asked for
information. Give me three months, and see what changes I shall
work in my prey.'

'Go your own way since you must. But I'm sorry that I was weak
enough to suggest the amusement.'

' ''I am all discretion, and may be trusted to an in-fin-ite extent," '
quoted Mrs. Hauksbee from The Fallen Angel; and the
conversation ceased with Mrs. Tarkass's last, long-drawn
war-whoop.

Her bitterest enemies and she had many  could hardly accuse Mrs.
Hauksbee of wasting her time. Otis Yeere was one of those
wandering 'dumb' characters, foredoomed through life to be
nobody's property. Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil
Service, spent, for the most part, in undesirable Districts, had
given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confidence.
Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers
on the immature 'Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars,
and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and
abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress
he had made, and thank Providence that under the conditions of
the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the dead-centre of
his career. And when a man stands still he feels the slightest
impulse from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should
be, for the first part of his service, one of the rank and file who are
ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing heart and
soul, and mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces
manual power in the working of the Empire, there must always be
this percentage must always be the men who are used up,
expended, in the mere mechanical routine. For these promotion is
far off and the mill-grind of every day very instant. The
Secretariats know them only by name; they are not the picked men
of the Districts with Divisions and Collectorates awaiting them.
They are simply the rank and file the food for fever  sharing with
the ryot and the plough-bullock the honour of being the plinth on
which the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspirations;
the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to
endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the rank
and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest and dull the
wits of the most keen.

Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months; drifting, in
the hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave
was over he would return to his swampy, sour-green,
under-manned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native
Doctor, the native Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the
ill-kempt City, and the undisguised insolence of the Municipality
that babbled away the lives of men. Life was cheap, however. The
soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of
the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the
fecundity of the next. Otis was unfeignedly thankful to lay down
his work for a little while and escape from the seething, whining,
weakly hive, impotent to help itself, but strong in its power to
cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunkeneyed man who, by official
irony, was said to be 'in charge' of it.

'I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal. They come up here
sometimes. But I didn't know that there were men-dowds, too.'

Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere that his clothes
wore rather the mark of the ages. It will be seen that his friendship
with Mrs. Hauksbee had made great strides.

As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy as when he is
talking about himself. From Otis Yeere's lips Mrs. Hauksbee,
before long, learned everything that she wished to know about the
subject of her experiment: learned what manner of life he had led
in what she vaguely called 'those awful cholera districts'; learned,
too, but this knowledge came later, what manner of life he had
purposed to lead and what dreams he had dreamed in the year of
grace '77, before the reality had knocked the heart out of him. Very
pleasant are the shady bridle-paths round Prospect Hill for the
telling of such confidences.

'Not yet,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to Mrs. Maliowe. 'Not yet. I must
wait until the man is properly dressed, at least. Great heavens, is it
possible that he doesn't know what an honour it is to be taken up
by Me!'

Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of her failings.

'Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!' murmured Mrs. Mallowe, with her
sweetest smile, to Otis. 'Oh you men, you men! Here are our
Punjabis growling because you've monopolised the nicest woman
in Simla. They'll tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day, Mr.
Yeere.'

Mrs. Mallowe rattled downhill, having satisfied herself, by a
glance through the fringe of her sunshade, of the effect of her
words.

The shot went home. Of a surety Otis Yeere was somebody in this
bewildering whirl of Simla had monopolised the nicest woman in
it, and the Punjabis were growling. The notion justified a mild
glow of vanity. He had never looked upon his acquaintance with
Mrs. Hauksbee as a matter for general interest.

The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feeling to the man of no
account. It was intensified later in the day when a luncher at the
Club said spitefully, 'Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are
going it. Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most
dangerous woman in Simla?'

Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh, when would his new
clothes be ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs.
Hauksbee, coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked
down upon him approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself as if he
were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, and,' she screwed up
her eyes to see the better through the sunlight 'he is a man when he
holds himself like that. O blessed Conceit, what should we be
without you?'

With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis
Yeere discovered that he could enter a room without breaking into
a gentle perspiration could cross one, even to talk to Mrs.
Hauksbee, as though rooms were meant to be crossed. He was for
the first time in nine years proud of himself, and contented with
his life, satisfied with his new clothes, and rejoicing in the
friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Conceit is what the poor fellow wants,' she said in confidence to
Mrs. Mallowe. 'I believe they must use Civilians to plough the
fields with in Lower Bengal. You see I have to begin from the very
beginning haven't I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he is
immensely improved since I took him in hand. Only give me a
little more time and he won't know himself.'

Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what he had been.
One of his own rank and file put the matter brutally when he asked
Yeere, in reference to nothing, 'And who has been making you a
Member of Council, lately? You carry the side of half-a-dozen of
'em.'

'I I'm awf'ly sorry. I didn't mean it, you know,' said Yeere
apologetically.

'There'll be no holding you,' continued the old stager grimly.
'Climb down, Otis climb down, and get all that beastly affectation
knocked out of you with fever! Three thousand a month wouldn't
support it.'

Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauksbee. He had come to
look upon her as his Mother Confessor.

'And you apologised!' she said. 'Oh, shame! I hate a man who
apologises. Never apologise for what your friend called ''side."
Never! It's a man's business to be insolent and overbearing until he
meets with a stronger. Now, you bad boy, listen to me.'

Simply and straightforwardly, as the 'rickshaw loitered round
Jakko, Mrs. Hauksbee preached to Otis Yeere the Great Gospel of
Conceit, illustrating it with living pictures encountered during their
Sunday afternoon stroll.

'Good gracious!' she ended with the personal argument, 'you'll
apologise next for being my attach‚!'

'Never!' said Otis Yeere. 'That's another thing altogether. I shall
always be '

'What's coming?' thought Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Proud of that,' said Otis.

'Safe for the present,' she said to herself.

'But I'm afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshurun, you know.
When he waxed fat, then he kicked. It's the having no worry on
one's mind and the Hill air, I suppose.'

'Hill air, indeed!' said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself. 'He'd have been
hiding in the Club till the last day of his leave, if I hadn't
discovered him.' And aloud 

'Why shouldn't you be? You have every right to.'

'I! Why?'

'Oh, hundreds of things. I'm not going to waste this lovely
afternoon by explaining; but I know you have. What was that heap
of manuscript you showed me about the grammar of the aboriginal
what's their names?'

'Gullals. A piece of nonsense. I've far too much work to do to
bother over Gullals now. You should see my District. Come down
with your husband some day and I'll show you round. Such a
lovely place in the Rains! A sheet of water with the
railway-embankment and the snakes sticking out, and, in the
summer, green flies and green squash. The people would die of
fear if you shook a dogwhip at 'em. But they know you're forbidden
to do that, so they conspire to make your life a burden to you. My
District's worked by some man at Darjiling, on the strength of a
native pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place!'

Otis Yeere laughed bitterly.

'There's not the least necessity that you should stay in it. Why do
you?'

'Because I must. How'm I to get out of it?'

'How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren't so many people
on the road I'd like to box your ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look!
There is young Hexarly with six years' service and half your
talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by
the Convent! There's McArthurson, who has come to his present
position by asking sheer, downright asking after he had pushed
himself out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in
your service believe me. I've seen Simla for more seasons than I
care to think about. Do you suppose men are chosen for
appointments because of their special fitness beforehand? You
have all passed a high test what do you call it? in the beginning,
and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you
can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it
insolence, call it anything you like, but ask! Men argue yes, I know
what men say that a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must
have some good in him. A weak man doesn't say: ''Give me this
and that." He whines: ''Why haven't I been given this and that?" If
you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play a
tambourine with your toes. As it is ask! You belong to a Service
that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at
twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape
from a squashy green district where you admit you are not master.
Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is a little
out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were
extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India to take
you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand
chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You
have twice the wits and three times the presence of the men up
here, and, and' Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued
'and in any way you look at it, you ought to. You who could go so
far!'

'I don't know,' said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. 'I haven't such a good opinion of myself.'

It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the
turned-back 'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face,
said tenderly, almost too tenderly, 'I believe in you if you mistrust
yourself. Is that enough, my friend?'

'It is enough,' answered Otis very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had
dreamed eight years ago, but through them all ran, as
sheet-lightning through golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's
violet eyes.

Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life the only
existence in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went
abroad among men and women, in the pauses between dance, play,
and Gymkhana, that Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of
self-confidence in his eyes, had 'done something decent' in the
wilds whence he came. He had brought an erring Municipality to
reason, appropriated the funds on his own responsibility, and saved
the lives of hundreds. He knew more about the Gullals than any
living man. Had a vast knowledge of the aboriginal tribes; was, in
spite of his juniority, the greatest authority on the aboriginal
Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The
Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs. Hauksbee, and prided
himself upon picking people's brains, explained they were a tribe
of ferocious hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship
even the Great Indian Empire would find it worth her while to
secure. Now we know that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee
his MS. notes of six years' standing on these same Gullals. He had
told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the fever their negligence
had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagely angry
at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned the collective
eyes of his 'intelligent local board' for a set of haramzadas. Which
act of 'brutal and tyrannous oppression' won him a Reprimand
Royal from the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as
amended for Northern consumption we find no record of this.
Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee edited his
reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well
knew, to exaggerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as
befitted the hero of many tales.

'You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk
now, and talk your brightest and best,' said Mrs. Hauksbee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a
woman of or above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his
head, he can meet both sexes on equal ground an advantage never
intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and
Woman on another, in sign that neither should know more than a
very little of the other's life. Such a man goes far, or, the counsel
being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world seeks the
reason.

Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee, who, again, had all Mrs. Mallowe's
wisdom at her disposal, proud of himself and, in the end, believing
in himself because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for
any fortune that might befall, certain that it would be good. He
would fight for his own hand, and intended that this second
struggle should lead to better issue than the first helpless surrender
of the bewildered 'Stunt.

What might have happened it is impossible to say. This lamentable
thing befell, bred directly by a statement of Mrs. Hauksbee that she
would spend the next season in Darjiling.

'Are you certain of that?' said Otis Yeere.

'Quite. We're writing about a house now.'

Otis Yeere 'stopped dead,' as Mrs. Hauksbee put it in discussing
the relapse with Mrs. Mallowe.

'He has behaved,' she said angrily, 'just like Captain Kerrington's
pony only Otis is a donkey at the last Gymkhana. Planted his
forefeet and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man's going
to disappoint me. What shall I do?'

As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring, but on this
occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost.

'You have managed cleverly so far,'she said. 'Speak to him, and ask
him what he means.'

'I will at to-night's dance.'

'No o, not at a dance,' said Mrs. Mallowe cautiously. 'Men are
never themselves quite at dances. Better wait till to-morrow
morning.'

'Nonsense. If he's going to 'vert in this insane way there isn't a day
to lose. Are you going? No? Then sit up for me, there's a dear. I
shan't stay longer than supper under any circumstances.'

Mrs. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long and
earnestly into the fire, and sometimes smiling to herself.

'Oh! oh! oh! The man's an idiot! A raving, positive idiot! I'm sorry I
ever saw him!'

Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe's house, at midnight,
almost in tears.

'What in the world has happened?' said Mrs. Mallowe, but her eyes
showed that she had guessed an answer.

'Happened! Everything has happened! He was there. I went to him
and said, ''Now, what does this nonsense mean?" Don't laugh, dear,
I can't bear it. But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a
square, and I sat it out with him and wanted an explanation, and he
said Oh! I haven't patience with such idiots! You know what I said
about going to Darjiling next year? It doesn't matter to me where I
go. I'd have changed the Station and lost the rent to have saved
this. He said, in so many words, that he wasn't going to try to work
up any more, because because he would be shifted into a province
away from Darjiling, and his own District, where these creatures
are,is within a day's journey '

'Ah hh!' said Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully
tracked an obscure word through a large dictionary.

'Did you ever hear of anything so mad so absurd? And he had the
ball at his feet. He had only to kick it! I would have made him
anything! Anything in the wide world. He could have gone to the
world's end. I would have helped him. I made him, didn't I, Polly?
Didn't I create that man? Doesn't he owe everything to me? And to
reward me, just when everything was nicely arranged, by this
lunacy that spoilt everything!'

'Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly.'

'Oh, Polly, don't laugh at me! I give men up from this hour. I could
have killed him then and there. What right had this man this Thing
I had picked out of his filthy paddy - fields to make love to me?'

'He did that, did he?'

'He did. I don't remember half he said, I was so angry. Oh, but such
a funny thing happened! I can't help laughing at it now, though I
felt nearly ready to cry with rage. He raved and I stormed I'm
afraid we must have made an awful noise in our kala juggah.
Protect my character, dear, if it's all over Simla by to-morrow and
then he bobbed forward in the middle of this insanity I firmly
believe the man's demented and kissed me.'

'Morals above reproach,' purred Mrs. Mallowe.

'So they were so they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't
believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my
head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end
of the chin here.' Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin
with her fan. 'Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him
that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so
on. He was crushed so easily then I couldn't be very angry. Then I
came away straight to you.'

'Was this before or after supper?'

'Oh! before oceans before. Isn't it perfectly disgusting?'

'Let me think. I withhold judgment till tomorrow. Morning brings
counsel.'

But morning brought only a servant with a dainty bouquet of
Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at the dance at
Viceregal Lodge that night.

'He doesn't seem to be very penitent,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'What's
the billet-doux in the centre?'

Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly-folded note, another
accomplishment that she had taught Otis, read it, and groaned
tragically.

'Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry! Is it his own, do you
think? Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a maudlin idiot!'

'No. It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and in view of the facts
of the case, as Jack says, uncommonly well chosen. Listen 

Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart,

   Pass! There's a world full of men;

And women as fair as thou art

   Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware 

   Malice not one can impute;

And why should a heart have been there,

   In the way of a fair woman's foot?

'I didn't I didn't I didn't!' said Mrs. Hauksbee angrily, her eyes
filling with tears; 'there was no malice at all. Oh, it's too
vexatious!'

'You've misunderstood the compliment,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'He
clears you completely and ahem I should think by this, that he has
cleared completely too. My experience of men is that when they
begin to quote poetry they are going to flit. Like swans singing
before they die, you know.'

'Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way.'

'Do I? Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I should say that
you've done a certain amount of damage to his heart.'

'Oh, you can never tell about a man!' said Mrs. Hauksbee.

At the Pit's Mouth

Men say it was a stolen tide 
   The Lord that sent it He knows all,
But in mine ear will aye abide
   The message that the bells let fall-
And awesome bells they were to me,
That in the dark rang, 'Enderby.'
       --Jean Ingelow

Once upon a time there was a Man and his Wife and a Tertium
Quid.

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The Man
should have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the
Tertium Quid, who, again, should have married a wife of his own,
after clean and open flirtations, to which nobody can possibly
object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. When you see a young
man with his pony in a white lather and his hat on the back of his
head, flying downhill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who
will be properly surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of
that young man, and wish him Staff appointments, and take an
interest in his welfare, and, as the proper time comes, give them
sugar-tongs or side-saddles according to your means and
generosity.

The Tertium Quid flew downhill on horseback, but it was to meet
the Man's Wife; and when he flew uphill it was for the same end.
The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend
on dresses and four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive
luxuries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent her a letter or
a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily, and said that she
was longing for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used
to lean over her shoulder and laugh as she wrote the notes. Then
the two would ride to the Post-office together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to
pass judgment on circumstantial evidence, which is the most
untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others
which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there
was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the
Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you
must form your own opinion, it was the Man's Wife's fault. She
was kittenish in her manners, wearing generally an air of soft and
fluffy innocence. But she was deadlily learned and evil-instructed;
and, now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw this,
shuddered and almost drew back. Men are occasionally particular,
and the least particular men are always the most exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of treating friendships. Certain
attachments which have set and crystallised through half-a-dozen
seasons acquire almost the sanctity of the marriage bond, and are
revered as such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all
appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win any recognised
official status; while a chance-sprung acquaintance, not two
months born, steps into the place which by right belongs to the
senior. There is no law reducible to print which regulates these
affairs.

Some people have a gift which secures them infinite toleration,
and others have not. The Man's Wife had not. If she looked over
the garden wall, for instance, women taxed her with stealing their
husbands. She complained pathetically that she was not allowed to
choose her own friends. When she put up her big white muff to her
lips, and gazed over it and under her eyebrows at you as she said
this thing, you felt that she had been infamously misjudged, and
that all the other women's instincts were all wrong; which was
absurd. She was not allowed to own the Tertium Quid in peace;
and was so strangely constructed that she would not have enjoyed
peace had she been so permitted. She preferred some semblance of
intrigue to cloak even her most commonplace actions.

After two months of riding, first round Jakko, then Elysium, then
Summer Hill, then Observatory Hill, then under Jutogh, and lastly
up and down the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk,
she said to the Tertium Quid, 'Frank, people say we are too much
together, and people are so horrid.'

The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid
people were unworthy of the consideration of nice people.

'But they have done more than talk they have written written to my
hubby I'm sure of it,' said the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter
from her husband out of her saddle-pocket and gave it to the
Tertium Quid.

It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in
the Plains on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife
eight hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers. It
said that, perhaps, she had not thought of the unwisdom of
allowing her name to be so generally coupled with the Tertium
Quid's; that she was too much of a child to understand the dangers
of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the last man in the
world to interfere jealously with her little amusements and
interests, but that it would be better were she to drop the Tertium
Quid quietly and for her husband's sake. The letter was sweetened
with many pretty little pet names, and it amused the Tertium Quid
considerably. He and She laughed over it, so that you, fifty yards
away, could see their shoulders shaking while the horses slouched
along side by side.

Their conversation was not worth reporting. The upshot of it was
that, next day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid
together. They had both gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a
rule, is only visited officially by the inhabitants of Simla.

A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding,
and the coffin creaking as it swings between the bearers, is one of
the most depressing things on this earth, particularly when the
procession passes under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe
Hotel, where the sun is shut out, and all the hill streams are
wailing and weeping together as they go down the valleys.

Occasionally folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are
transferred so often that, at the end of the second year, the Dead
have no friend only acquaintances who are far too busy amusing
themselves up the hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a
Cemetery as a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man
would have said simply, 'Let people talk. We'll go down the Mall.'
A woman is made differently, especially if she be such a woman as
the Man's Wife. She and the Tertium Quid enjoyed each other's
society among the graves of men and women whom they had
known and danced with aforetime.

They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to
the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground, and
where the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are
not ready. Each well-regulated Indian Cemetery keeps
half-a-dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and
incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more usually baby's
size, because children who come up weakened and sick from the
Plains often succumb to the effects of the Rains in the Hills or get
pneumonia from their ayahs taking them through damp
pine-woods after the sun has set. In Cantonments, of course, the
man's size is more in request; these arrangements varying with the
climate and population.

One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just
arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground.
They had marked out a full-size grave, and the Tertium Quid asked
them whether any Sahib was sick. They said that they did not
know; but it was an order that they should dig a Sahib's grave.

'Work away,' said the Tertium Quid, 'and let's see how it's done.'

The coolies worked away, and the Man's Wife and the Tertium
Quid watched and talked for a couple of hours while the grave was
being deepened. Then a coolie, taking the earth in baskets as it was
thrown up, jumped over the grave.

'That's queer,' said the Tertium Quid. 'Where's my ulster?'

'What's queer?' said the Man's Wife.

'I have got a chill down my back just as if a goose had walked over
my grave.'

'Why do you look at the thing, then?' said the Man's Wife. 'Let us
go.'

The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave, and stared
without answering for a space. Then he said, dropping a pebble
down, 'It is nasty and cold: horribly cold. I don't think I shall come
to the Cemetery any more. I don't think grave-digging is cheerful.'

The two talked and agreed that the Cemetery was depressing. They
also arranged for a ride next day out from the Cemetery through
the Mashobra Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, because all the world
was going to a garden-party at Viceregal Lodge, and all the people
of Mashobra would go too.

Coming up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid's horse tried to
bolt uphill, being tired with standing so long, and managed to
strain a back sinew.

'I shall have to take the mare to-morrow,' said the Tertium Quid,
'and she will stand nothing heavier than a snaffle.'

They made their arrangements to meet in the Cemetery, after
allowing all the Mashobra people time to pass into Simla. That
night it rained heavily, and, next day, when the Tertium Quid came
to the trysting-place, he saw that the new grave had a foot of water
in it, the ground being a tough and sour clay.

''Jove! That looks beastly,' said the Tertium Quid. 'Fancy being
boarded up and dropped into that well!'

They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing with the snaffle
and picking her way as though she were shod with satin, and the
sun shining divinely. The road below Mashobra to Fagoo is
officially styled the Himalayan-Thibet road; but in spite of its
name it is not much more than six feet wide in most places, and
the drop into the valley below may be anything between one and
two thousand feet.

'Now we're going to Thibet,' said the Man's Wife merrily, as the
horses drew near to Fagoo. She was riding on the cliff-side.

'Into Thibet,' said the Tertium Quid, 'ever so far from people who
say horrid things, and hubbies who write stupid letters. With you to
the end of the world!'

A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner, and the mare
went wide to avoid him forefeet in and haunches out, as a sensible
mare should go.

'To the world's end,' said the Man's Wife, and looked unspeakable
things over her near shoulder at the Tertium Quid.

He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it
were on his face, and changed to a nervous grin the sort of grin
men wear when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare
seemed to be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while
she was trying to realise what was happening. The rain of the night
before had rotted the drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and
it was giving way under her. 'What are you doing?' said the Man's
Wife. The Tertium Quid gave no answer. He grinned nervously
and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped with her forefeet on
the road, and the struggle began. The Man's Wife screamed, 'Oh,
Frank, get off!'

But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle his face blue and
white and he looked into the Man's Wife's eyes. Then the Man's
Wife clutched at the mare's head and caught her by the nose
instead of the bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down
with a scream, the Tertium Quid upon her, and the nervous grin
still set on his face.

The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose
earth falling off the roadway, and the sliding roar of the man and
horse going down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on
Frank to leave his mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He
was underneath the mare, nine hundred feet below, spoiling a
patch of Indian corn.

As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of
the evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a
temporarily mad horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes
and her mouth open, and her head like the head of a Medusa. She
was stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the
saddle, a limp heap, and put on the bank to explain herself. This
wasted twenty minutes, and then she was sent home in a lady's
'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her hands picking at her
riding-gloves.

She was in bed through the following three days, which were
rainy; so she missed attending the funeral of the Tertium Quid,
who was lowered into eighteen inches of water, instead of the
twelve to which he had first objected.

A Wayside Comedy

Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore
the misery of man is great upon him. 
--Eccles. viii. 6.

Fate and the Government of India have turned the Station of
Kashima into a prison; and, because there is no help for the poor
souls who are now lying there in torment, I write this story,
praying that the Government of India may be moved to scatter the
European population to the four winds.

Kashima is bounded on all sides by the rocktipped circle of the
Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with roses; in Summer, the
roses die and the hot winds blow from the hills; in Autumn, the
white mists from the jhils cover the place as with water, and in
Winter the frosts nip everything young and tender to earth-level.
There is but one view in Kashima a stretch of perfectly flat pasture
and plough-land, running up to the gray-blue scrub of the Dosehri
hills.

There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the
tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the
rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra one
hundred and forty-three miles by road is the nearest station to
Kashima. But Kashima never goes to Narkarra, where there are at
least twelve English people. It stays within the circle of the
Dosehri hills.

All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to do harm;
but all Kashima knows that she, and she alone, brought about their
pain.

Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurrell know this.
They are the English population of Kashima, if we except Major
Vansuythen, who is of no importance whatever, and Mrs.
Vansuythen, who is the most important of all.

You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws
weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public
opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a
certain risk of falling into evil ways. This risk is multiplied by
every addition to the population up to twelve the Jury-number.
After that, fear and consequent restraint begin, and human action
becomes less grotesquely jerky.

There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen arrived.
She was a charming woman, every one said so everywhere; and
she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of
this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and he
was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter
would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair
woman, with very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before
the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes
could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she was to look
upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was 'not
bad-looking, but spoilt by pretending to be so grave.' And yet her
gravity was natural. It was not her habit to smile. She merely went
through life, looking at those who passed; and the women objected
while the men fell down and worshipped.

She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to
Kashima; but Major Vansuythen cannot understand why Mrs.
Boulte does not drop in to afternoon tea at least three times a
week. 'When there are only two women in one Station, they ought
to see a great deal of each other,' says Major Vansuythen.

Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out of those
far-away places where there is society and amusement, Kurrell had
discovered that Mrs. Boulte was the one woman in the world for
him and you dare not blame them. Kashima was as out of the
world as Heaven or the Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept
their secret well. Boulte had no concern in the matter. He was in
camp for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and
neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They had all Kashima
and each other for their very, very own; and Kashima was the
Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte returned from his
wanderings he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call
him 'old fellow,' and the three would dine together. Kashima was
happy then when the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as
Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But the
Government sent Major Vansuythen to Kashima, and with him
came his wife.

The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert
island. When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to
the shore to make him welcome. Kashima assembled at the
masonry platform close to the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for
the Vansuythens. That ceremony was reckoned a formal call, and
made them free of the Station, its rights and privileges. When the
Vansuythens settled down they gave a tiny house-warming to all
Kashima; and that made Kashima free of their house, according to
the immemorial usage of the Station.

Then the Rains came, when no one could go into camp, and the
Narkarra Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the
cup-like pastures of Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep. The
clouds dropped down from the Dosehri hills and covered
everything.

At the end of the Rains Boulte's manner towards his wife changed
and became demonstratively affectionate. They had been married
twelve years, and the change startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her
husband with the hate of a woman who has met with nothing but
kindness from her mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, has done
him a great wrong. Moreover, she had her own trouble to fight
with her watch to keep over her own property, Kurrell. For two
months the Rains had hidden the Dosehri hills and many other
things besides; but, when they lifted, they showed Mrs. Boulte that
her man among men, her Ted for she called him Ted in the old
days when Boulte was out of earshot was slipping the links of the
allegiance.

'The Vansuythen Woman has taken him,' Mrs. Boulte said to
herself; and when Boulte was away, wept over her belief, in the
face of the over-vehement blandishments of Ted. Sorrow in
Kashima is as fortunate as Love because there is nothing to
weaken it save the flight of Time. Mrs. Boulte had never breathed
her suspicion to Kurrell because she was not certain; and her
nature led her to be very certain before she took steps in any
direction. That is why she behaved as she did.

Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the
door-posts of the drawing-room, chewing his moustache. Mrs.
Boulte was putting some flowers into a vase. There is a pretence of
civilisation even in Kashima.

'Little woman,' said Boulte quietly, 'do you care for me?'

'Immensely,' said she, with a laugh. 'Can you ask it?'

'But I'm serious,' said Boulte. 'Do you care for me?'

Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly. 'Do
you want an honest answer?'

'Ye-es, I've asked for it.'

Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes, very
distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding her meaning.
When Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he did a little thing, and
one not to be compared to the deliberate pulling down of a
woman's homestead about her own ears. There was no wise female
friend to advise Mrs. Boulte, the singularly cautious wife, to hold
her hand. She struck at Boulte's heart, because her own was sick
with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out with the long strain of
watching alone through the Rains. There was no plan or purpose in
her speaking. The sentences made themselves; and Boulte listened,
leaning against the door-post with his hands in his pockets. When
all was over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her nose
before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared straight in
front of him at the Dosehri hills.

'Is that all?' he said. 'Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know.'

'What are you going to do?' said the woman, between her sobs.

'Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell, or send you Home,
or apply for leave to get a divorce? It's two days' dƒk into
Narkarra.' He laughed again and went on: 'I'll tell you what you can
do. You can ask Kurrell to dinner tomorrow no, on Thursday, that
will allow you time to pack and you can bolt with him. I give you
my word I won't follow.'

He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte
sat till the moonlight streaked the floor, thinking and thinking and
thinking. She had done her best upon the spur of the moment to
pull the house down; but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not
understand her husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of her
useless truthfulness struck her, and she was ashamed to write to
Kurrell, saying, 'I have gone mad and told everything. My husband
says that I am free to elope with you. Get a dƒk for Thursday, and
we will fly after dinner.' There was a cold-bloodedness about that
procedure which did not appeal to her. So she sat still in her own
house and thought.

At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn
and haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the
evening wore on she muttered some expression of sorrow,
something approaching to contrition. Boulte came out of a brown
study and said, 'Oh, that! I wasn't thinking about that. By the way,
what does Kurrell say to the elopement?'

'I haven't seen him,' said Mrs. Boulte. 'Good God, is that all?'

But Boulte was not listening and her sentence ended in a gulp.

The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did
not appear, and the new lift that she, in the five minutes' madness
of the previous evening, had hoped to build out of the ruins of the
old, seemed to be no nearer.

Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in
the verandah, and went out. The morning wore through, and at
mid-day the tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not
cry. She had finished her crying in the night, and now she did not
want to be left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk
to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps there might be
some comfort to be found in her company. She was the only other
woman in the Station.

In Kashima there are no regular calling-hours. Every one can drop
in upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai
hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens' house to borrow last
week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going
up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge,
entering the house from the back. As she passed through the
dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the
drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying 

'But on my Honour! On my Soul and Honour, I tell you she doesn't
care for me. She told me so last night. I would have told you then
if Vansuythen hadn't been with you. If it is for her sake that you'll
have nothing to say to me, you can make your mind easy. It's
Kurrell '

'What?' said Mrs. Vansuythen, with a hysterical little laugh.
'Kurrell! Oh, it can't be! You two must have made some horrible
mistake. Perhaps you you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or
something. Things can't be as wrong as you say.'

Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man's
pleading, and was desperately trying to keep him to a side-issue.

'There must be some mistake,' she insisted, 'and it can be all put
right again.'

Boulte laughed grimly.

'It can't be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had never taken the
least the least interest in your wife, Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He
said he had not. He swore he had not,' said Mrs. Vansuythen.

The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a
little thin woman, with big rings round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuythen
stood up with a gasp.

'What was that you said?' asked Mrs. Boulte. 'Never mind that
man. What did Ted say to you? What did he say to you? What did
he say to you?'

Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the
trouble of her questioner.

'He said I can't remember exactly what he said but I understood
him to say that is  But, really, Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange
question?'

'Will you tell me what he said?' repeated Mrs. Boulte. Even a tiger
will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps, and Mrs. Vansuythen
was only an ordinarily good woman. She began in a sort of
desperation: 'Well, he said that the never cared for you at all, and,
of course, there was not the least reason why he should have, and
and that was all.'

'You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was that true?'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Vansuythen very softly.

Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell
forward fainting.

'What did I tell you?' said Boulte, as though the conversation had
been unbroken. 'You can see for yourself. She cares for him.' The
light began to break into his dull mind, and he went on ' And he  
what was he saying to you?'

But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for explanations or
impassioned protestations, was kneeling over Mrs. Boulte.

'Oh, you brute!' she cried. 'Are all men like this? Help me to get her
into my room and her face is cut against the table. Oh, will you be
quiet, and help me to carry her? I hate you, and I hate Captain
Kurrell. Lift her up carefully, and now go! Go away!'

Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Vansuythen's bedroom, and
departed before the storm of that lady's wrath and disgust,
impenitent and burning with jealousy. Kurrell had been making
love to Mrs. Vansuythen would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as
he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs.
Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved
had forsworn her.

In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along
the road and pulled up with a cheery 'Good - mornin'. 'Been
mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober,
married man, that. What will Mrs. Boulte say?'

Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.

'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two
are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough
to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me,
Kurrell old man haven't you?'

Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
about being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the
woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was
abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so
easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now
he was saddled with Boulte's voice recalled him.

'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'

Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
wrongs, Boulte added 

''Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the
woman, now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too,
haven't you?'

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond
him.

'What do you mean?' he said.

Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner: 'My wife
came over to Mrs. Vansuythen's just now; and it seems you'd been
telling Mrs. Vansuythen that you'd never cared for Emma. I
suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with
you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.'

Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by
another question: 'Go on. What happened?'

'Emma fainted,' said Boulte simply. 'But, look here, what had you
been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?'

Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made
havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the
man in whose eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.

'Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I
said pretty much what you've said, unless I'm a good deal
mistaken.'

'I spoke the truth,' said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell.
'Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.'

'No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know. And what did
Mrs. Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at
her feet?'

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

'I don't think that matters,' Boulte replied; 'and it doesn't concern
you.'

'But it does! I tell you it does' began Kurrell shamelessly.

The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips.
Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed laughed
long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound
the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the
Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might
have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half
the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and
Kurrell was the first to speak.

'Well, what are you going to do?'

Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. 'Nothing,' said he
quietly; 'what's the use? It's too ghastly for anything. We must let
the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't
go on calling you names for ever. Besides which, I don't feel that
I'm much better. We can't get out of this place. What is there to
do?'

Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply.
The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.

'Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don't
care what you do.'

He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him.
Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs.
Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony
grazed by the roadside.

The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs. Vansuythen was
driving home Mrs. Boulte, white and wan, with a cut on her
forehead.

'Stop, please,' said Mrs. Boulte, 'I want to speak to Ted.'

Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte leaned forward,
putting her hand upon the splashboard of the dog-cart, Kurrell
spoke.

'I've seen your husband, Mrs. Boulte.'

There was no necessity for any further explanation. The man's eyes
were fixed, not upon Mrs. Boulte, but her companion. Mrs. Boulte
saw the look.

'Speak to him!' she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side. 'Oh,
speak to him! Tell him what you told me just now. Tell him you
hate him. Tell him you hate him!'

She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the sais, impassive, went
forward to hold the horse. Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and
dropped the reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy
explanations.

'I've nothing to do with it,' she began coldly; but Mrs. Boulte's sobs
overcame her, and she addressed herself to the man. 'I don't know
what I am to say, Captain Kurrell. I don't know what I can call you.
I think you've you've behaved abominably, and she has cut her
forehead terribly against the table.'

'It doesn't hurt. It isn't anything,' said Mrs. Boulte feebly. 'That
doesn't matter. Tell him what you told me. Say you don't care for
him. Oh, Ted, won't you believe her?'

'Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were that you were
fond of her once upon a time,' went on Mrs. Vansuythen.

'Well!' said Kurrell brutally. 'It seems to me that Mrs. Boulte had
better be fond of her own husband first.'

'Stop!' said Mrs. Vansuythen. 'Hear me first. I don't care I don't
want to know anything about you and Mrs. Boulte; but I want you
to know that I hate you, that I think you are a cur, and that I'll
never, never speak to you again. Oh, I don't dare to say what I
think of you, you   man!'

'I want to speak to Ted,' moaned Mrs. Boulte, but the dog-cart
rattled on, and Kurrell was left on the road, shamed, and boiling
with wrath against Mrs. Boulte.

He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to her own
house, and, she being freed from the embarrassment of Mrs.
Boulte's presence, learned for the second time her opinion of
himself and his actions.

In the evenings it was the wont of all Kashima to meet at the
platform on the Narkarra Road, to drink tea and discuss the
trivialities of the day. Major Vansuythen and his wife found
themselves alone at the gathering-place for almost the first time in
their remembrance; and the cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife's
remarkably reasonable suggestion that the rest of the Station might
be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two bungalows and
unearthing the population.

'Sitting in the twilight!' said he, with great indignation, to the
Boultes. 'That'll never do! Hang it all, we're one family here! You
must come out, and so must Kurrell. I'll make him bring his banjo.'

So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good digestion
over guilty consciences that all Kashima did turn out, even down
to the banjo; and the Major embraced the company in one
expansive grin. As he grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her eyes for
an instant and looked at all Kashima. Her meaning was clear.
Major Vansuythen would never know anything. He was to be the
outsider in that happy family whose cage was the Dosehri hills.

'You're singing villainously out of tune, Kurrell,' said the Major
truthfully. 'Pass me that banjo.'

And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out and all
Kashima went to dinner.

That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima the life that
Mrs. Boulte made when her tongue was loosened in the twilight.

Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since he insists
upon keeping up a burdensome geniality, she has been compelled
to break her vow of not speaking to Kurrell. This speech, which
must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and
interest, serves admirably to keep alight the flame of jealousy and
dull hatred in Boulte's bosom, as it awakens the same passions in
his wife's heart. Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen because she
has taken Ted from her, and, in some curious fashion, hates her
because Mrs. Vansuythen and here the wife's eyes see far more
clearly than the husband's detests Ted. And Ted that gallant
captain and honourable man knows now that it is possible to hate a
woman once loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her for ever
with blows. Above all, is he shocked that Mrs. Boulte cannot see
the error of her ways.

Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all friendship.
Boulte has put their relationship on a most satisfactory footing.

'You're a blackguard,' he says to Kurrell, 'and I've lost any
self-respect I may ever have had; but when you're with me, I can
feel certain that you are not with Mrs. Vansuythen, or making
Emma miserable.'

Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him. Sometimes
they are away for three days together, and then the Major insists
upon his wife going over to sit with Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs.
Vansuythen has repeatedly declared that she prefers her husband's
company to any in the world. From the way in which she clings to
him, she would certainly seem to be speaking the truth.

But of course, as the Major says, 'in a little Station we must all be
friendly.'


The Hill of Illusion

What rendered vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled,
And bade between their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
       --Matthew Arnold.

He. Tell your jhampanies not to hurry so, dear. They forget I'm
fresh from the Plains.

She. Sure proof that I have not been going out with any one. Yes,
they are an untrained crew. Where do we go?

He. As usual to the world's end. No, Jakko.

She. Have your pony led after you, then. It's a long round.

He. And for the last time, thank Heaven!

She. Do you mean that still? I didn't dare to write to you about it
all these months.

He. Mean it! I've been shaping my affairs to that end since
Autumn. What makes you speak as though it had occurred to you
for the first time?

She. I? Oh! I don't know. I've had long enough to think, too.

He. And you've changed your mind?

She. No. You ought to know that I am a miracle of constancy.
What are your arrangements?

He. Ours, Sweetheart, please.

She. Ours, be it then. My poor boy, how the prickly heat has
marked your forehead! Have you ever tried sulphate of copper in
water?

He. It'll go away in a day or two up here. The arrangements are
simple enough. Tonga in the early morning reach Kalka at twelve
Umballa at seven down, straight by night train, to Bombay, and
then the steamer of the 21st for Rome. That's my idea. The
Continent and Sweden a ten-week honeymoon.

She. Ssh! Don't talk of it in that way. It makes me afraid. Guy, how
long have we two been insane?

He. Seven months and fourteen days, I forget the odd hours
exactly, but I'll think.

She. I only wanted to see if you remembered. Who are those two
on the Blessington Road?

He. Eabrey and the Penner Woman. What do they matter to us?
Tell me everything that you've been doing and saying and thinking.

She. Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great deal. I've hardly
been out at all.

He. That was wrong of you. You haven't been moping?

She. Not very much. Can you wonder that I'm disinclined for
amusement?

He. Frankly, I do. Where was the difficulty?

She. In this only. The more people I know and the more I'm known
here, the wider spread will be the news of the crash when it comes.
I don't like that.

He. Nonsense. We shall be out of it.

She. You think so?

He. I'm sure of it, if there is any power in steam or horse-flesh to
carry us away. Ha! ha!

She. And the fun of the situation comes in where, my Lancelot?

He. Nowhere, Guinevere. I was only thinking of something.

She. They say men have a keener sense of humour than women.
Now I was thinking of the scandal.

He. Don't think of anything so ugly. We shall be beyond it.

She. It will be there all the same in the mouths of Simla
telegraphed over India, and talked of at the dinners and when He
goes out they will stare at Him to see how he takes it. And we shall
be dead, Guy dear dead and cast into the outer darkness where
there is 

He. Love at least. Isn't that enough?

She. I have said so.

He. And you think so still?

She. What do you think?

He. What have I done? It means equal ruin to me, as the world
reckons it outcasting, the loss of my appointment, the breaking off
my life's work. I pay my price.

She. And are you so much above the world that you can afford to
pay it. Am I?

He. My Divinity what else?

She. A very ordinary woman, I'm afraid, but so far, respectable.
How d'you do, Mrs. Middle-ditch? Your husband? I think he's
riding down to Annandale with Colonel Statters. Yes, isn't it divine
after the rain? Guy, how long am I to be allowed to bow to Mrs.
Middleditch? Till the 17th?

He. Frowsy Scotchwoman! What is the use of bringing her into the
discussion? You were saying?

She. Nothing. Have you ever seen a man hanged?

He. Yes. Once.

She. What was it for?

He. Murder, of course.

She. Murder. Is that so great a sin after all? I wonder how he felt
before the drop fell.

He. I don't think he felt much. What a gruesome little woman it is
this evening! You're shivering. Put on your cape, dear.

She. I think I will. Oh! Look at the mist coming over Sanjaoli; and
I thought we should have sunshine on the Ladies' Mile! Let's turn
back.

He. What's the good? There's a cloud on Elysium Hill, and that
means it's foggy all down the Mall. We'll go on. It'll blow away
before we get to the Convent, perhaps. 'Jove! It is chilly.

She. You feel it, fresh from below. Put on your ulster. What do you
think of my cape?

He. Never ask a man his opinion of a woman's dress when he is
desperately and abjectly in love with the wearer. Let me look. Like
everything else of yours it's perfect. Where did you get it from?

She. He gave it me, on Wednesday our wedding-day, you know.

He. The Deuce He did! He's growing generous in his old age.
D'you like all that frilly, bunchy stuff at the throat? I don't.

She. Don't you?

Kind Sir, o' your courtesy,
   As you go by the town, Sir,
'Pray you o' your love for me,
   Buy me a russet gown, Sir.

He. I won't say: 'Keek into the draw-well, Janet, Janet.' Only wait a
little, darling, and you shall be stocked with russet gowns and
everything else.

She. And when the frocks wear out you'll get me new ones and
everything else?

He. Assuredly.

She. I wonder!

He. Look here, Sweetheart, I didn't spend two days and two nights
in the train to hear you wonder. I thought we'd settled all that at
Shaifazehat.

She. (dreamily). At Shaifazehat? Does the Station go on still? That
was ages and ages ago. It must be crumbling to pieces. All except
the Amirtollah kutcha road. I don't believe that could crumble till
the Day of Judgment.

He. You think so? What is the mood now?

She. I can't tell. How cold it is! Let us get on quickly.

He. 'Better walk a little. Stop your jhampanies and get out. What's
the matter with you this evening, dear?

She. Nothing. You must grow accustomed to my ways. If I'm
boring you I can go home. Here's Captain Congleton coming, I
daresay he'll be willing to escort me.

He. Goose! Between us, too! Damn Captain Congleton.

She. Chivalrous Knight. Is it your habit to swear much in talking?
It jars a little, and you might swear at me.

He. My angel! I didn't know what I was saying; and you changed
so quickly that I couldn't follow. I'll apologise in dust and ashes.

She. There'll be enough of those later on Good-night, Captain
Congleton. Going to the singing - quadrilles already? What dances
am I giving you next week? No! You must have written them down
wrong. Five and Seven, I said. If you've made a mistake, I certainly
don't intend to suffer for it. You must alter your programme.

He. I thought you told me that you had not been going out much
this season?

She. Quite true, but when I do I dance with Captain Congleton. He
dances very nicely.

He. And sit out with him, I suppose?

She. Yes. Have you any objection? Shall I stand under the
chandelier in future?

He. What does he talk to you about?

She. What do men talk about when they sit out?

He. Ugh! Don't! Well, now I'm up, you must dispense with the
fascinating Congleton for a while. I don't like him.

She (after a pause). Do you know what you have said?

He 'Can't say that I do exactly. I'm not in the best of tempers.

She So I see, and feel. My true and faithful lover, where is your
'eternal constancy,' 'unalterable trust,' and 'reverent devotion'? I
remember those phrases; you seem to have forgotten them. I
mention a man's name 

He. A good deal more than that.

She. Well, speak to him about a dance perhaps the last dance that I
shall ever dance in my life before I, before I go away; and you at
once distrust and insult me.

He. I never said a word.

She. How much did you imply? Guy, is this amount of confidence
to be our stock to start the new life on?

He. No, of course not. I didn't mean that. On my word and honour,
I didn't. Let it pass, dear. Please let it pass.

She. This once yes and a second time, and again and again, all
through the years when I shall be unable to resent it. You want too
much, my Lancelot, and, you know too much.

He. How do you mean?

She. That is a part of the punishment. There cannot be perfect trust
between us.

He. In Heaven's name, why not?

She. Hush! The Other Place is quite enough. Ask yourself.

He. I don't follow.

She. You trust me so implicitly that when I look at another man
Never mind. Guy, have you ever made love to a girl a good girl?

He. Something of the sort. Centuries ago in the Dark Ages, before
I ever met you, dear.

She. Tell me what you said to her.

He. What does a man say to a girl? I've forgotten.

She. I remember. He tells her that he trusts her and worships the
ground she walks on, and that he'll love and honour and protect her
till her dying day; and so she marries in that belief. At least, I
speak of one girl who was not protected.

He. Well, and then?

She. And then, Guy, and then, that girl needs ten times the love
and trust and honour yes, honour that was enough when she was
only a mere wife if if the other life she chooses to lead is to be
made even bearable. Do you understand?

He. Even bearable! It'll be Paradise.

She. Ah! Can you give me all I've asked for not now, nor a few
months later, but when you begin to think of what you might have
done if you had kept your own appointment and your caste here
when you begin to look upon me as a drag and a burden? I shall
want it most then, Guy, for there will be no one in the wide world
but you.

He. You're a little over-tired to-night, Sweetheart, and you're
taking a stage view of the situation. After the necessary business in
the Courts, the road is clear to 

She. 'The holy state of matrimony!' Ha! ha! ha!

He. Ssh! Don't laugh in that horrible way!

She. I I c-c-c-can't help it! Isn't it too absurd! Ah! Ha! ha! ha! Guy,
stop me quick or I shall l-l-laugh till we get to the Church.

He. For goodness sake, stop! Don't make an exhibition of yourself.
What is the matter with you?

She. N-nothing. I'm better now.

He. That's all right. One moment, dear. There's a little wisp of hair
got loose from behind your right ear and it's straggling over your
cheek. So!

She. Thank'oo. I'm 'fraid my hat's on one side, too.

He. What do you wear these huge dagger bonnet-skewers for?
They're big enough to kill a man with.

She. Oh! don't kill me, though. You're sticking it into my head! Let
me do it. You men are so clumsy.

He. Have you had many opportunities of comparing us in this sort
of work?

She. Guy, what is my name?

He. Eh! I don't follow.

She. Here's my card-case. Can you read?

He. Yes. Well?

She. Well, that answers your question. You know the other's man's
name. Am I sufficiently humbled, or would you like to ask me if
there is any one else?

He. I see now. My darling, I never meant that for an instant. I was
only joking. There! Lucky there's no one on the road. They'd be
scandalised.

She. They'll be more scandalised before the end.

He. Do-on't! I don't like you to talk in that way.

She. Unreasonable man! Who asked me to face the situation and
accept it? Tell me, do I look like Mrs. Penner? Do I look like a
naughty woman! Swear I don't! Give me your word of honour, my
honourable friend, that I'm not like Mrs. Buzgago. That's the way
she stands, with her hands clasped at the back of her head. D'you
like that?

He. Don't be affected.

She. I'm not. I'm Mrs. Buzgago. Listen!

Pendant une anne' toute entiŠre

Le r‚giment n'a pas r'paru.

Au MinistŠre de la Guerre

On le r'porta comme perdu.

On se r'noncait … rtrouver sa trace,

Quand un matin subitement,

On le vit r'paraŒtre sur la place,

L'Colonel toujours en avant.

That's the way she rolls her r's. Am I like her?

He. No, but I object when you go on like an actress and sing stuff
of that kind. Where in the world did you pick up the Chanson du
Colonel? It isn't a drawing-room song. It isn't proper.

She. Mrs. Buzgago taught it me. She is both drawing-room and
proper, and in another month she'll shut her drawing-room to me,
and thank God she isn't as improper as I am. Oh, Guy, Guy! I wish
I was like some women and had no scruples about What is it
Keene says? 'Wearing a corpse's hair and being false to the bread
they eat.'

He. I am only a man of limited intelligence, and, just now, very
bewildered. When you have quite finished flashing through all
your moods tell me, and I'll try to understand the last one.

She. Moods, Guy! I haven't any. I'm sixteen years old and you're
just twenty, and you've been waiting for two hours outside the
school in the cold. And now I've met you, and now we're walking
home together. Does that suit you, My Imperial Majesty?

He. No. We aren't children. Why can't you be rational?

She. He asks me that when I'm going to commit suicide for his
sake, and, and I don't want to be French and rave about my mother,
but have I ever told you that I have a mother, and a brother who
was my pet before I married? He's married now. Can't you imagine
the pleasure that the news of the elopement will give him? Have
you any people at Home, Guy, to be pleased with your
performances?

He. One or two. One can't make omelets without breaking eggs.

She (slowly). I don't see the necessity  

He. Hah! What do you mean?

She. Shall I speak the truth?

He Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as well.

She. Guy, I'm afraid.

He I thought we'd settled all that. What of?

She. Of you.

He. Oh, damn it all! The old business! This is toobad! 

She. Of you.

He. And what now?

She. What do you think of me?

He. Beside the question altogether. What do you intend to do?

She. I daren't risk it. I'm afraid. If I could only cheat 

He.  A la Buzgago? No, thanks. That's the one point on which I
have any notion of Honour. I won't eat his salt and steal too. I'll
loot openly or not at all.

She. I never meant anything else.

He. Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be willing to
come?

She. It's not pretence, Guy. I am afraid. 

He. Please explain.

She. It can't last, Guy. It can't last. You'll get angry, and then you'll
swear, and then you'll get jealous, and then you'll mistrust me you
do now and you yourself will be the best reason for doubting. And
I what shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs. Buzgago found out
no better than any one. And you'll know that. Oh, Guy, can't you
see?

He I see that you are desperately unreasonable, little woman.

She. There! The moment I begin to object, you get angry. What
will you do when I am only your property stolen property? It can't
be, Guy. It can't be! I thought it could, but it can't. You'll get tired
of me.

He I tell you I shall not. Won't anything make you understand that?

She. There, can't you see? If you speak to me like that now, you'll
call me horrible names later, if I don't do everything as you like.
And if you were cruel to me, Guy, where should I go?  where
should I go? I can't trust you. Oh! I can't trust you!

He. I suppose I ought to say that I can trust you. I've ample reason.

She. Please don't, dear. It hurts as much as if you hit me.

He. It isn't exactly pleasant for me.

She. I can't help it. I wish I were dead! I can't trust you, and I don't
trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!

He. Too late now. I don't understand you  I won't and I can't trust
myself to talk this evening. May I call to-morrow?

She. Yes. No! Oh, give me time! The day after. I get into my
'rickshaw here and meet Him at Peliti's. You ride.

He. I'll go on to Peliti's too. I think I want a drink. My world's
knocked about my ears and the stars are falling. Who are those
brutes howling in the Old Library?

She. They're rehearsing the singing-quadrilles for the Fancy Ball.
Can't you hear Mrs. Buzgago's voice? She has a solo. It's quite a
new idea. Listen!

Mrs. Buzgago (in the Old Library, con molt. exp.).

See-saw! Margery Daw!

Sold her bed to lie upon straw.

Wasn't she a silly slut

To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?

Captain Congleton, I'm going to alter that to 'flirt.' It sounds better.

He. No, I've changed my mind about the drink. Good-night, little
lady. I shall see you to-morrow?

She. Ye es. Good-night, Guy. Don't be angry with me.

He. Angry! You know I trust you absolutely. Good-night and God
bless you!

(Three seconds later. Alone.) Hmm! I'd give something to discover
whether there's another man at the back of all this.

A Second-Rate Woman

Est fuga, volvitur rota,
   On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One Two Three Four Five contribute their quota:
   Something is gained if one caught but the import,
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
       --Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

'Dressed! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in her life. She
stood in the middle of the room while her ayah no, her husband it
must have been a man threw her clothes at her. She then did her
hair with her fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the
bed. I know she did, as well as if I had assisted at the orgy. Who is
she?' said Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Don't!' said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. 'You make my head ache. I'am
miserable to-day. Stay me with fondants, comfort me with
chocolates, for I am Did you bring anything from Peliti's?'

'Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets when you have
answered them. Who and what is the creature? There were at least
half-a-dozen men round her, and she appeared to be going to sleep
in their midst.'

'Delville,' said Mrs. Mallowe, '''Shady" Delville, to distinguish her
from Mrs. Jim of that ilk. She dances as untidily as she dresses, I
believe, and her husband is somewhere in Madras. Go and call, if
you are so interested.'

'What have I to do with Shigramitish women? She merely caught
my attention for a minute, and I wondered at the attraction that a
dowd has for a certain type of man. I expected to see her walk out
of her clothes until I looked at her eyes.'

'Hooks and eyes, surely,' drawled Mrs. Mallowe.

'Don't be clever, Polly. You make my head ache. And round this
hayrick stood a crowd of men a positive crowd!'

'Perhaps they also expected '

'Polly, don't be Rabelaisian!'

Mrs. Mallowe curled herself up comfortably on the sofa, and
turned her attention to the sweets. She and Mrs. Hauksbee shared
the same house at Simla; and these things befell two seasons after
the matter of Otis Yeere, which has been already recorded.

Mrs. Hauksbee stepped into the verandah and looked down upon
the Mall, her forehead puckered with thought.

'Hah!' said Mrs. Hauksbee shortly. 'Indeed!'

'What is it?' said Mrs. Mallowe sleepily.

'That dowd and The Dancing Master to whom I object.'

'Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of
reprobate and romantic tendencies, and tries to be a friend of
mine.'

'Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling by nature, and
I should imagine that this animal how terrible her bonnet looks
from above!  is specially clingsome.'

'She is welcome to The Dancing Master so far as I am concerned. I
never could take an interest in a monotonous liar. The frustrated
aim of his life is to persuade people that he is a bachelor.'

'O-oh! I think I've met that sort of man before. And isn't he?'

'No. He confided that to me a few days ago. Ugh! Some men ought
to be killed.'

'What happened then?'

'He posed as the horror of horrors a misunderstood man. Heaven
knows the femme incomprise is sad enough and bad enough but
the other thing!'

'And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face. Men seldom
confide in me. How is it they come to you?'

'For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the past.
Protect me from men with confidences!'

'And yet you encourage them?'

'What can I do? They talk, I listen, and they vow that I am
sympathetic. I know I always profess astonishment even when the
plot is of the most old possible.'

'Yes. Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to
talk, whereas women's confidences are full of reservations and
fibs, except '

'When they go mad and babble of the Unutter-abilities after a
week's acquaintance. Really, if you come to consider, we know a
great deal more of men than of our own sex.'

'And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it. They
say we are trying to hide something.'

'They are generally doing that on their own account. Alas! These
chocolates pall upon me, and I haven't eaten more than a dozen. I
think I shall go to sleep.'

'Then you'll get fat, dear. If you took more exercise and a more
intelligent interest in your neighbours you would '

'Be as much loved as Mrs. Hauksbee. You're a darling in many
ways, and I like you you are not a woman's woman but why do you
trouble yourself about mere human beings?'

'Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be horribly
dull, men and women are the most fascinating things in the whole
wide world, lazy one. I am interested in The Dowd  I am interested
in The Dancing Master I am interested in the Hawley Boy and I am
interested in you.'

'Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property.'

'Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out
of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his
Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from
him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think, and' here
she waved her hands airily '''whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath joined
together let no man put asunder." That's all.'

'And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious
detrimental in Simla, and earned the undying hatred of Mamma
Holt, what will you do with me, Dispenser of the Destinies of the
Universe?'

Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of the fire, and,
chin in hand, gazed long and steadfastly at Mrs. Mallowe.

'I do not know,' she said, shaking her head, 'what I shall do with
you, dear. It's obviously impossible to marry you to some one else
your husband would object and the experiment might not be
successful after all. I think I shall begin by preventing you from
what is it? ''sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring in the sun."'

'Don't! I don't like your quotations. They are so rude. Go to the
Library and bring me new books.'

'While you sleep? No! If you don't come with me I shall spread
your newest frock on my 'rickshaw-bow, and when any one asks
me what I am doing, I shall say that I am going to Phelps's to get it
let out. I shall take care that Mrs. MacNamara sees me. Put your
things on, there's a good girl.'

Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went off to the
Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the man who went by
the nick-name of The Dancing Master. By that time Mrs. Mallowe
was awake and eloquent.

'That is the Creature!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, with the air of one
pointing out a slug in the road.

'No,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'The man is the Creature. Ugh!
Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought you were coming to tea this
evening.'

'Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?' answered The Dancing
Master. 'I understood   I fancied I'm so sorry How very
unfortunate!'  

But Mrs. Mallowe had passed on.

'For the practised equivocator you said he was,' murmured Mrs.
Hauksbee, 'he strikes me as a failure. Now wherefore should he
have preferred a walk with The Dowd to tea with us? Elective
affinities, I suppose both grubby. Polly, I'd never forgive that
woman as long as the world rolls.'

'I forgive every woman everything,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'He will be
a sufficient punishment for her. What a common voice she has!'

Mrs. Delville's voice was not pretty, her carriage was even less
lovely, and her raiment was strikingly neglected. All these things
Mrs. Mallowe noticed over the top of a magazine.

'Now what is there in her?' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'Do you see what I
meant about the clothes falling off? If I were a man I would perish
sooner than be seen with that rag-bag. And yet, she has good eyes,
but Oh!'

'What is it?'

'She doesn't know how to use them! On my honour, she does not.
Look! Oh look! Untidiness I can endure, but ignorance never! The
woman's a fool.'

'Hsh! She'll hear you.'

'All the women in Simla are fools. She'll think I mean some one
else. Now she's going out. What a thoroughly objectionable couple
she and The Dancing Master make! Which reminds me. Do you
suppose they'll ever dance together?'

'Wait and see. I don't envy her the conversation of The Dancing
Master loathly man! His wife ought to be up here before long?'

'Do you know anything about him?'

'Only what he told me. It may be all a fiction. He married a girl
bred in the country, I think, and, being an honourable, chivalrous
soul, told me that he repented his bargain and sent her to her as
often as possible a person who has lived in the Doon since the
memory of man and goes to Mussoorie when other people go
Home. The wife is with her at present. So he says.'

'Babies?'

'One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him
for it. He thought he was being epigrammatic and brilliant.'

'That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because he is
generally in the wake of some girl, disappointing the Eligibles. He
will persecute May Holt no more, unless I am much mistaken.'

'No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while.'

'Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?'

'Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I tell
you. Don't you know that type of man?'

'Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general rule, when a man
begins to abuse his wife to me, I find that the Lord gives me
wherewith to answer him according to his folly; and we part with a
coolness between us. I laugh.'

'I'm different. I've no sense of humour.'

'Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I
care to think about. A well-educated sense of humour will save a
woman when Religion, Training, and Home influences fail; and
we may all need salvation sometimes.'

'Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humour?'

'Her dress bewrays her. How can a Thing who wears her
supplŠment under her left arm have any notion of the fitness of
things much less their folly? If she discards The Dancing Master
after having once seen him dance, I may respect her. Otherwise '

'But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear? You
saw the woman at Peliti's half an hour later you saw her walking
with The Dancing Master an hour later you met her here at the
Library.'

'Still with The Dancing Master, remember.'

'Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of
that should you imagine '

'I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that
The Dancing Master is attracted to The Dowd because he is
objectionable in every way and she in every other. If I know the
man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at
present.'

'She is twenty years younger than he.'

'Poor wretch! And, in the end, after he has posed and swaggered
and lied he has a mouth under that ragged moustache simply made
for lies he will be rewarded according to his merits.'

'I wonder what those really are,' said Mrs. Mallowe.

But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to the shelf of the new books,
was humming softly: 'What shall he have who killed the Deer?' She
was a lady of unfettered speech.

One month later she announced her intention of calling upon Mrs.
Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning
wrappers, and there was a great peace in the land.

'I should go as I was,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'It would be a delicate
compliment to her style.'

Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

'Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I
should put on this robe, after all the others, to show her what a
morning-wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her. As it is, I shall
go in the dove-coloured sweet emblem of youth and innocence and
shall put on my new gloves.'

'If you really are going, dirty tan would be too good; and you know
that dove-colour spots with the rain.'

'I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one
cannot expect very much from a woman who puts a lace tucker
into her habit.'

'Just Heavens! When did she do that?'

'Yesterday riding with The Dancing Master. I met them at the back
of Jakko, and the rain had made the lace lie down. To complete the
effect, she was wearing an unclean terai with the elastic under her
chin. I felt almost too well content to take the trouble to despise
her.'

'The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?'

'Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did?
He stared in the rudest way, and just when I thought he had seen
the elastic, he said, ''There's something very taking about that
face." I rebuked him on the spot. I don't approve of boys being
taken by faces.'

'Other than your own. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if the
Hawley Boy immediately went to call.'

'I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and
his wife when she comes up. I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent
and the Delville woman together.'

Mrs. Hauksbee departed and, at the end of an hour, returned
slightly flushed.

'There is no limit to the treachery of youth! I ordered the Hawley
Boy, as he valued my patronage, not to call. The first person I
stumble over literally stumble over in her poky, dark little
drawing-room is, of course, the Hawley Boy. She kept us waiting
ten minutes, and then emerged as though she had been tipped out
of the dirtyclothes-basket. You know my way, dear, when I am at
all put out. I was Superior, crrrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes
to Heaven, and had heard of nothing 'dropped my eyes on the
carpet and ''really didn't know" 'played with my cardcase and
''supposed so." The Hawley Boy giggled like a girl, and I had to
freeze him with scowls between the sentences.'

'And she?'

'She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and managed to convey
the impression that she was suffering from stomach-ache, at the
very least. It was all I could do not to ask after her symptoms.
When I rose, she grunted just like a buffalo in the water too lazy to
move.'

'Are you certain? '

'Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer laziness, nothing else or her
garments were only constructed for sitting down in. I stayed for a
quarter of an hour trying to penetrate the gloom, to guess what her
surroundings were like, while she stuck out her tongue.'

'Lu cy!'

'Well I'll withdraw the tongue, though I'm sure if she didn't do it
when I was in the room, she did the minute I was outside. At any
rate, she lay in a lump and grunted. Ask the Hawley Boy, dear. I
believe the grunts were meant for sentences, but she spoke so
indistinctly that I can't swear to it.'

'You are incorrigible, simply.'

'I am not! Treat me civilly, give me peace with honour, don't put
the only available seat facing the window, and a child may eat jam
in my lap before Church. But I resent being grunted at. Wouldn't
you? Do you suppose that she communicates her views on life and
love to The Dancing Master in a set of modulated ''Grmphs"?'

'You attach too much importance to The Dancing Master.'

'He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost cordial at the
sight of him. He smiled greasily, and moved about that darkened
dog-kennel in a suspiciously familiar way.'

'Don't be uncharitable. Any sin but that I'll forgive.'

'Listen to the voice of History. I am only describing what I saw. He
entered, the heap on the sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy
and I came away together. He is disillusioned, but I felt it my duty
to lecture him severely for going there. And that's all.'

'Now for Pity's sake leave the wretched creature and The Dancing
Master alone. They never did you any harm.'

'No harm? To dress as an example and a stumbling-block for half
Simla, and then to find this Person who is dressed by the hand of
God not that I wish to disparage Him for a moment, but you know
the tikka dhurzie way He attires those lilies of the field this Person
draws the eyes of men and some of them nice men? It's almost
enough to make one discard clothing. I told the Hawley Boy so.'

'And what did that sweet youth do?'

'Turned shell-pink and looked across the far blue hills like a
distressed cherub. Am I talking wildly, Polly? Let me say my say,
and I shall be calm. Otherwise I may go abroad and disturb Simla
with a few original reflections. Excepting always your own sweet
self, there isn't a single woman in the land who understands me
when I am what's the word?'

'Tˆte-fˆl‚e,' suggested Mrs. Mallowe.

'Exactly! And now let us have tiffin. The demands of Society are
exhausting, and as Mrs. Delville says ' Here Mrs. Hauksbee, to the
horror of the khitmatgars, lapsed into a series of grunts, while Mrs.
Mallowe stared in lazy surprise.

'''God gie us a guid conceit of oorselves,"' said Mrs. Hauksbee
piously, returning to her natural speech. 'Now, in any other woman
that would have been vulgar. I am consumed with curiosity to see
Mrs. Bent. I expect complications.'

'Woman of one idea,' said Mrs. Mallowe shortly; 'all complications
are as old as the hills! I have lived through or near all all All!'

'And yet do not understand that men and women never behave
twice alike. I am old who was young if ever I put my head in your
lap, you dear, big sceptic, you will learn that my parting is gauze
but never, no never, have I lost my interest in men and women.
Polly, I shall see this business out to the bitter end.'

'I am going to sleep,' said Mrs. Mallowe calmly. 'I never interfere
with men or women unless I am compelled,' and she retired with
dignity to her own room.

Mrs. Hauksbee's curiosity was not long left ungratified, for Mrs.
Bent came up to Simla a few days after the conversation faithfully
reported above, and pervaded the Mall by her husband's side

'Behold!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, thoughtfully rubbing her nose. 'That
is the last link of the chain, if we omit the husband of the Delville,
whoever he may be. Let me consider. The Bents and the Delvilles
inhabit the same hotel; and the Delville is detested by the Waddy
do you know the Waddy? who is almost as big a dowd. The Waddy
also abominates the male Bent, for which, if her other sins do not
weigh too heavily, she will eventually go to Heaven.'

'Don't be irreverent,' said Mrs. Mallowe, 'I like Mrs. Bent's face.'

'I am discussing the Waddy,' returned Mrs. Hauksbee loftily. 'The
Waddy will take the female Bent apart, after having borrowed yes!
everything that she can, from hairpins to babies' bottles. Such, my
dear, is life in a hotel. The Waddy will tell the female Bent facts
and fictions about The Dancing Master and The Dowd.'

'Lucy, I should like you better if you were not always looking into
people's back-bedrooms.'

'Anybody can look into their front drawingrooms; and remember
whatever I do, and whatever I look, I never talk as the Waddy will.
Let us hope that The Dancing Master's greasy smile and manner of
the pedagogue will soften the heart of that cow, his wife. If mouths
speak truth, I should think that little Mrs. Bent could get very
angry on occasion.'

'But what reason has she for being angry?'

'What reason! The Dancing Master in himself is a reason. How
does it go? ''If in his life some trivial errors fall, Look in his face
and you'll believe them all." I am prepared to credit any evil of The
Dancing Master, because I hate him so. And The Dowd is so
disgustingly badly dressed '

'That she, too, is capable of every iniquity? I always prefer to
believe the best of everybody. It saves so much trouble.'

'Very good. I prefer to believe the worst. It saves useless
expenditure of sympathy. And you may be quite certain that the
Waddy believes with me.'

Mrs. Mallowe sighed and made no answer.

The conversation was holden after dinner while Mrs. Hauksbee
was dressing for a dance.

'I am too tired to go,' pleaded Mrs. Mallowe, and Mrs. Hauksbee
left her in peace till two in the morning, when she was aware of
emphatic knocking at her door.

'Don't be very angry, dear,' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'My idiot of an
ayah has gone home, and, as I hope to sleep to-night, there isn't a
soul in the place to unlace me.'

'Oh, this is too bad!' said Mrs. Mallowe sulkily.

''Cant help it. I'm a lone, lorn grass-widow, dear, but I will not
sleep in my stays. And such news too! Oh, do unlace me, there's a
darling! The Dowd The Dancing Master I and the Hawley Boy
You know the North verandah?'

'How can I do anything if you spin round like this?' protested Mrs.
Mallowe, fumbling with the knot of the laces.

'Oh, I forget. I must tell my tale without the aid of your eyes. Do
you know you've lovely eyes, dear? Well, to begin with, I took the
Hawley Boy to a kala juggah.'

'Did he want much taking?'

'Lots! There was an arrangement of loose-boxes in kanats, and she
was in the next one talking to him.'

'Which? How? Explain.'

'You know what I mean The Dowd and The Dancing Master. We
could hear every word, and we listened shamelessly 'specially the
Hawley Boy. Polly, I quite love that woman!'

'This is interesting. There! Now turn round. What happened?'

'One moment. Ah h! Blessed relief. I've been looking forward to
taking them off for the last half-hour which is ominous at my time
of life. But, as I was saying, we listened and heard The Dowd
drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid or a
blue-blooded Aide-de-Camp. ''Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond
o' me," she said, and The Dancing Master owned it was so in
language that nearly made me ill. The Dowd reflected for a while.
Then we heard her say, ''Look he-ere, Mister Bent, why are you
s