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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plain Tales from the Hills, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Plain Tales from the Hills
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Posting Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1858]
+Release Date: August, 1999
+Last Updated: March 2, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
+
+By Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     LESPETH
+
+     THREE AND AN EXTRA
+
+     THROWN AWAY
+
+     MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS
+
+     YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER
+
+     FALSE DAWN
+
+     THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES
+
+     CUPID'S ARROWS
+
+     HIS CHANCE IN LIFE
+
+     WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
+
+     THE OTHER MAN
+
+     CONSEQUENCES
+
+     THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN MCGOGGIN
+
+     A GERM DESTROYER
+
+     KIDNAPPED
+
+     THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY
+
+     THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
+
+     HIS WEDDED WIFE
+
+     THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
+
+     BEYOND THE PALE
+
+     IN ERROR
+
+     A BANK FRAUD
+
+     TOD'S AMENDMENT
+
+     IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH
+
+     PIG
+
+     THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS
+
+     THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE
+
+     VENUS ANNODOMINI
+
+     THE BISARA OF POORER
+
+     THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS
+
+     THE STORY OF MUHAMMID DIN
+
+     ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS
+
+     WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE
+
+     BY WORD OF MOUTH
+
+     TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE
+
+
+
+
+PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
+
+
+
+
+LISPETH.
+
+
+     Look, you have cast out Love!  What Gods are these
+       You bid me please?
+     The Three in One, the One in Three?  Not so!
+       To my own Gods I go.
+     It may be they shall give me greater ease
+     Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
+
+                                      The Convert.
+
+
+She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife. One
+year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their only
+poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side; so, next
+season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission
+to be baptized. The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and
+"Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.
+
+Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo and
+Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the wife of
+the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was after the reign of the Moravian
+missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten her title of
+"Mistress of the Northern Hills."
+
+Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own
+people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not
+know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely, she is
+worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a
+Greek face--one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom.
+She was of a pale, ivory color and, for her race, extremely tall. Also,
+she possessed eyes that were wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in
+the abominable print-cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her
+on the hill-side unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of
+the Romans going out to slay.
+
+Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when she
+reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated her
+because she had, they said, become a memsahib and washed herself daily;
+and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with her. Somehow,
+one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten in her shoes, to clean
+plates and dishes. So she played with the Chaplain's children and took
+classes in the Sunday School, and read all the books in the house, and
+grew more and more beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy tales. The
+Chaplain's wife said that the girl ought to take service in Simla as a
+nurse or something "genteel." But Lispeth did not want to take service.
+She was very happy where she was.
+
+When travellers--there were not many in those years--came to Kotgarth,
+Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear they might take
+her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the unknown world.
+
+One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth went
+out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies--a mile
+and a half out, and a ride back again. She covered between twenty and
+thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and about, between
+Kotgarth and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping
+down the breakneck descent into Kotgarth with something heavy in her
+arms. The Chaplain's wife was dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth
+came in breathing hard and very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put
+it down on the sofa, and said simply:
+
+"This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt himself.
+We will nurse him, and when he is well, your husband shall marry him to
+me."
+
+This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial
+views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the man on
+the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman, and his head
+had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth said she had found
+him down the khud, so she had brought him in. He was breathing queerly
+and was unconscious.
+
+He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew something of
+medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
+useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she meant
+to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely on the
+impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, and repeated her
+first proposition. It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out
+uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.
+Lispeth, having found the man she worshipped, did not see why she should
+keep silent as to her choice. She had no intention of being sent away,
+either. She was going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough
+to marry her. This was her little programme.
+
+After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman
+recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and
+Lispeth--especially Lispeth--for their kindness. He was a traveller in
+the East, he said--they never talked about "globe-trotters" in those
+days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and small--and had come from
+Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and butterflies among the Simla hills. No
+one at Simla, therefore, knew anything about him. He fancied he must
+have fallen over the cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk,
+and that his coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled. He thought
+he would go back to Simla when he was a little stronger. He desired no
+more mountaineering.
+
+He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength slowly.
+Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his wife;
+so the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told him how matters stood in
+Lispeth's heart. He laughed a good deal, and said it was very pretty and
+romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas; but, as he was engaged to a
+girl at Home, he fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly he would
+behave with discretion. He did that. Still he found it very pleasant to
+talk to Lispeth, and walk with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and
+call her pet names while he was getting strong enough to go away. It
+meant nothing at all to him, and everything in the world to Lispeth. She
+was very happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man
+to love.
+
+Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide her feelings, and
+the Englishman was amused. When he went away, Lispeth walked with him,
+up the Hill as far as Narkunda, very troubled and very miserable. The
+Chaplain's wife, being a good Christian and disliking anything in
+the shape of fuss or scandal--Lispeth was beyond her management
+entirely--had told the Englishman to tell Lispeth that he was coming
+back to marry her. "She is but a child, you know, and, I fear, at heart
+a heathen," said the Chaplain's wife. So all the twelve miles up the
+hill the Englishman, with his arm around Lispeth's waist, was assuring
+the girl that he would come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him
+promise over and over again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had
+passed out of sight along the Muttiani path.
+
+Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarth again, and said to the
+Chaplain's wife: "He will come back and marry me. He has gone to his
+own people to tell them so." And the Chaplain's wife soothed Lispeth
+and said: "He will come back." At the end of two months, Lispeth grew
+impatient, and was told that the Englishman had gone over the seas
+to England. She knew where England was, because she had read little
+geography primers; but, of course, she had no conception of the nature
+of the sea, being a Hill girl. There was an old puzzle-map of the World
+in the House. Lispeth had played with it when she was a child. She
+unearthed it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to
+herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was. As she had no
+ideas of distance or steamboats, her notions were somewhat erroneous. It
+would not have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct;
+for the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill girl.
+He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting in Assam.
+He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth's name did not appear.
+
+At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to Narkunda
+to see if her Englishman was coming along the road. It gave her comfort,
+and the Chaplain's wife, finding her happier, thought that she was
+getting over her "barbarous and most indelicate folly." A little later
+the walks ceased to help Lispeth and her temper grew very bad. The
+Chaplain's wife thought this a profitable time to let her know the real
+state of affairs--that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep
+her quiet--that he had never meant anything, and that it was "wrong and
+improper" of Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of
+a superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his own
+people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible, because he
+had said he loved her, and the Chaplain's wife had, with her own lips,
+asserted that the Englishman was coming back.
+
+"How can what he and you said be untrue?" asked Lispeth.
+
+"We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child," said the Chaplain's
+wife.
+
+"Then you have lied to me," said Lispeth, "you and he?"
+
+The Chaplain's wife bowed her head, and said nothing. Lispeth was
+silent, too for a little time; then she went out down the valley, and
+returned in the dress of a Hill girl--infamously dirty, but without the
+nose and ear rings. She had her hair braided into the long pig-tail,
+helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear.
+
+"I am going back to my own people," said she. "You have killed Lispeth.
+There is only left old Jadeh's daughter--the daughter of a pahari and
+the servant of Tarka Devi. You are all liars, you English."
+
+By the time that the Chaplain's wife had recovered from the shock of the
+announcement that Lispeth had 'verted to her mother's gods, the girl had
+gone; and she never came back.
+
+She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the
+arrears of the life she had stepped out of; and, in a little time, she
+married a wood-cutter who beat her, after the manner of paharis, and her
+beauty faded soon.
+
+"There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the
+heathen," said the Chaplain's wife, "and I believe that Lispeth was
+always at heart an infidel." Seeing she had been taken into the Church
+of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do
+credit to the Chaplain's wife.
+
+Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She always had a perfect
+command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk, could sometimes
+be induced to tell the story of her first love-affair.
+
+It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so like
+a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of the Kotgarth
+Mission."
+
+
+
+
+THREE AND--AN EXTRA.
+
+
+   "When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with
+   sticks but with gram."
+
+                                                  Punjabi Proverb.
+
+
+After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a little
+one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by both
+parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the current.
+
+In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did not set in till the
+third year after the wedding. Bremmil was hard to hold at the best
+of times; but he was a beautiful husband until the baby died and Mrs.
+Bremmil wore black, and grew thin, and mourned as if the bottom of the
+universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil ought to have comforted her. He
+tried to do so, I think; but the more he comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil
+grieved, and, consequently, the more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The
+fact was that they both needed a tonic. And they got it. Mrs. Bremmil
+can afford to laugh now, but it was no laughing matter to her at the
+time.
+
+You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she existed
+was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the "Stormy
+Petrel." She had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge.
+She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling,
+violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to
+mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise
+up, and call her--well--NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant,
+and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils of
+malice and mischievousness. She could be nice, though, even to her own
+sex. But that is another story.
+
+Bremmil went off at score after the baby's death and the general
+discomfort that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him. She took no
+pleasure in hiding her captives. She annexed him publicly, and saw that
+the public saw it. He rode with her, and walked with her, and talked
+with her, and picnicked with her, and tiffined at Peliti's with her,
+till people put up their eyebrows and said: "Shocking!" Mrs. Bremmil
+stayed at home turning over the dead baby's frocks and crying into the
+empty cradle. She did not care to do anything else. But some eight dear,
+affectionate lady-friends explained the situation at length to her in
+case she should miss the cream of it. Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly,
+and thanked them for their good offices. She was not as clever as Mrs.
+Hauksbee, but she was no fool. She kept her own counsel, and did not
+speak to Bremmil of what she had heard. This is worth remembering.
+Speaking to, or crying over, a husband never did any good yet.
+
+When Bremmil was at home, which was not often, he was more affectionate
+than usual; and that showed his hand. The affection was forced partly to
+soothe his own conscience and partly to soothe Mrs. Bremmil. It failed
+in both regards.
+
+Then "the A.-D.-C. in Waiting was commanded by Their Excellencies, Lord
+and Lady Lytton, to invite Mr. and Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil to Peterhoff on
+July 26th at 9.30 P. M."--"Dancing" in the bottom-left-hand corner.
+
+"I can't go," said Mrs. Bremmil, "it is too soon after poor little
+Florrie... but it need not stop you, Tom."
+
+She meant what she said then, and Bremmil said that he would go just to
+put in an appearance. Here he spoke the thing which was not; and Mrs.
+Bremmil knew it. She guessed--a woman's guess is much more accurate than
+a man's certainty--that he had meant to go from the first, and with Mrs.
+Hauksbee. She sat down to think, and the outcome of her thoughts was
+that the memory of a dead child was worth considerably less than the
+affections of a living husband. She made her plan and staked her
+all upon it. In that hour she discovered that she knew Tom Bremmil
+thoroughly, and this knowledge she acted on.
+
+"Tom," said she, "I shall be dining out at the Longmores' on the evening
+of the 26th. You'd better dine at the club."
+
+This saved Bremmil from making an excuse to get away and dine with
+Mrs. Hauksbee, so he was grateful, and felt small and mean at the same
+time--which was wholesome. Bremmil left the house at five for a ride.
+About half-past five in the evening a large leather-covered basket came
+in from Phelps' for Mrs. Bremmil. She was a woman who knew how to dress;
+and she had not spent a week on designing that dress and having it
+gored, and hemmed, and herring-boned, and tucked and rucked (or whatever
+the terms are) for nothing. It was a gorgeous dress--slight mourning. I
+can't describe it, but it was what The Queen calls "a creation"--a thing
+that hit you straight between the eyes and made you gasp. She had not
+much heart for what she was going to do; but as she glanced at the long
+mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had never looked so
+well in her life. She was a large blonde and, when she chose, carried
+herself superbly.
+
+After the dinner at the Longmores, she went on to the dance--a little
+late--and encountered Bremmil with Mrs. Hauksbee on his arm. That
+made her flush, and as the men crowded round her for dances she looked
+magnificent. She filled up all her dances except three, and those she
+left blank. Mrs. Hauksbee caught her eye once; and she knew it was
+war--real war--between them. She started handicapped in the struggle,
+for she had ordered Bremmil about just the least little bit in the world
+too much; and he was beginning to resent it. Moreover, he had never seen
+his wife look so lovely. He stared at her from doorways, and glared at
+her from passages as she went about with her partners; and the more he
+stared, the more taken was he. He could scarcely believe that this was
+the woman with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who used to weep
+over the eggs at breakfast.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee did her best to hold him in play, but, after two dances,
+he crossed over to his wife and asked for a dance.
+
+"I'm afraid you've come too late, MISTER Bremmil," she said, with her
+eyes twinkling.
+
+Then he begged her to give him a dance, and, as a great favor, she
+allowed him the fifth waltz. Luckily 5 stood vacant on his programme.
+They danced it together, and there was a little flutter round the room.
+Bremmil had a sort of notion that his wife could dance, but he never
+knew she danced so divinely. At the end of that waltz he asked for
+another--as a favor, not as a right; and Mrs. Bremmil said: "Show me
+your programme, dear!" He showed it as a naughty little schoolboy hands
+up contraband sweets to a master. There was a fair sprinkling of "H"
+on it besides "H" at supper. Mrs. Bremmil said nothing, but she smiled
+contemptuously, ran her pencil through 7 and 9--two "H's"--and returned
+the card with her own name written above--a pet name that only she and
+her husband used. Then she shook her finger at him, and said, laughing:
+"Oh, you silly, SILLY boy!"
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and--she owned as much--felt that she had the
+worst of it. Bremmil accepted 7 and 9 gratefully. They danced 7, and
+sat out 9 in one of the little tents. What Bremmil said and what Mrs.
+Bremmil said is no concern of any one's.
+
+When the band struck up "The Roast Beef of Old England," the two went
+out into the verandah, and Bremmil began looking for his wife's dandy
+(this was before 'rickshaw days) while she went into the cloak-room.
+Mrs. Hauksbee came up and said: "You take me in to supper, I think, Mr.
+Bremmil." Bremmil turned red and looked foolish. "Ah--h'm! I'm going
+home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee. I think there has been a little
+mistake." Being a man, he spoke as though Mrs. Hauksbee were entirely
+responsible.
+
+Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloak-room in a swansdown cloak with a
+white "cloud" round her head. She looked radiant; and she had a right
+to.
+
+The couple went off in the darkness together, Bremmil riding very close
+to the dandy.
+
+Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me--she looked a trifle faded and jaded in
+the lamplight: "Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a
+clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."
+
+Then we went in to supper.
+
+
+
+
+THROWN AWAY.
+
+
+     "And some are sulky, while some will plunge
+       [So ho!  Steady!  Stand still, you!]
+     Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge.
+       [There!  There!  Who wants to kill you?]
+     Some--there are losses in every trade--
+     Will break their hearts ere bitted and made,
+     Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard,
+     And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard."
+
+                       Toolungala Stockyard Chorus.
+
+
+To rear a boy under what parents call the "sheltered life system" is, if
+the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise. Unless he
+be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass through many unnecessary
+troubles; and may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply from ignorance
+of the proper proportions of things.
+
+Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot.
+He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and
+Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots
+are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the
+unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes
+abroad, at six months, a well-mannered little beast with a chastened
+appetite. If he had been kept away from boots, and soap, and big dogs
+till he came to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, just
+consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be! Apply that motion
+to the "sheltered life," and see how it works. It does not sound pretty,
+but it is the better of two evils.
+
+There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the "sheltered life"
+theory; and the theory killed him dead. He stayed with his people all
+his days, from the hour he was born till the hour he went into Sandhurst
+nearly at the top of the list. He was beautifully taught in all that
+wins marks by a private tutor, and carried the extra weight of "never
+having given his parents an hour's anxiety in his life." What he learnt
+at Sandhurst beyond the regular routine is of no great consequence.
+He looked about him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, very
+good. He ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst not so high as he went
+in. Then there was an interval and a scene with his people, who expected
+much from him. Next a year of living "unspotted from the world" in a
+third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were children, and all
+the seniors old women; and lastly he came out to India, where he was cut
+off from the support of his parents, and had no one to fall back on in
+time of trouble except himself.
+
+Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things
+too seriously--the midday sun always excepted. Too much work and too
+much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or
+too much drink. Flirtation does not matter because every one is being
+transferred and either you or she leave the Station, and never return.
+Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output
+and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work
+does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on
+longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because
+you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and
+most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness
+does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die
+another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours
+between death and burial. Nothing matters except Home furlough and
+acting allowances, and these only because they are scarce. This is a
+slack, kutcha country where all men work with imperfect instruments; and
+the wisest thing is to take no one and nothing in earnest, but to escape
+as soon as ever you can to some place where amusement is amusement and a
+reputation worth the having.
+
+But this Boy--the tale is as old as the Hills--came out, and took all
+things seriously. He was pretty and was petted. He took the pettings
+seriously, and fretted over women not worth saddling a pony to call
+upon. He found his new free life in India very good. It DOES look
+attractive in the beginning, from a Subaltern's point of view--all
+ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. He tasted it as the puppy tastes
+the soap. Only he came late to the eating, with a growing set of
+teeth. He had no sense of balance--just like the puppy--and could not
+understand why he was not treated with the consideration he received
+under his father's roof. This hurt his feelings.
+
+He quarrelled with other boys, and, being sensitive to the marrow,
+remembered these quarrels, and they excited him. He found whist, and
+gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after office)
+good; but he took them seriously too, just as he took the "head" that
+followed after drink. He lost his money over whist and gymkhanas because
+they were new to him.
+
+He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much energy and interest
+over a two-goldmohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with their manes
+hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One-half of this came from
+inexperience--much as the puppy squabbles with the corner of the
+hearth-rug--and the other half from the dizziness bred by stumbling out
+of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a livelier one. No
+one told him about the soap and the blacking because an average man
+takes it for granted that an average man is ordinarily careful in regard
+to them. It was pitiful to watch The Boy knocking himself to pieces, as
+an over-handled colt falls down and cuts himself when he gets away from
+the groom.
+
+This unbridled license in amusements not worth the trouble of breaking
+line for, much less rioting over, endured for six months--all through
+one cold weather--and then we thought that the heat and the knowledge
+of having lost his money and health and lamed his horses would sober
+The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In ninety-nine cases out of a
+hundred this would have happened. You can see the principle working in
+any Indian Station. But this particular case fell through because The
+Boy was sensitive and took things seriously--as I may have said some
+seven times before. Of course, we couldn't tell how his excesses struck
+him personally. They were nothing very heart-breaking or above the
+average. He might be crippled for life financially, and want a little
+nursing. Still the memory of his performances would wither away in
+one hot weather, and the shroff would help him to tide over the money
+troubles. But he must have taken another view altogether and have
+believed himself ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to him
+severely when the cold weather ended. That made him more wretched than
+ever; and it was only an ordinary "Colonel's wigging!"
+
+What follows is a curious instance of the fashion in which we are all
+linked together and made responsible for one another. THE thing that
+kicked the beam in The Boy's mind was a remark that a woman made when he
+was talking to her. There is no use in repeating it, for it was only a
+cruel little sentence, rapped out before thinking, that made him flush
+to the roots of his hair. He kept himself to himself for three days, and
+then put in for two days' leave to go shooting near a Canal Engineer's
+Rest House about thirty miles out. He got his leave, and that night
+at Mess was noisier and more offensive than ever. He said that he was
+"going to shoot big game", and left at half-past ten o'clock in an
+ekka. Partridge--which was the only thing a man could get near the Rest
+House--is not big game; so every one laughed.
+
+Next morning one of the Majors came in from short leave, and heard
+that The Boy had gone out to shoot "big game." The Major had taken an
+interest in The Boy, and had, more than once, tried to check him in
+the cold weather. The Major put up his eyebrows when he heard of the
+expedition and went to The Boy's room, where he rummaged.
+
+Presently he came out and found me leaving cards on the Mess. There was
+no one else in the ante-room.
+
+He said: "The Boy has gone out shooting. DOES a man shoot tetur with a
+revolver and a writing-case?"
+
+I said: "Nonsense, Major!" for I saw what was in his mind.
+
+He said: "Nonsense or nonsense, I'm going to the Canal now--at once. I
+don't feel easy."
+
+Then he thought for a minute, and said: "Can you lie?"
+
+"You know best," I answered. "It's my profession."
+
+"Very well," said the Major; "you must come out with me now--at
+once--in an ekka to the Canal to shoot black-buck. Go and put on
+shikar-kit--quick--and drive here with a gun."
+
+The Major was a masterful man; and I knew that he would not give orders
+for nothing. So I obeyed, and on return found the Major packed up in an
+ekka--gun-cases and food slung below--all ready for a shooting-trip.
+
+He dismissed the driver and drove himself. We jogged along quietly
+while in the station; but as soon as we got to the dusty road across the
+plains, he made that pony fly. A country-bred can do nearly anything at
+a pinch. We covered the thirty miles in under three hours, but the poor
+brute was nearly dead.
+
+Once I said: "What's the blazing hurry, Major?"
+
+He said, quietly: "The Boy has been alone, by himself, for--one, two,
+five--fourteen hours now! I tell you, I don't feel easy."
+
+This uneasiness spread itself to me, and I helped to beat the pony.
+
+When we came to the Canal Engineer's Rest House the Major called for The
+Boy's servant; but there was no answer. Then we went up to the house,
+calling for The Boy by name; but there was no answer.
+
+"Oh, he's out shooting," said I.
+
+Just then I saw through one of the windows a little hurricane-lamp
+burning. This was at four in the afternoon. We both stopped dead in the
+verandah, holding our breath to catch every sound; and we heard, inside
+the room, the "brr--brr--brr" of a multitude of flies. The Major said
+nothing, but he took off his helmet and we entered very softly.
+
+The Boy was dead on the charpoy in the centre of the bare, lime-washed
+room. He had shot his head nearly to pieces with his revolver. The
+gun-cases were still strapped, so was the bedding, and on the table lay
+The Boy's writing-case with photographs. He had gone away to die like a
+poisoned rat!
+
+The Major said to himself softly: "Poor Boy! Poor, POOR devil!" Then he
+turned away from the bed and said: "I want your help in this business."
+
+Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, I saw exactly what that help
+would be, so I passed over to the table, took a chair, lit a cheroot,
+and began to go through the writing-case; the Major looking over my
+shoulder and repeating to himself: "We came too late!--Like a rat in a
+hole!--Poor, POOR devil!"
+
+The Boy must have spent half the night in writing to his people, and to
+his Colonel, and to a girl at Home; and as soon as he had finished, must
+have shot himself, for he had been dead a long time when we came in.
+
+I read all that he had written, and passed over each sheet to the Major
+as I finished it.
+
+We saw from his accounts how very seriously he had taken everything.
+He wrote about "disgrace which he was unable to bear"--"indelible
+shame"--"criminal folly"--"wasted life," and so on; besides a lot of
+private things to his Father and Mother too much too sacred to put into
+print. The letter to the girl at Home was the most pitiful of all; and
+I choked as I read it. The Major made no attempt to keep dry-eyed.
+I respected him for that. He read and rocked himself to and fro, and
+simply cried like a woman without caring to hide it. The letters were so
+dreary and hopeless and touching. We forgot all about The Boy's follies,
+and only thought of the poor Thing on the charpoy and the scrawled
+sheets in our hands. It was utterly impossible to let the letters go
+Home. They would have broken his Father's heart and killed his Mother
+after killing her belief in her son.
+
+At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said: "Nice sort of thing
+to spring on an English family! What shall we do?"
+
+I said, knowing what the Major had brought me but for: "The Boy died
+of cholera. We were with him at the time. We can't commit ourselves to
+half-measures. Come along."
+
+Then began one of the most grimy comic scenes I have ever taken part
+in--the concoction of a big, written lie, bolstered with evidence, to
+soothe The Boy's people at Home. I began the rough draft of a letter,
+the Major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered up all the
+stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in the fireplace. It was a
+hot, still evening when we began, and the lamp burned very badly. In due
+course I got the draft to my satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy was
+the pattern of all virtues, beloved by his regiment, with every promise
+of a great career before him, and so on; how we had helped him through
+the sickness--it was no time for little lies, you will understand--and
+how he had died without pain. I choked while I was putting down these
+things and thinking of the poor people who would read them. Then I
+laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, and the laughter mixed
+itself up with the choke--and the Major said that we both wanted drinks.
+
+I am afraid to say how much whiskey we drank before the letter was
+finished. It had not the least effect on us. Then we took off The Boy's
+watch, locket, and rings.
+
+Lastly, the Major said: "We must send a lock of hair too. A woman values
+that."
+
+But there were reasons why we could not find a lock fit to send. The Boy
+was black-haired, and so was the Major, luckily. I cut off a piece of
+the Major's hair above the temple with a knife, and put it into the
+packet we were making. The laughing-fit and the chokes got hold of me
+again, and I had to stop. The Major was nearly as bad; and we both knew
+that the worst part of the work was to come.
+
+We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, seals, ring, letter, and
+lock of hair with The Boy's sealing-wax and The Boy's seal.
+
+Then the Major said: "For God's sake let's get outside--away from the
+room--and think!"
+
+We went outside, and walked on the banks of the Canal for an hour,
+eating and drinking what we had with us, until the moon rose. I know now
+exactly how a murderer feels. Finally, we forced ourselves back to the
+room with the lamp and the Other Thing in it, and began to take up
+the next piece of work. I am not going to write about this. It was too
+horrible. We burned the bedstead and dropped the ashes into the Canal;
+we took up the matting of the room and treated that in the same way.
+I went off to a village and borrowed two big hoes--I did not want the
+villagers to help--while the Major arranged--the other matters. It took
+us four hours' hard work to make the grave. As we worked, we argued out
+whether it was right to say as much as we remembered of the Burial
+of the Dead. We compromised things by saying the Lord's Prayer with a
+private unofficial prayer for the peace of the soul of The Boy. Then we
+filled in the grave and went into the verandah--not the house--to lie
+down to sleep. We were dead-tired.
+
+When we woke the Major said, wearily: "We can't go back till to-morrow.
+We must give him a decent time to die in. He died early THIS morning,
+remember. That seems more natural." So the Major must have been lying
+awake all the time, thinking.
+
+I said: "Then why didn't we bring the body back to the cantonments?"
+
+The Major thought for a minute:--"Because the people bolted when they
+heard of the cholera. And the ekka has gone!"
+
+That was strictly true. We had forgotten all about the ekka-pony, and he
+had gone home.
+
+So, we were left there alone, all that stifling day, in the Canal Rest
+House, testing and re-testing our story of The Boy's death to see if it
+was weak at any point. A native turned up in the afternoon, but we said
+that a Sahib was dead of cholera, and he ran away. As the dusk gathered,
+the Major told me all his fears about The Boy, and awful stories of
+suicide or nearly-carried-out suicide--tales that made one's hair crisp.
+He said that he himself had once gone into the same Valley of the Shadow
+as the Boy, when he was young and new to the country; so he understood
+how things fought together in The Boy's poor jumbled head. He also said
+that youngsters, in their repentant moments, consider their sins much
+more serious and ineffaceable than they really are. We talked together
+all through the evening, and rehearsed the story of the death of The
+Boy. As soon as the moon was up, and The Boy, theoretically, just
+buried, we struck across country for the Station. We walked from eight
+till six o'clock in the morning; but though we were dead-tired, we did
+not forget to go to The Boy's room and put away his revolver with the
+proper amount of cartridges in the pouch. Also to set his writing-case
+on the table. We found the Colonel and reported the death, feeling more
+like murderers than ever. Then we went to bed and slept the clock round;
+for there was no more in us.
+
+The tale had credence as long as was necessary, for every one forgot
+about The Boy before a fortnight was over. Many people, however, found
+time to say that the Major had behaved scandalously in not bringing in
+the body for a regimental funeral. The saddest thing of all was a letter
+from The Boy's mother to the Major and me--with big inky blisters all
+over the sheet. She wrote the sweetest possible things about our great
+kindness, and the obligation she would be under to us as long as she
+lived.
+
+All things considered, she WAS under an obligation; but not exactly as
+she meant.
+
+
+
+
+MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS.
+
+
+      When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?
+
+                                         Mahomedan Proverb.
+
+
+Some people say that there is no romance in India. Those people are
+wrong. Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for us. Sometimes
+more.
+
+Strickland was in the Police, and people did not understand him; so
+they said he was a doubtful sort of man and passed by on the other side.
+Strickland had himself to thank for this. He held the extraordinary
+theory that a Policeman in India should try to know as much about the
+natives as the natives themselves. Now, in the whole of Upper India,
+there is only ONE man who can pass for Hindu or Mohammedan, chamar or
+faquir, as he pleases. He is feared and respected by the natives from
+the Ghor Kathri to the Jamma Musjid; and he is supposed to have the gift
+of invisibility and executive control over many Devils. But what good
+has this done him with the Government? None in the world. He has never
+got Simla for his charge; and his name is almost unknown to Englishmen.
+
+Strickland was foolish enough to take that man for his model; and,
+following out his absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no
+respectable man would think of exploring--all among the native
+riff-raff. He educated himself in this peculiar way for seven years, and
+people could not appreciate it. He was perpetually "going Fantee" among
+the natives, which, of course, no man with any sense believes in. He was
+initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad once, when he was on leave; he
+knew the Lizard-Song of the Sansis, and the Halli-Hukk dance, which is
+a religious can-can of a startling kind. When a man knows who dances the
+Halli-Hukk, and how, and when, and where, he knows something to be proud
+of. He has gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland was not proud,
+though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the Death
+Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had mastered the
+thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-thief alone
+near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of a Border mosque and
+conducted service in the manner of a Sunni Mollah.
+
+His crowning achievement was spending eleven days as a faquir in the
+gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and there picking up the threads of
+the great Nasiban Murder Case. But people said, justly enough: "Why on
+earth can't Strickland sit in his office and write up his diary, and
+recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up the incapacity of his
+seniors?" So the Nasiban Murder Case did him no good departmentally;
+but, after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his outlandish
+custom of prying into native life. By the way, when a man once acquires
+a taste for this particular amusement, it abides with him all his days.
+It is the most fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where
+other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what
+he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time,
+stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while. He
+was a quiet, dark young fellow--spare, black-eyes--and, when he was not
+thinking of something else, a very interesting companion. Strickland
+on Native Progress as he had seen it was worth hearing. Natives hated
+Strickland; but they were afraid of him. He knew too much.
+
+When the Youghals came into the station, Strickland--very gravely, as he
+did everything--fell in love with Miss Youghal; and she, after a
+while, fell in love with him because she could not understand him. Then
+Strickland told the parents; but Mrs. Youghal said she was not going to
+throw her daughter into the worst paid Department in the Empire, and old
+Youghal said, in so many words, that he mistrusted Strickland's ways
+and works, and would thank him not to speak or write to his daughter
+any more. "Very well," said Strickland, for he did not wish to make
+his lady-love's life a burden. After one long talk with Miss Youghal he
+dropped the business entirely.
+
+The Youghals went up to Simla in April.
+
+In July, Strickland secured three months' leave on "urgent private
+affairs." He locked up his house--though not a native in the Providence
+would wittingly have touched "Estreekin Sahib's" gear for the world--and
+went down to see a friend of his, an old dyer, at Tarn Taran.
+
+Here all trace of him was lost, until a sais met me on the Simla Mall
+with this extraordinary note:
+
+
+"Dear old man,
+
+"Please give bearer a box of cheroots--Supers, No. I, for preference.
+They are freshest at the Club. I'll repay when I reappear; but at
+present I'm out of Society.
+
+"Yours,
+
+"E. STRICKLAND."
+
+
+I ordered two boxes, and handed them over to the sais with my love. That
+sais was Strickland, and he was in old Youghal's employ, attached to
+Miss Youghal's Arab. The poor fellow was suffering for an English
+smoke, and knew that whatever happened I should hold my tongue till the
+business was over.
+
+Later on, Mrs. Youghal, who was wrapped up in her servants, began
+talking at houses where she called of her paragon among saises--the man
+who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for
+the breakfast-table, and who blacked--actually BLACKED--the hoofs of his
+horse like a London coachman! The turnout of Miss Youghal's Arab was a
+wonder and a delight. Strickland--Dulloo, I mean--found his reward
+in the pretty things that Miss Youghal said to him when she went out
+riding. Her parents were pleased to find she had forgotten all her
+foolishness for young Strickland and said she was a good girl.
+
+Strickland vows that the two months of his service were the most rigid
+mental discipline he has ever gone through. Quite apart from the little
+fact that the wife of one of his fellow-saises fell in love with him and
+then tried to poison him with arsenic because he would have nothing
+to do with her, he had to school himself into keeping quiet when Miss
+Youghal went out riding with some man who tried to flirt with her, and
+he was forced to trot behind carrying the blanket and hearing every
+word! Also, he had to keep his temper when he was slanged in "Benmore"
+porch by a policeman--especially once when he was abused by a Naik he
+had himself recruited from Isser Jang village--or, worse still, when a
+young subaltern called him a pig for not making way quickly enough.
+
+But the life had its compensations. He obtained great insight into the
+ways and thefts of saises--enough, he says, to have summarily convicted
+half the chamar population of the Punjab if he had been on business. He
+became one of the leading players at knuckle-bones, which all jhampanis
+and many saises play while they are waiting outside the Government House
+or the Gaiety Theatre of nights; he learned to smoke tobacco that was
+three-fourths cowdung; and he heard the wisdom of the grizzled Jemadar
+of the Government House saises, whose words are valuable. He saw many
+things which amused him; and he states, on honor, that no man can
+appreciate Simla properly, till he has seen it from the sais's point of
+view. He also says that, if he chose to write all he saw, his head would
+be broken in several places.
+
+Strickland's account of the agony he endured on wet nights, hearing the
+music and seeing the lights in "Benmore," with his toes tingling for a
+waltz and his head in a horse-blanket, is rather amusing. One of these
+days, Strickland is going to write a little book on his experiences.
+That book will be worth buying; and even more, worth suppressing.
+
+Thus, he served faithfully as Jacob served for Rachel; and his leave was
+nearly at an end when the explosion came. He had really done his best to
+keep his temper in the hearing of the flirtations I have mentioned; but
+he broke down at last. An old and very distinguished General took
+Miss Youghal for a ride, and began that specially offensive
+"you're-only-a-little-girl" sort of flirtation--most difficult for
+a woman to turn aside deftly, and most maddening to listen to. Miss
+Youghal was shaking with fear at the things he said in the hearing of
+her sais. Dulloo--Strickland--stood it as long as he could. Then he
+caught hold of the General's bridle, and, in most fluent English,
+invited him to step off and be heaved over the cliff. Next minute Miss
+Youghal began crying; and Strickland saw that he had hopelessly given
+himself away, and everything was over.
+
+The General nearly had a fit, while Miss Youghal was sobbing out the
+story of the disguise and the engagement that wasn't recognized by the
+parents. Strickland was furiously angry with himself and more angry
+with the General for forcing his hand; so he said nothing, but held
+the horse's head and prepared to thrash the General as some sort of
+satisfaction, but when the General had thoroughly grasped the story, and
+knew who Strickland was, he began to puff and blow in the saddle, and
+nearly rolled off with laughing. He said Strickland deserved a V. C.,
+if it were only for putting on a sais's blanket. Then he called himself
+names, and vowed that he deserved a thrashing, but he was too old to
+take it from Strickland. Then he complimented Miss Youghal on her lover.
+The scandal of the business never struck him; for he was a nice old man,
+with a weakness for flirtations. Then he laughed again, and said
+that old Youghal was a fool. Strickland let go of the cob's head,
+and suggested that the General had better help them, if that was his
+opinion. Strickland knew Youghal's weakness for men with titles and
+letters after their names and high official position. "It's rather like
+a forty-minute farce," said the General, "but begad, I WILL help, if
+it's only to escape that tremendous thrashing I deserved. Go along
+to your home, my sais-Policeman, and change into decent kit, and I'll
+attack Mr. Youghal. Miss Youghal, may I ask you to canter home and wait?"
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+About seven minutes later, there was a wild hurroosh at the Club. A
+sais, with a blanket and head-rope, was asking all the men he knew: "For
+Heaven's sake lend me decent clothes!" As the men did not recognize him,
+there were some peculiar scenes before Strickland could get a hot bath,
+with soda in it, in one room, a shirt here, a collar there, a pair
+of trousers elsewhere, and so on. He galloped off, with half the Club
+wardrobe on his back, and an utter stranger's pony under him, to the
+house of old Youghal. The General, arrayed in purple and fine linen, was
+before him. What the General had said Strickland never knew, but Youghal
+received Strickland with moderate civility; and Mrs. Youghal, touched
+by the devotion of the transformed Dulloo, was almost kind. The General
+beamed, and chuckled, and Miss Youghal came in, and almost before old
+Youghal knew where he was, the parental consent had been wrenched out
+and Strickland had departed with Miss Youghal to the Telegraph Office
+to wire for his kit. The final embarrassment was when an utter stranger
+attacked him on the Mall and asked for the stolen pony.
+
+So, in the end, Strickland and Miss Youghal were married, on the strict
+understanding that Strickland should drop his old ways, and stick to
+Departmental routine, which pays best and leads to Simla. Strickland
+was far too fond of his wife, just then, to break his word, but it was
+a sore trial to him; for the streets and the bazars, and the sounds in
+them, were full of meaning to Strickland, and these called to him to
+come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I
+will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long
+since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would
+call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the
+marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a
+man would master, he must always continue to learn.
+
+But he fills in his Departmental returns beautifully.
+
+
+
+
+YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.
+
+
+     I am dying for you, and you are dying for another.
+
+                                       Punjabi Proverb.
+
+
+When the Gravesend tender left the P. & O. steamer for Bombay and went
+back to catch the train to Town, there were many people in it crying.
+But the one who wept most, and most openly was Miss Agnes Laiter. She
+had reason to cry, because the only man she ever loved--or ever could
+love, so she said--was going out to India; and India, as every one
+knows, is divided equally between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and
+sepoys.
+
+Phil Garron, leaning over the side of the steamer in the rain, felt very
+unhappy too; but he did not cry. He was sent out to "tea." What "tea"
+meant he had not the vaguest idea, but fancied that he would have to
+ride on a prancing horse over hills covered with tea-vines, and draw a
+sumptuous salary for doing so; and he was very grateful to his uncle
+for getting him the berth. He was really going to reform all his slack,
+shiftless ways, save a large proportion of his magnificent salary
+yearly, and, in a very short time, return to marry Agnes Laiter. Phil
+Garron had been lying loose on his friends' hands for three years, and,
+as he had nothing to do, he naturally fell in love. He was very nice;
+but he was not strong in his views and opinions and principles, and
+though he never came to actual grief his friends were thankful when
+he said good-bye, and went out to this mysterious "tea" business near
+Darjiling. They said:--"God bless you, dear boy! Let us never see your
+face again,"--or at least that was what Phil was given to understand.
+
+When he sailed, he was very full of a great plan to prove himself
+several hundred times better than any one had given him credit for--to
+work like a horse, and triumphantly marry Agnes Laiter. He had many good
+points besides his good looks; his only fault being that he was weak,
+the least little bit in the world weak. He had as much notion of economy
+as the Morning Sun; and yet you could not lay your hand on any one item,
+and say: "Herein Phil Garron is extravagant or reckless." Nor could
+you point out any particular vice in his character; but he was
+"unsatisfactory" and as workable as putty.
+
+Agnes Laiter went about her duties at home--her family objected to the
+engagement--with red eyes, while Phil was sailing to Darjiling--"a port
+on the Bengal Ocean," as his mother used to tell her friends. He was
+popular enough on board ship, made many acquaintances and a moderately
+large liquor bill, and sent off huge letters to Agnes Laiter at each
+port. Then he fell to work on this plantation, somewhere between
+Darjiling and Kangra, and, though the salary and the horse and the work
+were not quite all he had fancied, he succeeded fairly well, and gave
+himself much unnecessary credit for his perseverance.
+
+In the course of time, as he settled more into collar, and his work grew
+fixed before him, the face of Agnes Laiter went out of his mind and only
+came when he was at leisure, which was not often. He would forget
+all about her for a fortnight, and remember her with a start, like a
+school-boy who has forgotten to learn his lesson. She did not forget
+Phil, because she was of the kind that never forgets. Only, another
+man--a really desirable young man--presented himself before Mrs. Laiter;
+and the chance of a marriage with Phil was as far off as ever; and
+his letters were so unsatisfactory; and there was a certain amount of
+domestic pressure brought to bear on the girl; and the young man really
+was an eligible person as incomes go; and the end of all things was that
+Agnes married him, and wrote a tempestuous whirlwind of a letter to Phil
+in the wilds of Darjiling, and said she should never know a happy moment
+all the rest of her life. Which was a true prophecy.
+
+Phil got that letter, and held himself ill-treated. This was two years
+after he had come out; but by dint of thinking fixedly of Agnes Laiter,
+and looking at her photograph, and patting himself on the back for being
+one of the most constant lovers in history, and warming to the work as
+he went on, he really fancied that he had been very hardly used. He sat
+down and wrote one final letter--a really pathetic "world without end,
+amen," epistle; explaining how he would be true to Eternity, and that
+all women were very much alike, and he would hide his broken heart,
+etc., etc.; but if, at any future time, etc., etc., he could afford to
+wait, etc., etc., unchanged affections, etc., etc., return to her old
+love, etc., etc., for eight closely-written pages. From an artistic
+point of view, it was very neat work, but an ordinary Philistine, who
+knew the state of Phil's real feelings--not the ones he rose to as he
+went on writing--would have called it the thoroughly mean and selfish
+work of a thoroughly mean and selfish, weak man. But this verdict would
+have been incorrect. Phil paid for the postage, and felt every word he
+had written for at least two days and a half. It was the last flicker
+before the light went out.
+
+That letter made Agnes Laiter very unhappy, and she cried and put it
+away in her desk, and became Mrs. Somebody Else for the good of her
+family. Which is the first duty of every Christian maid.
+
+Phil went his ways, and thought no more of his letter, except as an
+artist thinks of a neatly touched-in sketch. His ways were not bad, but
+they were not altogether good until they brought him across Dunmaya, the
+daughter of a Rajput ex-Subadar-Major of our Native Army. The girl had a
+strain of Hill blood in her, and, like the Hill women, was not a purdah
+nashin. Where Phil met her, or how he heard of her, does not matter. She
+was a good girl and handsome, and, in her way, very clever and shrewd;
+though, of course, a little hard. It is to be remembered that Phil was
+living very comfortably, denying himself no small luxury, never putting
+by an anna, very satisfied with himself and his good intentions, was
+dropping all his English correspondents one by one, and beginning more
+and more to look upon this land as his home. Some men fall this way; and
+they are of no use afterwards. The climate where he was stationed was
+good, and it really did not seem to him that there was anything to go
+Home for.
+
+He did what many planters have done before him--that is to say, he
+made up his mind to marry a Hill girl and settle down. He was seven and
+twenty then, with a long life before him, but no spirit to go through
+with it. So he married Dunmaya by the forms of the English Church, and
+some fellow-planters said he was a fool, and some said he was a
+wise man. Dunmaya was a thoroughly honest girl, and, in spite of her
+reverence for an Englishman, had a reasonable estimate of her husband's
+weaknesses. She managed him tenderly, and became, in less than a year, a
+very passable imitation of an English lady in dress and carriage. [It
+is curious to think that a Hill man, after a lifetime's education, is
+a Hill man still; but a Hill woman can in six months master most of the
+ways of her English sisters. There was a coolie woman once. But that is
+another story.] Dunmaya dressed by preference in black and yellow, and
+looked well.
+
+Meantime the letter lay in Agnes's desk, and now and again she would
+think of poor resolute hard-working Phil among the cobras and tigers of
+Darjiling, toiling in the vain hope that she might come back to him. Her
+husband was worth ten Phils, except that he had rheumatism of the
+heart. Three years after he was married--and after he had tried Nice
+and Algeria for his complaint--he went to Bombay, where he died, and set
+Agnes free. Being a devout woman, she looked on his death and the
+place of it, as a direct interposition of Providence, and when she had
+recovered from the shock, she took out and reread Phil's letter with the
+"etc., etc.," and the big dashes, and the little dashes, and kissed it
+several times. No one knew her in Bombay; she had her husband's income,
+which was a large one, and Phil was close at hand. It was wrong and
+improper, of course, but she decided, as heroines do in novels, to find
+her old lover, to offer him her hand and her gold, and with him spend
+the rest of her life in some spot far from unsympathetic souls. She sat
+for two months, alone in Watson's Hotel, elaborating this decision, and
+the picture was a pretty one. Then she set out in search of Phil Garron,
+Assistant on a tea plantation with a more than usually unpronounceable
+name.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+She found him. She spent a month over it, for his plantation was not in
+the Darjiling district at all, but nearer Kangra. Phil was very little
+altered, and Dunmaya was very nice to her.
+
+Now the particular sin and shame of the whole business is that Phil, who
+really is not worth thinking of twice, was and is loved by Dunmaya,
+and more than loved by Agnes, the whole of whose life he seems to have
+spoilt.
+
+Worst of all, Dunmaya is making a decent man of him; and he will be
+ultimately saved from perdition through her training.
+
+Which is manifestly unfair.
+
+
+
+
+FALSE DAWN.
+
+
+     To-night God knows what thing shall tide,
+       The Earth is racked and faint--
+     Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed;
+     And we, who from the Earth were made,
+       Thrill with our Mother's pain.
+
+                                In Durance.
+
+
+No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; though women may
+sometimes whisper it to one another after a dance, when they are putting
+up their hair for the night and comparing lists of victims. A man, of
+course, cannot assist at these functions. So the tale must be told from
+the outside--in the dark--all wrong.
+
+Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments
+reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later on.
+Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will find that
+you do yourself harm.
+
+Saumarez knew this when he made up his mind to propose to the elder Miss
+Copleigh. Saumarez was a strange man, with few merits, so far as men
+could see, though he was popular with women, and carried enough
+conceit to stock a Viceroy's Council and leave a little over for the
+Commander-in-Chief's Staff. He was a Civilian. Very many women took an
+interest in Saumarez, perhaps, because his manner to them was offensive.
+If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance, he
+may not love you, but he will take a deep interest in your movements
+ever afterwards. The elder Miss Copleigh was nice, plump, winning and
+pretty. The younger was not so pretty, and, from men disregarding the
+hint set forth above, her style was repellant and unattractive. Both
+girls had, practically, the same figure, and there was a strong likeness
+between them in look and voice; though no one could doubt for an instant
+which was the nicer of the two.
+
+Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they came into the station from
+Behar, to marry the elder one. At least, we all made sure that he
+would, which comes to the same thing. She was two and twenty, and he was
+thirty-three, with pay and allowances of nearly fourteen hundred rupees
+a month. So the match, as we arranged it, was in every way a good one.
+Saumarez was his name, and summary was his nature, as a man once said.
+Having drafted his Resolution, he formed a Select Committee of One to
+sit upon it, and resolved to take his time. In our unpleasant slang, the
+Copleigh girls "hunted in couples." That is to say, you could do nothing
+with one without the other. They were very loving sisters; but
+their mutual affection was sometimes inconvenient. Saumarez held the
+balance-hair true between them, and none but himself could have said to
+which side his heart inclined; though every one guessed. He rode
+with them a good deal and danced with them, but he never succeeded in
+detaching them from each other for any length of time.
+
+Women said that the two girls kept together through deep mistrust, each
+fearing that the other would steal a march on her. But that has
+nothing to do with a man. Saumarez was silent for good or bad, and as
+business-likely attentive as he could be, having due regard to his work
+and his polo. Beyond doubt both girls were fond of him.
+
+As the hot weather drew nearer, and Saumarez made no sign, women said
+that you could see their trouble in the eyes of the girls--that they
+were looking strained, anxious, and irritable. Men are quite blind in
+these matters unless they have more of the woman than the man in their
+composition, in which case it does not matter what they say or think.
+I maintain it was the hot April days that took the color out of the
+Copleigh girls' cheeks. They should have been sent to the Hills
+early. No one--man or woman--feels an angel when the hot weather is
+approaching. The younger sister grew more cynical--not to say acid--in
+her ways; and the winningness of the elder wore thin. There was more
+effort in it.
+
+Now the Station wherein all these things happened was, though not
+a little one, off the line of rail, and suffered through want of
+attention. There were no gardens or bands or amusements worth speaking
+of, and it was nearly a day's journey to come into Lahore for a dance.
+People were grateful for small things to interest them.
+
+About the beginning of May, and just before the final exodus of
+Hill-goers, when the weather was very hot and there were not more than
+twenty people in the Station, Saumarez gave a moonlight riding-picnic at
+an old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the river. It was a "Noah's
+Ark" picnic; and there was to be the usual arrangement of quarter-mile
+intervals between each couple, on account of the dust. Six couples came
+altogether, including chaperons. Moonlight picnics are useful just at
+the very end of the season, before all the girls go away to the Hills.
+They lead to understandings, and should be encouraged by chaperones;
+especially those whose girls look sweetish in riding habits. I knew a
+case once. But that is another story. That picnic was called the "Great
+Pop Picnic," because every one knew Saumarez would propose then to the
+eldest Miss Copleigh; and, beside his affair, there was another which
+might possibly come to happiness. The social atmosphere was heavily
+charged and wanted clearing.
+
+We met at the parade-ground at ten: the night was fearfully hot. The
+horses sweated even at walking-pace, but anything was better than
+sitting still in our own dark houses. When we moved off under the full
+moon we were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez rode with the
+Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the procession, wondering
+with whom Saumarez would ride home. Every one was happy and contented;
+but we all felt that things were going to happen. We rode slowly: and
+it was nearly midnight before we reached the old tomb, facing the ruined
+tank, in the decayed gardens where we were going to eat and drink. I
+was late in coming up; and before I went into the garden, I saw that the
+horizon to the north carried a faint, dun-colored feather. But no one
+would have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment as
+this picnic--and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.
+
+We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out a banjo--which is a
+most sentimental instrument--and three or four of us sang. You must not
+laugh at this. Our amusements in out-of-the-way Stations are very few
+indeed. Then we talked in groups or together, lying under the trees,
+with the sun-baked roses dropping their petals on our feet, until supper
+was ready. It was a beautiful supper, as cold and as iced as you could
+wish; and we stayed long over it.
+
+I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter; but nobody
+seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind began
+lashing the orange-trees with a sound like the noise of the sea. Before
+we knew where we were, the dust-storm was on us, and everything was
+roaring, whirling darkness. The supper-table was blown bodily into the
+tank. We were afraid of staying anywhere near the old tomb for fear it
+might be blown down. So we felt our way to the orange-trees where the
+horses were picketed and waited for the storm to blow over. Then the
+little light that was left vanished, and you could not see your hand
+before your face. The air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed
+of the river, that filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and
+coated eyebrows and moustaches. It was one of the worst dust-storms of
+the year. We were all huddled together close to the trembling horses,
+with the thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting like
+water from a sluice, all ways at once. There was no danger, of course,
+unless the horses broke loose. I was standing with my head downward and
+my hands over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing each other. I could
+not see who was next me till the flashes came. Then I found that I was
+packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss Copleigh, with my own horse
+just in front of me. I recognized the eldest Miss Copleigh, because
+she had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger had not. All the
+electricity in the air had gone into my body and I was quivering and
+tingling from head to foot--exactly as a corn shoots and tingles before
+rain. It was a grand storm. The wind seemed to be picking up the earth
+and pitching it to leeward in great heaps; and the heat beat up from the
+ground like the heat of the Day of Judgment.
+
+The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard a
+despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly and
+softly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind: "O my
+God!" Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying:
+"Where is my horse? Get my horse. I want to go home. I WANT to go home.
+Take me home."
+
+I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened her;
+so I said there was no danger, but she must wait till the storm blew
+over. She answered: "It is not THAT! It is not THAT! I want to go home!
+O take me away from here!"
+
+I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her brush
+past me and go away. It was too dark to see where. Then the whole sky
+was split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end of the world
+were coming, and all the women shrieked.
+
+Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and heard
+Saumarez bellowing in my ear. Through the rattling of the trees and
+howling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once, but at last
+I heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one! What shall I do?"
+Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence to me. I was never a
+friend of his, nor am I now; but I fancy neither of us were ourselves
+just then. He was shaking as he stood with excitement, and I was feeling
+queer all over with the electricity. I could not think of anything to
+say except:--"More fool you for proposing in a dust-storm." But I did
+not see how that would improve the mistake.
+
+Then he shouted: "Where's Edith--Edith Copleigh?" Edith was the youngest
+sister. I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do you want with HER?"
+Would you believe it, for the next two minutes, he and I were shouting
+at each other like maniacs--he vowing that it was the youngest sister he
+had meant to propose to all along, and I telling him till my throat
+was hoarse that he must have made a mistake! I can't account for
+this except, again, by the fact that we were neither of us ourselves.
+Everything seemed to me like a bad dream--from the stamping of the
+horses in the darkness to Saumarez telling me the story of his loving
+Edith Copleigh since the first. He was still clawing my shoulder and
+begging me to tell him where Edith Copleigh was, when another lull came
+and brought light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the
+plain in front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon was low
+down, and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes about
+an hour before the real one. But the light was very faint, and the dun
+cloud roared like a bull. I wondered where Edith Copleigh had gone; and
+as I was wondering I saw three things together: First Maud Copleigh's
+face come smiling out of the darkness and move towards Saumarez, who was
+standing by me. I heard the girl whisper, "George," and slide her arm
+through the arm that was not clawing my shoulder, and I saw that look
+on her face which only comes once or twice in a lifetime-when a woman
+is perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-colored
+fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and is loved. At
+the same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard Maud Copleigh's voice,
+and fifty yards away from the clump of orange-trees I saw a brown
+holland habit getting upon a horse.
+
+It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quick
+to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to the
+habit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain. I'll
+fetch her back!" and I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a perfectly
+unnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order,
+and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe the happy look out of Maud
+Copleigh's face. All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wondered
+how he would do it.
+
+I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly on
+some pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she saw me,
+and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called back over her
+shoulder--"Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away!" two or three times;
+but my business was to catch her first, and argue later. The ride just
+fitted in with the rest of the evil dream. The ground was very bad, and
+now and again we rushed through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in
+the skirts of the flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing
+that brought up a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the
+half light and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain,
+flickered the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed for
+the Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the river
+through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. In
+cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country
+at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning
+crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils.
+I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the
+aftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove us
+downwind like pieces of paper.
+
+I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs and
+the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon through
+the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was
+literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the gray
+stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up dead lame. My brute was used
+up altogether. Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, plastered with dust,
+her helmet off, and crying bitterly. "Why can't you let me alone?" she
+said. "I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh, PLEASE let me go!"
+
+"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has
+something to say to you."
+
+It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh;
+and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I could
+not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told me. I thought he
+could do that better himself. All her pretence about being tired and
+wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked herself to and fro in the
+saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. I
+am not going to repeat what she said, because she was utterly unstrung.
+
+This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I, almost
+an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved her
+and she was to come back to hear him say so! I believe I made myself
+understood, for she gathered the gray together and made him hobble
+somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm went thundering
+down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out that
+she had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister
+and had wanted to go home and cry in peace, as an English girl should.
+She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and
+babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was
+perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the
+place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I,
+ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of this
+misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.
+
+When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that followed
+the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away. They
+were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all. His face was white
+and drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came forward to meet us,
+and, when he helped her down from her saddle, he kissed her before
+all the picnic. It was like a scene in a theatre, and the likeness was
+heightened by all the dust-white, ghostly-looking men and women under
+the orange-trees, clapping their hands, as if they were watching a
+play--at Saumarez's choice. I never knew anything so un-English in my
+life.
+
+Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would come
+out to look for us, and WOULD I be good enough to ride home with Maud
+Copleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.
+
+So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two; Saumarez
+walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse.
+
+The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt we
+were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women and that
+the "Great Pop Picnic" was a thing altogether apart and out of the
+world--never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and the
+tingle in the hot air.
+
+I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went in
+for a bath and some sleep.
+
+There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never be
+written.... unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.
+
+
+
+
+THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES.
+
+
+     Thus, for a season, they fought it fair--
+       She and his cousin May--
+     Tactful, talented, debonnaire,
+       Decorous foes were they;
+     But never can battle of man compare
+       With merciless feminine fray.
+
+                            Two and One.
+
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to
+prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.
+
+Pluffles was a subaltern in the "Unmentionables." He was callow, even
+for a subaltern. He was callow all over--like a canary that had not
+finished fledging itself. The worst of it was he had three times as much
+money as was good for him; Pluffles' Papa being a rich man and Pluffles
+being the only son. Pluffles' Mamma adored him. She was only a little
+less callow than Pluffles and she believed everything he said.
+
+Pluffles' weakness was not believing what people said. He preferred what
+he called "trusting to his own judgment." He had as much judgment as he
+had seat or hands; and this preference tumbled him into trouble once or
+twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever manufactured came about at
+Simla--some years ago, when he was four-and-twenty.
+
+He began by trusting to his own judgment, as usual, and the result
+was that, after a time, he was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver's
+'rickshaw wheels.
+
+There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless it was her dress.
+She was bad from her hair--which started life on a Brittany's girl's
+head--to her boot-heels, which were two and three-eighth inches high.
+She was not honestly mischievous like Mrs. Hauksbee; she was wicked in a
+business-like way.
+
+There was never any scandal--she had not generous impulses enough for
+that. She was the exception which proved the rule that Anglo-Indian
+ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at Home. She spent her
+life in proving that rule.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fervently. They heard far
+too much to clash; but the things they said of each other were
+startling--not to say original. Mrs. Hauksbee was honest--honest as her
+own front teeth--and, but for her love of mischief, would have been
+a woman's woman. There was no honesty about Mrs. Reiver; nothing but
+selfishness. And at the beginning of the season, poor little Pluffles
+fell a prey to her. She laid herself out to that end, and who was
+Pluffles, to resist? He went on trusting to his judgment, and he got
+judged.
+
+I have seen Hayes argue with a tough horse--I have seen a tonga-driver
+coerce a stubborn pony--I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a
+hard keeper--but the breaking-in of Pluffles of the "Unmentionables" was
+beyond all these. He learned to fetch and carry like a dog, and to
+wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs. Reiver. He learned to keep
+appointments which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of keeping. He learned
+to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of giving
+him. He learned to shiver for an hour and a quarter on the windward side
+of Elysium while Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come for a
+ride. He learned to hunt for a 'rickshaw, in a light dress-suit under
+a pelting rain, and to walk by the side of that 'rickshaw when he had
+found it. He learned what it was to be spoken to like a coolie and
+ordered about like a cook. He learned all this and many other things
+besides. And he paid for his schooling.
+
+Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it was fine and impressive,
+that it gave him a status among men, and was altogether the thing to do.
+It was nobody's business to warn Pluffles that he was unwise. The pace
+that season was too good to inquire; and meddling with another man's
+folly is always thankless work. Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered
+him back to his regiment when he heard how things were going. But
+Pluffles had got himself engaged to a girl in England the last time
+he went home; and if there was one thing more than another which the
+Colonel detested, it was a married subaltern. He chuckled when he heard
+of the education of Pluffles, and said it was "good training for
+the boy." But it was not good training in the least. It led him into
+spending money beyond his means, which were good: above that, the
+education spoilt an average boy and made it a tenth-rate man of an
+objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and his little bill at
+Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.
+
+Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game alone,
+knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for the sake of
+a girl she had never seen. Pluffles' fiancee was to come out, under the
+chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles.
+
+At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was time to
+interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to
+do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs. Hauksbee's
+experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain
+circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver's
+stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off
+that engagement for nothing at all--simply to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who,
+in return, would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long
+as she found it worth her while. She said she knew the signs of these
+things. If she did not, no one else could.
+
+Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the guns of the enemy;
+just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried away Bremmil under Mrs. Hauksbee's
+eyes.
+
+This particular engagement lasted seven weeks--we called it the Seven
+Weeks' War--and was fought out inch by inch on both sides. A detailed
+account would fill a book, and would be incomplete then. Any one who
+knows about these things can fit in the details for himself. It was
+a superb fight--there will never be another like it as long as Jakko
+stands--and Pluffles was the prize of victory. People said shameful
+things about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what she was playing
+for. Mrs. Reiver fought, partly because Pluffles was useful to her, but
+mainly because she hated Mrs. Hauksbee, and the matter was a trial of
+strength between them. No one knows what Pluffles thought. He had not
+many ideas at the best of times, and the few he possessed made him
+conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee said:--"The boy must be caught; and the only
+way of catching him is by treating him well."
+
+So she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long as
+the issue was doubtful. Little by little, Pluffles fell away from his
+old allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom he was made much of.
+He was never sent on out-post duty after 'rickshaws any more, nor was
+he given dances which never came off, nor were the drains on his
+purse continued. Mrs. Hauksbee held him on the snaffle; and after his
+treatment at Mrs. Reiver's hands, he appreciated the change.
+
+Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about himself, and made him
+talk about her own merits. Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won
+his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home,
+speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a "piece of boyish folly."
+This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon, and discoursing
+in what he considered a gay and fascinating style. Mrs. Hauksbee had
+seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and blossom, and decay into
+fat Captains and tubby Majors.
+
+At a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to that
+lady's character. Some men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles after
+the manner of a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years,
+instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke with a sort of throaty
+quaver in her voice which had a soothing effect, though what she said
+was anything but soothing. She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to
+say meanness, of Pluffles' conduct, and the smallness of his views. Then
+he stammered something about "trusting to his own judgment as a man of
+the world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next. It
+would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman; but
+in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only made
+him feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some superior kind of
+church. Little by little, very softly and pleasantly, she began taking
+the conceit out of Pluffles, as you take the ribs out of an umbrella
+before re-covering it. She told him what she thought of him and his
+judgment and his knowledge of the world; and how his performances had
+made him ridiculous to other people; and how it was his intention to make
+love to herself if she gave him the chance. Then she said that marriage
+would be the making of him; and drew a pretty little picture--all rose
+and opal--of the Mrs. Pluffles of the future going through life relying
+on the "judgment" and "knowledge of the world" of a husband who
+had nothing to reproach himself with. How she reconciled these
+two statements she alone knew. But they did not strike Pluffles as
+conflicting.
+
+Hers was a perfect little homily--much better than any clergyman could
+have given--and it ended with touching allusions to Pluffles' Mamma and
+Papa, and the wisdom of taking his bride Home.
+
+Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think over what she had said.
+Pluffles left, blowing his nose very hard and holding himself very
+straight. Mrs. Hauksbee laughed.
+
+What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter of the engagement only
+Mrs. Reiver knew, and she kept her own counsel to her death. She would
+have liked it spoiled as a compliment, I fancy.
+
+Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauksbee during the next few days.
+They were all to the same end, and they helped Pluffles in the path of
+Virtue.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her wing to the last. Therefore
+she discountenanced his going down to Bombay to get married. "Goodness
+only knows what might happen by the way!" she said. "Pluffles is cursed
+with the curse of Reuben, and India is no fit place for him!"
+
+In the end, the fiancee arrived with her aunt; and Pluffles, having
+reduced his affairs to some sort of order--here again Mrs. Hauksbee
+helped him--was married.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when both the "I wills" had been
+said, and went her way.
+
+Pluffies took her advice about going Home. He left the Service, and is
+now raising speckled cattle inside green painted fences somewhere at
+Home. I believe he does this very judiciously. He would have come to
+extreme grief out here.
+
+For these reasons if any one says anything more than usually nasty about
+Mrs. Hauksbee, tell him the story of the Rescue of Pluffles.
+
+
+
+
+CUPID'S ARROWS.
+
+
+     Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,
+     By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;
+     Log in the reh-grass, hidden and alone;
+     Bund where the earth-rat's mounds are strown:
+     Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals;
+     Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels,
+     Jump if you dare on a steed untried--
+     Safer it is to go wide--go wide!
+     Hark, from in front where the best men ride:--
+     "Pull to the off, boys!  Wide!  Go wide!"
+
+                                 The Peora Hunt.
+
+
+
+Once upon a time there lived at Simla a very pretty girl, the daughter
+of a poor but honest District and Sessions Judge. She was a good girl,
+but could not help knowing her power and using it. Her Mamma was very
+anxious about her daughter's future, as all good Mammas should be.
+
+When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor and has the right of wearing
+open-work jam-tart jewels in gold and enamel on his clothes, and of
+going through a door before every one except a Member of Council, a
+Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is worth marrying. At least, that
+is what ladies say. There was a Commissioner in Simla, in those days,
+who was, and wore, and did, all I have said. He was a plain man--an ugly
+man--the ugliest man in Asia, with two exceptions. His was a face to
+dream about and try to carve on a pipe-head afterwards. His name was
+Saggott--Barr-Saggott--Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow.
+Departmentally, he was one of the best men the Government of India
+owned. Socially, he was like a blandishing gorilla.
+
+When he turned his attentions to Miss Beighton, I believe that Mrs.
+Beighton wept with delight at the reward Providence had sent her in her
+old age.
+
+Mr. Beighton held his tongue. He was an easy-going man.
+
+Now a Commissioner is very rich. His pay is beyond the dreams of
+avarice--is so enormous that he can afford to save and scrape in a way
+that would almost discredit a Member of Council. Most Commissioners
+are mean; but Barr-Saggott was an exception. He entertained royally; he
+horsed himself well; he gave dances; he was a power in the land; and he
+behaved as such.
+
+Consider that everything I am writing of took place in an almost
+pre-historic era in the history of British India. Some folk may remember
+the years before lawn-tennis was born when we all played croquet. There
+were seasons before that, if you will believe me, when even croquet
+had not been invented, and archery--which was revived in England in
+1844--was as great a pest as lawn-tennis is now. People talked learnedly
+about "holding" and "loosing," "steles," "reflexed bows," "56-pound
+bows," "backed" or "self-yew bows," as we talk about "rallies,"
+"volleys," "smashes," "returns," and "16-ounce rackets."
+
+Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies' distance--60 yards, that
+is--and was acknowledged the best lady archer in Simla. Men called her
+"Diana of Tara-Devi."
+
+Barr-Saggott paid her great attention; and, as I have said, the heart of
+her mother was uplifted in consequence. Kitty Beighton took matters more
+calmly. It was pleasant to be singled out by a Commissioner with letters
+after his name, and to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feelings.
+But there was no denying the fact that Barr-Saggott was phenomenally
+ugly; and all his attempts to adorn himself only made him more
+grotesque. He was not christened "The Langur"--which means gray ape--for
+nothing. It was pleasant, Kitty thought, to have him at her feet, but
+it was better to escape from him and ride with the graceless Cubbon--the
+man in a Dragoon Regiment at Umballa--the boy with a handsome face, and
+no prospects. Kitty liked Cubbon more than a little. He never pretended
+for a moment the he was anything less than head over heels in love with
+her; for he was an honest boy. So Kitty fled, now and again, from the
+stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the company of young Cubbon, and
+was scolded by her Mamma in consequence. "But, Mother," she said, "Mr.
+Saggot is such--such a--is so FEARFULLY ugly, you know!"
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Beighton, piously, "we cannot be other than an
+all-ruling Providence has made us. Besides, you will take precedence of
+your own Mother, you know! Think of that and be reasonable."
+
+Then Kitty put up her little chin and said irreverent things about
+precedence, and Commissioners, and matrimony. Mr. Beighton rubbed the
+top of his head; for he was an easy-going man.
+
+Late in the season, when he judged that the time was ripe, Barr-Saggott
+developed a plan which did great credit to his administrative powers.
+He arranged an archery tournament for ladies, with a most sumptuous
+diamond-studded bracelet as prize. He drew up his terms skilfully,
+and every one saw that the bracelet was a gift to Miss Beighton; the
+acceptance carrying with it the hand and the heart of Commissioner
+Barr-Saggott. The terms were a St. Leonard's Round--thirty-six shots at
+sixty yards--under the rules of the Simla Toxophilite Society.
+
+All Simla was invited. There were beautifully arranged tea-tables under
+the deodars at Annandale, where the Grand Stand is now; and, alone in
+its glory, winking in the sun, sat the diamond bracelet in a blue velvet
+case. Miss Beighton was anxious--almost too anxious to compete. On the
+appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down to Annandale to witness the
+Judgment of Paris turned upside down. Kitty rode with young Cubbon, and
+it was easy to see that the boy was troubled in his mind. He must be
+held innocent of everything that followed. Kitty was pale and nervous,
+and looked long at the bracelet. Barr-Saggott was gorgeously dressed,
+even more nervous than Kitty, and more hideous than ever.
+
+Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as befitted the mother of a
+potential Commissioneress, and the shooting began; all the world
+standing in a semicircle as the ladies came out one after the other.
+
+Nothing is so tedious as an archery competition. They shot, and they
+shot, and they kept on shooting, till the sun left the valley, and
+little breezes got up in the deodars, and people waited for Miss
+Beighton to shoot and win. Cubbon was at one horn of the semicircle
+round the shooters, and Barr-Saggott at the other. Miss Beighton was
+last on the list. The scoring had been weak, and the bracelet, PLUS
+Commissioner Barr-Saggott, was hers to a certainty.
+
+The Commissioner strung her bow with his own sacred hands. She stepped
+forward, looked at the bracelet, and her first arrow went true to a
+hair--full into the heart of the "gold"--counting nine points.
+
+Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and his Devil prompted
+Barr-Saggott to smile. Now horses used to shy when Barr-Saggott smiled.
+Kitty saw that smile. She looked to her left-front, gave an almost
+imperceptible nod to Cubbon, and went on shooting.
+
+I wish I could describe the scene that followed. It was out of the
+ordinary and most improper. Miss Kitty fitted her arrows with immense
+deliberation, so that every one might see what she was doing. She was
+a perfect shot; and her 46-pound bow suited her to a nicety. She pinned
+the wooden legs of the target with great care four successive times. She
+pinned the wooden top of the target once, and all the ladies looked at
+each other. Then she began some fancy shooting at the white, which,
+if you hit it, counts exactly one point. She put five arrows into the
+white. It was wonderful archery; but, seeing that her business was to
+make "golds" and win the bracelet, Barr-Saggott turned a delicate green
+like young water-grass. Next, she shot over the target twice, then wide
+to the left twice--always with the same deliberation--while a chilly
+hush fell over the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her handkerchief.
+Then Kitty shot at the ground in front of the target, and split several
+arrows. Then she made a red--or seven points--just to show what she
+could do if she liked, and finished up her amazing performance with some
+more fancy shooting at the target-supports. Here is her score as it was
+picked off:--
+
+               Gold.  Red.  Blue.  Black.  White.  Total Hits.   Total
+ Score
+ Miss Beighton   1     1      0      0       5          7          21
+
+
+Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven into
+his legs instead of the target's, and the deep stillness was broken by
+a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of
+triumph: "Then I'VE won!"
+
+Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence of
+the people. No training could help her through such a disappointment.
+Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place,
+while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed snapping
+the bracelet on the snubby girl's raw, red wrist. It was an awkward
+scene--most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty
+to the mercy of her Mamma.
+
+But Cubbon took her away instead, and--the rest isn't worth printing.
+
+
+
+
+HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.
+
+
+     Then a pile of heads be laid--
+       Thirty thousand heaped on high--
+     All to please the Kafir maid,
+       Where the Oxus ripples by.
+         Grimly spake Atulla Khan:--
+       "Love hath made this thing a Man."
+
+                          Oatta's Story.
+
+
+If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past
+Trades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your
+respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line where the last
+drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would be
+easier to talk to a new made Duchess on the spur of the moment than
+to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or
+hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in
+their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish
+pride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes the Black
+in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and
+strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this
+people--understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the
+man who imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and
+then we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime,
+any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or
+inference.
+
+Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children
+who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.
+The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It
+never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own
+affairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important
+things in the world to Miss Vezzis. Very few mistresses admit this sort
+of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as black as a boot, and to our standard of
+taste, hideously ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes;
+and when she lost her temper with the children, she abused them in the
+language of the Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese,
+and part Native. She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she
+preferred being called "Miss Vezzis."
+
+Every Sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see her
+Mamma, who lived, for the most part, on an old cane chair in a greasy
+tussur-silk dressing-gown and a big rabbit-warren of a house full of
+Vezzises, Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gansalveses, and a floating
+population of loafers; besides fragments of the day's bazar, garlic,
+stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings
+for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah
+puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns. Miss
+Vezzis drew twenty rupees a month for acting as nurse, and she
+squabbled weekly with her Mamma as to the percentage to be given towards
+housekeeping. When the quarrel was over, Michele D'Cruze used to shamble
+across the low mud wall of the compound and make love to Miss Vezzis
+after the fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged about with much
+ceremony. Michele was a poor, sickly weed and very black; but he had his
+pride. He would not be seen smoking a huqa for anything; and he looked
+down on natives as only a man with seven-eighths native blood in his
+veins can. The Vezzis Family had their pride too. They traced their
+descent from a mythical plate-layer who had worked on the Sone Bridge
+when railways were new in India, and they valued their English origin.
+Michele was a Telegraph Signaller on Rs. 35 a month. The fact that he
+was in Government employ made Mrs. Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings of
+his ancestors.
+
+There was a compromising legend--Dom Anna the tailor brought it from
+Poonani--that a black Jew of Cochin had once married into the D'Cruze
+family; while it was an open secret that an uncle of Mrs. D'Cruze was at
+that very time doing menial work, connected with cooking, for a Club in
+Southern India! He sent Mrs D'Cruze seven rupees eight annas a month;
+but she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all the same.
+
+However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis brought herself
+to overlook these blemishes and gave her consent to the marriage of her
+daughter with Michele, on condition that Michele should have at least
+fifty rupees a month to start married life upon. This wonderful prudence
+must have been a lingering touch of the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshire
+blood; for across the Borderline people take a pride in marrying when
+they please--not when they can.
+
+Having regard to his departmental prospects, Miss Vezzis might as well
+have asked Michele to go away and come back with the Moon in his pocket.
+But Michele was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and that helped him to
+endure. He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one Sunday, and after Mass,
+walking home through the hot stale dust with her hand in his, he swore
+by several Saints, whose names would not interest you, never to forget
+Miss Vezzis; and she swore by her Honor and the Saints--the oath runs
+rather curiously; "In nomine Sanctissimae--" (whatever the name of the
+she-Saint is) and so forth, ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss
+on the left cheek, and a kiss on the mouth--never to forget Michele.
+
+Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis dropped tears
+upon the window-sash of the "Intermediate" compartment as he left the
+Station.
+
+If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see a long line
+skirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras. Michele was ordered to
+Tibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this line, to send messages
+on from Berhampur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and his
+chances of getting fifty rupees a month out of office hours. He had the
+noise of the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali Babu for company; nothing more.
+He sent foolish letters, with crosses tucked inside the flaps of the
+envelopes, to Miss Vezzis.
+
+When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his chance came.
+
+Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of Our
+Authority are always before a native he is as incapable as a child of
+understanding what authority means, or where is the danger of disobeying
+it. Tibasu was a forgotten little place with a few Orissa Mohamedans
+in it. These, hearing nothing of the Collector-Sahib for some time,
+and heartily despising the Hindu Sub-Judge, arranged to start a little
+Mohurrum riot of their own. But the Hindus turned out and broke their
+heads; when, finding lawlessness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans
+together raised an aimless sort of Donnybrook just to see how far they
+could go. They looted each other's shops, and paid off private grudges
+in the regular way. It was a nasty little riot, but not worth putting in
+the newspapers.
+
+Michele was working in his office when he heard the sound that a man
+never forgets all his life--the "ah-yah" of an angry crowd. [When that
+sound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick, droning _ut_, the
+man who hears it had better go away if he is alone.] The Native Police
+Inspector ran in and told Michele that the town was in an uproar and
+coming to wreck the Telegraph Office. The Babu put on his cap and
+quietly dropped out of the window; while the Police Inspector, afraid,
+but obeying the old race-instinct which recognizes a drop of White blood
+as far as it can be diluted, said:--"What orders does the Sahib give?"
+
+The "Sahib" decided Michele. Though horribly frightened, he felt that,
+for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial uncle in
+his pedigree, was the only representative of English authority in the
+place. Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees, and took the
+situation on himself. There were seven native policemen in Tibasu, and
+four crazy smooth-bore muskets among them. All the men were gray with
+fear, but not beyond leading. Michele dropped the key of the telegraph
+instrument, and went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob. As
+the shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and fired;
+the men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.
+
+The whole crowd--curs to the backbone--yelled and ran; leaving one man
+dead, and another dying in the road. Michele was sweating with fear, but
+he kept his weakness under, and went down into the town, past the house
+where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The streets were empty.
+Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for the mob had been taken at
+the right time.
+
+Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message to
+Chicacola asking for help. Before an answer came, he received a
+deputation of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge said
+his actions generally were "unconstitutional," and trying to bully him.
+But the heart of Michele D'Cruze was big and white in his breast,
+because of his love for Miss Vezzis, the nurse-girl, and because he had
+tasted for the first time Responsibility and Success. Those two make
+an intoxicating drink, and have ruined more men than ever has Whiskey.
+Michele answered that the Sub-Judge might say what he pleased, but,
+until the Assistant Collector came, the Telegraph Signaller was the
+Government of India in Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be held
+accountable for further rioting. Then they bowed their heads and said:
+"Show mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back in great fear; each
+accusing the other of having begun the rioting.
+
+Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,
+Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the Assistant
+Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence of
+this young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more and more
+into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended, with the strain
+on the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears, bred by sorrow that
+he had killed a man, shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he had
+felt through the night, and childish anger that his tongue could not
+do justice to his great deeds. It was the White drop in Michele's veins
+dying out, though he did not know it.
+
+But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schooled those men
+of Tibasu, and had conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellent
+official turned green, he found time to draught an official letter
+describing the conduct of Michele. Which letter filtered through the
+Proper Channels, and ended in the transfer of Michele up-country once
+more, on the Imperial salary of sixty-six rupees a month.
+
+So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and ancientry; and
+now there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the verandahs of
+the Central Telegraph Office.
+
+But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves were to be his
+reward Michele could never, never repeat what he did at Tibasu for the
+sake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl.
+
+Which proves that, when a man does good work out of all proportion to
+his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the
+virtue.
+
+The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.
+
+
+
+
+WATCHES OF THE NIGHT.
+
+
+   What is in the Brahmin's books that is in the Brahmin's heart.
+   Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world.
+
+                                                   Hindu Proverb.
+
+
+This began in a practical joke; but it has gone far enough now, and is
+getting serious.
+
+Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain
+leather guard.
+
+The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard, the lip-strap of
+a curb-chain. Lip-straps make the best watch guards. They are strong
+and short. Between a lip-strap and an ordinary leather guard there is no
+great difference; between one Waterbury watch and another there is none
+at all. Every one in the station knew the Colonel's lip-strap. He was
+not a horsey man, but he liked people to believe he had been on once;
+and he wove fantastic stories of the hunting-bridle to which this
+particular lip-strap had belonged. Otherwise he was painfully religious.
+
+Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the Club--both late for their
+engagements, and both in a hurry. That was Kismet. The two watches
+were on a shelf below the looking-glass--guards hanging down. That was
+carelessness. Platte changed first, snatched a watch, looked in the
+glass, settled his tie, and ran. Forty seconds later, the Colonel did
+exactly the same thing; each man taking the other's watch.
+
+You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply suspicious.
+They seem--for purely religious purposes, of course--to know more about
+iniquity than the Unregenerate. Perhaps they were specially bad before
+they became converted! At any rate, in the imputation of things evil,
+and in putting the worst construction on things innocent, a certain type
+of good people may be trusted to surpass all others. The Colonel and
+his Wife were of that type. But the Colonel's Wife was the worst. She
+manufactured the Station scandal, and--TALKED TO HER AYAH! Nothing
+more need be said. The Colonel's Wife broke up the Laplace's home. The
+Colonel's Wife stopped the Ferris-Haughtrey engagement. The Colonel's
+Wife induced young Buxton to keep his wife down in the Plains through
+the first year of the marriage. Whereby little Mrs. Buxton died, and
+the baby with her. These things will be remembered against the Colonel's
+Wife so long as there is a regiment in the country.
+
+But to come back to the Colonel and Platte. They went their several
+ways from the dressing-room. The Colonel dined with two Chaplains, while
+Platte went to a bachelor-party, and whist to follow.
+
+Mark how things happen! If Platte's sais had put the new saddle-pad on
+the mare, the butts of the territs would not have worked through the
+worn leather, and the old pad into the mare's withers, when she was
+coming home at two o'clock in the morning. She would not have reared,
+bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and sent Platte flying over
+an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept lawn; and this tale would
+never have been written. But the mare did all these things, and while
+Platte was rolling over and over on the turf, like a shot rabbit, the
+watch and guard flew from his waistcoat--as an Infantry Major's sword
+hops out of the scabbard when they are firing a feu de joie--and rolled
+and rolled in the moonlight, till it stopped under a window.
+
+Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, put the cart straight,
+and went home.
+
+Mark again how Kismet works! This would not happen once in a hundred
+years. Towards the end of his dinner with the two Chaplains, the Colonel
+let out his waistcoat and leaned over the table to look at some Mission
+Reports. The bar of the watch-guard worked through the buttonhole, and
+the watch--Platte's watch--slid quietly on to the carpet. Where the
+bearer found it next morning and kept it.
+
+Then the Colonel went home to the wife of his bosom; but the driver of
+the carriage was drunk and lost his way. So the Colonel returned at an
+unseemly hour and his excuses were not accepted. If the Colonel's Wife
+had been an ordinary "vessel of wrath appointed for destruction," she
+would have known that when a man stays away on purpose, his excuse
+is always sound and original. The very baldness of the Colonel's
+explanation proved its truth.
+
+See once more the workings of Kismet! The Colonel's watch which came
+with Platte hurriedly on to Mrs. Larkyn's lawn, chose to stop just under
+Mrs. Larkyn's window, where she saw it early in the morning, recognized
+it, and picked it up. She had heard the crash of Platte's cart at two
+o'clock that morning, and his voice calling the mare names. She knew
+Platte and liked him. That day she showed him the watch and heard his
+story. He put his head on one side, winked and said:--"How disgusting!
+Shocking old man! with his religious training, too! I should send the
+watch to the Colonel's Wife and ask for explanations."
+
+Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces--whom she had known
+when Laplace and his wife believed in each other--and answered:--"I will
+send it. I think it will do her good. But remember, we must NEVER tell
+her the truth."
+
+Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel's possession, and
+thought that the return of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a soothing
+note from Mrs. Larkyn, would merely create a small trouble for a few
+minutes. Mrs. Larkyn knew better. She knew that any poison dropped would
+find good holding-ground in the heart of the Colonel's Wife.
+
+The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on the Colonel's
+calling-hours, were sent over to the Colonel's Wife, who wept in her own
+room and took counsel with herself.
+
+If there was one woman under Heaven whom the Colonel's Wife hated with
+holy fervor, it was Mrs. Larkyn. Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous lady,
+and called the Colonel's Wife "old cat." The Colonel's Wife said that
+somebody in Revelations was remarkably like Mrs. Larkyn. She mentioned
+other Scripture people as well. From the Old Testament. [But the
+Colonel's Wife was the only person who cared or dared to say anything
+against Mrs. Larkyn. Every one else accepted her as an amusing, honest
+little body.] Wherefore, to believe that her husband had been shedding
+watches under that "Thing's" window at ungodly hours, coupled with the
+fact of his late arrival on the previous night, was.....
+
+At this point she rose up and sought her husband. He denied everything
+except the ownership of the watch. She besought him, for his Soul's
+sake, to speak the truth. He denied afresh, with two bad words. Then a
+stony silence held the Colonel's Wife, while a man could draw his breath
+five times.
+
+The speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours. It was made up
+of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age and sunken cheeks;
+deep mistrust born of the text that says even little babies' hearts
+are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of Mrs. Larkyn, and the
+tenets of the creed of the Colonel's Wife's upbringing.
+
+Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped Waterbury, ticking away
+in the palm of her shaking, withered hand. At that hour, I think, the
+Colonel's Wife realized a little of the restless suspicions she had
+injected into old Laplace's mind, a little of poor Miss Haughtrey's
+misery, and some of the canker that ate into Buxton's heart as he
+watched his wife dying before his eyes. The Colonel stammered and tried
+to explain. Then he remembered that his watch had disappeared; and the
+mystery grew greater. The Colonel's Wife talked and prayed by turns
+till she was tired, and went away to devise means for "chastening the
+stubborn heart of her husband." Which translated, means, in our slang,
+"tail-twisting."
+
+You see, being deeply impressed with the doctrine of Original Sin, she
+could not believe in the face of appearances. She knew too much, and
+jumped to the wildest conclusions.
+
+But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as she had spoilt the life
+of the Laplaces. She had lost her faith in the Colonel, and--here the
+creed-suspicion came in--he might, she argued, have erred many times,
+before a merciful Providence, at the hands of so unworthy an instrument
+as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt. He was a bad, wicked,
+gray-haired profligate. This may sound too sudden a revulsion for a
+long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable fact that, if a man or woman
+makes a practice of, and takes a delight in, believing and spreading
+evil of people indifferent to him or her, he or she will end in
+believing evil of folk very near and dear. You may think, also, that
+the mere incident of the watch was too small and trivial to raise this
+misunderstanding. It is another aged fact that, in life as well as
+racing, all the worst accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down
+fences. In the same way, you sometimes see a woman who would have made a
+Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces
+over all the mean worry of housekeeping. But that is another story.
+
+Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it
+insisted so strongly on the villainy of men. Remembering what she had
+done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-farthing
+attempts she made to hide it from the Station. But the Station knew and
+laughed heartlessly; for they had heard the story of the watch, with
+much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. Larkyn's lips.
+
+Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel had
+not cleared himself:--"This thing has gone far enough. I move we tell
+the Colonel's Wife how it happened." Mrs. Larkyn shut her lips and shook
+her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must bear her punishment
+as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous woman, in whom none
+would have suspected deep hate. So Platte took no action, and came to
+believe gradually, from the Colonel's silence, that the Colonel must
+have "run off the line" somewhere that night, and, therefore, preferred
+to stand sentence on the lesser count of rambling into other people's
+compounds out of calling hours. Platte forgot about the watch business
+after a while, and moved down-country with his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn
+went home when her husband's tour of Indian service expired. She never
+forgot.
+
+But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too far.
+The mistrust and the tragedy of it--which we outsiders cannot see and
+do not believe in--are killing the Colonel's Wife, and are making the
+Colonel wretched. If either of them read this story, they can depend
+upon its being a fairly true account of the case, and can "kiss and make
+friends."
+
+Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watching an Engineer being
+shelled by his own Battery. Now this shows that poets should not write
+about what they do not understand. Any one could have told him that
+Sappers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of the Service.
+But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute Gunner for Sapper, the
+moral comes just the same.
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER MAN.
+
+
+     When the earth was sick and the skies were gray,
+       And the woods were rotted with rain,
+     The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
+       To visit his love again.
+
+                                       Old Ballad.
+
+
+Far back in the "seventies," before they had built any Public Offices at
+Simla, and the broad road round Jakko lived in a pigeon-hole in the P.
+W. D. hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey marry Colonel Schriederling.
+He could not have been MUCH more than thirty-five years her senior; and,
+as he lived on two hundred rupees a month and had money of his own,
+he was well off. He belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold
+weather from lung complaints. In the hot weather he dangled on the brink
+of heat-apoplexy; but it never quite killed him.
+
+Understand, I do not blame Schriederling. He was a good husband
+according to his lights, and his temper only failed him when he was
+being nursed. Which was some seventeen days in each month. He was almost
+generous to his wife about money matters, and that, for him, was a
+concession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not happy. They married her
+when she was this side of twenty and had given all her poor little heart
+to another man. I have forgotten his name, but we will call him
+the Other Man. He had no money and no prospects. He was not even
+good-looking; and I think he was in the Commissariat or Transport. But,
+in spite of all these things, she loved him very madly; and there was
+some sort of an engagement between the two when Schreiderling appeared
+and told Mrs. Gaurey that he wished to marry her daughter. Then the
+other engagement was broken off--washed away by Mrs. Gaurey's tears,
+for that lady governed her house by weeping over disobedience to her
+authority and the lack of reverence she received in her old age. The
+daughter did not take after her mother. She never cried. Not even at the
+wedding.
+
+The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was transferred to as bad a
+station as he could find. Perhaps the climate consoled him. He suffered
+from intermittent fever, and that may have distracted him from his other
+trouble. He was weak about the heart also. Both ways. One of the valves
+was affected, and the fever made it worse. This showed itself later on.
+
+Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took to being ill. She
+did not pine away like people in story books, but she seemed to pick
+up every form of illness that went about a station, from simple fever
+upwards. She was never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of times;
+and the illness made her ugly. Schreiderling said so. He prided himself
+on speaking his mind.
+
+When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and went
+back to the lairs of his bachelordom. She used to trot up and down Simla
+Mall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat well on the back
+of her head, and a shocking bad saddle under her. Schreiderling's
+generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle would do for
+a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling. She never was asked to dance,
+because she did not dance well; and she was so dull and uninteresting,
+that her box very seldom had any cards in it. Schreiderling said that
+if he had known that she was going to be such a scare-crow after her
+marriage, he would never have married her. He always prided himself on
+speaking his mind, did Schreiderling!
+
+He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment. Then she
+revived a little, but she never recovered her looks. I found out at the
+Club that the Other Man is coming up sick--very sick--on an off chance
+of recovery. The fever and the heart-valves had nearly killed him. She
+knew that, too, and she knew--what I had no interest in knowing--when
+he was coming up. I suppose he wrote to tell her. They had not seen each
+other since a month before the wedding. And here comes the unpleasant
+part of the story.
+
+A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one evening.
+Mrs. Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the Mall all the
+afternoon in the rain. Coming up along the Cart-road, a tonga passed me,
+and my pony, tired with standing so long, set off at a canter. Just by
+the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs. Schreiderling, dripping from head
+to foot, was waiting for the tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga was
+no affair of mine; and just then she began to shriek. I went back at
+once and saw, under the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling kneeling
+in the wet road by the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaming
+hideously. Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.
+
+Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on the
+awning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and moustache, was the
+Other Man--dead. The sixty-mile up-hill jolt had been too much for his
+valve, I suppose. The tonga-driver said:--"The Sahib died two stages out
+of Solon. Therefore, I tied him with a rope, lest he should fall out
+by the way, and so came to Simla. Will the Sahib give me bukshish? IT,"
+pointing to the Other Man, "should have given one rupee."
+
+The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he enjoyed the joke of
+his arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, in the mud, began to groan. There
+was no one except us four in the office and it was raining heavily. The
+first thing was to take Mrs. Schreiderling home, and the second was to
+prevent her name from being mixed up with the affair. The tonga-driver
+received five rupees to find a bazar 'rickshaw for Mrs. Schreiderling.
+He was to tell the tonga Babu afterwards of the Other Man, and the Babu
+was to make such arrangements as seemed best.
+
+Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed out of the rain, and for
+three-quarters of an hour we two waited for the 'rickshaw. The Other
+Man was left exactly as he had arrived. Mrs. Schreiderling would do
+everything but cry, which might have helped her. She tried to scream as
+soon as her senses came back, and then she began praying for the Other
+Man's soul. Had she not been as honest as the day, she would have prayed
+for her own soul too. I waited to hear her do this, but she did not.
+Then I tried to get some of the mud off her habit. Lastly, the 'rickshaw
+came, and I got her away--partly by force. It was a terrible business
+from beginning to end; but most of all when the 'rickshaw had to squeeze
+between the wall and the tonga, and she saw by the lamp-light that thin,
+yellow hand grasping the awning-stanchion.
+
+She was taken home just as every one was going to a dance at Viceregal
+Lodge--"Peterhoff" it was then--and the doctor found that she had fallen
+from her horse, that I had picked her up at the back of Jakko, and
+really deserved great credit for the prompt manner in which I had
+secured medical aid. She did not die--men of Schreiderling's stamp marry
+women who don't die easily. They live and grow ugly.
+
+She never told of her one meeting, since her marriage, with the Other
+Man; and, when the chill and cough following the exposure of that
+evening, allowed her abroad, she never by word or sign alluded to having
+met me by the Tonga Office. Perhaps she never knew.
+
+She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shocking bad saddle,
+looking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner every
+minute. Two years afterward, she went Home, and died--at Bournemouth, I
+think.
+
+Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about "my
+poor dear wife." He always set great store on speaking his mind, did
+Schreiderling!
+
+
+
+
+CONSEQUENCES.
+
+
+     Rosicrucian subtleties
+     In the Orient had rise;
+     Ye may find their teachers still
+     Under Jacatala's Hill.
+     Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus,
+     Read what Flood the Seeker tells us
+     Of the Dominant that runs
+     Through the cycles of the Suns--
+     Read my story last and see
+     Luna at her apogee.
+
+
+There are yearly appointments, and two-yearly appointments, and
+five-yearly appointments at Simla, and there are, or used to be,
+permanent appointments, whereon you stayed up for the term of your
+natural life and secured red cheeks and a nice income. Of course, you
+could descend in the cold weather; for Simla is rather dull then.
+
+Tarrion came from goodness knows where--all away and away in some
+forsaken part of Central India, where they call Pachmari a "Sanitarium,"
+and drive behind trotting bullocks, I believe. He belonged to a
+regiment; but what he really wanted to do was to escape from his
+regiment and live in Simla forever and ever. He had no preference for
+anything in particular, beyond a good horse and a nice partner. He
+thought he could do everything well; which is a beautiful belief when
+you hold it with all your heart. He was clever in many ways, and good to
+look at, and always made people round him comfortable--even in Central
+India.
+
+So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever and amusing, he
+gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive everything
+but stupidity. Once he did her great service by changing the date on an
+invitation-card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished to attend,
+but couldn't because she had quarrelled with the A.-D.-C., who took
+care, being a mean man, to invite her to a small dance on the 6th
+instead of the big Ball of the 26th. It was a very clever piece of
+forgery; and when Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C. her invitation-card,
+and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his vendettas, he really
+thought he had made a mistake; and--which was wise--realized that it
+was no use to fight with Mrs. Hauksbee. She was grateful to Tarrion and
+asked what she could do for him. He said simply: "I'm a Freelance up
+here on leave, and on the lookout for what I can loot. I haven't a
+square inch of interest in all Simla. My name isn't known to any man
+with an appointment in his gift, and I want an appointment--a good,
+sound, pukka one. I believe you can do anything you turn yourself to do.
+Will you help me?" Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed
+the last of her riding-whip through her lips, as was her custom when
+thinking. Then her eyes sparkled, and she said:--"I will;" and she shook
+hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this great woman,
+took no further thought of the business at all. Except to wonder what
+sort of an appointment he would win.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the Heads of
+Departments and Members of Council she knew, and the more she thought
+the more she laughed, because her heart was in the game and it amused
+her. Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of the appointments.
+There are some beautiful appointments in the Civil List. Eventually, she
+decided that, though Tarrion was too good for the Political Department,
+she had better begin by trying to get him in there. What were her own
+plans to this end, does not matter in the least, for Luck or Fate played
+into her hands, and she had nothing to do but to watch the course of
+events and take the credit of them.
+
+All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through the "Diplomatic
+Secrecy" craze. It wears off in time; but they all catch it in the
+beginning, because they are new to the country. The particular Viceroy
+who was suffering from the complaint just then--this was a long time
+ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came from Canada, or Lord Ripon from the
+bosom of the English Church--had it very badly; and the result was that
+men who were new to keeping official secrets went about looking unhappy;
+and the Viceroy plumed himself on the way in which he had instilled
+notions of reticence into his Staff.
+
+Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom of committing
+what they do to printed papers. These papers deal with all sorts of
+things--from the payment of Rs. 200 to a "secret service" native, up to
+rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, and rather
+brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them to put their houses
+in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or filling offenders with
+pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of that kind. Of course, these
+things could never be made public, because Native Princes never err
+officially, and their States are, officially, as well administered as
+Our territories. Also, the private allowances to various queer people
+are not exactly matters to put into newspapers, though they give quaint
+reading sometimes. When the Supreme Government is at Simla, these papers
+are prepared there, and go round to the people who ought to see them in
+office-boxes or by post. The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy
+quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent
+despotism like Ours should never allow even little things, such as
+appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper time. He
+was always remarkable for his principles.
+
+There was a very important batch of papers in preparation at that time.
+It had to travel from one end of Simla to the other by hand. It was not
+put into an official envelope, but a large, square, pale-pink one; the
+matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper. It was addressed to "The
+Head Clerk, etc., etc." Now, between "The Head Clerk, etc., etc.,"
+and "Mrs. Hauksbee" and a flourish, is no very great difference if the
+address be written in a very bad hand, as this was. The chaprassi who
+took the envelope was not more of an idiot than most chaprassis. He
+merely forgot where this most unofficial cover was to be delivered, and
+so asked the first Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding
+down to Annandale in a great hurry. The Englishman hardly looked, said:
+"Hauksbee Sahib ki Mem," and went on. So did the chaprasss, because that
+letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his work over. There
+was no book to sign; he thrust the letter into Mrs. Hauksbee's bearer's
+hands and went off to smoke with a friend. Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting
+some cut-out pattern things in flimsy paper from a friend. As soon
+as she got the big square packet, therefore, she said, "Oh, the
+DEAR creature!" and tore it open with a paper-knife, and all the MS.
+enclosures tumbled out on the floor.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said the batch was rather
+important. That is quite enough for you to know. It referred to some
+correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a native chief and
+two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the first
+glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian Government, stripped
+of its casings, and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, impresses even
+the most stupid man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was
+a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid hold of a
+lightning-flash by the tail, and did not quite know what to do with it.
+There were remarks and initials at the side of the papers; and some
+of the remarks were rather more severe than the papers. The initials
+belonged to men who are all dead or gone now; but they were great in
+their day. Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought calmly as she read. Then
+the value of her trove struck her, and she cast about for the best
+method of using it. Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read through all
+the papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had come by
+them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the greatest woman on earth. Which I
+believe was true, or nearly so.
+
+"The honest course is always the best," said Tarrion after an hour and a
+half of study and conversation. "All things considered, the Intelligence
+Branch is about my form. Either that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay
+siege to the High Gods in their Temples."
+
+He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head of a
+strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest man that
+the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an appointment at
+Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence of this amused the Strong
+Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the moment, he listened to the
+proposals of the audacious Tarrion. "You have, I presume, some special
+qualifications, besides the gift of self-assertion, for the claims you
+put forwards?" said the Strong Man. "That, Sir," said Tarrion, "is for
+you to judge." Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of
+the more important notes in the papers--slowly and one by one as a
+man drops chlorodyne into a glass. When he had reached the peremptory
+order--and it WAS a peremptory order--the Strong Man was troubled.
+
+Tarrion wound up:--"And I fancy that special knowledge of this kind is
+at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign Office, as
+the fact of being the nephew of a distinguished officer's wife." That hit
+the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had
+been by black favor, and he knew it. "I'll see what I can do for you,"
+said the Strong Man. "Many thanks," said Tarrion. Then he left, and the
+Strong Man departed to see how the appointment was to be blocked.
+
+    .   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much
+telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying
+only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it
+was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained,
+and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special
+information would be worth translating. So they translated him. They
+must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was
+due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including
+the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for
+yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do
+not know about things Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in,
+and you will say it is impossible.
+
+What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was:--"So, this
+is the boy who 'rushed' the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir,
+that is not done TWICE." So he must have known something.
+
+What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--"If Mrs.
+Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be
+Viceroy of India in twenty years."
+
+What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears
+in his eyes, was first:--"I told you so!" and next, to herself:--"What
+fools men are!"
+
+
+
+
+THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.
+
+
+     Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.
+     But, once in a way, there will come a day
+     When the colt must be taught to feel
+     The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
+       and the sting of the rowelled steel.
+
+                                    Life's Handicap.
+
+
+This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud of
+it. Making a Tract is a Feat.
+
+Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--least
+of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's throats.
+The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGoggin
+was the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever--brilliantly
+clever--but his cleverness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping to
+the study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by a
+man called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a Professor
+Clifford. [You will find these books in the Library.] They deal with
+people's insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs.
+There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should have
+smacked him. They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with
+a rarefied religion over and above his work. It was not much of a
+creed. It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God and
+no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the good of
+Humanity.
+
+One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful than
+giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said;
+but I suspect he had misread his primers.
+
+I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, where
+there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all shut in
+by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higher
+than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything.
+But in this country, where you really see humanity--raw, brown, naked
+humanity--with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the
+used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away,
+and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long
+enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the
+head of affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant,
+the Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the
+Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the
+Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress
+be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for her to be
+responsible to--the entire system of Our administration must be wrong.
+Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They are
+stalled up a good deal and get intellectually "beany." When you take a
+gross, "beany" horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit
+till you can't see the horns. But the bit is there just the same. Men do
+not get "beany" in India. The climate and the work are against playing
+bricks with words.
+
+If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endings
+in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers on
+both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came
+out in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no
+souls too, and to help him to eliminate his Creator. As a good many men
+told him, HE undoubtedly had no soul, because he was so young, but it
+did not follow that his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether
+there was another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
+this. "But that is not the point--that is not the point!" Aurelian used
+to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to
+any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the
+"Blastoderm"--he said he came from a family of that name somewhere, in
+the pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter, strove to choke him
+dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an
+offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on
+the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,
+for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if
+he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the
+Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--all
+head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in
+McGoggin's soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's.
+His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of
+devastating the Club with "isms."
+
+He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
+trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too
+responsible and left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride an
+old horse in a halter; but never a colt. McGoggin took more trouble
+over his cases than any of the men of his year. He may have fancied that
+thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee cases--both sides perjured to the
+gullet--advanced the cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much,
+and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away
+on his ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
+that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee
+in June without suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually "beany"
+and proud of himself and his powers, and he would take no hint. He
+worked nine hours a day steadily.
+
+"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
+over-engined for your beam." McGoggin was a little chap.
+
+One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
+embellish a Tract.
+
+It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in the
+dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds
+would let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away, there was a
+faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river.
+One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, and said,
+naturally enough:--"Thank God!"
+
+Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure you
+it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
+of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a
+Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"
+
+"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and throw
+me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments." The Blastoderm
+reached out to the table, took up one paper, and jumped as if something
+had stung him. Then he handed the paper over.
+
+"As I was saying," he went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
+perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"
+
+"Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser."
+
+The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
+kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains. We
+were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and was
+fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--
+
+"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red
+oak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone."
+
+"Blastoderm's drunk," said one man. But the Blastoderm was not drunk. He
+looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with his hands
+in the half light as the clouds closed overhead. Then--with a scream:--
+
+"What is it?--Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"
+
+But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and--just as the lightning shot
+two tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the rain fell
+in quivering sheets--the Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing and
+champing like a hard-held horse, and his eyes were full of terror.
+
+The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard the story. "It's
+aphasia," he said. "Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash would come."
+We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to his quarters,
+and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to make him sleep.
+
+Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like all
+the arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only once
+before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a case.
+I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this sudden
+dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm himself might have said,
+due to "perfectly natural causes."
+
+"He'll have to take leave after this," said the Doctor. "He won't be
+fit for work for another three months. No; it isn't insanity or anything
+like it. It's only complete loss of control over the speech and memory.
+I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though."
+
+Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again. The first
+question he asked was: "What was it?" The Doctor enlightened him. "But I
+can't understand it!" said the Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane; but I can't
+be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can I?"
+
+"Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it," said
+the Doctor.
+
+"But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm. "It was my OWN
+mind and memory."
+
+"I can't help it," said the Doctor; "there are a good many things you
+can't understand; and, by the time you have put in my length of service,
+you'll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in this world."
+
+The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could not understand it. He went
+into the Hills in fear and trembling, wondering whether he would be
+permitted to reach the end of any sentence he began.
+
+This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. The legitimate
+explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to satisfy
+him. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milky
+lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly afraid.
+
+So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come across
+Aurelian McGoggin laying down the law on things Human--he doesn't seem
+to know as much as he used to about things Divine--put your forefinger
+on your lip for a moment, and see what happens.
+
+Don't blame me if he throws a glass at your head!
+
+
+
+
+A GERM DESTROYER.
+
+
+     Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
+       When great Jove nods;
+     But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
+     In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.
+
+
+As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State
+in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you. This tale
+is a justifiable exception.
+
+Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and
+each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary,
+who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks
+after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.
+
+There was a Viceroy once, who brought out with him a turbulent Private
+Secretary--a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for
+work. This Secretary was called Wonder--John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy
+possessed no name--nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds
+of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the
+electro-plated figurehead of a golden administration, and he watched
+in a dreamy, amused way Wonder's attempts to draw matters which were
+entirely outside his province into his own hands. "When we are all
+cherubims together," said His Excellency once, "my dear, good friend
+Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers
+or stealing Peter's keys. THEN I shall report him."
+
+But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's officiousness,
+other people said unpleasant things. Maybe the Members of Council began
+it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was "too much Wonder,
+and too little Viceroy," in that regime. Wonder was always quoting "His
+Excellency." It was "His Excellency this," "His Excellency that," "In
+the opinion of His Excellency," and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he
+did not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his
+"dear, good Wonder," they might be induced to leave the "Immemorial
+East" in peace.
+
+"No wise man has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail
+levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not
+believe in the latter."
+
+I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance
+Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--"Lie low."
+
+That season, came up to Simla one of these crazy people with only a
+single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they are not
+nice to talk to. This man's name was Mellish, and he had lived for
+fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He
+held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a
+muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake.
+The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by "Mellish's Own
+Invincible Fumigatory"--a heavy violet-black powder--"the result of
+fifteen years' scientific investigation, Sir!"
+
+Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially
+about "conspiracies of monopolists;" they beat upon the table with
+their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their
+persons.
+
+Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by the
+Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital
+Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had
+something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and what Mellish
+wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy--"Steward of our
+Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir." So Mellish went up to Simla, with
+eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy
+and to show him the merits of the invention.
+
+But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance
+to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee
+man, so great that his daughters never "married." They "contracted
+alliances." He himself was not paid. He "received emoluments," and his
+journeys about the country were "tours of observation." His business was
+to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench
+in a pond--and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old
+ways and gasp:--"This is Enlightenment and progress. Isn't it fine!"
+Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of
+getting rid of him.
+
+Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy." That was one of
+his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was
+"one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual
+comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes," and that, in all
+probability, he had "suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the
+public institutions in Madras." Which proves that His Excellency, though
+dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.
+
+Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe and Mellish's was E. S. Mellish, and
+they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after
+the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final
+"e;" that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran:
+"Dear Mr. Mellish.--Can you set aside your other engagements and lunch
+with us at two to-morrow? His Excellency has an hour at your disposal
+then," should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept
+with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered off to
+Peterhoff, a big paper-bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail
+pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of
+it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his
+"conference," that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin--no A.-D.
+C.'s, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he
+feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe
+of Madras.
+
+But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him.
+Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and
+talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him
+to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk
+"shop."
+
+As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning
+with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years' "scientific
+labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the excellence of
+his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes
+and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original
+animal." Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he
+stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy
+knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into
+the big silver ash-tray.
+
+"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish. "Y' Excellency shall judge
+for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honor."
+
+He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to
+smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-colored
+smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and
+sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your
+windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out
+blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see,
+nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.
+
+"Nitrate of strontia," he shouted; "baryta, bone-meal, etcetera!
+Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live--not a
+germ, Y' Excellency!"
+
+But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs,
+while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the
+Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came in, and mace-bearers came in,
+and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the smoke was drifting
+through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the
+verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could
+enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that
+unspeakable powder had burned itself out.
+
+Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C., rushed through the rolling
+clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with
+laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was
+shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.
+
+"Glorious! Glorious!" sobbed his Excellency. "Not a germ, as you justly
+observe, could exist! I can swear it. A magnificent success!"
+
+Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught the real
+Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the
+scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would
+presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he
+felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical "Ring."
+
+    .    .    .    .     .    .    .    .    .
+
+Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble,
+and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with the powder"
+went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their
+remarks.
+
+But His Excellency told the tale once too often--for Wonder. As he meant
+to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the
+Viceroy.
+
+"And I really thought for a moment," wound up His Excellency, "that my
+dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne!"
+
+Every one laughed; but there was a delicate subtinkle in the Viceroy's
+tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way;
+and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming
+"character" for use at Home among big people.
+
+"My fault entirely," said His Excellency, in after seasons, with
+a twinkling in his eye. "My inconsistency must always have been
+distasteful to such a masterly man."
+
+
+
+
+KIDNAPPED.
+
+
+     There is a tide in the affairs of men,
+     Which, taken any way you please, is bad,
+     And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
+     No decent soul would think of visiting.
+     You cannot stop the tide; but now and then,
+     You may arrest some rash adventurer
+     Who--h'm--will hardly thank you for your pains.
+
+                                Vibart's Moralities.
+
+
+
+We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant-marriage is very
+shocking and the consequences are sometimes peculiar; but, nevertheless,
+the Hindu notion--which is the Continental notion--which is the
+aboriginal notion--of arranging marriages irrespective of the personal
+inclinations of the married, is sound. Think for a minute, and you will
+see that it must be so; unless, of course, you believe in "affinities."
+In which case you had better not read this tale. How can a man who has
+never married; who cannot be trusted to pick up at sight a moderately
+sound horse; whose head is hot and upset with visions of domestic
+felicity, go about the choosing of a wife? He cannot see straight or
+think straight if he tries; and the same disadvantages exist in the
+case of a girl's fancies. But when mature, married and discreet people
+arrange a match between a boy and a girl, they do it sensibly, with a
+view to the future, and the young couple live happily ever afterwards.
+As everybody knows.
+
+Properly speaking, Government should establish a Matrimonial Department,
+efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief
+Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a
+love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the courtyard.
+All marriages should be made through the Department, which might be
+subordinate to the Educational Department, under the same penalty as
+that attaching to the transfer of land without a stamped document. But
+Government won't take suggestions. It pretends that it is too busy.
+However, I will put my notion on record, and explain the example that
+illustrates the theory.
+
+Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer in
+his own Department--a man with a career before him and, possibly, a K.
+C. G. E. at the end of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because
+he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times. There
+are to-day only eleven men in India who possess this secret; and they
+have all, with one exception, attained great honor and enormous incomes.
+
+This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his years
+by far. Which always carries its own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a
+Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for
+to-morrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared.
+But when Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet,
+hard-working, young Peythroppe--fell, there was a flutter through five
+Departments.
+
+The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss
+Castries--d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the
+d' for administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
+energetically that he worked. Understand clearly that there was not a
+breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--not a shadow of a
+breath. She was good and very lovely--possessed what innocent people at
+home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-black hair growing low
+down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big violet eyes
+under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a Gazette
+Extraordinary when a big man dies. But--but--but--. Well, she was a VERY
+sweet girl and very pious, but for many reasons she was "impossible."
+Quite so. All good Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
+absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx
+at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
+Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several other
+Castries--Honorary Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries,
+her Mamma, and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes
+ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections
+again.
+
+It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a
+Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a Deputy
+Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance with the
+Castries. It would have weighted his after-career less--even under a
+Government which never forgets and NEVER forgives. Everybody saw this
+but Peythroppe. He was going to marry Miss Castries, he was--being of
+age and drawing a good income--and woe betide the house that would not
+afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with the deference
+due to her husband's rank. That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any
+remonstrance drove him frantic.
+
+These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men. There was a case
+once--but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the
+mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the
+Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to
+put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument
+had not the least effect on him. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
+and the business was his own business. He would thank you to keep your
+advice to yourself. With a man in this condition, mere words only fix
+him in his purpose. Of course he cannot see that marriage out here does
+not concern the individual but the Government he serves.
+
+Do you remember Mrs. Hauksbee--the most wonderful woman in India? She
+saved Pluffles from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment in the
+Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil.
+She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her brain
+struck out the plan that saved him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent,
+the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and
+the triple intuition of the Woman. Never--no, never--as long as a tonga
+buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back of
+Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended
+the consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe's case; and she stood up
+with the lash of her riding-whip between her lips and spake.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the Gazette
+of India came in. Peythroppe found to his surprise that he had been
+gazetted a month's leave. Don't ask me how this was managed. I believe
+firmly that if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole Great Indian
+Administration would stand on its head.
+
+The Three Men had also a month's leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette
+down and said bad words. Then there came from the compound the soft
+"pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't
+bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.
+
+After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain. Peythroppe
+disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long foot-rest chair in the
+house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a bedstead departed
+from one of the bedrooms.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with
+the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.
+
+At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension
+of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
+The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came; and the
+D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and mocked Honorary
+Lieutenant Castries as one who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs.
+Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe
+did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three Men returned
+from Rajputana. Peythroppe was in hard, tough condition, rather white,
+and more self-contained than ever.
+
+One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, cause by the kick of a gun.
+Twelve-bores kick rather curiously.
+
+Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his
+perfidious son-in-law to be. He said things--vulgar and "impossible"
+things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below the "Honorary," and I
+fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his peace till the
+end; when he spoke briefly. Honorary Lieutenant Castries asked for a
+"peg" before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise.
+
+Miss Castries was a very good girl. She said that she would have no
+breach of promise suits. She said that, if she was not a lady, she
+was refined enough to know that ladies kept their broken hearts to
+themselves; and, as she ruled her parents, nothing happened. Later on,
+she married a most respectable and gentlemanly person. He travelled for
+an enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should
+be.
+
+So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, and did much good work, and
+was honored by all who knew him. One of these days he will marry; but he
+will marry a sweet pink-and-white maiden, on the Government House List,
+with a little money and some influential connections, as every wise man
+should. And he will never, all his life, tell her what happened during
+the seven weeks of his shooting-tour in Rajputana.
+
+But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
+cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might have
+been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial Department, under the
+control of the Director General of Education, but corresponding direct
+with the Viceroy.
+
+
+
+
+THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY.
+
+
+   "'I've forgotten the countersign,' sez 'e.
+   'Oh!  You 'aye, 'ave you?' sez I.
+   'But I'm the Colonel,' sez 'e.
+   'Oh!  You are, are you?' sez I.  'Colonel nor no Colonel, you waits
+   'ere till I'm relieved, an' the Sarjint reports on your ugly old
+   mug.  Coop!' sez I.
+       .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+   An' s'help me soul, 'twas the Colonel after all!  But I was a
+   recruity then."
+
+                     The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris.
+
+
+IF there was one thing on which Golightly prided himself more than
+another, it was looking like "an Officer and a gentleman." He said it
+was for the honor of the Service that he attired himself so elaborately;
+but those who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity. There
+was no harm about Golightly--not an ounce. He recognized a horse when
+he saw one, and could do more than fill a cantle. He played a very fair
+game at billiards, and was a sound man at the whist-table. Everyone
+liked him; and nobody ever dreamed of seeing him handcuffed on a station
+platform as a deserter. But this sad thing happened.
+
+He was going down from Dalhousie, at the end of his leave--riding down.
+He had cut his leave as fine as he dared, and wanted to come down in a
+hurry.
+
+It was fairly warm at Dalhousie, and knowing what to expect below, he
+descended in a new khaki suit--tight fitting--of a delicate olive-green;
+a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a snowy white solah helmet. He
+prided himself on looking neat even when he was riding post. He did
+look neat, and he was so deeply concerned about his appearance before he
+started that he quite forgot to take anything but some small change with
+him. He left all his notes at the hotel. His servants had gone down the
+road before him, to be ready in waiting at Pathankote with a change of
+gear. That was what he called travelling in "light marching-order." He
+was proud of his faculty of organization--what we call bundobust.
+
+Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain--not a mere
+hill-shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled
+on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads
+turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly's
+khaki gaiters. But he kept on steadily and tried to think how pleasant
+the coolth was.
+
+His next pony was rather a brute at starting, and Golightly's hands
+being slippery with the rain, contrived to get rid of Golightly at a
+corner. He chased the animal, caught it, and went ahead briskly. The
+spill had not improved his clothes or his temper, and he had lost one
+spur. He kept the other one employed. By the time that stage was ended,
+the pony had had as much exercise as he wanted, and, in spite of the
+rain, Golightly was sweating freely. At the end of another miserable
+half-hour, Golightly found the world disappear before his eyes in clammy
+pulp. The rain had turned the pith of his huge and snowy solah-topee
+into an evil-smelling dough, and it had closed on his head like a
+half-opened mushroom. Also the green lining was beginning to run.
+
+Golightly did not say anything worth recording here. He tore off and
+squeezed up as much of the brim as was in his eyes and ploughed on. The
+back of the helmet was flapping on his neck and the sides stuck to
+his ears, but the leather band and green lining kept things roughly
+together, so that the hat did not actually melt away where it flapped.
+
+Presently, the pulp and the green stuff made a sort of slimy mildew
+which ran over Golightly in several directions--down his back and
+bosom for choice. The khaki color ran too--it was really shockingly bad
+dye--and sections of Golightly were brown, and patches were violet,
+and contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy red, and blotches were
+nearly white, according to the nature and peculiarities of the dye.
+When he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face and the green of the
+hat-lining and the purple stuff that had soaked through on to his neck
+from the tie became thoroughly mixed, the effect was amazing.
+
+Near Dhar the rain stopped and the evening sun came out and dried him up
+slightly. It fixed the colors, too. Three miles from Pathankote the last
+pony fell dead lame, and Golightly was forced to walk. He pushed on
+into Pathankote to find his servants. He did not know then that his
+khitmatgar had stopped by the roadside to get drunk, and would come on
+the next day saying that he had sprained his ankle. When he got into
+Pathankote, he couldn't find his servants, his boots were stiff and ropy
+with mud, and there were large quantities of dirt about his body. The
+blue tie had run as much as the khaki. So he took it off with the collar
+and threw it away. Then he said something about servants generally and
+tried to get a peg. He paid eight annas for the drink, and this revealed
+to him that he had only six annas more in his pocket--or in the world as
+he stood at that hour.
+
+He went to the Station-Master to negotiate for a first-class ticket to
+Khasa, where he was stationed. The booking-clerk said something to
+the Station-Master, the Station-Master said something to the Telegraph
+Clerk, and the three looked at him with curiosity. They asked him to
+wait for half-an-hour, while they telegraphed to Umritsar for
+authority. So he waited, and four constables came and grouped themselves
+picturesquely round him. Just as he was preparing to ask them to go
+away, the Station-Master said that he would give the Sahib a ticket
+to Umritsar, if the Sahib would kindly come inside the booking-office.
+Golightly stepped inside, and the next thing he knew was that a
+constable was attached to each of his legs and arms, while the
+Station-Master was trying to cram a mailbag over his head.
+
+There was a very fair scuffle all round the booking-office, and
+Golightly received a nasty cut over his eye through falling against
+a table. But the constables were too much for him, and they and the
+Station-Master handcuffed him securely. As soon as the mail-bag was
+slipped, he began expressing his opinions, and the head-constable
+said:--"Without doubt this is the soldier-Englishman we required. Listen
+to the abuse!" Then Golightly asked the Station-Master what the this
+and the that the proceedings meant. The Station-Master told him he was
+"Private John Binkle of the ---- Regiment, 5 ft. 9 in., fair hair,
+gray eyes, and a dissipated appearance, no marks on the body," who had
+deserted a fortnight ago. Golightly began explaining at great length;
+and the more he explained the less the Station-Master believed him. He
+said that no Lieutenant could look such a ruffian as did Golightly, and
+that his instructions were to send his capture under proper escort to
+Umritsar. Golightly was feeling very damp and uncomfortable, and the
+language he used was not fit for publication, even in an expurgated
+form. The four constables saw him safe to Umritsar in an "intermediate"
+compartment, and he spent the four-hour journey in abusing them as
+fluently as his knowledge of the vernaculars allowed.
+
+At Umritsar he was bundled out on the platform into the arms of a
+Corporal and two men of the ---- Regiment. Golightly drew himself up
+and tried to carry off matters jauntily. He did not feel too jaunty in
+handcuffs, with four constables behind him, and the blood from the
+cut on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek. The Corporal was not
+jocular either. Golightly got as far as--"This is a very absurd mistake,
+my men," when the Corporal told him to "stow his lip" and come along.
+Golightly did not want to come along. He desired to stop and explain.
+He explained very well indeed, until the Corporal cut in with:--"YOU
+a orficer! It's the like o' YOU as brings disgrace on the likes of US.
+Bloom-in' fine orficer you are! I know your regiment. The Rogue's
+March is the quickstep where you come from. You're a black shame to the
+Service."
+
+Golightly kept his temper, and began explaining all over again from the
+beginning. Then he was marched out of the rain into the refreshment-room
+and told not to make a qualified fool of himself. The men were going to
+run him up to Fort Govindghar. And "running up" is a performance almost
+as undignified as the Frog March.
+
+Golightly was nearly hysterical with rage and the chill and the mistake
+and the handcuffs and the headache that the cut on his forehead had
+given him. He really laid himself out to express what was in his mind.
+When he had quite finished and his throat was feeling dry, one of the
+men said:--"I've 'eard a few beggars in the click blind, stiff and crack
+on a bit; but I've never 'eard any one to touch this 'ere 'orficer.'"
+They were not angry with him. They rather admired him. They had some
+beer at the refreshment-room, and offered Golightly some too, because
+he had "swore won'erful." They asked him to tell them all about the
+adventures of Private John Binkle while he was loose on the countryside;
+and that made Golightly wilder than ever. If he had kept his wits about
+him he would have kept quiet until an officer came; but he attempted to
+run.
+
+Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your back hurts a great deal,
+and rotten, rain-soaked khaki tears easily when two men are jerking at
+your collar.
+
+Golightly rose from the floor feeling very sick and giddy, with his
+shirt ripped open all down his breast and nearly all down his back. He
+yielded to his luck, and at that point the down-train from Lahore came
+in carrying one of Golightly's Majors.
+
+This is the Major's evidence in full:--
+
+"There was the sound of a scuffle in the second-class refreshment-room,
+so I went in and saw the most villainous loafer that I ever set eyes on.
+His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and beer-stains. He wore
+a muddy-white dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it hung down in
+slips on his shoulders, which were a good deal scratched. He was half in
+and half out of a shirt as nearly in two pieces as it could be, and he
+was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it. As he had
+rucked the shirt all over his head, I couldn't at first see who he was,
+but I fancied that he was a man in the first stage of D. T. from the way
+he swore while he wrestled with his rags. When he turned round, and I
+had made allowance for a lump as big as a pork-pie over one eye, and
+some green war-paint on the face, and some violet stripes round the
+neck, I saw that it was Golightly. He was very glad to see me," said the
+Major, "and he hoped I would not tell the Mess about it. I didn't, but
+you can if you like, now that Golightly has gone Home."
+
+Golightly spent the greater part of that summer in trying to get the
+Corporal and the two soldiers tried by Court-Martial for arresting an
+"officer and a gentleman." They were, of course, very sorry for their
+error. But the tale leaked into the regimental canteen, and thence ran
+about the Province.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
+
+
+     A stone's throw out on either hand
+     From that well-ordered road we tread,
+       And all the world is wild and strange;
+     Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
+     Shall bear us company to-night,
+     For we have reached the Oldest Land
+       Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
+
+                  From the Dusk to the Dawn.
+
+
+The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two-storied, with four
+carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize
+it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the
+whitewash between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a
+man who says he gets his living by seal-cutting, live in the lower story
+with a troop of wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two upper
+rooms used to be occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black-and-tan
+terrier that was stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Janoo by
+a soldier. To-day, only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps
+on the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used
+to go to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, who sells
+curiosities near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a real mud
+roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son
+who secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger
+to a big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that God will make me a
+Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay his prophecy will come
+true. He is very, very old, with white hair and no teeth worth showing,
+and he has outlived his wits--outlived nearly everything except his
+fondness for his son at Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris,
+Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable
+profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the
+North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere
+near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He
+is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting
+pretends to be very poor. This lets you know as much as is necessary of
+the four principal tenants in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me,
+of course; but I am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain
+things. So I do not count.
+
+Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
+cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
+She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.
+
+Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo
+was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made
+capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in
+Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. And here the
+story begins.
+
+Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
+me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
+be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
+him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he
+might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted fearfully,
+to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
+evening. The ekka did not run quickly. It was full dark when we pulled
+up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the
+Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that, by reason of my condescension,
+it was absolutely certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor
+while my hair was yet black. Then we talked about the weather and the
+state of my health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the
+Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.
+
+Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
+there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared
+that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know
+anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something
+interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being
+discouraged by the Government it was highly commended. The greatest
+officials of the State practiced it themselves. (If the Financial
+Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is.) Then, to encourage him
+further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had not the least
+objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to seeing that
+it was clean jadoo--white magic, as distinguished from the unclean jadoo
+which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this
+was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks
+and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the
+cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in
+Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this
+news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he had told
+Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could be
+removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see
+how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo
+in the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything
+was done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the way
+Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and
+two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost two
+hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his
+son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.
+
+The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
+could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if
+some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while
+we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and
+Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was
+coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is
+a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was
+an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would
+go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear
+and old age. He kept walking up and down the room in the half light,
+repeating his son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if
+the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own
+landlord. Janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved
+bow-windows. The boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one tiny
+lamp. There was no chance of my being seen if I stayed still.
+
+Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase.
+That was the seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier
+barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out
+the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow
+from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal-cutter
+came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan.
+Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed to one of the beds with a
+shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a
+pale blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show
+Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between
+her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on
+the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.
+
+I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was
+stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
+wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle,
+and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was
+the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first
+place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only
+see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of
+a demon--a ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old
+ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He
+was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him,
+as if he had been thrown down pinioned. His head and neck were the only
+parts of him off the floor. They were nearly at right angles to the
+body, like the head of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the centre
+of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin,
+with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light.
+Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How
+he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine
+and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head
+seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl
+of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was breathing seventy
+to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes; and old Suddhoo,
+fingering at the dirt that had got into his white beard, was crying to
+himself. The horror of it was that the creeping, crawly thing made no
+sound--only crawled! And, remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while
+the terrier whined, and Azizun shuddered, and Janoo gasped, and Suddhoo
+cried.
+
+I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a
+thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself by his
+most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that
+unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as
+high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. Now, I
+knew how fire-spouting is done--I can do it myself--so I felt at ease.
+The business was a fraud. If he had only kept to that crawl without
+trying to raise the effect, goodness knows what I might not have
+thought. Both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the head
+dropped, chin down, on the floor with a thud; the whole body lying then
+like a corpse with its arms trussed. There was a pause of five full
+minutes after this, and the blue-green flame died down. Janoo stooped to
+settle one of her anklets, while Azizun turned her face to the wall and
+took the terrier in her arms. Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to
+Janoo's huqa, and she slid it across the floor with her foot. Directly
+above the body and on the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in
+stamped paper frames, of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked
+down on the performance, and, to my thinking, seemed to heighten the
+grotesqueness of it all.
+
+Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and
+rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach
+up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise
+a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the centre
+revived.
+
+I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
+shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
+shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling
+exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to speak.
+
+Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man,
+and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's
+voice.
+
+There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort
+of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a
+bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes
+before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me.
+I looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the
+hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing
+to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The
+whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that
+one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a
+piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head
+was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. It
+told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of
+the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. I always
+shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time
+of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were
+night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
+recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in
+the basin, were doubled.
+
+Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask for
+twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used
+when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of
+masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say "Asli
+nahin! Fareib!" scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so,
+the light in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard
+the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the
+lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. Suddhoo
+was wringing his hands and explaining to any one who cared to listen,
+that, if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it, he could not
+raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the
+corner; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss
+the probabilities of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up."
+
+I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but
+her argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always demanding
+gifts is no true magic," said she. "My mother told me that the
+only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. This
+seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything, or
+get anything done, because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for
+two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The
+seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food.
+A fool's jadoo has been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo
+many rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and
+mantras before. He never showed us anything like this till to-night.
+Azizun is a fool, and will be a pur dahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost
+his strength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many
+rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he
+is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the
+seal-cutter!"
+
+Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business?
+Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. The whole
+thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless."
+
+"Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofs these
+seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here
+to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, whose
+salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the
+seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his
+son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have
+to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below."
+
+Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation;
+while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun
+was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the
+charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under
+false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal
+Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform
+the Police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses
+flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this
+big India of ours. I cannot again take the law into my own hands, and
+speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo
+disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is
+bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard;
+and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather
+patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but
+Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose
+advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the
+money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter,
+and becomes daily more furious and sullen.
+
+She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something
+happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of
+cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And thus I
+shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.
+
+
+
+
+HIS WEDDED WIFE.
+
+
+     Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each
+     Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
+     That ask:--"Art thou the man?"  We hunted Cain,
+     Some centuries ago, across the world,
+     That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
+     To-day.
+
+                              Vibart's Moralities.
+
+
+Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or beetles,
+turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan is never to
+tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his
+buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of sappy English
+beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm that turned. For
+the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The
+Worm," although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair
+on his face, and with a waist like a girl's when he came out to the
+Second "Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways. The "Shikarris"
+are a high-caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well--play
+a banjo or ride more than a little, or sing, or act--to get on with
+them.
+
+The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of
+gate-posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time. He
+objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept
+very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four
+of these five things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and
+set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how subalterns are, by
+brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to be ferocious. It is
+good and wholesome, and does no one any harm, unless tempers are lost;
+and then there is trouble. There was a man once--but that is another
+story.
+
+The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore everything
+without winking. He was so good and so anxious to learn, and flushed
+so pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left to his own
+devices by every one except the Senior Subaltern, who continued to make
+life a burden to The Worm. The Senior Subaltern meant no harm; but his
+chaff was coarse, and he didn't quite understand where to stop. He had
+been waiting too long for his company; and that always sours a man. Also
+he was in love, which made him worse.
+
+One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who never
+existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to The
+Worm purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the Mess all
+about it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet, ladylike
+voice: "That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a month's pay to
+a month's pay when you get your step, that I work a sell on you that
+you'll remember for the rest of your days, and the Regiment after you
+when you're dead or broke." The Worm wasn't angry in the least, and the
+rest of the Mess shouted. Then the Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm
+from the boots upwards, and down again, and said, "Done, Baby." The Worm
+took the rest of the Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, and
+retired into a book with a sweet smile.
+
+Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The Worm,
+who began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on. I have
+said that the Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing is that
+a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the Colonel said
+awful things, and the Majors snorted, and married Captains looked
+unutterable wisdom, and the juniors scoffed, those two were engaged.
+
+The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company and his
+acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm. The girl
+was a pretty girl, and had money of her own. She does not come into this
+story at all.
+
+One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except The
+Worm, who had gone to his own room to write Home letters, were sitting
+on the platform outside the Mess House. The Band had finished playing,
+but no one wanted to go in. And the Captains' wives were there also.
+The folly of a man in love is unlimited. The Senior Subaltern had been
+holding forth on the merits of the girl he was engaged to, and the
+ladies were purring approval, while the men yawned, when there was a
+rustle of skirts in the dark, and a tired, faint voice lifted itself:
+
+"Where's my husband?"
+
+I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the
+"Shikarris;" but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had
+been shot. Three of them were married men. Perhaps they were afraid that
+their wives had come from Home unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had
+acted on the impulse of the moment. He explained this afterwards.
+
+Then the voice cried:--"Oh, Lionel!" Lionel was the Senior Subaltern's
+name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on
+the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior
+Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things
+were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small
+world of ours, one knows so little of the life of the next man--which,
+after all, is entirely his own concern--that one is not surprised when
+a crash comes. Anything might turn up any day for any one. Perhaps the
+Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that
+way occasionally. We didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains'
+wives were as anxious as we. If he HAD been trapped, he was to be
+excused; for the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes, and gray
+travelling dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full
+of tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a running
+sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as the Senior Subaltern stood up, she
+threw her arms round his neck, and called him "my darling," and said she
+could not bear waiting alone in England, and his letters were so short
+and cold, and she was his to the end of the world, and would he forgive
+her. This did not sound quite like a lady's way of speaking. It was too
+demonstrative.
+
+Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
+eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the
+Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
+
+Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir?" and the woman sobbed
+afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his
+neck, but he gasped out:--"It's a d----d lie! I never had a wife in my
+life!" "Don't swear," said the Colonel. "Come into the Mess. We must
+sift this clear somehow," and he sighed to himself, for he believed in
+his "Shikarris," did the Colonel.
+
+We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we
+saw how beautiful the woman was. She stood up in the middle of us all,
+sometimes choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then holding
+out her arms to the Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a
+tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern had married her when he
+was Home on leave eighteen months before; and she seemed to know all
+that we knew, and more too, of his people and his past life. He was
+white and ashy gray, trying now and again to break into the torrent
+of her words; and we, noting how lovely she was and what a criminal he
+looked, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind. We felt sorry for him,
+though.
+
+I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.
+Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced,
+into our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back; but their eyes were
+alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced
+the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel seemed five years older. One Major was
+shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath
+it. Another was chewing his moustache and smiling quietly as if he
+were witnessing a play. Full in the open space in the centre, by the
+whist-tables, the Senior Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I
+remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.
+I remember the look of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was
+rather like seeing a man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the
+woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.
+M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
+minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors
+said very politely:--"I presume that your marriage certificate would be
+more to the purpose?"
+
+That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern
+for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all the rest.
+Then she wept, and then she pulled a paper from her breast, saying
+imperially:--"Take that! And let my husband--my lawfully wedded
+husband--read it aloud--if he dare!"
+
+There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
+Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took the
+paper. We were wondering as we stared, whether there was anything
+against any one of us that might turn up later on. The Senior
+Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he
+broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the woman:--"You
+young blackguard!"
+
+But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
+written:--"This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
+debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern
+is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess
+attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in the lawful
+currency of the India Empire."
+
+Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt
+and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc.,
+on the bed. He came over as he was, and the "Shikarris" shouted till the
+Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun. I
+think we were all, except the Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little
+disappointed that the scandal had come to nothing. But that is human
+nature. There could be no two words about The Worm's acting. It leaned
+as near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can. When
+most of the Subalterns sat upon him with sofa-cushions to find out
+why he had not said that acting was his strong point, he answered very
+quietly:--"I don't think you ever asked me. I used to act at Home with
+my sisters." But no acting with girls could account for The Worm's
+display that night. Personally, I think it was in bad taste. Besides
+being dangerous. There is no sort of use in playing with fire, even for
+fun.
+
+The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic Club; and,
+when the Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did at once, The
+Worm sank the money in scenery and dresses. He was a good Worm; and
+the "Shikarris" are proud of him. The only drawback is that he has been
+christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern;" and as there are now two Mrs. Senior
+Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing to strangers.
+
+Later on, I will tell you of a case something like, this, but with all
+the jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
+
+
+     While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
+     While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
+     While horses are horses to train and to race,
+     Then women and wine take a second place
+             For me--for me--
+               While a short "ten-three"
+     Has a field to squander or fence to face!
+
+                                    Song of the G. R.
+
+
+There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than pulling
+his head off in the straight. Some men forget this. Understand clearly
+that all racing is rotten--as everything connected with losing money
+must be. Out here, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the
+merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty on paper only. Every one
+knows every one else far too well for business purposes. How on earth
+can you rack and harry and post a man for his losings, when you are fond
+of his wife, and live in the same Station with him? He says, "on the
+Monday following, I can't settle just yet." You say, "All right, old
+man," and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
+a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing is
+immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a man wants
+your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a subscription-list,
+instead of juggling about the country, with an Australian larrikin;
+a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a brace of chumars in
+gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with hogged manes, and a
+switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab because she has a kink in
+her flag. Racing leads to the shroff quicker than anything else. But
+if you have no conscience and no sentiments, and good hands, and some
+knowledge of pace, and ten years' experience of horses, and several
+thousand rupees a month, I believe that you can occasionally contrive to
+pay your shoeing-bills.
+
+Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g., 15.13.8--coarse, loose, mule-like
+ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the
+queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand,
+being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a
+head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
+for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if
+ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
+was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
+himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
+him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
+objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand
+this, and lost money in consequence. At last he was bought by a man who
+discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles only,
+would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still. This man
+had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West Australia--and
+he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing a jock can
+learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting still. When
+Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the country. No
+weight could stop him at his own distance; and the fame of Shackles
+spread from Ajmir in the South, to Chedputter in the North. There was no
+horse like Shackles, so long as he was allowed to do his work in his own
+way. But he was beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough
+to make angels weep.
+
+At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into
+the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds
+enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six
+feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding peculiarity of
+the course is that, if you stand at one particular place, about half a
+mile away, inside the course, and speak at an ordinary pitch, your voice
+just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining
+echo there. A man discovered this one morning by accident while out
+training with a friend. He marked the place to stand and speak from
+with a couple of bricks, and he kept his knowledge to himself. EVERY
+peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats
+play the mischief with the elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps
+to suit their own stables. This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a
+long, racking high mare with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of
+an airy wandering seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a
+delicate tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for
+short, Regula Baddun.
+
+Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his nerves
+had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne,
+where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who
+came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the
+Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts--logs of jarrak
+spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once
+in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the
+Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red
+Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck
+came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling,
+screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three
+were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story
+of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley
+on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done
+for!" and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had crushed
+the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell of men and
+horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-races and Australia
+together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that story by heart. Brunt never
+varied it in the telling. He had no education.
+
+Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his owner
+walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
+they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
+Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and humble
+the pride of his owner." The Districts rose against Shackles and sent
+up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do his mile in
+1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew how
+to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th; Bobolink, the pride of
+Peshawar; and many others.
+
+They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to smash
+Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund gave
+eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the course for all
+horses." Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the race with regard
+to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths,
+I don't mind." Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I throw in my mare to fret
+Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance, and she will then lie down
+and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting
+race." Now, this was a lie, for Regula had been in work for two months
+at Dehra, and her chances were good, always supposing that Shackles
+broke a blood-vessel--OR BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.
+
+The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand-rupee
+lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in the Pioneer
+said that "favoritism was divided." In plain English, the various
+contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the Handicappers
+had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary shouted himself hoarse
+through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and
+the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire.
+
+Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner cantered out
+on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks
+had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds at the lower end of
+the course and waited.
+
+The story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first
+mile, Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get
+round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the
+others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy,
+listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs behind, and knowing
+that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would draw one deep breath and
+go up the last half-mile like the "Flying Dutchman." As Shackles went
+short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, Brunt heard,
+above the noise of the wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the
+offside, saying:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!" In one stride, Brunt
+saw the whole seething smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him,
+started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror. The start brought the
+heels into Shackles' side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He
+couldn't stop dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty
+yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a
+shaking, terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
+race with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard
+a bad third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
+field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the two
+bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the stand. He
+had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
+
+It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all the
+men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner. He went
+down to interview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping with fright,
+where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the race never seemed to
+strike him. All he knew was that Whalley had "called" him, that the
+"call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two for it, he would never get
+up again. His nerve had gone altogether, and he only asked his master
+to give him a good thrashing, and let him go. He was fit for nothing, he
+said. He got his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock, white as chalk,
+with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. People said nasty things
+in the paddock; but Brunt never heeded. He changed into tweeds, took his
+stick and went down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering
+over and over again:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!" To the best of my
+knowledge and belief he spoke the truth.
+
+So now you know how the Broken-Link Handicap was run and won. Of course
+you don't believe it. You would credit anything about Russia's designs
+on India, or the recommendations of the Currency Commission; but a
+little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand!
+
+
+
+
+BEYOND THE PALE.
+
+
+  "Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed.  I went in search of
+  love and lost myself."
+
+                                                    Hindu Proverb.
+
+
+A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.
+Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, whatever
+trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--neither sudden,
+alien, nor unexpected.
+
+This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits
+of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.
+
+He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the
+second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never
+do so again.
+
+Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee, lies
+Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated
+window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on
+either side of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor
+Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. If
+Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man
+to-day, and little Biessa would have been able to knead her own bread.
+Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully
+where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue
+slime. She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the
+Gods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve of
+living alone.
+
+One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
+aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over
+a big heap of cattle food.
+
+Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
+from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and
+Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
+Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that
+verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:
+
+
+  Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
+      or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
+  If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
+      being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
+
+
+There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the
+grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
+
+
+  Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
+    Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
+  They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
+      to the North.
+  There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
+  Call to the bowman to make ready--
+
+
+The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
+wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
+so neatly.
+
+Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw a
+packet into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken
+glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
+cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a
+clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
+epistle.
+
+Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
+Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
+spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
+them out.
+
+A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
+when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
+Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower
+of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or "danger,"
+according to the other things with it. One cardamom means "jealousy;"
+but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its
+symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time,
+or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ran
+then:--"A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven o'clock." The pinch of
+bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves much
+to instinctive knowledge--that the bhusa referred to the big heap of
+cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the
+message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
+So the message ran then:--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of
+bhusa, desires you to come at eleven o'clock."
+
+Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knew
+that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the
+forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went,
+that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a boorka,
+which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in the City
+made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up "The Love
+Song of Har Dyal" at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har
+Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English
+you miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:--
+
+
+     Alone upon the housetops, to the North
+       I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
+     The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
+       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
+
+     Below my feet the still bazar is laid
+       Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
+     The camels and the captives of thy raid,
+       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
+
+     My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
+       And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
+     My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
+       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
+
+
+As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
+whispered:--"I am here."
+
+Bisesa was good to look upon.
+
+That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double
+life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a
+dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had
+detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the
+window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an
+active man might climb.
+
+In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or
+put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station;
+wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little
+Bisesa. At night, when all the City was still, came the walk under the
+evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quick
+turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead
+walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of
+the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that
+Durga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter. Who or what Durga Charan
+was, Trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was not discovered
+and knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, and
+Bisesa... But this comes later.
+
+Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird;
+and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had
+reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping
+attempts to pronounce his name--"Christopher." The first syllable was
+always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures
+with her rose-leaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then,
+kneeling before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do,
+if he were sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more than
+any one else in the world. Which was true.
+
+After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled
+Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You
+may take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed
+and discussed by a man's own race, but by some hundred and fifty natives
+as well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the
+Band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instant
+dreaming that this would affect his dearer out-of-the-way life. But the
+news flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till
+Bisesa's duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubled
+that she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's
+wife in consequence.
+
+A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She understood
+no gradations and spoke openly. Trejago laughed and Bisesa stamped her
+little feet--little feet, light as marigold flowers, that could lie in
+the palm of a man's one hand.
+
+Much that is written about "Oriental passion and impulsiveness" is
+exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true; and
+when an Englishman finds that little, it is quite as startling as any
+passion in his own proper life. Bisesa raged and stormed, and finally
+threatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once drop the alien
+Memsahib who had come between them. Trejago tried to explain, and
+to show her that she did not understand these things from a Western
+standpoint. Bisesa drew herself up, and said simply:
+
+"I do not. I know only this--it is not good that I should have made you
+dearer than my own heart to me, Sahib. You are an Englishman. I am only
+a black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint--"and the widow
+of a black man."
+
+Then she sobbed and said: "But on my soul and my Mother's soul, I love
+you. There shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to me."
+
+Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she seemed
+quite unreasonably disturbed. Nothing would satisfy her save that all
+relations between them should end. He was to go away at once. And he
+went. As he dropped out at the window, she kissed his forehead twice,
+and he walked away wondering.
+
+A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa.
+Trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough, went
+down to Amir Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hoping
+that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be answered. He
+was not disappointed.
+
+There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into Amir
+Nath's Gully, and struck the grating, which was drawn away as he
+knocked. From the black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the
+moonlight. Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps
+were nearly healed.
+
+Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one in
+the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife, sword or
+spear--thrust at Trejago in his boorka. The stroke missed his body, but
+cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly from
+the wound for the rest of his days.
+
+The grating went into its place. There was no sign whatever from inside
+the house--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and the
+blackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind.
+
+The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a
+madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the
+river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his boorka and went home
+bareheaded.
+
+What the tragedy was--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair,
+told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured
+to tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and what became of
+Bisesa--Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had
+happened, and the thought of what it must have been comes upon Trejago
+in the night now and again, and keeps him company till the morning.
+One special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies the
+front of Durga Charan's house. It may open on to a courtyard common to
+two or more houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of Jitha
+Megji's bustee. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa--poor little
+Bisesa--back again. He has lost her in the City, where each man's house
+is as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens
+into Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up.
+
+But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort
+of man.
+
+There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, caused
+by a riding-strain, in the right leg.
+
+
+
+
+IN ERROR.
+
+
+     They burnt a corpse upon the sand--
+         The light shone out afar;
+       It guided home the plunging boats
+         That beat from Zanzibar.
+       Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise.
+         Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!
+
+                             Salsette Boat-Song.
+
+
+There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more
+often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinks
+secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never seen to drink.
+
+This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it. Moriarty's
+case was that exception.
+
+He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put him quite
+by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk to and a
+great deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four years he
+was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and solitary
+drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and
+haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make him. You know the
+saying that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more than a
+year is never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty's
+queerness of manner and moody ways to the solitude, and said it showed
+how Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had built
+himself the plinth of a very good reputation in the bridge-dam-girder
+line. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking steps
+to undermine that reputation with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little
+nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution
+and a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like a
+sick camel in the district, as better men have done before him.
+
+Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the desert;
+and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant. That season, Mrs.
+Reiver--perhaps you will remember her--was in the height of her power,
+and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad that could be said
+has already been said about Mrs. Reiver, in another tale. Moriarty was
+heavily-built and handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to please
+his neighbors when he wasn't sunk in a brown study. He started a good
+deal at sudden noises or if spoken to without warning; and, when you
+watched him drinking his glass of water at dinner, you could see the
+hand shake a little. But all this was put down to nervousness, and the
+quiet, steady, "sip-sip-sip, fill and sip-sip-sip, again," that went
+on in his own room when he was by himself, was never known. Which was
+miraculous, seeing how everything in a man's private life is public
+property out here.
+
+Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver's set, because they were not
+his sort, but into the power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in front
+of her and made a goddess of her. This was due to his coming fresh out
+of the jungle to a big town. He could not scale things properly or see
+who was what.
+
+Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he said she was stately and
+dignified. Because she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly, he
+said she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver shy! Because she was unworthy
+of honor or reverence from any one, he reverenced her from a distance
+and dowered her with all the virtues in the Bible and most of those in
+Shakespeare.
+
+This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous when a pony cantered
+behind him, used to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing with
+pleasure when she threw a word or two his way. His admiration was
+strictly platonic: even other women saw and admitted this. He did not
+move out in Simla, so he heard nothing against his idol: which was
+satisfactory. Mrs. Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond seeing
+that he was added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with him
+now and then, just to show that he was her property, claimable as such.
+Moriarty must have done most of the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn't
+talk much to a man of his stamp; and the little she said could not have
+been profitable. What Moriarty believed in, as he had good reason to,
+was Mrs. Reiver's influence over him, and, in that belief, set himself
+seriously to try to do away with the vice that only he himself knew of.
+
+His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been peculiar,
+but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off from everything
+except water for a week. Then, on a rainy night, when no one had asked
+him out to dinner, and there was a big fire in his room, and everything
+comfortable, he would sit down and make a big night of it by adding
+little nip to little nip, planning big schemes of reformation meanwhile,
+until he threw himself on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered next
+morning.
+
+One night, the big crash came. He was troubled in his own mind over his
+attempts to make himself "worthy of the friendship" of Mrs. Reiver. The
+past ten days had been very bad ones, and the end of it all was that he
+received the arrears of two and three-quarter years of sipping in one
+attack of delirium tremens of the subdued kind; beginning with suicidal
+depression, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and ending with
+downright raving. As he sat in a chair in front of the fire, or walked
+up and down the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what
+poor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her
+and his own fall for the most part; though he ravelled some P. W. D.
+accounts into the same skein of thought. He talked, and talked, and
+talked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him.
+He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried to
+pull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his
+mind ran out of control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the
+story of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a
+child of all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of
+his heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one
+who was in the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-five
+next morning.
+
+From what he said, one gathered how immense an influence Mrs. Reiver
+held over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse. His
+whisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were very
+instructive as showing the errors of his estimates.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances were pitying him
+for the bad attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down, Moriarty
+swore a big oath to himself and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till
+the end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential way as an
+angel from heaven. Later on he took to riding--not hacking, but honest
+riding--which was good proof that he was improving, and you could slam
+doors behind him without his jumping to his feet with a gasp. That,
+again, was hopeful.
+
+How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning, nobody
+knows. He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a man who
+has drank heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner, but he
+never drank alone, and never let what he drank have the least hold on
+him.
+
+Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great trouble, and how the
+"influence of a pure honest woman, and an angel as well" had saved him.
+When the man--startled at anything good being laid to Mrs. Reiver's
+door--laughed, it cost him Moriarty's friendship. Moriarty, who is
+married now to a woman ten thousand times better than Mrs. Reiver--a
+woman who believes that there is no man on earth as good and clever as
+her husband--will go down to his grave vowing and protesting that Mrs.
+Reiver saved him from ruin in both worlds.
+
+That she knew anything of Moriarty's weakness nobody believed for
+a moment. That she would have cut him dead, thrown him over, and
+acquainted all her friends with her discovery, if she had known of it,
+nobody who knew her doubted for an instant.
+
+Moriarty thought her something she never was, and in that belief saved
+himself. Which was just as good as though she had been everything that
+he had imagined.
+
+But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have to the credit of
+Moriarty's salvation, when her day of reckoning comes?
+
+
+
+
+A BANK FRAUD.
+
+
+     He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
+       He purchased raiment and forebore to pay;
+     He struck a trusting junior with a horse,
+       And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way.
+     Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside
+       To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied.
+
+                                           The Mess Room.
+
+
+If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent this tale being told;
+but as he is in Hong-Kong and won't see it, the telling is safe. He was
+the man who worked the big fraud on the Sind and Sialkote Bank. He was
+manager of an up-country Branch, and a sound practical man with a large
+experience of native loan and insurance work. He could combine the
+frivolities of ordinary life with his work, and yet do well. Reggie
+Burke rode anything that would let him get up, danced as neatly as he
+rode, and was wanted for every sort of amusement in the Station.
+
+As he said himself, and as many men found out rather to their surprise,
+there were two Burkes, both very much at your service. "Reggie Burke,"
+between four and ten, ready for anything from a hot-weather gymkhana to
+a riding-picnic; and, between ten and four, "Mr. Reginald Burke, Manager
+of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank." You might play polo with him one
+afternoon and hear him express his opinions when a man crossed; and you
+might call on him next morning to raise a two-thousand rupee loan on a
+five hundred pound insurance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums. He
+would recognize you, but you would have some trouble in recognizing him.
+
+The Directors of the Bank--it had its headquarters in Calcutta and its
+General Manager's word carried weight with the Government--picked their
+men well. They had tested Reggie up to a fairly severe breaking-strain.
+They trusted him just as much as Directors ever trust Managers. You must
+see for yourself whether their trust was misplaced.
+
+Reggie's Branch was in a big Station, and worked with the usual
+staff--one Manager, one Accountant, both English, a Cashier, and a horde
+of native clerks; besides the Police patrol at nights outside. The
+bulk of its work, for it was in a thriving district, was hoondi and
+accommodation of all kinds. A fool has no grip of this sort of business;
+and a clever man who does not go about among his clients, and know
+more than a little of their affairs, is worse than a fool. Reggie was
+young-looking, clean-shaved, with a twinkle in his eye, and a head
+that nothing short of a gallon of the Gunners' Madeira could make any
+impression on.
+
+One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that the Directors had
+shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the Accountant
+line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley, Accountant, was a MOST
+curious animal--a long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshireman, full of the
+savage self-conceit that blossom's only in the best county in England.
+Arrogance was a mild word for the mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He
+had worked himself up, after seven years, to a Cashier's position in a
+Huddersfield Bank; and all his experience lay among the factories of the
+North. Perhaps he would have done better on the Bombay side, where they
+are happy with one-half per cent. profits, and money is cheap. He was
+useless for Upper India and a wheat Province, where a man wants a large
+head and a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory
+balance-sheet.
+
+He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the
+country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from
+Home work. Like most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity in his
+nature; and, somehow or other, had construed the ordinarily polite terms
+of his letter of engagement into a belief that the Directors had chosen
+him on account of his special and brilliant talents, and that they set
+great store by him. This notion grew and crystallized; thus adding to
+his natural North-country conceit. Further, he was delicate, suffered
+from some trouble in his chest, and was short in his temper.
+
+You will admit that Reggie had reason to call his new Accountant a
+Natural Curiosity. The two men failed to hit it off at all. Riley
+considered Reggie a wild, feather-headed idiot, given to Heaven only
+knew what dissipation in low places called "Messes," and totally unfit
+for the serious and solemn vocation of banking. He could never get
+over Reggie's look of youth and "you-be-damned" air; and he couldn't
+understand Reggie's friends--clean-built, careless men in the Army--who
+rode over to big Sunday breakfasts at the Bank, and told sultry stories
+till Riley got up and left the room. Riley was always showing Reggie
+how the business ought to be conducted, and Reggie had more than once to
+remind him that seven years' limited experience between Huddersfield and
+Beverly did not qualify a man to steer a big up-country business. Then
+Riley sulked and referred to himself as a pillar of the Bank and a
+cherished friend of the Directors, and Reggie tore his hair. If a man's
+English subordinates fail him in this country, he comes to a hard time
+indeed, for native help has strict limitations. In the winter Riley went
+sick for weeks at a time with his lung complaint, and this threw more
+work on Reggie. But he preferred it to the everlasting friction when
+Riley was well.
+
+One of the Travelling Inspectors of the Bank discovered these collapses
+and reported them to the Directors. Now Riley had been foisted on the
+Bank by an M. P., who wanted the support of Riley's father, who, again,
+was anxious to get his son out to a warmer climate because of those
+lungs. The M. P. had an interest in the Bank; but one of the Directors
+wanted to advance a nominee of his own; and, after Riley's father had
+died, he made the rest of the Board see that an Accountant who was sick
+for half the year, had better give place to a healthy man. If Riley had
+known the real story of his appointment, he might have behaved better;
+but knowing nothing, his stretches of sickness alternated with restless,
+persistent, meddling irritation of Reggie, and all the hundred ways in
+which conceit in a subordinate situation can find play. Reggie used to
+call him striking and hair-curling names behind his back as a relief to
+his own feelings; but he never abused him to his face, because he said:
+"Riley is such a frail beast that half of his loathsome conceit is due
+to pains in the chest."
+
+Late one April, Riley went very sick indeed. The doctor punched him
+and thumped him, and told him he would be better before long. Then the
+doctor went to Reggie and said:--"Do you know how sick your Accountant
+is?" "No!" said Reggie--"The worse the better, confound him! He's a
+clacking nuisance when he's well. I'll let you take away the Bank Safe
+if you can drug him silent for this hot-weather."
+
+But the doctor did not laugh--"Man, I'm not joking," he said. "I'll give
+him another three months in his bed and a week or so more to die in.
+On my honor and reputation that's all the grace he has in this world.
+Consumption has hold of him to the marrow."
+
+Reggie's face changed at once into the face of "Mr. Reginald Burke," and
+he answered:--"What can I do?"
+
+"Nothing," said the doctor. "For all practical purposes the man is dead
+already. Keep him quiet and cheerful and tell him he's going to recover.
+That's all. I'll look after him to the end, of course."
+
+The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down to open the evening mail. His
+first letter was one from the Directors, intimating for his information
+that Mr. Riley was to resign, under a month's notice, by the terms of
+his agreement, telling Reggie that their letter to Riley would follow
+and advising Reggie of the coming of a new Accountant, a man whom Reggie
+knew and liked.
+
+Reggie lit a cheroot, and, before he had finished smoking, he had
+sketched the outline of a fraud. He put away--"burked"--the Directors
+letter, and went in to talk to Riley, who was as ungracious as usual,
+and fretting himself over the way the bank would run during his illness.
+He never thought of the extra work on Reggie's shoulders, but solely of
+the damage to his own prospects of advancement. Then Reggie assured him
+that everything would be well, and that he, Reggie, would confer with
+Riley daily on the management of the Bank. Riley was a little soothed,
+but he hinted in as many words that he did not think much of Reggie's
+business capacity. Reggie was humble. And he had letters in his desk
+from the Directors that a Gilbarte or a Hardie might have been proud of!
+
+The days passed in the big darkened house, and the Directors' letter of
+dismissal to Riley came and was put away by Reggie, who, every evening,
+brought the books to Riley's room, and showed him what had been going
+forward, while Riley snarled. Reggie did his best to make statements
+pleasing to Riley, but the Accountant was sure that the Bank was going
+to rack and ruin without him. In June, as the lying in bed told on his
+spirit, he asked whether his absence had been noted by the Directors,
+and Reggie said that they had written most sympathetic letters, hoping
+that he would be able to resume his valuable services before long. He
+showed Riley the letters: and Riley said that the Directors ought to
+have written to him direct. A few days later, Reggie opened Riley's
+mail in the half-light of the room, and gave him the sheet--not the
+envelope--of a letter to Riley from the Directors. Riley said he would
+thank Reggie not to interfere with his private papers, specially as
+Reggie knew he was too weak to open his own letters. Reggie apologized.
+
+Then Riley's mood changed, and he lectured Reggie on his evil ways:
+his horses and his bad friends. "Of course, lying here on my back, Mr.
+Burke, I can't keep you straight; but when I'm well, I DO hope you'll
+pay some heed to my words." Reggie, who had dropped polo, and dinners,
+and tennis, and all to attend to Riley, said that he was penitent and
+settled Riley's head on the pillow and heard him fret and contradict in
+hard, dry, hacking whispers, without a sign of impatience. This at the
+end of a heavy day's office work, doing double duty, in the latter half
+of June.
+
+When the new Accountant came, Reggie told him the facts of the case, and
+announced to Riley that he had a guest staying with him. Riley said that
+he might have had more consideration than to entertain his "doubtful
+friends" at such a time. Reggie made Carron, the new Accountant, sleep
+at the Club in consequence. Carron's arrival took some of the heavy work
+off his shoulders, and he had time to attend to Riley's exactions--to
+explain, soothe, invent, and settle and resettle the poor wretch in
+bed, and to forge complimentary letters from Calcutta. At the end of the
+first month, Riley wished to send some money home to his mother. Reggie
+sent the draft. At the end of the second month, Riley's salary came in
+just the same. Reggie paid it out of his own pocket; and, with it, wrote
+Riley a beautiful letter from the Directors.
+
+Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of his life burnt unsteadily.
+Now and then he would be cheerful and confident about the future,
+sketching plans for going Home and seeing his mother. Reggie listened
+patiently when the office work was over, and encouraged him.
+
+At other times Riley insisted on Reggie's reading the Bible and grim
+"Methody" tracts to him. Out of these tracts he pointed morals directed
+at his Manager. But he always found time to worry Reggie about the
+working of the Bank, and to show him where the weak points lay.
+
+This in-door, sick-room life and constant strains wore Reggie down a
+good deal, and shook his nerves, and lowered his billiard-play by forty
+points. But the business of the Bank, and the business of the sick-room,
+had to go on, though the glass was 116 degrees in the shade.
+
+At the end of the third month, Riley was sinking fast, and had begun
+to realize that he was very sick. But the conceit that made him worry
+Reggie, kept him from believing the worst. "He wants some sort of mental
+stimulant if he is to drag on," said the doctor. "Keep him interested in
+life if you care about his living." So Riley, contrary to all the laws
+of business and the finance, received a 25-per-cent, rise of salary from
+the Directors. The "mental stimulant" succeeded beautifully. Riley was
+happy and cheerful, and, as is often the case in consumption, healthiest
+in mind when the body was weakest. He lingered for a full month,
+snarling and fretting about the Bank, talking of the future, hearing the
+Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and wondering when he would be able
+to move abroad.
+
+But at the end of September, one mercilessly hot evening, he rose up in
+his bed with a little gasp, and said quickly to Reggie:--"Mr. Burke, I
+am going to die. I know it in myself. My chest is all hollow inside, and
+there's nothing to breathe with. To the best of my knowledge I have done
+nowt"--he was returning to the talk of his boyhood--"to lie heavy on my
+conscience. God be thanked, I have been preserved from the grosser forms
+of sin; and I counsel YOU, Mr. Burke...."
+
+Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped over him.
+
+"Send my salary for September to my mother.... done great things with
+the Bank if I had been spared.... mistaken policy.... no fault of mine."
+
+Then he turned his face to the wall and died.
+
+Reggie drew the sheet over Its face, and went out into the verandah,
+with his last "mental stimulant"--a letter of condolence and sympathy
+from the Directors--unused in his pocket.
+
+"If I'd been only ten minutes earlier," thought Reggie, "I might have
+heartened him up to pull through another day."
+
+
+
+
+TOD'S AMENDMENT.
+
+
+     The World hath set its heavy yoke
+     Upon the old white-bearded folk
+       Who strive to please the King.
+     God's mercy is upon the young,
+     God's wisdom in the baby tongue
+       That fears not anything.
+
+          The Parable of Chajju Bhagat.
+
+
+Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, and every one in Simla
+knew Tods. Most men had saved him from death on occasions. He was beyond
+his ayah's control altogether, and perilled his life daily to find out
+what would happen if you pulled a Mountain Battery mule's tail. He was
+an utterly fearless young Pagan, about six years old, and the only baby
+who ever broke the holy calm of the supreme Legislative Council.
+
+It happened this way: Tods' pet kid got loose, and fled up the hill, off
+the Boileaugunge Road, Tods after it, until it burst into the Viceregal
+Lodge lawn, then attached to "Peterhoff." The Council were sitting at
+the time, and the windows were open because it was warm. The Red Lancer
+in the porch told Tods to go away; but Tods knew the Red Lancer and most
+of the Members of Council personally. Moreover, he had firm hold of the
+kid's collar, and was being dragged all across the flower-beds. "Give
+my salaam to the long Councillor Sahib, and ask him to help me take
+Moti back!" gasped Tods. The Council heard the noise through the open
+windows; and, after an interval, was seen the shocking spectacle of
+a Legal Member and a Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct
+patronage of a Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and very
+dirty boy in a sailor's suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a
+lively and rebellious kid. They headed it off down the path to the Mall,
+and Tods went home in triumph and told his Mamma that ALL the Councillor
+Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moti. Whereat his Mamma smacked
+Tods for interfering with the administration of the Empire; but Tods met
+the Legal Member the next day, and told him in confidence that if the
+Legal Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he, Tods, would give him all
+the help in his power. "Thank you, Tods," said the Legal Member.
+
+Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half as many saises.
+He saluted them all as "O Brother." It never entered his head that
+any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the
+buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of that
+household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the dhoby
+to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from
+Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-mates
+should look down on him.
+
+So Tods had honor in the land from Boileaugunge to Chota Simla, and
+ruled justly according to his lights. Of course, he spoke Urdu, but he
+had also mastered many queer side-speeches like the chotee bolee of the
+women, and held grave converse with shopkeepers and Hill-coolies alike.
+He was precocious for his age, and his mixing with natives had taught
+him some of the more bitter truths of life; the meanness and the
+sordidness of it. He used, over his bread and milk, to deliver solemn
+and serious aphorisms, translated from the vernacular into the English,
+that made his Mamma jump and vow that Tods MUST go home next hot
+weather.
+
+Just when Tods was in the bloom of his power, the Supreme Legislature
+were hacking out a Bill, for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a revision of the
+then Act, smaller than the Punjab Land Bill, but affecting a few
+hundred thousand people none the less. The Legal Member had built,
+and bolstered, and embroidered, and amended that Bill, till it looked
+beautiful on paper. Then the Council began to settle what they called
+the "minor details." As if any Englishman legislating for natives knows
+enough to know which are the minor and which are the major points, from
+the native point of view, of any measure! That Bill was a triumph of
+"safe guarding the interests of the tenant." One clause provided that
+land should not be leased on longer terms than five years at a stretch;
+because, if the landlord had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years,
+he would squeeze the very life out of him. The notion was to keep up
+a stream of independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and
+ethnologically and politically the notion was correct. The only drawback
+was that it was altogether wrong. A native's life in India implies the
+life of his son. Wherefore, you cannot legislate for one generation at
+a time. You must consider the next from the native point of view.
+Curiously enough, the native now and then, and in Northern India more
+particularly, hates being over-protected against himself. There was
+a Naga village once, where they lived on dead AND buried Commissariat
+mules.... But that is another story.
+
+For many reasons, to be explained later, the people concerned objected
+to the Bill. The Native Member in Council knew as much about Punjabis as
+he knew about Charing Cross. He had said in Calcutta that "the Bill was
+entirely in accord with the desires of that large and important class,
+the cultivators;" and so on, and so on. The Legal Member's knowledge
+of natives was limited to English-speaking Durbaris, and his own red
+chaprassis, the Sub-Montane Tracts concerned no one in particular,
+the Deputy Commissioners were a good deal too driven to make
+representations, and the measure was one which dealt with small
+landholders only. Nevertheless, the Legal Member prayed that it might be
+correct, for he was a nervously conscientious man. He did not know that
+no man can tell what natives think unless he mixes with them with the
+varnish off. And not always then. But he did the best he knew. And the
+measure came up to the Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods
+patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played with
+the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and listened, as a child
+listens to all the stray talk about this new freak of the Lat Sahib's.
+
+One day there was a dinner-party, at the house of Tods' Mamma, and the
+Legal Member came. Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till he heard the
+bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee. Then he paddled out in
+his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night-suit, and took refuge
+by the side of his father, knowing that he would not be sent back. "See
+the miseries of having a family!" said Tods' father, giving Tods three
+prunes, some water in a glass that had been used for claret, and telling
+him to sit still. Tods sucked the prunes slowly, knowing that he would
+have to go when they were finished, and sipped the pink water like a man
+of the world, as he listened to the conversation. Presently, the Legal
+Member, talking "shop," to the Head of a Department, mentioned his Bill
+by its full name--"The Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment."
+Tods caught the one native word, and lifting up his small voice
+said:--"Oh, I know ALL about that! Has it been murramutted yet,
+Councillor Sahib?"
+
+"How much?" said the Legal Member.
+
+"Murramutted--mended.--Put theek, you know--made nice to please Ditta
+Mull!"
+
+The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to Tods.
+
+"What do you know about Ryotwari, little man?" he said.
+
+"I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know ALL about it. Ditta Mull,
+and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and--oh, lakhs of my friends tell me
+about it in the bazars when I talk to them."
+
+"Oh, they do--do they? What do they say, Tods?"
+
+Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing-gown and said:--"I
+must fink."
+
+The Legal Member waited patiently. Then Tods, with infinite compassion:
+
+"You don't speak my talk, do you, Councillor Sahib?"
+
+"No; I am sorry to say I do not," said the Legal Member.
+
+"Very well," said Tods. "I must fink in English."
+
+He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very slowly,
+translating in his mind from the vernacular to English, as many
+Anglo-Indian children do. You must remember that the Legal Member
+helped him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was not equal to the
+sustained flight of oratory that follows.
+
+"Ditta Mull says:--'This thing is the talk of a child, and was made up
+by fools.' But I don't think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib," said
+Todds, hastily. "You caught my goat. This is what Ditta Mull says:--'I
+am not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child? I can see if
+the land is good and if the landlord is good. If I am a fool, the sin is
+upon my own head. For five years I take my ground for which I have saved
+money, and a wife I take too, and a little son is born.' Ditta Mull has
+one daughter now, but he SAYS he will have a son, soon. And he says: 'At
+the end of five years, by this new bundobust, I must go. If I do not go,
+I must get fresh seals and takkus-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the
+middle of the harvest, and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but
+to go twice is Jehannum.' That is QUITE true," explained Tods, gravely.
+"All my friends say so. And Ditta Mull says:--'Always fresh takkus and
+paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts every five years or
+else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want to go? Am I fool? If I am a
+fool and do not know, after forty years, good land when I see it, let
+me die! But if the new bundobust says for FIFTEEN years, then it is
+good and wise. My little son is a man, and I am burnt, and he takes the
+ground or another ground, paying only once for the takkus-stamps on the
+papers, and his little son is born, and at the end of fifteen years is
+a man too. But what profit is there in five years and fresh papers?
+Nothing but dikh, trouble, dikh. We are not young men who take these
+lands, but old ones--not jais, but tradesmen with a little money--and
+for fifteen years we shall have peace. Nor are we children that the
+Sirkar should treat us so."
+
+Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening. The Legal
+Member said to Tods: "Is that all?"
+
+"All I can remember," said Tods. "But you should see Ditta Mull's big
+monkey. It's just like a Councillor Sahib."
+
+"Tods! Go to bed," said his father.
+
+Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed.
+
+The Legal Member brought his hand down on the table with a crash--"By
+Jove!" said the Legal Member, "I believe the boy is right. The short
+tenure IS the weak point."
+
+He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was obviously
+impossible for the Legal Member to play with a bunnia's monkey, by way
+of getting understanding; but he did better. He made inquiries,
+always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not the hybrid,
+University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and, little by little,
+he coaxed some of the men whom the measure concerned most intimately to
+give in their views, which squared very closely with Tods' evidence.
+
+So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was filled
+with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent very little
+except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the thought
+from him as illiberal. He was a most Liberal Man.
+
+After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got the
+Bill recast in the tenure clause, and if Tods' Mamma had not interfered,
+Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit and pistachio
+nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the verandah. Till he
+went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before the Viceroy in popular
+estimation. But for the little life of him Tods could not understand
+why.
+
+In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft of
+the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and, opposite the
+twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the Legal
+Member, are the words "Tods' Amendment."
+
+
+
+
+IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.
+
+
+     "Stopped in the straight when the race was his own!
+     Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!"
+     "Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden,
+     What did he carry and how was he ridden?
+     Maybe they used him too much at the start;
+     Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart."
+
+                                       Life's Handicap.
+
+
+When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on the
+Senior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all the
+jest left out. This is that tale:
+
+Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by
+landlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so
+nearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was just
+the least little bit in the world below it. This happened a month
+before he came out to India, and five days after his one-and-twentieth
+birthday. The girl was nineteen--six years older than Dicky in the
+things of this world, that is to say--and, for the time, twice as
+foolish as he.
+
+Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing more fatally
+easy than marriage before the Registrar. The ceremony costs less than
+fifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking into a pawn-shop. After
+the declarations of residence have been put in, four minutes will
+cover the rest of the proceedings--fees, attestation, and all. Then the
+Registrar slides the blotting-pad over the names, and says grimly, with
+his pen between his teeth:--"Now you're man and wife;" and the couple
+walk out into the street, feeling as if something were horribly illegal
+somewhere.
+
+But that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his undoing just
+as thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" curse from the
+altar-rails, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice that
+breathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off. In this manner was Dicky Hatt
+kidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he had received an
+appointment in India which carried a magnificent salary from the Home
+point of view. The marriage was to be kept secret for a year. Then Mrs.
+Dicky Hatt was to come out and the rest of life was to be a glorious
+golden mist. That was how they sketched it under the Addison Road
+Station lamps; and, after one short month, came Gravesend and Dicky
+steaming out to his new life, and the girl crying in a thirty-shillings
+a week bed-and-living room, in a back street off Montpelier Square near
+the Knightsbridge Barracks.
+
+But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land, where "men" of
+twenty-one were reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was expensive.
+The salary that loomed so large six thousand miles away did not go far.
+Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and remitted more than the
+fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square. One hundred and thirty-five
+rupees out of three hundred and thirty is not much to live on; but
+it was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt could exist forever on the 20
+pounds held back by Dicky, from his outfit allowance. Dicky saw this,
+and remitted at once; always remembering that Rs. 700 were to be paid,
+twelve months later, for a first-class passage out for a lady. When you
+add to these trifling details the natural instincts of a boy beginning a
+new life in a new country and longing to go about and enjoy himself, and
+the necessity for grappling with strange work--which, properly speaking,
+should take up a boy's undivided attention--you will see that Dicky
+started handicapped. He saw it himself for a breath or two; but he did
+not guess the full beauty of his future.
+
+As the hot weather began, the shackles settled on him and ate into his
+flesh. First would come letters--big, crossed, seven sheet letters--from
+his wife, telling him how she longed to see him, and what a Heaven
+upon earth would be their property when they met. Then some boy of the
+chummery wherein Dicky lodged would pound on the door of his bare little
+room, and tell him to come out and look at a pony--the very thing to
+suit him. Dicky could not afford ponies. He had to explain this. Dicky
+could not afford living in the chummery, modest as it was. He had to
+explain this before he moved to a single room next the office where
+he worked all day. He kept house on a green oil-cloth table-cover, one
+chair, one charpoy, one photograph, one tooth-glass, very strong and
+thick, a seven-rupee eight-anna filter, and messing by contract at
+thirty-seven rupees a month. Which last item was extortion. He had no
+punkah, for a punkah costs fifteen rupees a month; but he slept on the
+roof of the office with all his wife's letters under his pillow. Now and
+again he was asked out to dinner where he got both a punkah and an iced
+drink. But this was seldom, for people objected to recognizing a boy who
+had evidently the instincts of a Scotch tallow-chandler, and who lived
+in such a nasty fashion. Dicky could not subscribe to any amusement, so
+he found no amusement except the pleasure of turning over his Bank-book
+and reading what it said about "loans on approved security." That cost
+nothing. He remitted through a Bombay Bank, by the way, and the Station
+knew nothing of his private affairs.
+
+Every month he sent Home all he could possibly spare for his wife--and
+for another reason which was expected to explain itself shortly and
+would require more money.
+
+About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the nervous, haunting fear
+that besets married men when they are out of sorts. He had no pension to
+look to. What if he should die suddenly, and leave his wife unprovided
+for? The thought used to lay hold of him in the still, hot nights on the
+roof, till the shaking of his heart made him think that he was going to
+die then and there of heart-disease. Now this is a frame of mind which
+no boy has a right to know. It is a strong man's trouble; but, coming
+when it did, it nearly drove poor punkah-less, perspiring Dicky Hatt
+mad. He could tell no one about it.
+
+A certain amount of "screw" is as necessary for a man as for a
+billiard-ball. It makes them both do wonderful things. Dicky needed
+money badly, and he worked for it like a horse. But, naturally, the men
+who owned him knew that a boy can live very comfortably on a certain
+income--pay in India is a matter of age, not merit, you see, and if
+their particular boy wished to work like two boys, Business forbid that
+they should stop him! But Business forbid that they should give him an
+increase of pay at his present ridiculously immature age! So Dicky won
+certain rises of salary--ample for a boy--not enough for a wife and
+child--certainly too little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he
+and Mrs. Hatt had discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with this
+he was forced to be content.
+
+Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in Home drafts and the
+crushing Exchange, and the tone of the Home letters changed and grew
+querulous. "Why wouldn't Dicky have his wife and the baby out? Surely he
+had a salary--a fine salary--and it was too bad of him to enjoy himself
+in India. But would he--could he--make the next draft a little more
+elastic?" Here followed a list of baby's kit, as long as a Parsee's
+bill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his wife and the little son
+he had never seen--which, again, is a feeling no boy is entitled
+to--enlarged the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half-man letters,
+saying that life was not so enjoyable after all and would the little
+wife wait yet a little longer? But the little wife, however much she
+approved of money, objected to waiting, and there was a strange, hard
+sort of ring in her letters that Dicky didn't understand. How could he,
+poor boy?
+
+Later on still--just as Dicky had been told--apropos of another
+youngster who had "made a fool of himself," as the saying is--that
+matrimony would not only ruin his further chances of advancement, but
+would lose him his present appointment--came the news that the baby, his
+own little, little son, had died, and, behind this, forty lines of
+an angry woman's scrawl, saying that death might have been averted if
+certain things, all costing money, had been done, or if the mother and
+the baby had been with Dicky. The letter struck at Dicky's naked heart;
+but, not being officially entitled to a baby, he could show no sign of
+trouble.
+
+How Dicky won through the next four months, and what hope he kept
+alight to force him into his work, no one dare say. He pounded on, the
+seven-hundred-rupee passage as far away as ever, and his style of living
+unchanged, except when he launched into a new filter. There was the
+strain of his office-work, and the strain of his remittances, and the
+knowledge of his boy's death, which touched the boy more, perhaps, than
+it would have touched a man; and, beyond all, the enduring strain of
+his daily life. Gray-headed seniors, who approved of his thrift and his
+fashion of denying himself everything pleasant, reminded him of the old
+saw that says:
+
+
+     "If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art,
+      He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart."
+
+
+And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every trouble that a man is
+permitted to know, had to laugh and agree; with the last line of his
+balanced Bank-book jingling in his head day and night.
+
+But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. There arrived a
+letter from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others if
+Dicky had only known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone with
+a handsomer man than you." It was a rather curious production, without
+stops, something like this:--"She was not going to wait forever and the
+baby was dead and Dicky was only a boy and he would never set eyes on
+her again and why hadn't he waved his handkerchief to her when he left
+Gravesend and God was her judge she was a wicked woman but Dicky was
+worse enjoying himself in India and this other man loved the ground she
+trod on and would Dicky ever forgive her for she would never forgive
+Dicky; and there was no address to write to."
+
+Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky discovered
+exactly how an injured husband feels--again, not at all the knowledge
+to which a boy is entitled--for his mind went back to his wife as he
+remembered her in the thirty-shilling "suite" in Montpelier Square, when
+the dawn of his last morning in England was breaking, and she was crying
+in the bed. Whereat he rolled about on his bed and bit his fingers. He
+never stopped to think whether, if he had met Mrs. Hatt after those
+two years, he would have discovered that he and she had grown quite
+different and new persons. This, theoretically, he ought to have done.
+He spent the night after the English Mail came in rather severe pain.
+
+Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to work. He argued that he had
+missed the pleasure of youth. He was tired, and he had tasted all the
+sorrow in life before three-and-twenty. His Honor was gone--that was the
+man; and now he, too, would go to the Devil--that was the boy in him. So
+he put his head down on the green oil-cloth table-cover, and wept before
+resigning his post, and all it offered.
+
+But the reward of his services came. He was given three days to
+reconsider himself, and the Head of the establishment, after some
+telegraphings, said that it was a most unusual step, but, in view of the
+ability that Mr. Hatt had displayed at such and such a time, at such and
+such junctures, he was in a position to offer him an infinitely superior
+post--first on probation, and later, in the natural course of things,
+on confirmation. "And how much does the post carry?" said Dicky. "Six
+hundred and fifty rupees," said the Head slowly, expecting to see the
+young man sink with gratitude and joy.
+
+And it came then! The seven hundred rupee passage, and enough to have
+saved the wife, and the little son, and to have allowed of assured and
+open marriage, came then. Dicky burst into a roar of laughter--laughter
+he could not check--nasty, jangling merriment that seemed as if it
+would go on forever. When he had recovered himself he said, quite
+seriously:--"I'm tired of work. I'm an old man now. It's about time I
+retired. And I will."
+
+"The boy's mad!" said the Head.
+
+I think he was right; but Dicky Hatt never reappeared to settle the
+question.
+
+
+
+
+PIG.
+
+
+     Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather
+       Ride, follow the fox if you can!
+     But, for pleasure and profit together,
+       Allow me the hunting of Man,--
+     The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
+       To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.
+
+                                  The Old Shikarri.
+
+
+I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a twist in
+his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by whom Nafferton was
+nearly slain. There may have been other causes of offence; the horse was
+the official stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; but Pinecoffin
+laughed and said that he had never guaranteed the beast's manners.
+Nafferton laughed, too, though he vowed that he would write off his fall
+against Pinecoffin if he waited five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyond
+Skipton will forgive an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a
+South Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their
+names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin. He was a
+peculiar man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new
+and fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from Mithankot
+to Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the Punjab,
+a large province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had no
+intention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups," in the
+shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making their lives a
+burden to them.
+
+Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work after
+their first hot weather in the country. The boys with digestions hope to
+write their names large on the Frontier and struggle for dreary places
+like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. Which
+is very bad for the liver. Others are bitten with a mania for District
+work, Ghuznivide coins or Persian poetry; while some, who come of
+farmers' stock, find that the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets
+into their blood, and calls them to "develop the resources of the
+Province." These men are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to their
+class. He knew a great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and
+temporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too
+much rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All the
+Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took back
+her own again. Unfortunately--most unfortunately for Pinecoffin--he
+was a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Nafferton watched him, and thought
+about the horse. Nafferton said:--"See me chase that boy till he drops!"
+I said:--"You can't get your knife into an Assistant Commissioner."
+Nafferton told me that I did not understand the administration of the
+Province.
+
+Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural and
+general information side, and will supply a moderately respectable man
+with all sorts of "economic statistics," if he speaks to it prettily.
+For instance, you are interested in gold-washing in the sands of the
+Sutlej. You pull the string, and find that it wakes up half a dozen
+Departments, and finally communicates, say, with a friend of yours
+in the Telegraph, who once wrote some notes on the customs of the
+gold-washers when he was on construction-work in their part of the
+Empire. He may or may not be pleased at being ordered to write out
+everything he knows for your benefit. This depends on his temperament.
+The bigger man you are, the more information and the greater trouble can
+you raise.
+
+Nafferton was not a big man; but he had the reputation of being very
+earnest. An "earnest" man can do much with a Government. There was an
+earnest man who once nearly wrecked... but all India knows THAT story.
+I am not sure what real "earnestness" is. A very fair imitation can
+be manufactured by neglecting to dress decently, by mooning about in a
+dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking office-work home after staying
+in office till seven, and by receiving crowds of native gentlemen on
+Sundays. That is one sort of "earnestness."
+
+Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his earnestness, and for
+a string that would communicate with Pinecoffin. He found both. They
+were Pig. Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig. He informed
+the Government that he had a scheme whereby a very large percentage of
+the British Army in India could be fed, at a very large saving, on
+Pig. Then he hinted that Pinecoffin might supply him with the "varied
+information necessary to the proper inception of the scheme." So the
+Government wrote on the back of the letter:--"Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin to
+furnish Mr. Nafferton with any information in his power." Government is
+very prone to writing things on the backs of letters which, later, lead
+to trouble and confusion.
+
+Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he knew that
+Pinecoffin would flounce into the trap. Pinecoffin was delighted at
+being consulted about Pig. The Indian Pig is not exactly an important
+factor in agricultural life; but Nafferton explained to Pinecoffin that
+there was room for improvement, and corresponded direct with that young
+man.
+
+You may think that there is not much to be evolved from Pig. It all
+depends how you set to work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and wishing
+to do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the Primitive Pig,
+the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed that
+information--twenty-seven foolscap sheets--and wanted to know about the
+distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and how it stood the Plains in
+the hot weather. From this point onwards, remember that I am giving you
+only the barest outlines of the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, of
+the web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin.
+
+Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and collected observations
+on the comparative longevity of the Pig (a) in the sub-montane tracts
+of the Himalayas, and (b) in the Rechna Doab. Nafferton filed that, and
+asked what sort of people looked after Pig. This started an ethnological
+excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long tables showing
+the proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. Nafferton filed
+that bundle, and explained that the figures which he wanted referred to
+the Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fine
+and large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. By this time,
+Government had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. Pinecoffin.
+They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned well-oiled
+wheels to skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into the
+spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do. He had a
+fair amount of work of his own to clear away; but he sat up of nights
+reducing Pig to five places of decimals for the honor of his Service. He
+was not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject as Pig.
+
+Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire into"
+the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District. People had been
+killing each other with those peaceful tools; and Government wished
+to know "whether a modified form of agricultural implement could
+not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced among the
+agricultural population without needlessly or unduly exasperating the
+existing religious sentiments of the peasantry."
+
+Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather heavily
+burdened.
+
+Nafferton now began to take up "(a) The food-supply of the indigenous
+Pig, with a view to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh-former.
+(b) The acclimatization of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctive
+peculiarities." Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic Pig
+would become merged in the indigenous type; and quoted horse-breeding
+statistics to prove this. The side-issue was debated, at great length on
+Pinecoffin's side, till Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong,
+and moved the previous question. When Pinecoffin had quite written
+himself out about flesh-formers, and fibrins, and glucose and the
+nitrogenous constituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised the
+question of expense. By this time Pinecoffin, who had been transferred
+from Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he stated in
+thirty-three folio pages--all carefully filed by Nafferton. Who asked
+for more.
+
+These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the potential
+Piggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own views. But
+Nafferton bombarded him with letters on "the Imperial aspect of
+the scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork, and thereby
+calculated to give offence to the Mahomedan population of Upper India."
+He guessed that Pinecoffin would want some broad, free-hand work after
+his niggling, stippling, decimal details. Pinecoffin handled the latest
+development of the case in masterly style, and proved that no "popular
+ebullition of excitement was to be apprehended." Nafferton said that
+there was nothing like Civilian insight in matters of this kind,
+and lured him up a bye-path--"the possible profits to accrue to the
+Government from the sale of hog-bristles." There is an extensive
+literature of hog-bristles, and the shoe, brush, and colorman's trades
+recognize more varieties of bristles than you would think possible.
+After Pinecoffin had wondered a little at Nafferton's rage for
+information, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on "Products of
+the Pig." This led him, under Nafferton's tender handling, straight to
+the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin for saddles--and thence
+to the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote that pomegranate-seed was the best cure
+for hog-skin, and suggested--for the past fourteen months had wearied
+him--that Nafferton should "raise his pigs before he tanned them."
+
+Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question. How
+could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did in the
+West and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics of its
+oriental congener?" Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what
+he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied that he was about
+to reopen the entire question. He was too far involved in the hideous
+tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote:--"Consult my first
+letter." Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact,
+Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage; having gone off
+on a side-issue on the merging of types.
+
+THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries! He complained to the
+Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to me
+in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and
+the flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by a
+gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should at lest have taught
+him the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire
+variety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the letter to which
+he refers me contains his serious views on the acclimatization of a
+valuable, though possibly uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled
+to believe," etc., etc.
+
+There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation. The
+wretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for the Country,
+and not the Country for the Service, and that he had better begin to
+supply information about Pigs.
+
+Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that could
+be written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.
+
+Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on the
+Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in full. The
+essay was rather highflown; but if the Editor had seen the stacks of
+paper, in Pinecoffin's handwriting, on Nafferton's table, he would not
+have been so sarcastic about the "nebulous discursiveness and blatant
+self-sufficiency of the modern Competition-wallah, and his utter
+inability to grasp the practical issues of a practical question." Many
+friends cut out these remarks and sent them to Pinecoffin.
+
+I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft stock. This last
+stroke frightened and shook him. He could not understand it; but he felt
+he had been, somehow, shamelessly betrayed by Nafferton. He realized
+that he had wrapped himself up in the Pigskin without need, and that
+he could not well set himself right with his Government. All his
+acquaintances asked after his "nebulous discursiveness" or his "blatant
+self-sufficiency," and this made him miserable.
+
+He took a train and went to Nafferton, whom he had not seen since
+the Pig business began. He also took the cutting from the paper, and
+blustered feebly and called Nafferton names, and then died down to a
+watery, weak protest of the "I-say-it's-too-bad-you-know" order.
+
+Nafferton was very sympathetic.
+
+"I'm afraid I've given you a good deal of trouble, haven't I?" said he.
+
+"Trouble!" whimpered Pinecoffin; "I don't mind the trouble so much,
+though that was bad enough; but what I resent is this showing up in
+print. It will stick to me like a burr all through my service. And I DID
+do my best for your interminable swine. It's too bad of you, on my soul
+it is!"
+
+"I don't know," said Nafferton; "have you ever been stuck with a horse?
+It isn't the money I mind, though that is bad enough; but what I resent
+is the chaff that follows, especially from the boy who stuck me. But I
+think we'll cry quits now."
+
+Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad words; and Nafferton smiled
+ever so sweetly, and asked him to dinner.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS.
+
+
+     It was not in the open fight
+       We threw away the sword,
+     But in the lonely watching
+       In the darkness by the ford.
+     The waters lapped, the night-wind blew,
+     Full-armed the Fear was born and grew,
+     And we were flying ere we knew
+       From panic in the night.
+
+                          Beoni Bar.
+
+
+Some people hold that an English Cavalry regiment cannot run. This is
+a mistake. I have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabres flying over
+the face of the country in abject terror--have seen the best Regiment
+that ever drew bridle, wiped off the Army List for the space of two
+hours. If you repeat this tale to the White Hussars they will, in all
+probability, treat you severely. They are not proud of the incident.
+
+You may know the White Hussars by their "side," which is greater than
+that of all the Cavalry Regiments on the roster. If this is not a
+sufficient mark, you may know them by their old brandy. It has been
+sixty years in the Mess and is worth going far to taste. Ask for the
+"McGaire" old brandy, and see that you get it. If the Mess Sergeant
+thinks that you are uneducated, and that the genuine article will be
+lost on you, he will treat you accordingly. He is a good man. But, when
+you are at Mess, you must never talk to your hosts about forced marches
+or long-distance rides. The Mess are very sensitive; and, if they think
+that you are laughing at them, will tell you so.
+
+As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colonel's fault. He was a new
+man, and he ought never to have taken the Command. He said that the
+Regiment was not smart enough. This to the White Hussars, who knew they
+could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and over any Foot on
+the face of the earth! That insult was the first cause of offence.
+
+Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse--the Drum-Horse of the White
+Hussars! Perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had
+committed. I will try to make it clear. The soul of the Regiment lives
+in the Drum-Horse, who carries the silver kettle-drums. He is nearly
+always a big piebald Waler. That is a point of honor; and a Regiment
+will spend anything you please on a piebald. He is beyond the ordinary
+laws of casting. His work is very light, and he only manoeuvres at a
+foot-pace. Wherefore, so long as he can step out and look handsome,
+his well-being is assured. He knows more about the Regiment than the
+Adjutant, and could not make a mistake if he tried.
+
+The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was only eighteen years old, and
+perfectly equal to his duties. He had at least six years' more work in
+him, and carried himself with all the pomp and dignity of a Drum-Major
+of the Guards. The Regiment had paid Rs. 1,200 for him.
+
+But the Colonel said that he must go, and he was cast in due form and
+replaced by a washy, bay beast as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck,
+rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the best
+of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their
+eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no
+gentleman. I fancy that the Colonel's ideas of smartness extended to
+the Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade
+movements. A Cavalry Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for
+Commanding Officers' parades, and the Band Master is one degree more
+important than the Colonel. He is a High Priest and the "Keel Row" is
+his holy song. The "Keel Row" is the Cavalry Trot; and the man who has
+never heard that tune rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of the
+Regiment going past the saluting-base, has something yet to hear and
+understand.
+
+When the Colonel cast the Drum-horse of the White Hussars, there was
+nearly a mutiny.
+
+The officers were angry, the Regiment were furious, and the Bandsman
+swore--like troopers. The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to
+auction--public auction--to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put into
+a cart! It was worse than exposing the inner life of the Regiment to the
+whole world, or selling the Mess Plate to a Jew--a black Jew.
+
+The Colonel was a mean man and a bully. He knew what the Regiment
+thought about his action; and, when the troopers offered to buy the
+Drum-Horse, he said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden by the
+Regulations.
+
+But one of the Subalterns--Hogan-Yale, an Irishman--bought the
+Drum-Horse for Rs. 160 at the sale; and the Colonel was wroth. Yale
+professed repentance--he was unnaturally submissive--and said that,
+as he had only made the purchase to save the horse from possible
+ill-treatment and starvation, he would now shoot him and end the
+business. This appeared to soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the
+Drum-Horse disposed of. He felt that he had made a mistake, and could
+not of course acknowledge it. Meantime, the presence of the Drum-Horse
+was an annoyance to him.
+
+Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three cheroots, and his
+friend, Martyn; and they all left the Mess together. Yale and Martyn
+conferred for two hours in Yale's quarters; but only the bull-terrier
+who keeps watch over Yale's boot-trees knows what they said. A horse,
+hooded and sheeted to his ears, left Yale's stables and was taken, very
+unwillingly, into the Civil Lines. Yale's groom went with him. Two men
+broke into the Regimental Theatre and took several paint-pots and some
+large scenery brushes. Then night fell over the Cantonments, and there
+was a noise as of a horse kicking his loose-box to pieces in Yale's
+stables. Yale had a big, old, white Waler trap-horse.
+
+The next day was a Thursday, and the men, hearing that Yale was going
+to shoot the Drum-Horse in the evening, determined to give the beast a
+regular regimental funeral--a finer one than they would have given the
+Colonel had he died just then. They got a bullock-cart and some sacking,
+and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried
+out to the place where the anthrax cases were cremated; two-thirds of
+the Regiment followed. There was no Band, but they all sang "The Place
+where the old Horse died" as something respectful and appropriate to the
+occasion. When the corpse was dumped into the grave and the men began
+throwing down armfuls of roses to cover it, the Farrier-Sergeant ripped
+out an oath and said aloud:--"Why, it ain't the Drum-Horse any more than
+it's me!" The Troop-Sergeant-Majors asked him whether he had left
+his head in the Canteen. The Farrier-Sergeant said that he knew the
+Drum-Horse's feet as well as he knew his own; but he was silenced
+when he saw the regimental number burnt in on the poor stiff, upturned
+near-fore.
+
+Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars buried; the
+Farrier-Sergeant grumbling. The sacking that covered the corpse was
+smeared in places with black paint; and the Farrier-Sergeant drew
+attention to this fact. But the Troop-Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked
+him severely on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk.
+
+On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought revenge on the
+White Hussars. Unfortunately, being at that time temporarily in Command
+of the Station, he ordered a Brigade field-day. He said that he wished
+to make the regiment "sweat for their damned insolence," and he carried
+out his notion thoroughly. That Monday was one of the hardest days
+in the memory of the White Hussars. They were thrown against a
+skeleton-enemy, and pushed forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, and
+"scientifically handled" in every possible fashion over dusty country,
+till they sweated profusely. Their only amusement came late in the day,
+when they fell upon the battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two
+mile's. This was a personal question, and most of the troopers had money
+on the event; the Gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the
+White Hussars. They were wrong. A march-past concluded the campaign, and
+when the Regiment got back to their Lines, the men were coated with dirt
+from spur to chin-strap.
+
+The White Hussars have one great and peculiar privilege. They won it at
+Fontenoy, I think.
+
+Many Regiments possess special rights, such as wearing collars with
+undress uniform, or a bow of ribbon between the shoulders, or red and
+white roses in their helmets on certain days of the year. Some
+rights are connected with regimental saints, and some with regimental
+successes. All are valued highly; but none so highly as the right of
+the White Hussars to have the Band playing when their horses are being
+watered in the Lines. Only one tune is played, and that tune never
+varies. I don't know its real name, but the White Hussars call
+it:--"Take me to London again." It sound's very pretty. The Regiment
+would sooner be struck off the roster than forego their distinction.
+
+After the "dismiss" was sounded, the officers rode off home to prepare
+for stables; and the men filed into the lines, riding easy. That is to
+say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets, and began
+to joke or to swear as the humor took them; the more careful slipping
+off and easing girths and curbs. A good trooper values his mount exactly
+as much as he values himself, and believes, or should believe, that the
+two together are irresistible where women or men, girl's or gun's, are
+concerned.
+
+Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order:--"Water horses," and the
+Regiment loafed off to the squadron-troughs, which were in rear of
+the stables and between these and the barracks. There were four huge
+troughs, one for each squadron, arranged en echelon, so that the whole
+Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. But it lingered for
+seventeen, as a rule, while the Band played.
+
+The band struck up as the squadrons filed off the troughs and the men
+slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other. The sun
+was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to the
+Civil Lines seemed to run straight into the sun's eye. There was a
+little dot on the road. It grew and grew till it showed as a horse, with
+a sort of gridiron thing on his back. The red cloud glared through the
+bars of the gridiron. Some of the troopers shaded their eyes with their
+hands and said:--"What the mischief as that there 'orse got on 'im!"
+
+In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul--horse and man--in
+the Regiment knew, and saw, heading straight towards the Band, the dead
+Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!
+
+On his withers banged and bumped the kettle-drums draped in crape, and
+on his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bare-headed skeleton.
+
+The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.
+
+Then some one in E troop--men said it was the
+Troop-Sergeant-Major--swung his horse round and yelled. No one can
+account exactly for what happened afterwards; but it seems that, at
+least, one man in each troop set an example of panic, and the rest
+followed like sheep. The horses that had barely put their muzzles into
+the trough's reared and capered; but, as soon as the Band broke, which
+it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong distant, all
+hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede--quite different
+from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough
+horse-play of watering in camp--made them only more terrified. They felt
+that the men on their backs were afraid of something. When horses once
+know THAT, all is over except the butchery.
+
+Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere, and
+everywhere--like spit quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary
+spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the
+carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men
+were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which
+was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and
+seemed to be spurring for a wager.
+
+The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. Most of the officers
+were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go down
+to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant
+Majors. When "Take me to London again" stopped, after twenty bars, every
+one in the Mess said:--"What on earth has happened?" A minute later,
+they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White
+Hussars scattered, and broken, and flying.
+
+The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment
+had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganized
+mob, tore past, and at it's heels labored the Drum-Horse--the dead and
+buried Drum-Horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton. Hogan-Yale
+whispered softly to Martyn:--"No wire will stand that treatment," and
+the Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest
+of the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the
+dusk had shut in and each man was howling to his neighbor that the
+Drum-Horse was on his flank. Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated
+as a rule. They can, on emergencies, do a great deal, even with
+seventeen stone on their backs. As the troopers found out.
+
+How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon
+rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes
+and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of
+themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by
+old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess
+verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go
+forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's
+foot. The Band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly.
+The Colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name
+that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the
+bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and blood. Then he beat the
+kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that they were but
+made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, still swearing, he tried to
+drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found that it had been wired
+into the cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the
+skeleton's pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse's stomach, was
+striking. Not to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a minute or
+two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the Band:--"Here, you
+curs, that's what you're afraid of." The skeleton did not look pretty in
+the twilight. The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began to
+chuckle and choke. "Shall I take it away, sir?" said the Band-Sergeant.
+"Yes," said the Colonel, "take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves!"
+
+The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow,
+and led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries
+for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful. He
+would disband the Regiment--he would court-martial every soul in it--he
+would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the
+men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the
+utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a Colonel of Horse.
+
+Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from
+the service as a necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was the
+weaker man of the two, Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked,
+firstly, that he was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that he was
+as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the
+Drum-Horse.
+
+"My instructions," said Yale, with a singularly sweet smile, "were that
+the Drum-Horse should be sent back as impressively as possible. I ask
+you, AM I responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a
+manner as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her Majesty's
+Cavalry?"
+
+Martyn said:--"you are a great man and will in time become a General;
+but I'd give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this affair."
+
+Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale. The Second-in-Command led the
+Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the subalterns of
+the white Hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there,
+after many oaths on the Colonel's part, they talked together in low
+tones. I fancy that the Second-in-Command must have represented the
+scare as the work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect;
+and I know that he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of making a public
+laughingstock of the scare.
+
+"They will call us," said the Second-in-Command, who had really a fine
+imagination, "they will call us the 'Fly-by-Nights'; they will call us
+the 'Ghost Hunters'; they will nickname us from one end of the Army list
+to the other. All the explanations in the world won't make outsiders
+understand that the officers were away when the panic began. For the
+honor of the Regiment and for your own sake keep this thing quiet."
+
+The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down was not
+so difficult as might be imagined. He was made to see, gently and by
+degrees, that it was obviously impossible to court-martial the whole
+Regiment, and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who,
+in his belief, had any concern in the hoax.
+
+"But the beast's alive! He's never been shot at all!" shouted the
+Colonel. "It's flat, flagrant disobedience! I've known a man broke for
+less, d----d sight less. They're mocking me, I tell you, Mutman! They're
+mocking me!"
+
+Once more, the Second-in-Command set himself to sooth the Colonel,
+and wrestled with him for half-an-hour. At the end of that time, the
+Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather
+novel tell to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances.
+He saluted and said: "Regiment all come back, Sir." Then, to propitiate
+the Colonel:--"An' none of the horses any the worse, Sir."
+
+The Colonel only snorted and answered:--"You'd better tuck the men into
+their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in the night."
+The Sergeant withdrew.
+
+His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, and, further, he
+felt slightly ashamed of the language he had been using. The
+Second-in-Command worried him again, and the two sat talking far into
+the night.
+
+Next day but one, there was a Commanding Officer's parade, and the
+Colonel harangued the White Hussars vigorously. The pith of his speech
+was that, since the Drum-Horse in his old age had proved himself capable
+of cutting up the Whole Regiment, he should return to his post of pride
+at the head of the band, BUT the Regiment were a set of ruffians with
+bad consciences.
+
+The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about them into
+the air, and when the parade was over, they cheered the Colonel till
+they couldn't speak. No cheers were put up for Lieutenant Hogan-Yale,
+who smiled very sweetly in the background.
+
+Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unofficially:--"These little
+things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect discipline."
+
+"But I went back on my word," said the Colonel.
+
+"Never mind," said the Second-in-Command. "The White Hussars will follow
+you anywhere from to-day. Regiment's are just like women. They will do
+anything for trinketry."
+
+A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary letter from some one
+who signed himself "Secretary Charity and Zeal, 3709, E. C.," and asked
+for "the return of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in
+your possession."
+
+"Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?" said Hogan-Yale.
+
+"Beg your pardon, Sir," said the Band-Sergeant, "but the skeleton is
+with me, an' I'll return it if you'll pay the carriage into the Civil
+Lines. There's a coffin with it, Sir."
+
+Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band-Sergeant,
+saying:--"Write the date on the skull, will you?"
+
+If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date on
+the skeleton. But don't mention the matter to the White Hussars.
+
+I happen to know something about it, because I prepared the Drum-Horse
+for his resurrection. He did not take kindly to the skeleton at all.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE.
+
+
+     In the daytime, when she moved about me,
+       In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,--
+     I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence.
+     Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her--
+       Would to God that she or I had died!
+
+                                      Confessions.
+
+
+There was a man called Bronckhorst--a three-cornered, middle-aged man
+in the Army--gray as a badger, and, some people said, with a touch of
+country-blood in him. That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst
+was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her husband.
+She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy eyelids, over weak eyes,
+and hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell on it.
+
+Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty
+public and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is.
+His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many things--including
+actual assault with the clenched fist--that a wife will endure; but
+seldom a wife can bear--as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore--with a long course of
+brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her
+small fits of gayety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make
+herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not
+what she has been, and--worst of all--the love that she spends on her
+children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear
+to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning
+no harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of
+endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their
+feelings. A similar impulse make's a man say:--"Hutt, you old beast!"
+when a favorite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the
+reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the
+tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say.
+But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her "teddy," as she called him.
+Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhaps--this is only a theory
+to account for his infamous behavior later on--he gave way to the queer
+savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband twenty
+years' married, when he sees, across the table, the same face of
+his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so must he
+continue to sit until day of its death or his own. Most men and all
+women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule, must be
+a "throw-back" to times when men and women were rather worse than they
+are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.
+
+Dinner at the Bronckhorst's was an infliction few men cared to undergo.
+Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his wife wince.
+When their little boy came in at dessert, Bronckhorst used to give him
+half a glass of wine, and naturally enough, the poor little mite got
+first riotous, next miserable, and was removed screaming. Bronckhorst
+asked if that was the way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs.
+Bronckhorst could not spare some of her time to teach the "little beggar
+decency." Mrs. Bronckhorst, who loved the boy more than her own life,
+tried not to cry--her spirit seemed to have been broken by her marriage.
+Lastly, Bronckhorst used to say:--"There! That'll do, that'll do.
+For God's sake try to behave like a rational woman. Go into the
+drawing-room." Mrs. Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all
+off with a smile; and the guest of the evening would feel angry and
+uncomfortable.
+
+After three years of this cheerful life--for Mrs. Bronckhorst had no
+woman-friends to talk to--the Station was startled by the news that
+Bronckhorst had instituted proceedings ON THE CRIMINAL COUNT, against
+a man called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive to Mrs.
+Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in public. The utter want of
+reserve with which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonor helped us to
+know that the evidence against Biel would be entirely circumstantial and
+native. There were no letters; but Bronckhorst said openly that he would
+rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel superintending the manufacture
+of carpets in the Central Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her
+house, and let charitable folks say what they pleased. Opinions were
+divided. Some two-thirds of the Station jumped at once to the conclusion
+that Biel was guilty; but a dozen men who knew and liked him held by
+him. Biel was furious and surprised. He denied the whole thing, and
+vowed that he would thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life.
+No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native
+evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the
+corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees; but Biel did not care to
+scrape through by the benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing
+cleared: but as he said one night:--"He can prove anything with
+servants' evidence, and I've only my bare word." This was about a month
+before the case came on; and beyond agreeing with Biel, we could do
+little. All that we could be sure of was that the native evidence would
+be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest of his service; for
+when a native begins perjury he perjures himself thoroughly. He does not
+boggle over details.
+
+Some genius at the end of the table whereat the affair was being talked
+over, said:--"Look here! I don't believe lawyers are any good. Get a man
+to wire to Strickland, and beg him to come down and pull us through."
+
+Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line. He had
+not long been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a
+chance of return to the old detective work that his soul lusted after,
+and next night he came in and heard our story. He finished his pipe and
+said oracularly:--"we must get at the evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussalman
+khit and methraniayah, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I am on
+in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty in my talk."
+
+He rose and went into Biel's bedroom where his trunk had been put, and
+shut the door. An hour later, we heard him say:--"I hadn't the heart
+to part with my old makeups when I married. Will this do?" There was a
+lothely faquir salaaming in the doorway.
+
+"Now lend me fifty rupees," said Strickland, "and give me your Words of
+Honor that you won't tell my Wife."
+
+He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank
+his health. What he did only he himself knows. A faquir hung about
+Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a mehter appeared, and when
+Biel heard of HIM, he said that Strickland was an angel full-fledged.
+Whether the mehter made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a
+question which concerns Strickland exclusively.
+
+He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly:--"You spoke
+the truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end.
+Jove! It almost astonishes ME! That Bronckhorst-beast isn't fit to
+live."
+
+There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said:--"How are you going to
+prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing on Bronckhorst's
+compound in disguise!"
+
+"No," said Strickland. "Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to get up
+something strong about 'inherent improbabilities' and 'discrepancies of
+evidence.' He won't have to speak, but it will make him happy. I'M going
+to run this business."
+
+Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would happen.
+They trusted Strickland as men trust quiet men. When the case came off
+the Court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the verandah of the
+Court, till he met the Mohammedan khitmatgar. Then he murmured a
+faquir's blessing in his ear, and asked him how his second wife did. The
+man spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of "Estreeken Sahib,"
+his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was married,
+he was, as I have told you already, a power among natives. Strickland
+whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect that he was
+abreast of all that was going on, and went into the Court armed with a
+gut trainer's-whip.
+
+The Mohammedan was the first witness and Strickland beamed upon him from
+the back of the Court. The man moistened his lips with his tongue and,
+in his abject fear of "Estreeken Sahib" the faquir, went back on every
+detail of his evidence--said he was a poor man and God was his witness
+that he had forgotten every thing that Bronckhorst Sahib had told him
+to say. Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and Bronckhorst he
+collapsed, weeping.
+
+Then began the panic among the witnesses. Janki, the ayah, leering
+chastely behind her veil, turned gray, and the bearer left the Court. He
+said that his Mamma was dying and that it was not wholesome for any man
+to lie unthriftily in the presence of "Estreeken Sahib."
+
+Biel said politely to Bronckhorst:--"Your witnesses don't seem to work.
+Haven't you any forged letters to produce?" But Bronckhorst was swaying
+to and fro in his chair, and there was a dead pause after Biel had been
+called to order.
+
+Bronckhorst's Counsel saw the look on his client's face, and without
+more ado, pitched his papers on the little green baize table, and
+mumbled something about having been misinformed. The whole Court
+applauded wildly, like soldiers at a theatre, and the Judge began to say
+what he thought.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Biel came out of the place, and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's-whip
+in the verandah. Ten minutes later, Biel was cutting Bronckhorst into
+ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly and without scandal. What
+was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a carriage; and his wife wept
+over it and nursed it into a man again.
+
+Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up the counter-charge against
+Bronckhorst of fabricating false evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst, with her
+faint watery smile, said that there had been a mistake, but it wasn't
+her Teddy's fault altogether. She would wait till her Teddy came back to
+her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her, or she had tried his patience,
+and perhaps we wouldn't cut her any more, and perhaps the mothers would
+let their children play with "little Teddy" again. He was so lonely.
+Then the Station invited Mrs. Bronckhorst everywhere, until Bronckhorst
+was fit to appear in public, when he went Home and took his wife with
+him. According to the latest advices, her Teddy did "come back to her,"
+and they are moderately happy. Though, of course, he can never forgive
+her the thrashing that she was the indirect means of getting for him.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+What Biel wants to know is:--"Why didn't I press home the charge against
+the Bronckhorst-brute, and have him run in?"
+
+What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is:--"How DID my husband bring such
+a lovely, lovely Waler from your Station? I know ALL his money-affairs;
+and I'm CERTAIN he didn't BUY it."
+
+What I want to know is:--"How do women like Mrs. Bronckhorst come to
+marry men like Bronckhorst?"
+
+And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the three.
+
+
+
+
+VENUS ANNODOMINI.
+
+
+     And the years went on as the years must do;
+     But our great Diana was always new--
+     Fresh, and blooming, and blonde, and fair,
+     With azure eyes and with aureate hair;
+     And all the folk, as they came or went,
+     Offered her praise to her heart's content.
+
+                              Diana of Ephesus.
+
+
+She had nothing to do with Number Eighteen in the Braccio Nuovo of
+the Vatican, between Visconti's Ceres and the God of the Nile. She was
+purely an Indian deity--an Anglo-Indian deity, that is to say--and
+we called her THE Venus Annodomini, to distinguish her from other
+Annodominis of the same everlasting order. There was a legend among the
+Hills that she had once been young; but no living man was prepared to
+come forward and say boldly that the legend was true. Men rode up to
+Simla, and stayed, and went away and made their name and did their
+life's work, and returned again to find the Venus Annodomini exactly as
+they had left her. She was as immutable as the Hills. But not quite
+so green. All that a girl of eighteen could do in the way of riding,
+walking, dancing, picnicking and over-exertion generally, the Venus
+Annodomini did, and showed no sign of fatigue or trace of weariness.
+Besides perpetual youth, she had discovered, men said, the secret of
+perpetual health; and her fame spread about the land. From a mere woman,
+she grew to be an Institution, insomuch that no young man could be said
+to be properly formed, who had not, at some time or another, worshipped
+at the shrine of the Venus Annodomini. There was no one like her, though
+there were many imitations. Six years in her eyes were no more than six
+months to ordinary women; and ten made less visible impression on her
+than does a week's fever on an ordinary woman. Every one adored her, and
+in return she was pleasant and courteous to nearly every one. Youth had
+been a habit of hers for so long, that she could not part with it--never
+realized, in fact, the necessity of parting with it--and took for her
+more chosen associates young people.
+
+Among the worshippers of the Venus Annodomini was young Gayerson.
+"Very Young" Gayerson, he was called to distinguish him from his father
+"Young" Gayerson, a Bengal Civilian, who affected the customs--as he had
+the heart--of youth. "Very Young" Gayerson was not content to worship
+placidly and for form's sake, as the other young men did, or to accept
+a ride or a dance, or a talk from the Venus Annodomini in a properly
+humble and thankful spirit. He was exacting, and, therefore, the Venus
+Annodomini repressed him. He worried himself nearly sick in a futile
+sort of way over her; and his devotion and earnestness made him appear
+either shy or boisterous or rude, as his mood might vary, by the side of
+the older men who, with him, bowed before the Venus Annodomini. She was
+sorry for him. He reminded her of a lad who, three-and-twenty years ago,
+had professed a boundless devotion for her, and for whom in return she
+had felt something more than a week's weakness. But that lad had fallen
+away and married another woman less than a year after he had worshipped
+her; and the Venus Annodomini had almost--not quite--forgotten his name.
+"Very Young" Gayerson had the same big blue eyes and the same way of
+pouting his underlip when he was excited or troubled. But the Venus
+Annodomini checked him sternly none the less. Too much zeal was a thing
+that she did not approve of; preferring instead, a tempered and sober
+tenderness.
+
+"Very Young" Gayerson was miserable, and took no trouble to conceal his
+wretchedness. He was in the Army--a Line regiment I think, but am not
+certain--and, since his face was a looking-glass and his forehead an
+open book, by reason of his innocence, his brothers in arms made his
+life a burden to him and embittered his naturally sweet disposition. No
+one except "Very Young" Gayerson, and he never told his views, knew how
+old "Very Young" Gayerson believed the Venus Annodomini to be. Perhaps
+he thought her five and twenty, or perhaps she told him that she was
+this age. "Very Young" Gayerson would have forded the Gugger in flood to
+carry her lightest word, and had implicit faith in her. Every one liked
+him, and every one was sorry when they saw him so bound a slave of the
+Venus Annodomini. Every one, too, admitted that it was not her fault;
+for the Venus Annodomini differed from Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Reiver in
+this particular--she never moved a finger to attract any one; but, like
+Ninon de l'Enclos, all men were attracted to her. One could admire and
+respect Mrs. Hauksbee, despise and avoid Mrs. Reiver, but one was forced
+to adore the Venus Annodomini.
+
+"Very Young" Gayerson's papa held a Division or a Collectorate
+or something administrative in a particularly unpleasant part of
+Bengal--full of Babus who edited newspapers proving that "Young"
+Gayerson was a "Nero" and a "Scylla" and a "Charybdis"; and, in addition
+to the Babus, there was a good deal of dysentery and cholera abroad
+for nine months of the year. "Young" Gayerson--he was about five and
+forty--rather liked Babus, they amused him, but he objects to dysentery,
+and when he could get away, went to Darjilling for the most part. This
+particular season he fancied that he would come up to Simla, and see his
+boy. The boy was not altogether pleased. He told the Venus Annodomini
+that his father was coming up, and she flushed a little and said that
+she should be delighted to make his acquaintance. Then she looked long
+and thoughtfully at "Very Young" Gayerson; because she was very, very
+sorry for him, and he was a very, very big idiot.
+
+"My daughter is coming out in a fortnight, Mr. Gayerson," she said.
+
+"Your WHAT?" said he.
+
+"Daughter," said the Venus Annodomini. "She's been out for a year at
+Home already, and I want her to see a little of India. She is nineteen
+and a very sensible, nice girl I believe."
+
+"Very Young" Gayerson, who was a short twenty-two years old, nearly fell
+out of his chair with astonishment; for he had persisted in believing,
+against all belief, in the youth of the Venus Annodomini. She, with her
+back to the curtained window, watched the effect of her sentences and
+smiled.
+
+"Very Young" Gayerson's papa came up twelve days later, and had not been
+in Simla four and twenty hours, before two men, old acquaintances of
+his, had told him how "Very Young" Gayerson had been conducting himself.
+
+"Young" Gayerson laughed a good deal, and inquired who the Venus
+Annodomini might be. Which proves that he had been living in Bengal
+where nobody knows anything except the rate of Exchange. Then he said
+"boys will be boys," and spoke to his son about the matter. "Very Young"
+Gayerson said that he felt wretched and unhappy; and "Young" Gayerson
+said that he repented of having helped to bring a fool into the world.
+He suggested that his son had better cut his leave short and go down to
+his duties. This led to an unfilial answer, and relations were strained,
+until "Young" Gayerson demmanded that they should call on the Venus
+Annodomini. "Very Young" Gayerson went with his papa, feeling, somehow,
+uncomfortable and small.
+
+The Venus Annodomini received them graciously and "Young" Gayerson
+said:--"By Jove! It's Kitty!" "Very Young" Gayerson would have listened
+for an explanation, if his time had not been taken up with trying to
+talk to a large, handsome, quiet, well-dressed girl--introduced to him
+by the Venus Annodomini as her daughter. She was far older in manners,
+style and repose than "Very Young" Gayerson; and, as he realized this
+thing, he felt sick.
+
+Presently, he heard the Venus Annodomini saying:--"Do you know that your
+son is one of my most devoted admirers?"
+
+"I don't wonder," said "Young" Gayerson. Here he raised his voice:--"He
+follows his father's footsteps. Didn't I worship the ground you trod on,
+ever so long ago, Kitty--and you haven't changed since then. How strange
+it all seems!"
+
+"Very Young" Gayerson said nothing. His conversation with the daughter
+of the Venus Annodomini was, through the rest of the call, fragmentary
+and disjointed.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+"At five, to-morrow then," said the Venus Annodomini. "And mind you are
+punctual."
+
+"At five punctual," said "Young" Gayerson. "You can lend your old father
+a horse I dare say, youngster, can't you? I'm going for a ride tomorrow
+afternoon."
+
+"Certainly," said "Very Young" Gayerson. "I am going down to-morrow
+morning. My ponies are at your service, Sir."
+
+The Venus Annodomini looked at him across the half-light of the room,
+and her big gray eyes filled with moisture. She rose and shook hands
+with him.
+
+"Good-bye, Tom," whispered the Venus Annodomini.
+
+
+
+
+THE BISARA OF POOREE.
+
+
+     Little Blind Fish, thou art marvellous wise,
+     Little Blind Fish, who put out thy eyes?
+     Open thine ears while I whisper my wish--
+     Bring me a lover, thou little Blind Fish.
+
+                      The Charm of the Bisara.
+
+
+Some natives say that it came from the other side of Kulu, where
+the eleven-inch Temple Sapphire is. Others that it was made at the
+Devil-Shrine of Ao-Chung in Thibet, was stolen by a Kafir, from him by
+a Gurkha, from him again by a Lahouli, from him by a khitmatgar, and by
+this latter sold to an Englishman, so all its virtue was lost: because,
+to work properly, the Bisara of Pooree must be stolen--with bloodshed if
+possible, but, at any rate, stolen.
+
+These stories of the coming into India are all false. It was made at
+Pooree ages since--the manner of its making would fill a small book--was
+stolen by one of the Temple dancing-girls there, for her own purposes,
+and then passed on from hand to hand, steadily northward, till it
+reached Hanla: always bearing the same name--the Bisara of Pooree. In
+shape it is a tiny, square box of silver, studded outside with eight
+small balas-rubies. Inside the box, which opens with a spring, is
+a little eyeless fish, carved from some sort of dark, shiny nut and
+wrapped in a shred of faded gold-cloth. That is the Bisara of Pooree,
+and it were better for a man to take a king cobra in his hand than to
+touch the Bisara of Pooree.
+
+All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with except in India
+where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff that people
+call "civilization." Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will
+tell you what its powers are--always supposing that it has been honestly
+stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in the
+country, with one exception.
+
+[The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the Nizam's Horse, at a
+place called Tuprani, due north of Hyderabad.] This can be depended upon
+for a fact. Some one else may explain it.
+
+If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or found, it turns
+against its owner in three years, and leads to ruin or death. This is
+another fact which you may explain when you have time. Meanwhile, you
+can laugh at it. At present, the Bisara is safe on an ekka-pony's
+neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off the Evil-eye. If the
+ekka-driver ever finds it, and wears it, or gives it to his wife, I am
+sorry for him.
+
+A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, owned it at Theog in 1884.
+It came into Simla from the north before Churton's khitmatgar bought it,
+and sold it, for three times its silver-value, to Churton, who collected
+curiosities. The servant knew no more what he had bought than
+the master; but a man looking over Churton's collection of
+curiosities--Churton was an Assistant Commissioner by the way--saw and
+held his tongue. He was an Englishman; but knew how to believe. Which
+shows that he was different from most Englishmen. He knew that it was
+dangerous to have any share in the little box when working or dormant;
+for unsought Love is a terrible gift.
+
+Pack--"Grubby" Pack, as we used to call him--was, in every way, a nasty
+little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake. He was three
+inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword was
+a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, I suppose, it
+was his wizenedness and worthlessness that made him fall so hopelessly
+in love with Miss Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five foot seven in
+her tennis shoes. He was not content with falling in love quietly,
+but brought all the strength of his miserable little nature into the
+business. If he had not been so objectionable, one might have pitied
+him. He vapored, and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and
+tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis's big, quiet, gray eyes,
+and failed. It was one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in
+this country where we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on
+one side, without the faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis
+looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road. He had
+no prospects beyond Captain's pay, and no wits to help that out by one
+anna. In a large-sized man, love like his would have been touching. In
+a good man it would have been grand. He being what he was, it was only a
+nuisance.
+
+You will believe this much. What you will not believe, is what follows:
+Churton, and The Man who Knew that the Bisara was, were lunching at the
+Simla Club together. Churton was complaining of life in general. His
+best mare had rolled out of stable down the hill and had broken her
+back; his decisions were being reversed by the upper Courts, more
+than an Assistant Commissioner of eight years' standing has a right to
+expect; he knew liver and fever, and, for weeks past, had felt out of
+sorts. Altogether, he was disgusted and disheartened.
+
+Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world knows, in two
+sections, with an arch-arrangement dividing them. Come in, turn to your
+own left, take the table under the window, and you cannot see any one
+who has come in, turning to the right, and taken a table on the right
+side of the arch. Curiously enough, every word that you say can be
+heard, not only by the other diner, but by the servants beyond the
+screen through which they bring dinner. This is worth knowing: an
+echoing-room is a trap to be forewarned against.
+
+Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man who Knew told
+Churton the story of the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length than
+I have told it to you in this place; winding up with the suggestion that
+Churton might as well throw the little box down the hill and see whether
+all his troubles would go with it. In ordinary ears, English ears, the
+tale was only an interesting bit of folk-lore. Churton laughed,
+said that he felt better for his tiffin, and went out. Pack had been
+tiffining by himself to the right of the arch, and had heard everything.
+He was nearly mad with his absurd infatuation for Miss Hollis that all
+Simla had been laughing about.
+
+It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves beyond reason, he
+is ready to go beyond reason to gratify his feelings. Which he would not
+do for money or power merely. Depend upon it, Solomon would never have
+built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with queer names, if
+there had not been trouble of some kind in his zenana, and nowhere else.
+But this is beside the story. The facts of the case are these: Pack
+called on Churton next day when Churton was out, left his card, and
+STOLE the Bisara of Pooree from its place under the clock on the
+mantelpiece! Stole it like the thief he was by nature. Three days later,
+all Simla was electrified by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted
+Pack--the shrivelled rat, Pack! Do you desire clearer evidence than
+this? The Bisara of Pooree had been stolen, and it worked as it had
+always done when won by foul means.
+
+There are three or four times in a man's life-when he is justified in
+meddling with other people's affairs to play Providence.
+
+The Man who Knew felt that he WAS justified; but believing and acting on
+a belief are quite different things. The insolent satisfaction of Pack
+as he ambled by the side of Miss Hollis, and Churton's striking release
+from liver, as soon as the Bisara of Pooree had gone, decided the Man.
+He explained to Churton and Churton laughed, because he was not brought
+up to believe that men on the Government House List steal--at least
+little things. But the miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that
+tailor, Pack, decided him to take steps on suspicion. He vowed that he
+only wanted to find out where his ruby-studded silver box had vanished
+to. You cannot accuse a man on the Government House List of stealing.
+And if you rifle his room you are a thief yourself. Churton, prompted
+by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary. If he found nothing in Pack's
+room.... but it is not nice to think of what would have happened in that
+case.
+
+Pack went to a dance at Benmore--Benmore WAS Benmore in those days, and
+not an office--and danced fifteen waltzes out of twenty-two with Miss
+Hollis. Churton and The Man took all the keys that they could lay hands
+on, and went to Pack's room in the hotel, certain that his servants
+would be away. Pack was a cheap soul. He had not purchased a decent
+cash-box to keep his papers in, but one of those native imitations that
+you buy for ten rupees. It opened to any sort of key, and there at the
+bottom, under Pack's Insurance Policy, lay the Bisara of Pooree!
+
+Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of Pooree in his pocket, and
+went to the dance with The Man. At least, he came in time for supper,
+and saw the beginning of the end in Miss Hollis's eyes. She was
+hysterical after supper, and was taken away by her Mamma.
+
+At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in his pocket, Churton twisted
+his foot on one of the steps leading down to the old Rink, and had to be
+sent home in a rickshaw, grumbling. He did not believe in the Bisara of
+Pooree any the more for this manifestation, but he sought out Pack and
+called him some ugly names; and "thief" was the mildest of them. Pack
+took the names with the nervous smile of a little man who wants both
+soul and body to resent an insult, and went his way. There was no public
+scandal.
+
+A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis. There
+had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said. So he
+went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if he lives to
+be a Colonel.
+
+Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of Pooree as a
+gift. The Man took it, went down to the Cart Road at once, found an ekka
+pony with a blue head-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the
+necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven that he was
+rid of a danger. Remember, in case you ever find it, that you must not
+destroy the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain why just now,
+but the power lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max
+Muller could tell you more about it than I.
+
+You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. If ever you come
+across a little silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch long
+by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold
+cloth, inside it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will
+discover for yourself whether my story is true or false.
+
+Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you had
+not killed yourself in the beginning.
+
+
+
+
+THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS.
+
+
+  "If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious?"
+
+                                        Opium Smoker's Proverb.
+
+
+This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste,
+spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and
+I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions so:--
+
+It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'
+quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque
+of Wazir Khan. I don't mind telling any one this much, but I defy him
+to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might
+even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none
+the wiser. We used to call the gully, "the Gully of the Black Smoke,"
+but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey
+couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you
+reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.
+
+It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it
+first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that
+he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped
+bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up
+north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in
+peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and
+not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find
+all over the City. No; the old man knew his business thoroughly, and he
+was most clean for a Chinaman. He was a one-eyed little chap, not much
+more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone. All the
+same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen.
+Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day
+and night, night and day, was a caution. I've been at it five years, and
+I can do my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a child to
+Fung-Tching that way. All the same, the old man was keen on his money,
+very keen; and that's what I can't understand. I heard he saved a good
+deal before he died, but his nephew has got all that now; and the old
+man's gone back to China to be buried.
+
+He kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat
+as a new pin. In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss--almost
+as ugly as Fung-Tching--and there were always sticks burning under his
+nose; but you never smelt 'em when the pipes were going thick. Opposite
+the Joss was Fung-Tching's coffin. He had spent a good deal of his
+savings on that, and whenever a new man came to the Gate he was always
+introduced to it. It was lacquered black, with red and gold writings
+on it, and I've heard that Fung-Tching brought it out all the way from
+China. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I know that, if I
+came first in the evening, I used to spread my mat just at the foot of
+it. It was a quiet corner you see, and a sort of breeze from the gully
+came in at the window now and then. Besides the mats, there was no other
+furniture in the room--only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and
+blue and purple with age and polish.
+
+Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place "The Gate of a Hundred
+Sorrows." (He was the only Chinaman I know who used bad-sounding fancy
+names. Most of them are flowery. As you'll see in Calcutta.) We used
+to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows on you so much, if you're
+white, as the Black Smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium doesn't
+tell on him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good deal. Of
+course, there are some people that the Smoke doesn't touch any more than
+tobacco would at first. They just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep
+naturally, and next morning they are almost fit for work. Now, I was
+one of that sort when I began, but I've been at it for five years pretty
+steadily, and its different now. There was an old aunt of mine, down
+Agra way, and she left me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a
+month secured. Sixty isn't much. I can recollect a time, seems hundreds
+and hundreds of years ago, that I was getting my three hundred a month,
+and pickings, when I was working on a big timber contract in Calcutta.
+
+I didn't stick to that work for long. The Black Smoke does not allow of
+much other business; and even though I am very little affected by it, as
+men go, I couldn't do a day's work now to save my life. After all, sixty
+rupees is what I want. When old Fung-Tching was alive he used to draw
+the money for me, give me about half of it to live on (I eat very
+little), and the rest he kept himself. I was free of the Gate at any
+time of the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when I liked,
+so I didn't care. I know the old man made a good thing out of it; but
+that's no matter. Nothing matters much to me; and, besides, the money
+always came fresh and fresh each month.
+
+There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was first opened. Me,
+and two Baboos from a Government Office somewhere in Anarkulli, but they
+got the sack and couldn't pay (no man who has to work in the daylight
+can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a Chinaman
+that was Fung-Tching's nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of
+money somehow; an English loafer--Mac-Somebody I think, but I have
+forgotten--that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they
+said he had saved Fung-Tching's life at some trial in Calcutta when
+he was a barrister): another Eurasian, like myself, from Madras; a
+half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the
+North. I think they must have been Persians or Afghans or something.
+There are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular. I
+don't know what happened to the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died
+after six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles
+and nose-ring for himself. But I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank
+as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in
+a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
+Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air. They
+found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me, the
+Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used to
+live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. The
+Memsahib looks very old now. I think she was a young woman when the
+Gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds
+and hundreds of years old. It is very hard to keep count of time in the
+Gate, and besides, time doesn't matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees
+fresh and fresh every month. A very, very long while ago, when I used
+to be getting three hundred and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on
+a big timber-contract at Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she's dead
+now. People said that I killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Perhaps
+I did, but it's so long since it doesn't matter. Sometimes when I first
+came to the Gate, I used to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and
+done with long ago, and I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every
+month, and am quite happy. Not DRUNK happy, you know, but always quiet
+and soothed and contented.
+
+How did I take to it? It began at Calcutta. I used to try it in my own
+house, just to see what it was like. I never went very far, but I think
+my wife must have died then. Anyhow, I found myself here, and got to
+know Fung-Tching. I don't remember rightly how that came about; but he
+told me of the Gate and I used to go there, and, somehow, I have never
+got away from it since. Mind you, though, the Gate was a respectable
+place in Fung-Tching's time where you could be comfortable, and not at
+all like the chandoo-khanas where the niggers go. No; it was clean and
+quiet, and not crowded. Of course, there were others beside us ten
+and the man; but we always had a mat apiece with a wadded woollen
+head-piece, all covered with black and red dragons and things; just like
+a coffin in the corner.
+
+At the end of one's third pipe the dragons used to move about and fight.
+I've watched 'em, many and many a night through. I used to regulate
+my Smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to make 'em stir.
+Besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old Fung-Tching
+is dead. He died a couple of years ago, and gave me the pipe I always
+use now--a silver one, with queer beasts crawling up and down the
+receiver-bottle below the cup. Before that, I think, I used a big bamboo
+stem with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green jade mouthpiece.
+It was a little thicker than a walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet,
+very sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn't, and
+I've got to clean it out now and then, that's a great deal of trouble,
+but I smoke it for the old man's sake. He must have made a good thing
+out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best
+stuff you could get anywhere.
+
+When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it
+the "Temple of the Three Possessions;" but we old ones speak of it
+as the "Hundred Sorrows," all the same. The nephew does things very
+shabbily, and I think the Memsahib must help him. She lives with him;
+same as she used to do with the old man. The two let in all sorts of low
+people, niggers and all, and the Black Smoke isn't as good as it used
+to be. I've found burnt bran in my pipe over and over again. The old man
+would have died if that had happened in his time. Besides, the room
+is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. The
+coffin has gone--gone to China again--with the old man and two ounces of
+smoke inside it, in case he should want 'em on the way.
+
+The Joss doesn't get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used to;
+that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He's all brown, too, and
+no one ever attends to him. That's the Memsahib's work, I know; because,
+when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a
+waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss
+wouldn't know the difference. So now we've got the sticks mixed with
+a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour longer to burn, and smell
+stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get
+on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss doesn't like it. I can see
+that. Late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue
+and green and red--just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive;
+and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.
+
+I don't know why I don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a little
+room of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if
+I went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's so much
+trouble, and I've grown to be very fond of the Gate. It's not much to
+look at. Not what it was in the old man's time, but I couldn't leave it.
+I've seen so many come in and out. And I've seen so many die here on the
+mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I've seen some
+things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange
+when you're on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was,
+it wouldn't matter. Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his
+people, and never got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and
+such. But the nephew isn't half so careful. He tells everywhere that he
+keeps a "first-chop" house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make
+them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a
+little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course.
+The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin
+into the place. He has to keep us three of course--me and the Memsahib
+and the other Eurasian. We're fixtures. But he wouldn't give us credit
+for a pipeful--not for anything.
+
+One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and
+the Madras man are terrible shaky now. They've got a boy to light their
+pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them
+carried out before me. I don't think I shall ever outlive the Memsahib
+or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black-Smoke, and
+Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him, though he DOES smoke
+cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her
+time; and SHE died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the
+old man hung up her pipe just above the Joss. He was always fond of her,
+I fancy. But he took her bangles just the same.
+
+I should like to die like the bazar-woman--on a clean, cool mat with a
+pipe of good stuff between my lips. When I feel I'm going, I shall ask
+Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and
+fresh, as long as he pleases, and watch the black and red dragons have
+their last big fight together; and then....
+
+Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters much to me--only I wished
+Tsin-ling wouldn't put bran into the Black Smoke.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN.
+
+
+  "Who is the happy man?  He that sees in his own house at home little
+  children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying."
+
+                        Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.
+
+
+The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood
+on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was
+cleaning for me.
+
+"Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din, deferentially.
+
+The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a
+polo-ball to a khitmatgar?
+
+"By Your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and
+desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself."
+
+No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting
+to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the
+verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of
+small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground.
+Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his
+treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo-ball?
+
+Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was
+aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a
+ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the
+tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning
+to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the
+"little son."
+
+He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in
+his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into
+the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground
+with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what
+was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the
+servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever
+done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing
+sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner
+who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief.
+
+"This boy," said Imam Din, judicially, "is a budmash, a big budmash.
+He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior." Renewed
+yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam
+Din.
+
+"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib is not angry, and take him
+away." Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had
+now gathered all his shirt round his neck, string-wise, and the yell
+subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said Imam
+Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is Muhammad Din, and he
+is a budmash." Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round,
+in his father's arms, and said gravely:--"It is true that my name is
+Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a MAN!"
+
+From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did
+he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the compound,
+we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was
+confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side and "Salaam Muhammad Din" from
+mine. Daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the
+fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered
+trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that
+my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.
+
+Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the
+compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands
+of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down
+the ground. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six
+shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that
+circle again, was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick
+alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a
+little bank of dust. The bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea for
+the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did
+not much disfigure my garden.
+
+Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then
+or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me
+unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads,
+dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all
+hope of mending. Next morning I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to
+himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him
+that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had
+scattered his rubbish using bad language the while. Muhammad Din
+labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery
+fragments, and it was with a tearful apologetic face that he said,
+"Talaam Tahib," when I came home from the office. A hasty inquiry
+resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that by my singular favor he
+was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took
+heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to
+eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.
+
+For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble
+orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning
+magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth
+water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy,
+from my fowls--always alone and always crooning to himself.
+
+A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his
+little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something
+more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I
+disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his
+crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in dust. It
+would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two
+yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never
+completed.
+
+Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive,
+and no "Talaam Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to
+the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day, Imam Din told me
+that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He
+got the medicine, and an English Doctor.
+
+"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left Imam
+Din's quarters.
+
+A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met
+on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one
+other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that
+was left of little Muhammad Din.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS.
+
+
+   If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care
+   that you do not fall in.
+
+                                                  Hindu Proverb.
+
+
+Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a
+young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is
+an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important and business-like,
+and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of liver, or suffers
+from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very
+happy in a tender, twilight fashion.
+
+Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him. It was four
+years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it. She had
+married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning, she had told
+Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more than a sister
+to him, she would always take the deepest interest in his welfare." This
+startlingly new and original remark gave Hannasyde something to think
+over for two years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four
+months. Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Garron, but, none the
+less, had several points in common with that far too lucky man.
+
+He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
+pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It
+brought him happily through the Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely.
+There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which
+he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex
+to him. Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He
+kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while.
+
+Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the
+Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill,
+one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down
+in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the
+girl who had made him so happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned against the
+railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but
+that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his
+temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the
+'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later,
+the wife of a man from Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way
+place, and she had come up to Simla early in the season for the good of
+her health. She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the
+end of the season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla
+again, her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde,
+raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with
+himself for one measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you
+must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love,
+and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself,
+affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human
+likelihood cross his path again. So whatever he did didn't much matter.
+She was marvellously like the girl who "took a deep interest" and the
+rest of the formula. All things considered, it would be pleasant to make
+the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a
+very little time--to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again.
+Every one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular
+monomania was his old love, Alice Chisane.
+
+He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
+introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as
+he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the
+facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties,
+and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and
+rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are
+matters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention
+of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. He wanted to
+be deceived, he meant to be deceived, and he deceived himself very
+thoroughly. Not only were the face and figure, the face and figure of
+Alice Chisane, but the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and
+so were the turns of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman
+has, of gait and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the
+same. The turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes
+at the end of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over
+the saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most
+marvellous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next
+room, while Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note
+for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--"Poor
+Wandering One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for Hannasyde in
+the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual woman herself--in
+the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she and Alice Chisane
+being cast in different moulds. But all that Hannasyde wanted to know
+and see and think about, was this maddening and perplexing likeness of
+face and voice and manner. He was bent on making a fool of himself that
+way; and he was in no sort disappointed.
+
+Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always pleasant to
+any sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of the world,
+could make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.
+
+He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man habitually--to
+meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes. Anything she told him to do
+was law; and he was, there could be no doubting it, fond of her company
+so long as she talked to him, and kept on talking about trivialities.
+But when she launched into expression of her personal views and her
+wrongs, those small social differences that make the spice of Simla
+life, Hannasyde was neither pleased nor interested. He didn't want
+to know anything about Mrs. Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in
+the past--she had travelled nearly all over the world, and could talk
+cleverly--he wanted the likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and
+her voice in his ears. Anything outside that, reminding him of another
+personality jarred, and he showed that it did.
+
+Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert turned on
+him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. "Mr. Hannasyde,"
+said she, "will you be good enough to explain why you have appointed
+yourself my special cavalier servente? I don't understand it. But I
+am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that you don't care the least
+little bit in the world for ME." This seems to support, by the way, the
+theory that no man can act or tell lies to a woman without being found
+out. Hannasyde was taken off his guard. His defence never was a strong
+one, because he was always thinking of himself, and he blurted out,
+before he knew what he was saying, this inexpedient answer:--"No more I
+do."
+
+The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Landys-Haggert
+laugh. Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's lucid
+explanation, Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of scorn in
+her voice:--"So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of
+your tattered affections on, am I?"
+
+Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted himself
+generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane, which was
+unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that Mrs. Haggert
+had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde. Only....
+only no woman likes being made love through instead of to--specially on
+behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing.
+
+Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular exhibition
+of himself. He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of
+Simla.
+
+When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place and Mrs.
+Haggert to hers. "It was like making love to a ghost," said Hannasyde
+to himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my work." But
+he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-Chisane ghost; and he
+could not be certain whether it was Haggert or Chisane that made up the
+greater part of the pretty phantom.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+He got understanding a month later.
+
+A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a
+heartless Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to the
+other. You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy till
+he or she dies. There was a case once--but that's another story.
+
+Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the Frontier at
+two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step, from
+Dindigul to his station. He dropped Mrs. Haggert at Lucknow, to stay
+with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the Chutter
+Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home a little
+comfortable. Lucknow was Hannasyde's station, and Mrs. Haggert stayed
+a week there. Hannasyde went to meet her. And the train came in,
+he discovered which he had been thinking of for the past month. The
+unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. The Lucknow week, with two
+dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides together, clinched matters;
+and Hannasyde found himself pacing this circle of thought:--He
+adored Alice Chisane--at least he HAD adored her. AND he admired
+Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like Alice Chisane. BUT Mrs.
+Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice Chisane, being a thousand
+times more adorable. NOW Alice Chisane was "the bride of another," and
+so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good and honest wife too. THEREFORE,
+he, Hannasyde, was.... here he called himself several hard names, and
+wished that he had been wise in the beginning.
+
+Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind, she alone
+knows. He seemed to take an unqualified interest in everything connected
+with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-Chisane likeness, and he
+said one or two things which, if Alice Chisane had been still betrothed
+to him, could scarcely have been excused, even on the grounds of the
+likeness. But Mrs. Haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long
+time in making Hannasyde see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been
+to him because of her strange resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde
+groaned in his saddle and said, "Yes, indeed," and busied himself with
+preparations for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and
+miserable.
+
+The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her off
+at the Railway Station. She was very grateful for his kindness and the
+trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one
+who knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And Hannasyde abused
+the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the people on the platform,
+and prayed that the roof might fall in and slay him.
+
+As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of the
+window to say goodbye:--"On second thoughts au revoir, Mr. Hannasyde. I
+go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you in Town."
+
+Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly:--"I hope
+to Heaven I shall never see your face again!"
+
+And Mrs. Haggert understood.
+
+
+
+
+WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE.
+
+
+     I closed and drew for my love's sake,
+       That now is false to me,
+     And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss,
+       And set Dumeny free.
+
+     And ever they give me praise and gold,
+       And ever I moan my loss,
+     For I struck the blow for my false love's sake,
+       And not for the men at the Moss.
+
+                                   Tarrant Moss.
+
+
+One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of atmosphere in
+the painter's sense. There are no half-tints worth noticing. Men stand
+out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone them down, and nothing to
+scale them against. They do their work, and grow to think that there is
+nothing but their work, and nothing like their work, and that they are
+the real pivots on which the administration turns. Here is an instance
+of this feeling. A half-caste clerk was ruling forms in a Pay Office. He
+said to me:--"Do you know what would happen if I added or took away one
+single line on this sheet?" Then, with the air of a conspirator:--"It
+would disorganize the whole of the Treasury payments throughout the
+whole of the Presidency Circle! Think of that?"
+
+If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own
+particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill
+themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the
+listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.
+
+Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
+over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils through a
+district of five thousand square miles.
+
+There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had grown
+middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent
+juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
+backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the
+Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad.
+This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days,
+to say:--"Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any
+living man." If you did not say this, you were considered one of mean
+understanding.
+
+Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal
+complications across the Border is of more use; but in Wressley's time,
+much attention was paid to the Central Indian States. They were called
+"foci" and "factors," and all manner of imposing names.
+
+And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. When Wressley
+lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
+such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
+of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
+sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were
+"assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political contingencies."
+In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit
+near and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall.
+
+Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm, and, to keep
+him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was made
+much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was. He did not
+require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what he received
+confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite so absolutely
+and imperatively necessary to the stability of India as Wressley of the
+Foreign Office. There might be other good men, but the known, honored
+and trusted man among men was Wressley of the Foreign Office. We had a
+Viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle" a fractious big
+man and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and so keep all his
+team level. He conveyed to Wressley the impression which I have just
+set down; and even tough men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy's
+praise. There was a case once--but that is another story.
+
+All India knew Wressley's name and office--it was in Thacker and Spink's
+Directory--but who he was personally, or what he did, or what his
+special merits were, not fifty men knew or cared. His work filled all
+his time, and he found no leisure to cultivate acquaintances beyond
+those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots in their 'scutcheons.
+Wressley would have made a very good Clerk in the Herald's College had
+he not been a Bengal Civilian.
+
+Upon a day, between office and office, great trouble came to
+Wressley--overwhelmed him, knocked him down, and left him gasping
+as though he had been a little school-boy. Without reason, against
+prudence, and at a moment's notice, he fell in love with a frivolous,
+golden-haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall on a high, rough
+waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap crammed over her eyes. Her name was
+Venner--Tillie Venner--and she was delightful. She took Wressley's heart
+at a hand-gallop, and Wressley found that it was not good for man to
+live alone; even with half the Foreign Office Records in his presses.
+
+Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was slightly ridiculous. He did
+his best to interest the girl in himself--that is to say, his work--and
+she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in
+what, behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs"; for she
+lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing about
+them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort of
+error before now.
+
+Providence, however, had care of Wressley. He was immensely struck with
+Miss Venner's intelligence. He would have been more impressed had
+he heard her private and confidential accounts of his calls. He held
+peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls. He said that the best work
+of a man's career should be laid reverently at their feet. Ruskin writes
+something like this somewhere, I think; but in ordinary life a few
+kisses are better and save time.
+
+About a month after he had lost his heart to Miss Venner, and had been
+doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his "Native Rule
+in Central India" struck Wressley and filled him with joy. It was, as he
+sketched it, a great thing--the work of his life--a really comprehensive
+survey of a most fascinating subject--to be written with all the special
+and laboriously acquired knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office--a
+gift fit for an Empress.
+
+He told Miss Venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped, on his
+return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance. Would she wait?
+Certainly she would. Wressley drew seventeen hundred rupees a month. She
+would wait a year for that. Her mamma would help her to wait.
+
+So Wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents, about
+a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to Central India
+with his notion hot in his head. He began his book in the land he was
+writing of. Too much official correspondence had made him a frigid
+workman, and he must have guessed that he needed the white light of
+local color on his palette. This is a dangerous paint for amateurs to
+play with.
+
+Heavens, how that man worked! He caught his Rajahs, analyzed his Rajahs,
+and traced them up into the mists of Time and beyond, with their
+queens and their concubines. He dated and cross-dated, pedigreed and
+triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted,
+selected, inferred, calendared and counter-calendared for ten hours a
+day. And, because this sudden and new light of Love was upon him, he
+turned those dry bones of history and dirty records of misdeeds into
+things to weep or to laugh over as he pleased. His heart and soul were
+at the end of his pen, and they got into the link. He was dowered with
+sympathy, insight, humor and style for two hundred and thirty days and
+nights; and his book was a Book. He had his vast special knowledge with
+him, so to speak; but the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry
+and the power of the output, were beyond all special knowledge. But I
+doubt whether he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may
+have lost some happiness. He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for
+himself. Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.
+
+Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in India where every
+one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven, by the women
+who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to take up points
+alone. A good man once started, goes forward; but an average man, so
+soon as the woman loses interest in his success as a tribute to her
+power, comes back to the battalion and is no more heard of.
+
+Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, blushing and
+stammering, presented it to Miss Venner. She read a little of it. I
+give her review verbatim:--"Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid
+Wajahs. I didn't understand it."
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,--I am not
+exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl. All that he could say
+feebly was:--"But, but it's my magnum opus! The work of my life." Miss
+Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but she knew that Captain
+Kerrington had won three races at the last Gymkhana. Wressley didn't
+press her to wait for him any longer. He had sense enough for that.
+
+Then came the reaction after the year's strain, and Wressley went back
+to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering,
+report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees
+a month. He abided by Miss Venner's review. Which proves that the
+inspiration in the book was purely temporary and unconnected with
+himself. Nevertheless, he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn, five
+packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense from Bombay, of the best
+book of Indian history ever written.
+
+When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I was turning over
+his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of "Native Rule in
+Central India"--the copy that Miss Venner could not understand. I read
+it, sitting on his mule-trucks, as long as the light lasted, and offered
+him his own price for it. He looked over my shoulder for a few pages and
+said to himself drearily:--"Now, how in the world did I come to write
+such damned good stuff as that?" Then to me:--"Take it and keep
+it. Write one of your penny-farthing yarns about its birth.
+Perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may have been ordained to that
+end."
+
+Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office was once, struck me
+as about the bitterest thing that I had ever heard a man say of his own
+work.
+
+
+
+
+BY WORD OF MOUTH.
+
+
+     Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
+       A spectre at my door,
+     Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
+       I shall but love you more,
+     Who from Death's house returning, give me still
+       One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
+
+                                     Shadow Houses.
+
+
+This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and
+where the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long enough
+in this country to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only
+write the story as it happened.
+
+Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse,"
+because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good
+Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even with our Deputy
+Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse.
+He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking as himself. She was
+a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "Squash" Hillardyce of the Berars, who
+married his Chief's daughter by mistake. But that is another story.
+
+A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is
+nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years.
+This is a delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one
+another. They can live absolutely alone and without interruption--just
+as the Dormice did. These two little people retired from the world after
+their marriage, and were very happy. They were forced, of course,
+to give occasional dinners, but they made no friends hereby, and the
+Station went its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally,
+that Dormouse was the best of good fellows, though dull. A Civil Surgeon
+who never quarrels is a rarity, appreciated as such.
+
+Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of all
+in India, where we are few in the land, and very much dependent on each
+other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the
+world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of
+typhoid broke out in the Station in the heart of the cold weather, and
+his wife went down. He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted
+before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burning with something worse
+than simple fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call
+on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.
+Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very helpless
+in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses,
+minute by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise's
+ears for what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to
+look after the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station
+that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five
+cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did
+their best. The women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned
+to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those
+typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of
+the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were
+going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise
+got a relapse and died in a week and the Station went to the funeral.
+Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be
+taken away.
+
+After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be
+comforted. He did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should
+go on leave, and the other men of his own Service told him so. Dumoise
+was very thankful for the suggestion--he was thankful for anything in
+those days--and went to Chini on a walking-tour. Chini is some twenty
+marches from Simla, in the heart of the Hills, and the scenery is good
+if you are in trouble. You pass through big, still deodar-forests, and
+under big, still cliffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like
+a woman's breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the
+deodars says:--"Hush--hush--hush." So little Dumoise was packed off to
+Chini, to wear down his grief with a full-plate camera, and a rifle. He
+took also a useless bearer, because the man had been his wife's favorite
+servant. He was idle and a thief, but Dumoise trusted everything to him.
+
+On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bagi, through the
+Forest Reserve which is on the spur of Mount Huttoo. Some men who have
+travelled more than a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is
+one of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, and ends
+suddenly in bleak, nipped hill-side and black rocks. Bagi dak-bungalow
+is open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi.
+Perhaps that was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven
+in the evening, and his bearer went down the hill-side to the village
+to engage coolies for the next day's march. The sun had set, and the
+night-winds were beginning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise leaned on
+the railing of the verandah, waiting for his bearer to return. The man
+came back almost immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a
+rate that Dumoise fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was running as
+hard as he could up the face of the hill.
+
+But there was no bear to account for his terror. He raced to the
+verandah and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face
+iron-gray. Then he gurgled:--"I have seen the Memsahib! I have seen the
+Memsahib!"
+
+"Where?" said Dumoise.
+
+"Down there, walking on the road to the village. She was in a blue
+dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said:--'Ram Dass, give
+my salaams to the Sahib, and tell him that I shall meet him next month
+at Nuddea.' Then I ran away, because I was afraid."
+
+What Dumoise said or did I do not know. Ram Dass declares that he said
+nothing, but walked up and down the verandah all the cold night, waiting
+for the Memsahib to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into
+the dark like a madman. But no Memsahib came, and, next day, he went on
+to Simla cross-questioning the bearer every hour.
+
+Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise and that she had
+lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully
+repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram Dass adhered. He did not know
+where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would most certainly
+never go to Nuddea; even though his pay were doubled.
+
+Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing whatever to do with a doctor
+serving in the Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles from
+Meridki.
+
+Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki
+there to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him
+during his tour. There were some Dispensary accounts to be explained,
+and some recent orders of the Surgeon-General to be noted, and,
+altogether, the taking-over was a full day's work. In the evening,
+Dumoise told his locum tenens, who was an old friend of his bachelor
+days, what had happened at Bagi; and the man said that Ram Dass might as
+well have chosen Tuticorin while he was about it.
+
+At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from Simla,
+ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at once
+to Nuddea on special duty. There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at
+Nuddea, and the Bengal Government, being shorthanded, as usual, had
+borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab.
+
+Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said:--"Well?"
+
+The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he could say.
+
+Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on his way
+from Bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard the first news of the
+impending transfer.
+
+He tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words, but
+Dumoise stopped him with:--"If I had desired THAT, I should never have
+come back from Chini. I was shooting there. I wish to live, for I have
+things to do.... but I shall not be sorry."
+
+The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight, to pack up
+Dumoise's just opened trunks. Ram Dass entered with the lamps.
+
+"Where is the Sahib going?" he asked.
+
+"To Nuddea," said Dumoise, softly.
+
+Ram Dass clawed Dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not to go. Ram
+Dass wept and howled till he was turned out of the room. Then he wrapped
+up all his belongings and came back to ask for a character. He was not
+going to Nuddea to see his Sahib die, and, perhaps to die himself.
+
+So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea alone; the
+other Doctor bidding him good-bye as one under sentence of death.
+
+Eleven days later, he had joined his Memsahib; and the Bengal Government
+had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nuddea. The
+first importation lay dead in Chooadanga Dak-Bungalow.
+
+
+
+
+TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.
+
+
+     By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed
+     From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun,
+            Fell the Stone
+     To the Tarn where the daylight is lost;
+     So She fell from the light of the Sun,
+            And alone.
+
+     Now the fall was ordained from the first,
+     With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
+            But the Stone
+     Knows only Her life is accursed,
+     As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn,
+            And alone.
+
+     Oh, Thou who has builded the world
+     Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun!
+     Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn!
+           Judge Thou
+     The Sin of the Stone that was hurled
+     By the Goat from the light of the Sun,
+     As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
+           Even now--even now--even now!
+
+     From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin.
+
+
+          "Say, is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower,
+           Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
+           Oh be it night--be it--"
+
+
+Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the Serai
+where the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from Central
+Asia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night was dark,
+he could not rise again till I helped him. That was the beginning of my
+acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. When a loafer, and drunk, sings
+The Song of the Bower, he must be worth cultivating. He got off the
+camel's back and said, rather thickly:--"I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but a
+dip in Loggerhead will put me right again; and I say, have you spoken to
+Symonds about the mare's knees?"
+
+Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close to
+Mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, and
+Charley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks. It was
+strange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the horses
+and camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the man seemed to remember
+himself and sober down at the same time. He leaned against the camel and
+pointed to a corner of the Serai where a lamp was burning:--
+
+"I live there," said he, "and I should be extremely obliged if you would
+be good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for I am more than
+usually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight. But not in respect to my
+head. 'My brain cries out against'--how does it go? But my head rides on
+the--rolls on the dung-hill I should have said, and controls the qualm."
+
+I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed on
+the edge of the verandah in front of the line of native quarters.
+
+"Thanks--a thousand thanks! O Moon and little, little Stars! To think
+that a man should so shamelessly.... Infamous liquor, too. Ovid in exile
+drank no worse. Better. It was frozen. Alas! I had no ice. Good-night. I
+would introduce you to my wife were I sober--or she civilized."
+
+A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began calling
+the man names; so I went away. He was the most interesting loafer that
+I had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later on, he became
+a friend of mine. He was a tall, well-built, fair man fearfully shaken
+with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the thirty-five which, he
+said, was his real age. When a man begins to sink in India, and is not
+sent Home by his friends as soon as may be, he falls very low from a
+respectable point of view. By the time that he changes his creed, as did
+McIntosh, he is past redemption.
+
+In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three Sahibs,
+generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or Mussulman, and who live
+more or less as such. But it is not often that you can get to know
+them. As McIntosh himself used to say:--"If I change my religion for my
+stomach's sake, I do not seek to become a martyr to missionaries, nor am
+I anxious for notoriety."
+
+At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned me. "Remember this. I am
+not an object for charity. I require neither your money, your food,
+nor your cast-off raiment. I am that rare animal, a self-supporting
+drunkard. If you choose, I will smoke with you, for the tobacco of the
+bazars does not, I admit, suit my palate; and I will borrow any books
+which you may not specially value. It is more than likely that I shall
+sell them for bottles of excessively filthy country-liquors. In return,
+you shall share such hospitality as my house affords. Here is a charpoy
+on which two can sit, and it is possible that there may, from time to
+time, be food in that platter. Drink, unfortunately, you will find on
+the premises at any hour: and thus I make you welcome to all my poor
+establishments."
+
+I was admitted to the McIntosh household--I and my good tobacco. But
+nothing else. Unluckily, one cannot visit a loafer in the Serai by
+day. Friends buying horses would not understand it. Consequently, I
+was obliged to see McIntosh after dark. He laughed at this, and said
+simply:--"You are perfectly right. When I enjoyed a position in society,
+rather higher than yours, I should have done exactly the same thing,
+Good Heavens! I was once"--he spoke as though he had fallen from the
+Command of a Regiment--"an Oxford Man!" This accounted for the reference
+to Charley Symonds' stable.
+
+"You," said McIntosh, slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, to
+outward appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for strong
+drinks. On the whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of the two. Yet
+I am not certain. You are--forgive my saying so even while I am smoking
+your excellent tobacco--painfully ignorant of many things."
+
+We were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he owned
+no chairs, watching the horses being watered for the night, while the
+native woman was preparing dinner. I did not like being patronized by a
+loafer, but I was his guest for the time being, though he owned only one
+very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of trousers made out of gunny-bags.
+He took the pipe out of his mouth, and went on judicially:--"All things
+considered, I doubt whether you are the luckier. I do not refer to
+your extremely limited classical attainments, or your excruciating
+quantities, but to your gross ignorance of matters more immediately
+under your notice. That for instance."--He pointed to a woman cleaning
+a samovar near the well in the centre of the Serai. She was flicking the
+water out of the spout in regular cadenced jerks.
+
+"There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. If you knew why she
+was doing her work in that particular fashion, you would know what the
+Spanish Monk meant when he said--
+
+     'I the Trinity illustrate,
+        Drinking watered orange-pulp--
+      In three sips the Aryan frustrate,
+        While he drains his at one gulp.--'
+
+
+and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes. However, Mrs.
+McIntosh has prepared dinner. Let us come and eat after the fashion of
+the people of the country--of whom, by the way, you know nothing."
+
+The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us. This was wrong.
+The wife should always wait until the husband has eaten. McIntosh
+Jellaludin apologized, saying:--
+
+"It is an English prejudice which I have not been able to overcome; and
+she loves me. Why, I have never been able to understand. I fore-gathered
+with her at Jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with me
+ever since. I believe her to be moral, and know her to be skilled in
+cookery."
+
+He patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly. She was
+not pretty to look at.
+
+McIntosh never told me what position he had held before his fall. He
+was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was rather
+more of the first than the second. He used to get drunk about once a
+week for two days. On those occasions the native woman tended him
+while he raved in all tongues except his own. One day, indeed, he began
+reciting Atalanta in Calydon, and went through it to the end, beating
+time to the swing of the verse with a bedstead-leg. But he did most of
+his ravings in Greek or German. The man's mind was a perfect rag-bag
+of useless things. Once, when he was beginning to get sober, he told
+me that I was the only rational being in the Inferno into which he had
+descended--a Virgil in the Shades, he said--and that, in return for
+my tobacco, he would, before he died, give me the materials of a new
+Inferno that should make me greater than Dante. Then he fell asleep on a
+horse-blanket and woke up quite calm.
+
+"Man," said he, "when you have reached the uttermost depths of
+degradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to you
+of no consequence. Last night, my soul was among the gods; but I make no
+doubt that my bestial body was writhing down here in the garbage."
+
+"You were abominably drunk if that's what you mean," I said.
+
+"I WAS drunk--filthy drunk. I who am the son of a man with whom you have
+no concern--I who was once Fellow of a College whose buttery-hatch you
+have not seen. I was loathsomely drunk. But consider how lightly I am
+touched. It is nothing to me. Less than nothing; for I do not even feel
+the headache which should be my portion. Now, in a higher life, how
+ghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter my repentance! Believe
+me, my friend with the neglected education, the highest is as the
+lowest--always supposing each degree extreme."
+
+He turned round on the blanket, put his head between his fists and
+continued:--
+
+"On the Soul which I have lost and on the Conscience which I have
+killed, I tell you that I CANNOT feel! I am as the gods, knowing good
+and evil, but untouched by either. Is this enviable or is it not?"
+
+When a man has lost the warning of "next morning's head," he must be in
+a bad state, I answered, looking at McIntosh on the blanket, with his
+hair over his eyes and his lips blue-white, that I did not think the
+insensibility good enough.
+
+"For pity's sake, don't say that! I tell you, it IS good and most
+enviable. Think of my consolations!"
+
+"Have you so many, then, McIntosh?"
+
+"Certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which is essentially the weapon
+of a cultured man, are crude. First, my attainments, my classical and
+literary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate drinking--which
+reminds me that before my soul went to the Gods last night, I sold the
+Pickering Horace you so kindly lent me. Ditta Mull the Clothesman has
+it. It fetched ten annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee--but still
+infinitely superior to yours. Secondly, the abiding affection of Mrs.
+McIntosh, best of wives. Thirdly, a monument, more enduring than brass,
+which I have built up in the seven years of my degradation."
+
+He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water. He
+was very shaky and sick.
+
+He referred several times to his "treasure"--some great possession that
+he owned--but I held this to be the raving of drink. He was as poor and
+as proud as he could be. His manner was not pleasant, but he knew enough
+about the natives, among whom seven years of his life had been spent,
+to make his acquaintance worth having. He used actually to laugh at
+Strickland as an ignorant man--"ignorant West and East"--he said. His
+boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts,
+which may or may not have been true--I did not know enough to check his
+statements--and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of native
+life"--which was a fact. As an Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he
+was always throwing his education about. As a Mahommedan faquir--as
+McIntosh Jellaludin--he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked
+several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things
+worth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the
+cold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin
+alpaca-coat. He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, and
+that he was not going into hospital. He had lived like a beast and he
+would die rationally, like a man.
+
+As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia; and on the night of his death
+sent over a grubby note asking me to come and help him to die.
+
+The native woman was weeping by the side of the bed. McIntosh, wrapped
+in a cotton cloth, was too weak to resent a fur coat being thrown over
+him. He was very active as far as his mind was concerned, and his eyes
+were blazing. When he had abused the Doctor who came with me so foully
+that the indignant old fellow left, he cursed me for a few minutes and
+calmed down.
+
+Then he told his wife to fetch out "The Book" from a hole in the wall.
+She brought out a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a petticoat, of old
+sheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all numbered and covered with fine
+cramped writing. McIntosh ploughed his hand through the rubbish and
+stirred it up lovingly.
+
+"This," he said, "is my work--the Book of McIntosh Jellaludin, showing
+what he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and others; being also
+an account of the life and sins and death of Mother Maturin. What Mirza
+Murad Ali Beg's book is to all other books on native life, will my work
+be to Mirza Murad Ali Beg's!"
+
+This, as will be conceded by any one who knows Mirza Ali Beg's book, was
+a sweeping statement. The papers did not look specially valuable; but
+McIntosh handled them as if they were currency-notes. Then he said
+slowly:--"In despite the many weaknesses of your education, you have
+been good to me. I will speak of your tobacco when I reach the Gods. I
+owe you much thanks for many kindnesses. But I abominate indebtedness.
+For this reason I bequeath to you now the monument more enduring than
+brass--my one book--rude and imperfect in parts, but oh, how rare in
+others! I wonder if you will understand it. It is a gift more honorable
+than... Bah! where is my brain rambling to? You will mutilate it
+horribly. You will knock out the gems you call 'Latin quotations,' you
+Philistine, and you will butcher the style to carve into your own jerky
+jargon; but you cannot destroy the whole of it. I bequeath it to you.
+Ethel... My brain again!... Mrs. McIntosh, bear witness that I give the
+sahib all these papers. They would be of no use to you, Heart of my
+heart; and I lay it upon you," he turned to me here, "that you do not
+let my book die in its present form. It is yours unconditionally--the
+story of McIntosh Jellaludin, which is NOT the story of McIntosh
+Jellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and of a far greater woman.
+Listen now! I am neither mad nor drunk! That book will make you famous."
+
+I said, "thank you," as the native woman put the bundle into my arms.
+
+"My only baby!" said McIntosh with a smile. He was sinking fast, but
+he continued to talk as long as breath remained. I waited for the
+end: knowing that, in six cases out of ten the dying man calls for his
+mother. He turned on his side and said:--
+
+"Say how it came into your possession. No one will believe you, but my
+name, at least, will live. You will treat it brutally, I know you will.
+Some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish fools. I was their
+servant once. But do your mangling gently--very gently. It is a great
+work, and I have paid for it in seven years' damnation."
+
+His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, and then he began mumbling
+a prayer of some kind in Greek. The native woman cried very bitterly.
+Lastly, he rose in bed and said, as loudly as slowly:--"Not guilty, my
+Lord!"
+
+Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he died. The native
+woman ran into the Serai among the horses and screamed and beat her
+breasts; for she had loved him.
+
+Perhaps his last sentence in life told what McIntosh had once gone
+through; but, saving the big bundle of old sheets in the cloth, there
+was nothing in his room to say who or what he had been.
+
+The papers were in a hopeless muddle.
+
+Strickland helped me to sort them, and he said that the writer was
+either an extreme liar or a most wonderful person. He thought the
+former. One of these days, you may be able to judge for yourself. The
+bundle needed much expurgation and was full of Greek nonsense, at the
+head of the chapters, which has all been cut out.
+
+If the things are ever published some one may perhaps remember this
+story, now printed as a safeguard to prove that McIntosh Jellaludin and
+not I myself wrote the Book of Mother Maturin.
+
+I don't want the Giant's Robe to come true in my case.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Plain Tales from the Hills, by Rudyard Kipling
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