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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling
+#19 in our series by Rudyard Kipling
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+Title:  Under the Deodars
+
+Author:  Rudyard Kipling
+
+September, 2001  [Etext #2828]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling
+*******This file should be named undeo10.txt or undeo10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, undeo11.txt
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+
+Contents
+
+The Education of Otis Yeere
+At the Pit's Mouth
+A Wayside Comedy
+The Hill of Illusion
+A Second-rate Woman
+Only a Subaltern
+In the Matter of a Private
+The Enlightenments of Pagett. M. P.
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+Under the Deodars
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+The Education of Otis Yeere
+At the Pit's Mouth
+A Wayside Comedy
+The Hill of Illusion
+A Second-rate Woman
+Only a Subaltern
+In the Matter of a Private
+The Enlightenments of Pagett. M. P.
+
+
+
+
+Under the Deodars
+
+The Education of Otis Yeere
+
+I
+
+In the pleasant orchard-closes
+   'God bless all our gains,' say we;
+But 'May God bless all our losses,'
+   Better suits with our degree.
+       The Lost Bower.
+
+This is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that
+it might be an instructive tale to put into print for the benefit of the
+younger generation. The younger generation does not want
+instruction, being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen
+to it. None the less, here begins the story where every right-minded
+story should begin, that is to say at Simla, where all things begin
+and many come to an evil end.
+
+The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder
+and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever
+woman's mistake is outside the regular course of Nature and
+Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only
+infallible thing in this world, except Government Paper of the '79
+issue, bearing interest at four and a half per cent. Yet, we have to
+remember that six consecutive days of rehearsing the leading part
+of The Fallen Angel, at the New Gaiety Theatre where the plaster
+is not yet properly dry, might have brought about an unhingement
+of spirits which, again, might have led to eccentricities.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee came to 'The Foundry' to tiffin with Mrs. Mallowe,
+her one bosom friend, for she was in no sense 'a woman's woman.'
+And it was a woman's tiffin, the door shut to all the world; and
+they both talked chiffons, which is French for Mysteries.
+
+'I've enjoyed an interval of sanity,' Mrs. Hauksbee announced, after
+tiffin was over and the two were comfortably settled in the little
+writing-room that opened out of Mrs. Mallowe's bedroom.
+
+'My dear girl, what has he done?' said Mrs. Mallowe sweetly. It is
+noticeable that ladies of a certain age call each other 'dear girl,' just
+as commissioners of twenty-eight years' standing address their
+equals in the Civil List as 'my boy.'
+
+'There's no he in the case. Who am I that an imaginary man should
+be always credited to me? Am I an Apache?'
+
+'No, dear, but somebody's scalp is generally drying at your
+wigwam-door. Soaking rather.'
+
+This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in the habit of
+riding all across Simla in the Rains, to call on Mrs. Hauksbee. That
+lady laughed.
+
+'For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told me off to The
+Mussuck. Hsh! Don't laugh. One of my most devoted admirers.
+When the duff came some one really ought to teach them to make
+puddings at Tyrconnel The Mussuck was at liberty to attend to me.'
+
+'Sweet soul! I know his appetite,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'Did he, oh
+did he, begin his wooing?'
+
+'By a special mercy of Providence, no. He explained his
+importance as a Pillar of the Empire. I didn't laugh.'
+
+'Lucy, I don't believe you.'
+
+'Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side. Well, as I was
+saying, The Mussuck dilated.'
+
+'I think I can see him doing it,' said Mrs. Mallowe pensively,
+scratching her fox-terrier's ears.
+
+'I was properly impressed. Most properly. I yawned openly. ''Strict
+supervision, and play them off one against the other," said The
+Mussuck, shovelling down his ice by tureenfuls, I assure you.
+''That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government." '
+
+Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily. 'And what did you say?'
+
+'Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet? I said: ''So I have
+observed in my dealings with you." The Mussuck swelled with
+pride. He is coming to call on me to-morrow. The Hawley Boy is
+coming too.'
+
+' ''Strict supervision and play them off one against the other. That,
+Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government." And I daresay if
+we could get to The Mussuck's heart, we should find that he
+considers himself a man of the world.'
+
+'As he is of the other two things. I like The
+
+Mussuck, and I won't have you call him names. He amuses me.'
+
+'He has reformed you, too, by what appears. Explain the interval of
+sanity, and hit Tim on the nose with the paper-cutter, please. That
+dog is too fond of sugar. Do you take milk in yours?'
+
+'No, thanks. Polly, I'm wearied of this life. It's hollow.'
+
+'Turn religious, then. I always said that Rome would be your fate.'
+
+'Only exchanging half-a-dozen attach‚s in red for one in black, and
+if I fasted, the wrinkles would come, and never, never go. Has it
+ever struck you, dear, that I'm getting old?'
+
+'Thanks for your courtesy. I'll return it. Ye-es, we are both not
+exactly how shall I put it?'
+
+'What we have been. ''I feel it in my bones," as Mrs. Crossley says.
+Polly, I've wasted my life.'
+
+'As how?'
+
+'Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power before I die.'
+
+'Be a Power then. You've wits enough for anything and beauty!'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon straight at her hostess. 'Polly, if
+you heap compliments on me like this, I shall cease to believe that
+you're a woman. Tell me how I am to be a Power.'
+
+'Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating and slimmest
+man in Asia, and he'll tell you anything and everything you please.'
+
+'Bother The Mussuck! I mean an intellectual Power not a
+gas-power. Polly, I'm going to start a salon.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her head on her
+hand. 'Hear the words of the Preacher, the son of Baruch,' she said.
+
+'Will you talk sensibly?'
+
+'I will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a mistake.'
+
+'I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I couldn't
+explain away afterwards.'
+
+'Going to make a mistake,' went on Mrs. Mallowe composedly. 'It
+is impossible to start a salon in Simla. A bar would be much more
+to the point.'
+
+'Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy.'
+
+'Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever women are there
+in Simla?'
+
+'Myself and yourself,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a moment's
+hesitation.
+
+'Modest woman! Mrs. Feardon would thank you for that. And how
+many clever men?'
+
+'Oh er hundreds,' said Mrs. Hauksbee vaguely.
+
+'What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are all bespoke by the
+Government. Take my husband, for instance. Jack was a clever
+man, though I say so who shouldn't. Government has eaten him up.
+All his ideas and powers of conversation he really used to be a
+good talker, even to his wife in the old days are taken from him by
+this this kitchen-sink of a Government. That's the case with every
+man up here who is at work. I don't suppose a Russian convict
+under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our
+men-folk here are gilded convicts.'
+
+'But there are scores '
+
+'I know what you're going to say. Scores of idle men up on leave. I
+admit it, but they are all of two objectionable sets. The Civilian
+who'd be delightful if he had the military man's knowledge of the
+world and style, and the military man who'd be adorable if he had
+the Civilian's culture.'
+
+'Detestable word! Have Civilians culchaw? I never studied the
+breed deeply.'
+
+'Don't make fun of Jack's Service. Yes. They're like the teapoys in
+the Lakka Bazar  good material but not polished. They can't help
+themselves, poor dears. A Civilian only begins to be tolerable after
+he has knocked about the world for fifteen years.'
+
+'And a military man?'
+
+'When he has had the same amount of service. The young of both
+species are horrible. You would have scores of them in your salon.'
+
+'I would not!' said Mrs. Hauksbee fiercely.
+
+'I would tell the bearer to darwaza band them. I'd put their own
+colonels and commissioners at the door to turn them away. I'd give
+them to the Topsham Girl to play with.'
+
+'The Topsham Girl would be grateful for the gift. But to go back to
+the salon. Allowing that you had gathered all your men and women
+together, what would you do with them? Make them talk? They
+would all with one accord begin to flirt. Your salon would become
+a glorified Peliti's a ''Scandal Point" by lamplight.'
+
+'There's a certain amount of wisdom in that view.'
+
+'There's all the wisdom in the world in it. Surely, twelve Simla
+seasons ought to have taught you that you can't focus anything in
+India; and a salon, to be any good at all, must be permanent. In two
+seasons your roomful would be scattered all over Asia. We are
+only little bits of dirt on the hillsides here one day and blown down
+the khud the next. We have lost the art of talking at least our men
+have. We have no cohesion '
+
+'George Eliot in the flesh,' interpolated Mrs. Hauksbee wickedly.
+
+'And collectively, my dear scoffer, we, men and women alike, have
+no influence. Come into the verandah and look at the Mall!'
+
+The two looked down on the now rapidly filling road, for all Simla
+was abroad to steal a stroll between a shower and a fog.
+
+'How do you propose to fix that river? Look! There's The Mussuck
+head of goodness knows what. He is a power in the land, though he
+does eat like a costermonger. There's Colonel Blone, and General
+Grucher, and Sir Dugald Delane, and Sir Henry Haughton, and Mr.
+Jellalatty. All Heads of Departments, and all powerful.'
+
+'And all my fervent admirers,' said Mrs. Hauksbee piously. 'Sir
+Henry Haughton raves about me. But go on.'
+
+'One by one, these men are worth something. Collectively, they're
+just a mob of Anglo-Indians. Who cares for what Anglo-Indians
+say? Your salon won't weld the Departments together and make
+you mistress of India, dear. And these creatures won't talk
+administrative ''shop" in a crowd your salon because they are so
+afraid of the men in the lower ranks overhearing it. They have
+forgotten what of Literature and Art they ever knew, and the
+women '
+
+'Can't talk about anything except the last Gymkhana, or the sins of
+their last nurse. I was calling on Mrs. Derwills this morning.'
+
+'You admit that? They can talk to the subalterns though, and the
+subalterns can talk to them. Your salon would suit their views
+admirably, if you respected the religious prejudices of the country
+and provided plenty of kala juggahs.'
+
+'Plenty of kala juggahs. Oh my poor little idea! Kala juggahs in a
+salon! But who made you so awfully clever?'
+
+'Perhaps I've tried myself; or perhaps I know a woman who has. I
+have preached and expounded the whole matter and the conclusion
+thereof '
+
+'You needn't go on. ''Is Vanity." Polly, I thank you. These vermin'
+Mrs. Hauksbee waved her hand from the verandah to two men in
+the crowd below who had raised their hats to her  'these vermin
+shall not rejoice in a new Scandal Point or an extra Peliti's. I will
+abandon the notion of a salon. It did seem so tempting, though. But
+what shall I do? I must do something.'
+
+'Why? Are not Abana and Pharpar '
+
+'Jack has made you nearly as bad as himself! I want to, of course.
+I'm tired of everything and everybody, from a moonlight picnic at
+Seepee to the blandishments of The Mussuck.'
+
+'Yes that comes, too, sooner or later. Have you nerve enough to
+make your bow yet?'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee's mouth shut grimly. Then she laughed. 'I think I
+see myself doing it. Big pink placards on the Mall: ''Mrs.
+Hauksbee! Positively her last appearance on any stage! This is to
+give notice!" No more dances; no more rides; no more luncheons;
+no more theatricals with supper to follow; no more sparring with
+one's dearest, dearest friend; no more fencing with an inconvenient
+man who hasn't wit enough to clothe what he's pleased to call his
+sentiments in passable speech; no more parading of The Mussuck
+while Mrs. Tarkass calls all round Simla, spreading horrible stories
+about me! No more of anything that is thoroughly wearying,
+abominable, and detestable, but, all the same, makes life worth the
+having. Yes! I see it all! Don't interrupt, Polly, I'm inspired. A
+mauve and white striped ''cloud" round my excellent shoulders, a
+seat in the fifth row of the Gaiety, and both horses sold. Delightful
+vision! A comfortable arm-chair, situated in three different
+draughts, at every ball-room; and nice, large, sensible shoes for all
+the couples to stumble over as they go into the verandah! Then at
+supper. Can't you imagine the scene? The greedy mob gone away.
+Reluctant subaltern, pink all over like a newly-powdered baby,
+they really ought to tan subalterns before they are exported, Polly,
+sent back by the hostess to do his duty. Slouches up to me across
+the room, tugging at a glove two sizes too large for him I hate a
+man who wears gloves like overcoats and trying to look as if he'd
+thought of it from the first. ''May I ah-have the pleasure 'f takin'
+you 'nt' supper?" Then I get up with a hungry smile. Just like this.'
+
+'Lucy, how can you be so absurd?'
+
+'And sweep out on his arm. So! After supper I shall go away early,
+you know, because I shall be afraid of catching cold. No one will
+look for my 'rickshaw. Mine, so please you! I shall stand, always
+with that mauve and white ''cloud" over my head, while the wet
+soaks into my dear, old, venerable feet, and Tom swears and
+shouts for the mem-sahib's gharri. Then home to bed at half-past
+eleven! Truly excellent life helped out by the visits of the Padri,
+just fresh from burying somebody down below there.' She pointed
+through the pines toward the Cemetery, and continued with
+vigorous dramatic gesture 
+
+'Listen! I see it all down, down even to the stays! Such stays!
+Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel or list, is it? that they put
+into the tops of those fearful things. I can draw you a picture of
+them.'
+
+'Lucy, for Heaven's sake, don't go waving your arms about in that
+idiotic manner! Recollect every one can see you from the Mall.'
+
+'Let them see! They'll think I am rehearsing for The Fallen Angel.
+Look! There's The Mussuck. How badly he rides. There!'
+
+She blew a kiss to the venerable Indian administrator with infinite
+grace.
+
+'Now,' she continued, 'he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the
+delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy
+will tell me all about it softening the details for fear of shocking
+me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of
+recommending him to throw up his commission and go into the
+Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey me. Happy,
+happy child!'
+
+'Never again,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an affectation of
+indignation, 'shall you tiffin here! ''Lucindy your behaviour is
+scand'lus." '
+
+'All your fault,' retorted Mrs. Hauksbee, 'for suggesting such a
+thing as my abdication. No! jamais! nevaire! I will act, dance, ride,
+frivol, talk scandal, dine out, and appropriate the legitimate
+captives of any woman I choose, until I d-r-r-rop, or a better
+woman than I puts me to shame before all Simla, and it's dust and
+ashes in my mouth while I'm doing it!'
+
+She swept into the drawing-room. Mrs. Mallowe followed and put
+an arm round her waist.
+
+'I'm not!' said Mrs. Hauksbee defiantly, rummaging for her
+handkerchief. 'I've been dining out the last ten nights, and
+rehearsing in the afternoon. You'd be tired yourself. It's only
+because I'm tired.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe did not offer Mrs. Hauksbee any pity or ask her to
+lie down, but gave her another cup of tea, and went on with the
+talk.
+
+'I've been through that too, dear,' she said.
+
+'I remember,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, a gleam of fun on her face. 'In
+'84, wasn't it? You went out a great deal less next season.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe smiled in a superior and Sphinx-like fashion.
+
+'I became an Influence,' said she.
+
+'Good gracious, child, you didn't join the Theosophists and kiss
+Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they
+cast me out for a sceptic without a chance of improving my poor
+little mind, too.'
+
+'No, I didn't Theosophilander. Jack says '
+
+'Never mind Jack. What a husband says is known before. What did
+you do?'
+
+'I made a lasting impression.'
+
+'So have I for four months. But that didn't console me in the least. I
+hated the man. Will you stop smiling in that inscrutable way and
+tell me what you mean?'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe told.
+
+'And you mean to say that it is absolutely Platonic on both sides?'
+
+'Absolutely, or I should never have taken it up.'
+
+'And his last promotion was due to you?'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe nodded.
+
+'And you warned him against the Topsham Girl?'
+
+Another nod.
+
+'And told him of Sir Dugald Delane's private memo about him?'
+
+A third nod.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'What a question to ask a woman! Because it amused me at first. I
+am proud of my property now. If I live, he shall continue to be
+successful. Yes, I will put him upon the straight road to
+Knighthood, and everything else that a man values. The rest
+depends upon himself.'
+
+'Polly, you are a most extraordinary woman.'
+
+'Not in the least. I'm concentrated, that's all. You diffuse yourself,
+dear; and though all Simla knows your skill in managing a team '
+
+'Can't you choose a prettier word?'
+
+'Team, of half-a-dozen, from The Mussuck to the Hawley Boy, you
+gain nothing by it. Not even amusement.'
+
+'And you?'
+
+'Try my recipe. Take a man, not a boy, mind, but an almost mature,
+unattached man, and be his guide, philosopher, and friend. You'll
+find it the most interesting occupation that you ever embarked on.
+It can be done you needn't look like that because I've done it.'
+
+'There's an element of risk about it that makes the notion attractive.
+I'll get such a man and say to him, ''Now, understand that there
+must be no flirtation. Do exactly what I tell you, profit by my
+instruction and counsels, and all will yet be well." Is that the idea?'
+
+'More or less,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an unfathomable smile.
+'But be sure he understands.'
+
+II
+
+Dribble-dribble trickle-trickle 
+
+   What a lot of raw dust!
+
+My dollie's had an accident
+
+   And out came all the sawdust!
+
+       Nursery Rhyme.
+
+So Mrs. Hauksbee, in 'The Foundry' which overlooks Simla Mall,
+sat at the feet of Mrs. Mallowe and gathered wisdom. The end of
+the Conference was the Great Idea upon which Mrs. Hauksbee so
+plumed herself.
+
+'I warn you,' said Mrs. Mallowe, beginning to repent of her
+suggestion, 'that the matter is not half so easy as it looks. Any
+woman even the Topsham Girl can catch a man, but very, very few
+know how to manage him when caught.'
+
+'My child,' was the answer, 'I've been a female St. Simon Stylites
+looking down upon men for these these years past. Ask The
+Mussuck whether I can manage them.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee departed humming, 'I'll go to him and say to him in
+manner most ironical.' Mrs. Mallowe laughed to herself. Then she
+grew suddenly sober. 'I wonder whether I've done well in advising
+that amusement? Lucy's a clever woman, but a thought too
+careless.'
+
+A week later the two met at a Monday Pop. 'Well?' said Mrs.
+Mallowe.
+
+'I've caught him!' said Mrs. Hauksbee: her eyes were dancing with
+merriment.
+
+'Who is it, mad woman? I'm sorry I ever spoke to you about it.'
+
+'Look between the pillars. In the third row; fourth from the end.
+You can see his face now. Look!'
+
+'Otis Yeere! Of all the improbable and impossible people! I don't
+believe you.'
+
+'Hsh! Wait till Mrs. Tarkass begins murdering Milton Wellings;
+and I'll tell you all about it. S-s-ss! That woman's voice always
+reminds me of an Underground train coming into Earl's Court with
+the brakes on. Now listen. It is really Otis Yeere.'
+
+'So I see, but does it follow that he is your property!'
+
+'He is! By right of trove. I found him, lonely and unbefriended, the
+very next night after our talk, at the Dugald Delanes' burra-khana. I
+liked his eyes, and I talked to him. Next day he called. Next day
+we went for a ride together, and to-day he's tied to my
+'richshaw-wheels hand and foot. You'll see when the concert's
+over. He doesn't know I'm here yet.'
+
+'Thank goodness you haven't chosen a boy. What are you going to
+do with him, assuming that you've got him?'
+
+'Assuming, indeed! Does a woman do I  ever make a mistake in
+that sort of thing? First'  Mrs. Hauksbee ticked off the items
+ostentatiously on her little gloved fingers 'First, my dear, I shall
+dress him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace, and he
+wears a dress-shirt like a crumpled sheet of the Pioneer. Secondly,
+after I have made him presentable, I shall form his manners his
+morals are above reproach.'
+
+'You seem to have discovered a great deal about him considering
+the shortness of your acquaintance.'
+
+'Surely you ought to know that the first proof a man gives of his
+interest in a woman is by talking to her about his own sweet self. If
+the woman listens without yawning, he begins to like her. If she
+flatters the animal's vanity, he ends by adoring her.'
+
+'In some cases.'
+
+'Never mind the exceptions. I know which one you are thinking of.
+Thirdly, and lastly, after he is polished and made pretty, I shall, as
+you said, be his guide, philosopher, and friend, and he shall
+become a success as great a success as your friend. I always
+wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck come to you
+with the Civil List and, dropping on one knee no, two knees, ˆ la
+Gibbon hand it to you and say, ''Adorable angel, choose your
+friend's appointment"?'
+
+'Lucy, your long experiences of the Military Department have
+demoralised you. One doesn't do that sort of thing on the Civil
+Side.'
+
+'No disrespect meant to Jack's Service, my dear. I only asked for
+information. Give me three months, and see what changes I shall
+work in my prey.'
+
+'Go your own way since you must. But I'm sorry that I was weak
+enough to suggest the amusement.'
+
+' ''I am all discretion, and may be trusted to an in-fin-ite extent," '
+quoted Mrs. Hauksbee from The Fallen Angel; and the
+conversation ceased with Mrs. Tarkass's last, long-drawn
+war-whoop.
+
+Her bitterest enemies and she had many  could hardly accuse Mrs.
+Hauksbee of wasting her time. Otis Yeere was one of those
+wandering 'dumb' characters, foredoomed through life to be
+nobody's property. Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil
+Service, spent, for the most part, in undesirable Districts, had
+given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confidence.
+Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers
+on the immature 'Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars,
+and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and
+abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress
+he had made, and thank Providence that under the conditions of
+the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the dead-centre of
+his career. And when a man stands still he feels the slightest
+impulse from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should
+be, for the first part of his service, one of the rank and file who are
+ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing heart and
+soul, and mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces
+manual power in the working of the Empire, there must always be
+this percentage must always be the men who are used up,
+expended, in the mere mechanical routine. For these promotion is
+far off and the mill-grind of every day very instant. The
+Secretariats know them only by name; they are not the picked men
+of the Districts with Divisions and Collectorates awaiting them.
+They are simply the rank and file the food for fever  sharing with
+the ryot and the plough-bullock the honour of being the plinth on
+which the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspirations;
+the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to
+endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the rank
+and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest and dull the
+wits of the most keen.
+
+Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months; drifting, in
+the hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave
+was over he would return to his swampy, sour-green,
+under-manned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native
+Doctor, the native Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the
+ill-kempt City, and the undisguised insolence of the Municipality
+that babbled away the lives of men. Life was cheap, however. The
+soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of
+the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the
+fecundity of the next. Otis was unfeignedly thankful to lay down
+his work for a little while and escape from the seething, whining,
+weakly hive, impotent to help itself, but strong in its power to
+cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunkeneyed man who, by official
+irony, was said to be 'in charge' of it.
+
+'I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal. They come up here
+sometimes. But I didn't know that there were men-dowds, too.'
+
+Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere that his clothes
+wore rather the mark of the ages. It will be seen that his friendship
+with Mrs. Hauksbee had made great strides.
+
+As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy as when he is
+talking about himself. From Otis Yeere's lips Mrs. Hauksbee,
+before long, learned everything that she wished to know about the
+subject of her experiment: learned what manner of life he had led
+in what she vaguely called 'those awful cholera districts'; learned,
+too, but this knowledge came later, what manner of life he had
+purposed to lead and what dreams he had dreamed in the year of
+grace '77, before the reality had knocked the heart out of him. Very
+pleasant are the shady bridle-paths round Prospect Hill for the
+telling of such confidences.
+
+'Not yet,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to Mrs. Maliowe. 'Not yet. I must
+wait until the man is properly dressed, at least. Great heavens, is it
+possible that he doesn't know what an honour it is to be taken up
+by Me!'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of her failings.
+
+'Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!' murmured Mrs. Mallowe, with her
+sweetest smile, to Otis. 'Oh you men, you men! Here are our
+Punjabis growling because you've monopolised the nicest woman
+in Simla. They'll tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day, Mr.
+Yeere.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe rattled downhill, having satisfied herself, by a
+glance through the fringe of her sunshade, of the effect of her
+words.
+
+The shot went home. Of a surety Otis Yeere was somebody in this
+bewildering whirl of Simla had monopolised the nicest woman in
+it, and the Punjabis were growling. The notion justified a mild
+glow of vanity. He had never looked upon his acquaintance with
+Mrs. Hauksbee as a matter for general interest.
+
+The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feeling to the man of no
+account. It was intensified later in the day when a luncher at the
+Club said spitefully, 'Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are
+going it. Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most
+dangerous woman in Simla?'
+
+Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh, when would his new
+clothes be ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs.
+Hauksbee, coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked
+down upon him approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself as if he
+were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, and,' she screwed up
+her eyes to see the better through the sunlight 'he is a man when he
+holds himself like that. O blessed Conceit, what should we be
+without you?'
+
+With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis
+Yeere discovered that he could enter a room without breaking into
+a gentle perspiration could cross one, even to talk to Mrs.
+Hauksbee, as though rooms were meant to be crossed. He was for
+the first time in nine years proud of himself, and contented with
+his life, satisfied with his new clothes, and rejoicing in the
+friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.
+
+'Conceit is what the poor fellow wants,' she said in confidence to
+Mrs. Mallowe. 'I believe they must use Civilians to plough the
+fields with in Lower Bengal. You see I have to begin from the very
+beginning haven't I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he is
+immensely improved since I took him in hand. Only give me a
+little more time and he won't know himself.'
+
+Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what he had been.
+One of his own rank and file put the matter brutally when he asked
+Yeere, in reference to nothing, 'And who has been making you a
+Member of Council, lately? You carry the side of half-a-dozen of
+'em.'
+
+'I I'm awf'ly sorry. I didn't mean it, you know,' said Yeere
+apologetically.
+
+'There'll be no holding you,' continued the old stager grimly.
+'Climb down, Otis climb down, and get all that beastly affectation
+knocked out of you with fever! Three thousand a month wouldn't
+support it.'
+
+Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauksbee. He had come to
+look upon her as his Mother Confessor.
+
+'And you apologised!' she said. 'Oh, shame! I hate a man who
+apologises. Never apologise for what your friend called ''side."
+Never! It's a man's business to be insolent and overbearing until he
+meets with a stronger. Now, you bad boy, listen to me.'
+
+Simply and straightforwardly, as the 'rickshaw loitered round
+Jakko, Mrs. Hauksbee preached to Otis Yeere the Great Gospel of
+Conceit, illustrating it with living pictures encountered during their
+Sunday afternoon stroll.
+
+'Good gracious!' she ended with the personal argument, 'you'll
+apologise next for being my attach‚!'
+
+'Never!' said Otis Yeere. 'That's another thing altogether. I shall
+always be '
+
+'What's coming?' thought Mrs. Hauksbee.
+
+'Proud of that,' said Otis.
+
+'Safe for the present,' she said to herself.
+
+'But I'm afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshurun, you know.
+When he waxed fat, then he kicked. It's the having no worry on
+one's mind and the Hill air, I suppose.'
+
+'Hill air, indeed!' said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself. 'He'd have been
+hiding in the Club till the last day of his leave, if I hadn't
+discovered him.' And aloud 
+
+'Why shouldn't you be? You have every right to.'
+
+'I! Why?'
+
+'Oh, hundreds of things. I'm not going to waste this lovely
+afternoon by explaining; but I know you have. What was that heap
+of manuscript you showed me about the grammar of the aboriginal
+what's their names?'
+
+'Gullals. A piece of nonsense. I've far too much work to do to
+bother over Gullals now. You should see my District. Come down
+with your husband some day and I'll show you round. Such a
+lovely place in the Rains! A sheet of water with the
+railway-embankment and the snakes sticking out, and, in the
+summer, green flies and green squash. The people would die of
+fear if you shook a dogwhip at 'em. But they know you're forbidden
+to do that, so they conspire to make your life a burden to you. My
+District's worked by some man at Darjiling, on the strength of a
+native pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place!'
+
+Otis Yeere laughed bitterly.
+
+'There's not the least necessity that you should stay in it. Why do
+you?'
+
+'Because I must. How'm I to get out of it?'
+
+'How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren't so many people
+on the road I'd like to box your ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look!
+There is young Hexarly with six years' service and half your
+talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by
+the Convent! There's McArthurson, who has come to his present
+position by asking sheer, downright asking after he had pushed
+himself out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in
+your service believe me. I've seen Simla for more seasons than I
+care to think about. Do you suppose men are chosen for
+appointments because of their special fitness beforehand? You
+have all passed a high test what do you call it? in the beginning,
+and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you
+can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it
+insolence, call it anything you like, but ask! Men argue yes, I know
+what men say that a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must
+have some good in him. A weak man doesn't say: ''Give me this
+and that." He whines: ''Why haven't I been given this and that?" If
+you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play a
+tambourine with your toes. As it is ask! You belong to a Service
+that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at
+twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape
+from a squashy green district where you admit you are not master.
+Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is a little
+out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were
+extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India to take
+you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand
+chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You
+have twice the wits and three times the presence of the men up
+here, and, and' Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued
+'and in any way you look at it, you ought to. You who could go so
+far!'
+
+'I don't know,' said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
+eloquence. 'I haven't such a good opinion of myself.'
+
+It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
+her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the
+turned-back 'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face,
+said tenderly, almost too tenderly, 'I believe in you if you mistrust
+yourself. Is that enough, my friend?'
+
+'It is enough,' answered Otis very solemnly.
+
+He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had
+dreamed eight years ago, but through them all ran, as
+sheet-lightning through golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's
+violet eyes.
+
+Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life the only
+existence in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went
+abroad among men and women, in the pauses between dance, play,
+and Gymkhana, that Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of
+self-confidence in his eyes, had 'done something decent' in the
+wilds whence he came. He had brought an erring Municipality to
+reason, appropriated the funds on his own responsibility, and saved
+the lives of hundreds. He knew more about the Gullals than any
+living man. Had a vast knowledge of the aboriginal tribes; was, in
+spite of his juniority, the greatest authority on the aboriginal
+Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The
+Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs. Hauksbee, and prided
+himself upon picking people's brains, explained they were a tribe
+of ferocious hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship
+even the Great Indian Empire would find it worth her while to
+secure. Now we know that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee
+his MS. notes of six years' standing on these same Gullals. He had
+told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the fever their negligence
+had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagely angry
+at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned the collective
+eyes of his 'intelligent local board' for a set of haramzadas. Which
+act of 'brutal and tyrannous oppression' won him a Reprimand
+Royal from the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as
+amended for Northern consumption we find no record of this.
+Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee edited his
+reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well
+knew, to exaggerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as
+befitted the hero of many tales.
+
+'You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk
+now, and talk your brightest and best,' said Mrs. Hauksbee.
+
+Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a
+woman of or above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his
+head, he can meet both sexes on equal ground an advantage never
+intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and
+Woman on another, in sign that neither should know more than a
+very little of the other's life. Such a man goes far, or, the counsel
+being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world seeks the
+reason.
+
+Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee, who, again, had all Mrs. Mallowe's
+wisdom at her disposal, proud of himself and, in the end, believing
+in himself because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for
+any fortune that might befall, certain that it would be good. He
+would fight for his own hand, and intended that this second
+struggle should lead to better issue than the first helpless surrender
+of the bewildered 'Stunt.
+
+What might have happened it is impossible to say. This lamentable
+thing befell, bred directly by a statement of Mrs. Hauksbee that she
+would spend the next season in Darjiling.
+
+'Are you certain of that?' said Otis Yeere.
+
+'Quite. We're writing about a house now.'
+
+Otis Yeere 'stopped dead,' as Mrs. Hauksbee put it in discussing
+the relapse with Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+'He has behaved,' she said angrily, 'just like Captain Kerrington's
+pony only Otis is a donkey at the last Gymkhana. Planted his
+forefeet and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man's going
+to disappoint me. What shall I do?'
+
+As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring, but on this
+occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost.
+
+'You have managed cleverly so far,'she said. 'Speak to him, and ask
+him what he means.'
+
+'I will at to-night's dance.'
+
+'No o, not at a dance,' said Mrs. Mallowe cautiously. 'Men are
+never themselves quite at dances. Better wait till to-morrow
+morning.'
+
+'Nonsense. If he's going to 'vert in this insane way there isn't a day
+to lose. Are you going? No? Then sit up for me, there's a dear. I
+shan't stay longer than supper under any circumstances.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long and
+earnestly into the fire, and sometimes smiling to herself.
+
+'Oh! oh! oh! The man's an idiot! A raving, positive idiot! I'm sorry I
+ever saw him!'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe's house, at midnight,
+almost in tears.
+
+'What in the world has happened?' said Mrs. Mallowe, but her eyes
+showed that she had guessed an answer.
+
+'Happened! Everything has happened! He was there. I went to him
+and said, ''Now, what does this nonsense mean?" Don't laugh, dear,
+I can't bear it. But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a
+square, and I sat it out with him and wanted an explanation, and he
+said Oh! I haven't patience with such idiots! You know what I said
+about going to Darjiling next year? It doesn't matter to me where I
+go. I'd have changed the Station and lost the rent to have saved
+this. He said, in so many words, that he wasn't going to try to work
+up any more, because because he would be shifted into a province
+away from Darjiling, and his own District, where these creatures
+are,is within a day's journey '
+
+'Ah hh!' said Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully
+tracked an obscure word through a large dictionary.
+
+'Did you ever hear of anything so mad so absurd? And he had the
+ball at his feet. He had only to kick it! I would have made him
+anything! Anything in the wide world. He could have gone to the
+world's end. I would have helped him. I made him, didn't I, Polly?
+Didn't I create that man? Doesn't he owe everything to me? And to
+reward me, just when everything was nicely arranged, by this
+lunacy that spoilt everything!'
+
+'Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly.'
+
+'Oh, Polly, don't laugh at me! I give men up from this hour. I could
+have killed him then and there. What right had this man this Thing
+I had picked out of his filthy paddy - fields to make love to me?'
+
+'He did that, did he?'
+
+'He did. I don't remember half he said, I was so angry. Oh, but such
+a funny thing happened! I can't help laughing at it now, though I
+felt nearly ready to cry with rage. He raved and I stormed I'm
+afraid we must have made an awful noise in our kala juggah.
+Protect my character, dear, if it's all over Simla by to-morrow and
+then he bobbed forward in the middle of this insanity I firmly
+believe the man's demented and kissed me.'
+
+'Morals above reproach,' purred Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+'So they were so they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't
+believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my
+head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end
+of the chin here.' Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin
+with her fan. 'Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him
+that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so
+on. He was crushed so easily then I couldn't be very angry. Then I
+came away straight to you.'
+
+'Was this before or after supper?'
+
+'Oh! before oceans before. Isn't it perfectly disgusting?'
+
+'Let me think. I withhold judgment till tomorrow. Morning brings
+counsel.'
+
+But morning brought only a servant with a dainty bouquet of
+Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at the dance at
+Viceregal Lodge that night.
+
+'He doesn't seem to be very penitent,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'What's
+the billet-doux in the centre?'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly-folded note, another
+accomplishment that she had taught Otis, read it, and groaned
+tragically.
+
+'Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry! Is it his own, do you
+think? Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a maudlin idiot!'
+
+'No. It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and in view of the facts
+of the case, as Jack says, uncommonly well chosen. Listen 
+
+Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart,
+
+   Pass! There's a world full of men;
+
+And women as fair as thou art
+
+   Must do such things now and then.
+
+Thou only hast stepped unaware 
+
+   Malice not one can impute;
+
+And why should a heart have been there,
+
+   In the way of a fair woman's foot?
+
+'I didn't I didn't I didn't!' said Mrs. Hauksbee angrily, her eyes
+filling with tears; 'there was no malice at all. Oh, it's too
+vexatious!'
+
+'You've misunderstood the compliment,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'He
+clears you completely and ahem I should think by this, that he has
+cleared completely too. My experience of men is that when they
+begin to quote poetry they are going to flit. Like swans singing
+before they die, you know.'
+
+'Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way.'
+
+'Do I? Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I should say that
+you've done a certain amount of damage to his heart.'
+
+'Oh, you can never tell about a man!' said Mrs. Hauksbee.
+
+At the Pit's Mouth
+
+Men say it was a stolen tide 
+   The Lord that sent it He knows all,
+But in mine ear will aye abide
+   The message that the bells let fall-
+And awesome bells they were to me,
+That in the dark rang, 'Enderby.'
+       --Jean Ingelow
+
+Once upon a time there was a Man and his Wife and a Tertium
+Quid.
+
+All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The Man
+should have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the
+Tertium Quid, who, again, should have married a wife of his own,
+after clean and open flirtations, to which nobody can possibly
+object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. When you see a young
+man with his pony in a white lather and his hat on the back of his
+head, flying downhill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who
+will be properly surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of
+that young man, and wish him Staff appointments, and take an
+interest in his welfare, and, as the proper time comes, give them
+sugar-tongs or side-saddles according to your means and
+generosity.
+
+The Tertium Quid flew downhill on horseback, but it was to meet
+the Man's Wife; and when he flew uphill it was for the same end.
+The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend
+on dresses and four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive
+luxuries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent her a letter or
+a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily, and said that she
+was longing for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used
+to lean over her shoulder and laugh as she wrote the notes. Then
+the two would ride to the Post-office together.
+
+Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
+any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to
+pass judgment on circumstantial evidence, which is the most
+untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others
+which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there
+was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the
+Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you
+must form your own opinion, it was the Man's Wife's fault. She
+was kittenish in her manners, wearing generally an air of soft and
+fluffy innocence. But she was deadlily learned and evil-instructed;
+and, now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw this,
+shuddered and almost drew back. Men are occasionally particular,
+and the least particular men are always the most exacting.
+
+Simla is eccentric in its fashion of treating friendships. Certain
+attachments which have set and crystallised through half-a-dozen
+seasons acquire almost the sanctity of the marriage bond, and are
+revered as such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all
+appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win any recognised
+official status; while a chance-sprung acquaintance, not two
+months born, steps into the place which by right belongs to the
+senior. There is no law reducible to print which regulates these
+affairs.
+
+Some people have a gift which secures them infinite toleration,
+and others have not. The Man's Wife had not. If she looked over
+the garden wall, for instance, women taxed her with stealing their
+husbands. She complained pathetically that she was not allowed to
+choose her own friends. When she put up her big white muff to her
+lips, and gazed over it and under her eyebrows at you as she said
+this thing, you felt that she had been infamously misjudged, and
+that all the other women's instincts were all wrong; which was
+absurd. She was not allowed to own the Tertium Quid in peace;
+and was so strangely constructed that she would not have enjoyed
+peace had she been so permitted. She preferred some semblance of
+intrigue to cloak even her most commonplace actions.
+
+After two months of riding, first round Jakko, then Elysium, then
+Summer Hill, then Observatory Hill, then under Jutogh, and lastly
+up and down the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk,
+she said to the Tertium Quid, 'Frank, people say we are too much
+together, and people are so horrid.'
+
+The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid
+people were unworthy of the consideration of nice people.
+
+'But they have done more than talk they have written written to my
+hubby I'm sure of it,' said the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter
+from her husband out of her saddle-pocket and gave it to the
+Tertium Quid.
+
+It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in
+the Plains on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife
+eight hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers. It
+said that, perhaps, she had not thought of the unwisdom of
+allowing her name to be so generally coupled with the Tertium
+Quid's; that she was too much of a child to understand the dangers
+of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the last man in the
+world to interfere jealously with her little amusements and
+interests, but that it would be better were she to drop the Tertium
+Quid quietly and for her husband's sake. The letter was sweetened
+with many pretty little pet names, and it amused the Tertium Quid
+considerably. He and She laughed over it, so that you, fifty yards
+away, could see their shoulders shaking while the horses slouched
+along side by side.
+
+Their conversation was not worth reporting. The upshot of it was
+that, next day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid
+together. They had both gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a
+rule, is only visited officially by the inhabitants of Simla.
+
+A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding,
+and the coffin creaking as it swings between the bearers, is one of
+the most depressing things on this earth, particularly when the
+procession passes under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe
+Hotel, where the sun is shut out, and all the hill streams are
+wailing and weeping together as they go down the valleys.
+
+Occasionally folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are
+transferred so often that, at the end of the second year, the Dead
+have no friend only acquaintances who are far too busy amusing
+themselves up the hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a
+Cemetery as a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man
+would have said simply, 'Let people talk. We'll go down the Mall.'
+A woman is made differently, especially if she be such a woman as
+the Man's Wife. She and the Tertium Quid enjoyed each other's
+society among the graves of men and women whom they had
+known and danced with aforetime.
+
+They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to
+the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground, and
+where the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are
+not ready. Each well-regulated Indian Cemetery keeps
+half-a-dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and
+incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more usually baby's
+size, because children who come up weakened and sick from the
+Plains often succumb to the effects of the Rains in the Hills or get
+pneumonia from their ayahs taking them through damp
+pine-woods after the sun has set. In Cantonments, of course, the
+man's size is more in request; these arrangements varying with the
+climate and population.
+
+One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just
+arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground.
+They had marked out a full-size grave, and the Tertium Quid asked
+them whether any Sahib was sick. They said that they did not
+know; but it was an order that they should dig a Sahib's grave.
+
+'Work away,' said the Tertium Quid, 'and let's see how it's done.'
+
+The coolies worked away, and the Man's Wife and the Tertium
+Quid watched and talked for a couple of hours while the grave was
+being deepened. Then a coolie, taking the earth in baskets as it was
+thrown up, jumped over the grave.
+
+'That's queer,' said the Tertium Quid. 'Where's my ulster?'
+
+'What's queer?' said the Man's Wife.
+
+'I have got a chill down my back just as if a goose had walked over
+my grave.'
+
+'Why do you look at the thing, then?' said the Man's Wife. 'Let us
+go.'
+
+The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave, and stared
+without answering for a space. Then he said, dropping a pebble
+down, 'It is nasty and cold: horribly cold. I don't think I shall come
+to the Cemetery any more. I don't think grave-digging is cheerful.'
+
+The two talked and agreed that the Cemetery was depressing. They
+also arranged for a ride next day out from the Cemetery through
+the Mashobra Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, because all the world
+was going to a garden-party at Viceregal Lodge, and all the people
+of Mashobra would go too.
+
+Coming up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid's horse tried to
+bolt uphill, being tired with standing so long, and managed to
+strain a back sinew.
+
+'I shall have to take the mare to-morrow,' said the Tertium Quid,
+'and she will stand nothing heavier than a snaffle.'
+
+They made their arrangements to meet in the Cemetery, after
+allowing all the Mashobra people time to pass into Simla. That
+night it rained heavily, and, next day, when the Tertium Quid came
+to the trysting-place, he saw that the new grave had a foot of water
+in it, the ground being a tough and sour clay.
+
+''Jove! That looks beastly,' said the Tertium Quid. 'Fancy being
+boarded up and dropped into that well!'
+
+They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing with the snaffle
+and picking her way as though she were shod with satin, and the
+sun shining divinely. The road below Mashobra to Fagoo is
+officially styled the Himalayan-Thibet road; but in spite of its
+name it is not much more than six feet wide in most places, and
+the drop into the valley below may be anything between one and
+two thousand feet.
+
+'Now we're going to Thibet,' said the Man's Wife merrily, as the
+horses drew near to Fagoo. She was riding on the cliff-side.
+
+'Into Thibet,' said the Tertium Quid, 'ever so far from people who
+say horrid things, and hubbies who write stupid letters. With you to
+the end of the world!'
+
+A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner, and the mare
+went wide to avoid him forefeet in and haunches out, as a sensible
+mare should go.
+
+'To the world's end,' said the Man's Wife, and looked unspeakable
+things over her near shoulder at the Tertium Quid.
+
+He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it
+were on his face, and changed to a nervous grin the sort of grin
+men wear when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare
+seemed to be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while
+she was trying to realise what was happening. The rain of the night
+before had rotted the drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and
+it was giving way under her. 'What are you doing?' said the Man's
+Wife. The Tertium Quid gave no answer. He grinned nervously
+and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped with her forefeet on
+the road, and the struggle began. The Man's Wife screamed, 'Oh,
+Frank, get off!'
+
+But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle his face blue and
+white and he looked into the Man's Wife's eyes. Then the Man's
+Wife clutched at the mare's head and caught her by the nose
+instead of the bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down
+with a scream, the Tertium Quid upon her, and the nervous grin
+still set on his face.
+
+The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose
+earth falling off the roadway, and the sliding roar of the man and
+horse going down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on
+Frank to leave his mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He
+was underneath the mare, nine hundred feet below, spoiling a
+patch of Indian corn.
+
+As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of
+the evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a
+temporarily mad horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes
+and her mouth open, and her head like the head of a Medusa. She
+was stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the
+saddle, a limp heap, and put on the bank to explain herself. This
+wasted twenty minutes, and then she was sent home in a lady's
+'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her hands picking at her
+riding-gloves.
+
+She was in bed through the following three days, which were
+rainy; so she missed attending the funeral of the Tertium Quid,
+who was lowered into eighteen inches of water, instead of the
+twelve to which he had first objected.
+
+A Wayside Comedy
+
+Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore
+the misery of man is great upon him. 
+--Eccles. viii. 6.
+
+Fate and the Government of India have turned the Station of
+Kashima into a prison; and, because there is no help for the poor
+souls who are now lying there in torment, I write this story,
+praying that the Government of India may be moved to scatter the
+European population to the four winds.
+
+Kashima is bounded on all sides by the rocktipped circle of the
+Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with roses; in Summer, the
+roses die and the hot winds blow from the hills; in Autumn, the
+white mists from the jhils cover the place as with water, and in
+Winter the frosts nip everything young and tender to earth-level.
+There is but one view in Kashima a stretch of perfectly flat pasture
+and plough-land, running up to the gray-blue scrub of the Dosehri
+hills.
+
+There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the
+tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the
+rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra one
+hundred and forty-three miles by road is the nearest station to
+Kashima. But Kashima never goes to Narkarra, where there are at
+least twelve English people. It stays within the circle of the
+Dosehri hills.
+
+All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to do harm;
+but all Kashima knows that she, and she alone, brought about their
+pain.
+
+Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurrell know this.
+They are the English population of Kashima, if we except Major
+Vansuythen, who is of no importance whatever, and Mrs.
+Vansuythen, who is the most important of all.
+
+You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws
+weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public
+opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a
+certain risk of falling into evil ways. This risk is multiplied by
+every addition to the population up to twelve the Jury-number.
+After that, fear and consequent restraint begin, and human action
+becomes less grotesquely jerky.
+
+There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen arrived.
+She was a charming woman, every one said so everywhere; and
+she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of
+this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and he
+was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter
+would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair
+woman, with very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before
+the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes
+could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she was to look
+upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was 'not
+bad-looking, but spoilt by pretending to be so grave.' And yet her
+gravity was natural. It was not her habit to smile. She merely went
+through life, looking at those who passed; and the women objected
+while the men fell down and worshipped.
+
+She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to
+Kashima; but Major Vansuythen cannot understand why Mrs.
+Boulte does not drop in to afternoon tea at least three times a
+week. 'When there are only two women in one Station, they ought
+to see a great deal of each other,' says Major Vansuythen.
+
+Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out of those
+far-away places where there is society and amusement, Kurrell had
+discovered that Mrs. Boulte was the one woman in the world for
+him and you dare not blame them. Kashima was as out of the
+world as Heaven or the Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept
+their secret well. Boulte had no concern in the matter. He was in
+camp for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and
+neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They had all Kashima
+and each other for their very, very own; and Kashima was the
+Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte returned from his
+wanderings he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call
+him 'old fellow,' and the three would dine together. Kashima was
+happy then when the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as
+Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But the
+Government sent Major Vansuythen to Kashima, and with him
+came his wife.
+
+The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert
+island. When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to
+the shore to make him welcome. Kashima assembled at the
+masonry platform close to the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for
+the Vansuythens. That ceremony was reckoned a formal call, and
+made them free of the Station, its rights and privileges. When the
+Vansuythens settled down they gave a tiny house-warming to all
+Kashima; and that made Kashima free of their house, according to
+the immemorial usage of the Station.
+
+Then the Rains came, when no one could go into camp, and the
+Narkarra Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the
+cup-like pastures of Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep. The
+clouds dropped down from the Dosehri hills and covered
+everything.
+
+At the end of the Rains Boulte's manner towards his wife changed
+and became demonstratively affectionate. They had been married
+twelve years, and the change startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her
+husband with the hate of a woman who has met with nothing but
+kindness from her mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, has done
+him a great wrong. Moreover, she had her own trouble to fight
+with her watch to keep over her own property, Kurrell. For two
+months the Rains had hidden the Dosehri hills and many other
+things besides; but, when they lifted, they showed Mrs. Boulte that
+her man among men, her Ted for she called him Ted in the old
+days when Boulte was out of earshot was slipping the links of the
+allegiance.
+
+'The Vansuythen Woman has taken him,' Mrs. Boulte said to
+herself; and when Boulte was away, wept over her belief, in the
+face of the over-vehement blandishments of Ted. Sorrow in
+Kashima is as fortunate as Love because there is nothing to
+weaken it save the flight of Time. Mrs. Boulte had never breathed
+her suspicion to Kurrell because she was not certain; and her
+nature led her to be very certain before she took steps in any
+direction. That is why she behaved as she did.
+
+Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the
+door-posts of the drawing-room, chewing his moustache. Mrs.
+Boulte was putting some flowers into a vase. There is a pretence of
+civilisation even in Kashima.
+
+'Little woman,' said Boulte quietly, 'do you care for me?'
+
+'Immensely,' said she, with a laugh. 'Can you ask it?'
+
+'But I'm serious,' said Boulte. 'Do you care for me?'
+
+Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly. 'Do
+you want an honest answer?'
+
+'Ye-es, I've asked for it.'
+
+Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes, very
+distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding her meaning.
+When Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he did a little thing, and
+one not to be compared to the deliberate pulling down of a
+woman's homestead about her own ears. There was no wise female
+friend to advise Mrs. Boulte, the singularly cautious wife, to hold
+her hand. She struck at Boulte's heart, because her own was sick
+with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out with the long strain of
+watching alone through the Rains. There was no plan or purpose in
+her speaking. The sentences made themselves; and Boulte listened,
+leaning against the door-post with his hands in his pockets. When
+all was over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her nose
+before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared straight in
+front of him at the Dosehri hills.
+
+'Is that all?' he said. 'Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know.'
+
+'What are you going to do?' said the woman, between her sobs.
+
+'Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell, or send you Home,
+or apply for leave to get a divorce? It's two days' dƒk into
+Narkarra.' He laughed again and went on: 'I'll tell you what you can
+do. You can ask Kurrell to dinner tomorrow no, on Thursday, that
+will allow you time to pack and you can bolt with him. I give you
+my word I won't follow.'
+
+He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte
+sat till the moonlight streaked the floor, thinking and thinking and
+thinking. She had done her best upon the spur of the moment to
+pull the house down; but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not
+understand her husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of her
+useless truthfulness struck her, and she was ashamed to write to
+Kurrell, saying, 'I have gone mad and told everything. My husband
+says that I am free to elope with you. Get a dƒk for Thursday, and
+we will fly after dinner.' There was a cold-bloodedness about that
+procedure which did not appeal to her. So she sat still in her own
+house and thought.
+
+At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn
+and haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the
+evening wore on she muttered some expression of sorrow,
+something approaching to contrition. Boulte came out of a brown
+study and said, 'Oh, that! I wasn't thinking about that. By the way,
+what does Kurrell say to the elopement?'
+
+'I haven't seen him,' said Mrs. Boulte. 'Good God, is that all?'
+
+But Boulte was not listening and her sentence ended in a gulp.
+
+The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did
+not appear, and the new lift that she, in the five minutes' madness
+of the previous evening, had hoped to build out of the ruins of the
+old, seemed to be no nearer.
+
+Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in
+the verandah, and went out. The morning wore through, and at
+mid-day the tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not
+cry. She had finished her crying in the night, and now she did not
+want to be left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk
+to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps there might be
+some comfort to be found in her company. She was the only other
+woman in the Station.
+
+In Kashima there are no regular calling-hours. Every one can drop
+in upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai
+hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens' house to borrow last
+week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going
+up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge,
+entering the house from the back. As she passed through the
+dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the
+drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying 
+
+'But on my Honour! On my Soul and Honour, I tell you she doesn't
+care for me. She told me so last night. I would have told you then
+if Vansuythen hadn't been with you. If it is for her sake that you'll
+have nothing to say to me, you can make your mind easy. It's
+Kurrell '
+
+'What?' said Mrs. Vansuythen, with a hysterical little laugh.
+'Kurrell! Oh, it can't be! You two must have made some horrible
+mistake. Perhaps you you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or
+something. Things can't be as wrong as you say.'
+
+Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man's
+pleading, and was desperately trying to keep him to a side-issue.
+
+'There must be some mistake,' she insisted, 'and it can be all put
+right again.'
+
+Boulte laughed grimly.
+
+'It can't be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had never taken the
+least the least interest in your wife, Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He
+said he had not. He swore he had not,' said Mrs. Vansuythen.
+
+The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a
+little thin woman, with big rings round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuythen
+stood up with a gasp.
+
+'What was that you said?' asked Mrs. Boulte. 'Never mind that
+man. What did Ted say to you? What did he say to you? What did
+he say to you?'
+
+Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the
+trouble of her questioner.
+
+'He said I can't remember exactly what he said but I understood
+him to say that is  But, really, Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange
+question?'
+
+'Will you tell me what he said?' repeated Mrs. Boulte. Even a tiger
+will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps, and Mrs. Vansuythen
+was only an ordinarily good woman. She began in a sort of
+desperation: 'Well, he said that the never cared for you at all, and,
+of course, there was not the least reason why he should have, and
+and that was all.'
+
+'You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was that true?'
+
+'Yes,' said Mrs. Vansuythen very softly.
+
+Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell
+forward fainting.
+
+'What did I tell you?' said Boulte, as though the conversation had
+been unbroken. 'You can see for yourself. She cares for him.' The
+light began to break into his dull mind, and he went on ' And he  
+what was he saying to you?'
+
+But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for explanations or
+impassioned protestations, was kneeling over Mrs. Boulte.
+
+'Oh, you brute!' she cried. 'Are all men like this? Help me to get her
+into my room and her face is cut against the table. Oh, will you be
+quiet, and help me to carry her? I hate you, and I hate Captain
+Kurrell. Lift her up carefully, and now go! Go away!'
+
+Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Vansuythen's bedroom, and
+departed before the storm of that lady's wrath and disgust,
+impenitent and burning with jealousy. Kurrell had been making
+love to Mrs. Vansuythen would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as
+he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs.
+Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved
+had forsworn her.
+
+In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along
+the road and pulled up with a cheery 'Good - mornin'. 'Been
+mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober,
+married man, that. What will Mrs. Boulte say?'
+
+Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
+changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.
+
+'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two
+are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough
+to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me,
+Kurrell old man haven't you?'
+
+Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
+about being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the
+woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was
+abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so
+easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now
+he was saddled with Boulte's voice recalled him.
+
+'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
+pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'
+
+Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
+wrongs, Boulte added 
+
+''Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the
+woman, now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too,
+haven't you?'
+
+Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond
+him.
+
+'What do you mean?' he said.
+
+Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner: 'My wife
+came over to Mrs. Vansuythen's just now; and it seems you'd been
+telling Mrs. Vansuythen that you'd never cared for Emma. I
+suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with
+you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.'
+
+Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by
+another question: 'Go on. What happened?'
+
+'Emma fainted,' said Boulte simply. 'But, look here, what had you
+been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?'
+
+Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made
+havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the
+man in whose eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.
+
+'Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I
+said pretty much what you've said, unless I'm a good deal
+mistaken.'
+
+'I spoke the truth,' said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell.
+'Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.'
+
+'No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know. And what did
+Mrs. Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at
+her feet?'
+
+Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.
+
+'I don't think that matters,' Boulte replied; 'and it doesn't concern
+you.'
+
+'But it does! I tell you it does' began Kurrell shamelessly.
+
+The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips.
+Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed laughed
+long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound
+the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the
+Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might
+have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half
+the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and
+Kurrell was the first to speak.
+
+'Well, what are you going to do?'
+
+Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. 'Nothing,' said he
+quietly; 'what's the use? It's too ghastly for anything. We must let
+the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't
+go on calling you names for ever. Besides which, I don't feel that
+I'm much better. We can't get out of this place. What is there to
+do?'
+
+Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply.
+The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.
+
+'Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don't
+care what you do.'
+
+He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him.
+Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs.
+Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony
+grazed by the roadside.
+
+The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs. Vansuythen was
+driving home Mrs. Boulte, white and wan, with a cut on her
+forehead.
+
+'Stop, please,' said Mrs. Boulte, 'I want to speak to Ted.'
+
+Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte leaned forward,
+putting her hand upon the splashboard of the dog-cart, Kurrell
+spoke.
+
+'I've seen your husband, Mrs. Boulte.'
+
+There was no necessity for any further explanation. The man's eyes
+were fixed, not upon Mrs. Boulte, but her companion. Mrs. Boulte
+saw the look.
+
+'Speak to him!' she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side. 'Oh,
+speak to him! Tell him what you told me just now. Tell him you
+hate him. Tell him you hate him!'
+
+She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the sais, impassive, went
+forward to hold the horse. Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and
+dropped the reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy
+explanations.
+
+'I've nothing to do with it,' she began coldly; but Mrs. Boulte's sobs
+overcame her, and she addressed herself to the man. 'I don't know
+what I am to say, Captain Kurrell. I don't know what I can call you.
+I think you've you've behaved abominably, and she has cut her
+forehead terribly against the table.'
+
+'It doesn't hurt. It isn't anything,' said Mrs. Boulte feebly. 'That
+doesn't matter. Tell him what you told me. Say you don't care for
+him. Oh, Ted, won't you believe her?'
+
+'Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were that you were
+fond of her once upon a time,' went on Mrs. Vansuythen.
+
+'Well!' said Kurrell brutally. 'It seems to me that Mrs. Boulte had
+better be fond of her own husband first.'
+
+'Stop!' said Mrs. Vansuythen. 'Hear me first. I don't care I don't
+want to know anything about you and Mrs. Boulte; but I want you
+to know that I hate you, that I think you are a cur, and that I'll
+never, never speak to you again. Oh, I don't dare to say what I
+think of you, you   man!'
+
+'I want to speak to Ted,' moaned Mrs. Boulte, but the dog-cart
+rattled on, and Kurrell was left on the road, shamed, and boiling
+with wrath against Mrs. Boulte.
+
+He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to her own
+house, and, she being freed from the embarrassment of Mrs.
+Boulte's presence, learned for the second time her opinion of
+himself and his actions.
+
+In the evenings it was the wont of all Kashima to meet at the
+platform on the Narkarra Road, to drink tea and discuss the
+trivialities of the day. Major Vansuythen and his wife found
+themselves alone at the gathering-place for almost the first time in
+their remembrance; and the cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife's
+remarkably reasonable suggestion that the rest of the Station might
+be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two bungalows and
+unearthing the population.
+
+'Sitting in the twilight!' said he, with great indignation, to the
+Boultes. 'That'll never do! Hang it all, we're one family here! You
+must come out, and so must Kurrell. I'll make him bring his banjo.'
+
+So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good digestion
+over guilty consciences that all Kashima did turn out, even down
+to the banjo; and the Major embraced the company in one
+expansive grin. As he grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her eyes for
+an instant and looked at all Kashima. Her meaning was clear.
+Major Vansuythen would never know anything. He was to be the
+outsider in that happy family whose cage was the Dosehri hills.
+
+'You're singing villainously out of tune, Kurrell,' said the Major
+truthfully. 'Pass me that banjo.'
+
+And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out and all
+Kashima went to dinner.
+
+That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima the life that
+Mrs. Boulte made when her tongue was loosened in the twilight.
+
+Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since he insists
+upon keeping up a burdensome geniality, she has been compelled
+to break her vow of not speaking to Kurrell. This speech, which
+must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and
+interest, serves admirably to keep alight the flame of jealousy and
+dull hatred in Boulte's bosom, as it awakens the same passions in
+his wife's heart. Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen because she
+has taken Ted from her, and, in some curious fashion, hates her
+because Mrs. Vansuythen and here the wife's eyes see far more
+clearly than the husband's detests Ted. And Ted that gallant
+captain and honourable man knows now that it is possible to hate a
+woman once loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her for ever
+with blows. Above all, is he shocked that Mrs. Boulte cannot see
+the error of her ways.
+
+Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all friendship.
+Boulte has put their relationship on a most satisfactory footing.
+
+'You're a blackguard,' he says to Kurrell, 'and I've lost any
+self-respect I may ever have had; but when you're with me, I can
+feel certain that you are not with Mrs. Vansuythen, or making
+Emma miserable.'
+
+Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him. Sometimes
+they are away for three days together, and then the Major insists
+upon his wife going over to sit with Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs.
+Vansuythen has repeatedly declared that she prefers her husband's
+company to any in the world. From the way in which she clings to
+him, she would certainly seem to be speaking the truth.
+
+But of course, as the Major says, 'in a little Station we must all be
+friendly.'
+
+
+The Hill of Illusion
+
+What rendered vain their deep desire?
+A God, a God their severance ruled,
+And bade between their shores to be
+The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
+       --Matthew Arnold.
+
+He. Tell your jhampanies not to hurry so, dear. They forget I'm
+fresh from the Plains.
+
+She. Sure proof that I have not been going out with any one. Yes,
+they are an untrained crew. Where do we go?
+
+He. As usual to the world's end. No, Jakko.
+
+She. Have your pony led after you, then. It's a long round.
+
+He. And for the last time, thank Heaven!
+
+She. Do you mean that still? I didn't dare to write to you about it
+all these months.
+
+He. Mean it! I've been shaping my affairs to that end since
+Autumn. What makes you speak as though it had occurred to you
+for the first time?
+
+She. I? Oh! I don't know. I've had long enough to think, too.
+
+He. And you've changed your mind?
+
+She. No. You ought to know that I am a miracle of constancy.
+What are your arrangements?
+
+He. Ours, Sweetheart, please.
+
+She. Ours, be it then. My poor boy, how the prickly heat has
+marked your forehead! Have you ever tried sulphate of copper in
+water?
+
+He. It'll go away in a day or two up here. The arrangements are
+simple enough. Tonga in the early morning reach Kalka at twelve
+Umballa at seven down, straight by night train, to Bombay, and
+then the steamer of the 21st for Rome. That's my idea. The
+Continent and Sweden a ten-week honeymoon.
+
+She. Ssh! Don't talk of it in that way. It makes me afraid. Guy, how
+long have we two been insane?
+
+He. Seven months and fourteen days, I forget the odd hours
+exactly, but I'll think.
+
+She. I only wanted to see if you remembered. Who are those two
+on the Blessington Road?
+
+He. Eabrey and the Penner Woman. What do they matter to us?
+Tell me everything that you've been doing and saying and thinking.
+
+She. Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great deal. I've hardly
+been out at all.
+
+He. That was wrong of you. You haven't been moping?
+
+She. Not very much. Can you wonder that I'm disinclined for
+amusement?
+
+He. Frankly, I do. Where was the difficulty?
+
+She. In this only. The more people I know and the more I'm known
+here, the wider spread will be the news of the crash when it comes.
+I don't like that.
+
+He. Nonsense. We shall be out of it.
+
+She. You think so?
+
+He. I'm sure of it, if there is any power in steam or horse-flesh to
+carry us away. Ha! ha!
+
+She. And the fun of the situation comes in where, my Lancelot?
+
+He. Nowhere, Guinevere. I was only thinking of something.
+
+She. They say men have a keener sense of humour than women.
+Now I was thinking of the scandal.
+
+He. Don't think of anything so ugly. We shall be beyond it.
+
+She. It will be there all the same in the mouths of Simla
+telegraphed over India, and talked of at the dinners and when He
+goes out they will stare at Him to see how he takes it. And we shall
+be dead, Guy dear dead and cast into the outer darkness where
+there is 
+
+He. Love at least. Isn't that enough?
+
+She. I have said so.
+
+He. And you think so still?
+
+She. What do you think?
+
+He. What have I done? It means equal ruin to me, as the world
+reckons it outcasting, the loss of my appointment, the breaking off
+my life's work. I pay my price.
+
+She. And are you so much above the world that you can afford to
+pay it. Am I?
+
+He. My Divinity what else?
+
+She. A very ordinary woman, I'm afraid, but so far, respectable.
+How d'you do, Mrs. Middle-ditch? Your husband? I think he's
+riding down to Annandale with Colonel Statters. Yes, isn't it divine
+after the rain? Guy, how long am I to be allowed to bow to Mrs.
+Middleditch? Till the 17th?
+
+He. Frowsy Scotchwoman! What is the use of bringing her into the
+discussion? You were saying?
+
+She. Nothing. Have you ever seen a man hanged?
+
+He. Yes. Once.
+
+She. What was it for?
+
+He. Murder, of course.
+
+She. Murder. Is that so great a sin after all? I wonder how he felt
+before the drop fell.
+
+He. I don't think he felt much. What a gruesome little woman it is
+this evening! You're shivering. Put on your cape, dear.
+
+She. I think I will. Oh! Look at the mist coming over Sanjaoli; and
+I thought we should have sunshine on the Ladies' Mile! Let's turn
+back.
+
+He. What's the good? There's a cloud on Elysium Hill, and that
+means it's foggy all down the Mall. We'll go on. It'll blow away
+before we get to the Convent, perhaps. 'Jove! It is chilly.
+
+She. You feel it, fresh from below. Put on your ulster. What do you
+think of my cape?
+
+He. Never ask a man his opinion of a woman's dress when he is
+desperately and abjectly in love with the wearer. Let me look. Like
+everything else of yours it's perfect. Where did you get it from?
+
+She. He gave it me, on Wednesday our wedding-day, you know.
+
+He. The Deuce He did! He's growing generous in his old age.
+D'you like all that frilly, bunchy stuff at the throat? I don't.
+
+She. Don't you?
+
+Kind Sir, o' your courtesy,
+   As you go by the town, Sir,
+'Pray you o' your love for me,
+   Buy me a russet gown, Sir.
+
+He. I won't say: 'Keek into the draw-well, Janet, Janet.' Only wait a
+little, darling, and you shall be stocked with russet gowns and
+everything else.
+
+She. And when the frocks wear out you'll get me new ones and
+everything else?
+
+He. Assuredly.
+
+She. I wonder!
+
+He. Look here, Sweetheart, I didn't spend two days and two nights
+in the train to hear you wonder. I thought we'd settled all that at
+Shaifazehat.
+
+She. (dreamily). At Shaifazehat? Does the Station go on still? That
+was ages and ages ago. It must be crumbling to pieces. All except
+the Amirtollah kutcha road. I don't believe that could crumble till
+the Day of Judgment.
+
+He. You think so? What is the mood now?
+
+She. I can't tell. How cold it is! Let us get on quickly.
+
+He. 'Better walk a little. Stop your jhampanies and get out. What's
+the matter with you this evening, dear?
+
+She. Nothing. You must grow accustomed to my ways. If I'm
+boring you I can go home. Here's Captain Congleton coming, I
+daresay he'll be willing to escort me.
+
+He. Goose! Between us, too! Damn Captain Congleton.
+
+She. Chivalrous Knight. Is it your habit to swear much in talking?
+It jars a little, and you might swear at me.
+
+He. My angel! I didn't know what I was saying; and you changed
+so quickly that I couldn't follow. I'll apologise in dust and ashes.
+
+She. There'll be enough of those later on Good-night, Captain
+Congleton. Going to the singing - quadrilles already? What dances
+am I giving you next week? No! You must have written them down
+wrong. Five and Seven, I said. If you've made a mistake, I certainly
+don't intend to suffer for it. You must alter your programme.
+
+He. I thought you told me that you had not been going out much
+this season?
+
+She. Quite true, but when I do I dance with Captain Congleton. He
+dances very nicely.
+
+He. And sit out with him, I suppose?
+
+She. Yes. Have you any objection? Shall I stand under the
+chandelier in future?
+
+He. What does he talk to you about?
+
+She. What do men talk about when they sit out?
+
+He. Ugh! Don't! Well, now I'm up, you must dispense with the
+fascinating Congleton for a while. I don't like him.
+
+She (after a pause). Do you know what you have said?
+
+He 'Can't say that I do exactly. I'm not in the best of tempers.
+
+She So I see, and feel. My true and faithful lover, where is your
+'eternal constancy,' 'unalterable trust,' and 'reverent devotion'? I
+remember those phrases; you seem to have forgotten them. I
+mention a man's name 
+
+He. A good deal more than that.
+
+She. Well, speak to him about a dance perhaps the last dance that I
+shall ever dance in my life before I, before I go away; and you at
+once distrust and insult me.
+
+He. I never said a word.
+
+She. How much did you imply? Guy, is this amount of confidence
+to be our stock to start the new life on?
+
+He. No, of course not. I didn't mean that. On my word and honour,
+I didn't. Let it pass, dear. Please let it pass.
+
+She. This once yes and a second time, and again and again, all
+through the years when I shall be unable to resent it. You want too
+much, my Lancelot, and, you know too much.
+
+He. How do you mean?
+
+She. That is a part of the punishment. There cannot be perfect trust
+between us.
+
+He. In Heaven's name, why not?
+
+She. Hush! The Other Place is quite enough. Ask yourself.
+
+He. I don't follow.
+
+She. You trust me so implicitly that when I look at another man
+Never mind. Guy, have you ever made love to a girl a good girl?
+
+He. Something of the sort. Centuries ago in the Dark Ages, before
+I ever met you, dear.
+
+She. Tell me what you said to her.
+
+He. What does a man say to a girl? I've forgotten.
+
+She. I remember. He tells her that he trusts her and worships the
+ground she walks on, and that he'll love and honour and protect her
+till her dying day; and so she marries in that belief. At least, I
+speak of one girl who was not protected.
+
+He. Well, and then?
+
+She. And then, Guy, and then, that girl needs ten times the love
+and trust and honour yes, honour that was enough when she was
+only a mere wife if if the other life she chooses to lead is to be
+made even bearable. Do you understand?
+
+He. Even bearable! It'll be Paradise.
+
+She. Ah! Can you give me all I've asked for not now, nor a few
+months later, but when you begin to think of what you might have
+done if you had kept your own appointment and your caste here
+when you begin to look upon me as a drag and a burden? I shall
+want it most then, Guy, for there will be no one in the wide world
+but you.
+
+He. You're a little over-tired to-night, Sweetheart, and you're
+taking a stage view of the situation. After the necessary business in
+the Courts, the road is clear to 
+
+She. 'The holy state of matrimony!' Ha! ha! ha!
+
+He. Ssh! Don't laugh in that horrible way!
+
+She. I I c-c-c-can't help it! Isn't it too absurd! Ah! Ha! ha! ha! Guy,
+stop me quick or I shall l-l-laugh till we get to the Church.
+
+He. For goodness sake, stop! Don't make an exhibition of yourself.
+What is the matter with you?
+
+She. N-nothing. I'm better now.
+
+He. That's all right. One moment, dear. There's a little wisp of hair
+got loose from behind your right ear and it's straggling over your
+cheek. So!
+
+She. Thank'oo. I'm 'fraid my hat's on one side, too.
+
+He. What do you wear these huge dagger bonnet-skewers for?
+They're big enough to kill a man with.
+
+She. Oh! don't kill me, though. You're sticking it into my head! Let
+me do it. You men are so clumsy.
+
+He. Have you had many opportunities of comparing us in this sort
+of work?
+
+She. Guy, what is my name?
+
+He. Eh! I don't follow.
+
+She. Here's my card-case. Can you read?
+
+He. Yes. Well?
+
+She. Well, that answers your question. You know the other's man's
+name. Am I sufficiently humbled, or would you like to ask me if
+there is any one else?
+
+He. I see now. My darling, I never meant that for an instant. I was
+only joking. There! Lucky there's no one on the road. They'd be
+scandalised.
+
+She. They'll be more scandalised before the end.
+
+He. Do-on't! I don't like you to talk in that way.
+
+She. Unreasonable man! Who asked me to face the situation and
+accept it? Tell me, do I look like Mrs. Penner? Do I look like a
+naughty woman! Swear I don't! Give me your word of honour, my
+honourable friend, that I'm not like Mrs. Buzgago. That's the way
+she stands, with her hands clasped at the back of her head. D'you
+like that?
+
+He. Don't be affected.
+
+She. I'm not. I'm Mrs. Buzgago. Listen!
+
+Pendant une anne' toute entiŠre
+
+Le r‚giment n'a pas r'paru.
+
+Au MinistŠre de la Guerre
+
+On le r'porta comme perdu.
+
+On se r'noncait … rtrouver sa trace,
+
+Quand un matin subitement,
+
+On le vit r'paraŒtre sur la place,
+
+L'Colonel toujours en avant.
+
+That's the way she rolls her r's. Am I like her?
+
+He. No, but I object when you go on like an actress and sing stuff
+of that kind. Where in the world did you pick up the Chanson du
+Colonel? It isn't a drawing-room song. It isn't proper.
+
+She. Mrs. Buzgago taught it me. She is both drawing-room and
+proper, and in another month she'll shut her drawing-room to me,
+and thank God she isn't as improper as I am. Oh, Guy, Guy! I wish
+I was like some women and had no scruples about What is it
+Keene says? 'Wearing a corpse's hair and being false to the bread
+they eat.'
+
+He. I am only a man of limited intelligence, and, just now, very
+bewildered. When you have quite finished flashing through all
+your moods tell me, and I'll try to understand the last one.
+
+She. Moods, Guy! I haven't any. I'm sixteen years old and you're
+just twenty, and you've been waiting for two hours outside the
+school in the cold. And now I've met you, and now we're walking
+home together. Does that suit you, My Imperial Majesty?
+
+He. No. We aren't children. Why can't you be rational?
+
+She. He asks me that when I'm going to commit suicide for his
+sake, and, and I don't want to be French and rave about my mother,
+but have I ever told you that I have a mother, and a brother who
+was my pet before I married? He's married now. Can't you imagine
+the pleasure that the news of the elopement will give him? Have
+you any people at Home, Guy, to be pleased with your
+performances?
+
+He. One or two. One can't make omelets without breaking eggs.
+
+She (slowly). I don't see the necessity  
+
+He. Hah! What do you mean?
+
+She. Shall I speak the truth?
+
+He Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as well.
+
+She. Guy, I'm afraid.
+
+He I thought we'd settled all that. What of?
+
+She. Of you.
+
+He. Oh, damn it all! The old business! This is toobad! 
+
+She. Of you.
+
+He. And what now?
+
+She. What do you think of me?
+
+He. Beside the question altogether. What do you intend to do?
+
+She. I daren't risk it. I'm afraid. If I could only cheat 
+
+He.  A la Buzgago? No, thanks. That's the one point on which I
+have any notion of Honour. I won't eat his salt and steal too. I'll
+loot openly or not at all.
+
+She. I never meant anything else.
+
+He. Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be willing to
+come?
+
+She. It's not pretence, Guy. I am afraid. 
+
+He. Please explain.
+
+She. It can't last, Guy. It can't last. You'll get angry, and then you'll
+swear, and then you'll get jealous, and then you'll mistrust me you
+do now and you yourself will be the best reason for doubting. And
+I what shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs. Buzgago found out
+no better than any one. And you'll know that. Oh, Guy, can't you
+see?
+
+He I see that you are desperately unreasonable, little woman.
+
+She. There! The moment I begin to object, you get angry. What
+will you do when I am only your property stolen property? It can't
+be, Guy. It can't be! I thought it could, but it can't. You'll get tired
+of me.
+
+He I tell you I shall not. Won't anything make you understand that?
+
+She. There, can't you see? If you speak to me like that now, you'll
+call me horrible names later, if I don't do everything as you like.
+And if you were cruel to me, Guy, where should I go?  where
+should I go? I can't trust you. Oh! I can't trust you!
+
+He. I suppose I ought to say that I can trust you. I've ample reason.
+
+She. Please don't, dear. It hurts as much as if you hit me.
+
+He. It isn't exactly pleasant for me.
+
+She. I can't help it. I wish I were dead! I can't trust you, and I don't
+trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!
+
+He. Too late now. I don't understand you  I won't and I can't trust
+myself to talk this evening. May I call to-morrow?
+
+She. Yes. No! Oh, give me time! The day after. I get into my
+'rickshaw here and meet Him at Peliti's. You ride.
+
+He. I'll go on to Peliti's too. I think I want a drink. My world's
+knocked about my ears and the stars are falling. Who are those
+brutes howling in the Old Library?
+
+She. They're rehearsing the singing-quadrilles for the Fancy Ball.
+Can't you hear Mrs. Buzgago's voice? She has a solo. It's quite a
+new idea. Listen!
+
+Mrs. Buzgago (in the Old Library, con molt. exp.).
+
+See-saw! Margery Daw!
+
+Sold her bed to lie upon straw.
+
+Wasn't she a silly slut
+
+To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?
+
+Captain Congleton, I'm going to alter that to 'flirt.' It sounds better.
+
+He. No, I've changed my mind about the drink. Good-night, little
+lady. I shall see you to-morrow?
+
+She. Ye es. Good-night, Guy. Don't be angry with me.
+
+He. Angry! You know I trust you absolutely. Good-night and God
+bless you!
+
+(Three seconds later. Alone.) Hmm! I'd give something to discover
+whether there's another man at the back of all this.
+
+A Second-Rate Woman
+
+Est fuga, volvitur rota,
+   On we drift: where looms the dim port?
+One Two Three Four Five contribute their quota:
+   Something is gained if one caught but the import,
+Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
+       --Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
+
+'Dressed! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in her life. She
+stood in the middle of the room while her ayah no, her husband it
+must have been a man threw her clothes at her. She then did her
+hair with her fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the
+bed. I know she did, as well as if I had assisted at the orgy. Who is
+she?' said Mrs. Hauksbee.
+
+'Don't!' said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. 'You make my head ache. I'am
+miserable to-day. Stay me with fondants, comfort me with
+chocolates, for I am Did you bring anything from Peliti's?'
+
+'Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets when you have
+answered them. Who and what is the creature? There were at least
+half-a-dozen men round her, and she appeared to be going to sleep
+in their midst.'
+
+'Delville,' said Mrs. Mallowe, '''Shady" Delville, to distinguish her
+from Mrs. Jim of that ilk. She dances as untidily as she dresses, I
+believe, and her husband is somewhere in Madras. Go and call, if
+you are so interested.'
+
+'What have I to do with Shigramitish women? She merely caught
+my attention for a minute, and I wondered at the attraction that a
+dowd has for a certain type of man. I expected to see her walk out
+of her clothes until I looked at her eyes.'
+
+'Hooks and eyes, surely,' drawled Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+'Don't be clever, Polly. You make my head ache. And round this
+hayrick stood a crowd of men a positive crowd!'
+
+'Perhaps they also expected '
+
+'Polly, don't be Rabelaisian!'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe curled herself up comfortably on the sofa, and
+turned her attention to the sweets. She and Mrs. Hauksbee shared
+the same house at Simla; and these things befell two seasons after
+the matter of Otis Yeere, which has been already recorded.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee stepped into the verandah and looked down upon
+the Mall, her forehead puckered with thought.
+
+'Hah!' said Mrs. Hauksbee shortly. 'Indeed!'
+
+'What is it?' said Mrs. Mallowe sleepily.
+
+'That dowd and The Dancing Master to whom I object.'
+
+'Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of
+reprobate and romantic tendencies, and tries to be a friend of
+mine.'
+
+'Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling by nature, and
+I should imagine that this animal how terrible her bonnet looks
+from above!  is specially clingsome.'
+
+'She is welcome to The Dancing Master so far as I am concerned. I
+never could take an interest in a monotonous liar. The frustrated
+aim of his life is to persuade people that he is a bachelor.'
+
+'O-oh! I think I've met that sort of man before. And isn't he?'
+
+'No. He confided that to me a few days ago. Ugh! Some men ought
+to be killed.'
+
+'What happened then?'
+
+'He posed as the horror of horrors a misunderstood man. Heaven
+knows the femme incomprise is sad enough and bad enough but
+the other thing!'
+
+'And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face. Men seldom
+confide in me. How is it they come to you?'
+
+'For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the past.
+Protect me from men with confidences!'
+
+'And yet you encourage them?'
+
+'What can I do? They talk, I listen, and they vow that I am
+sympathetic. I know I always profess astonishment even when the
+plot is of the most old possible.'
+
+'Yes. Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to
+talk, whereas women's confidences are full of reservations and
+fibs, except '
+
+'When they go mad and babble of the Unutter-abilities after a
+week's acquaintance. Really, if you come to consider, we know a
+great deal more of men than of our own sex.'
+
+'And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it. They
+say we are trying to hide something.'
+
+'They are generally doing that on their own account. Alas! These
+chocolates pall upon me, and I haven't eaten more than a dozen. I
+think I shall go to sleep.'
+
+'Then you'll get fat, dear. If you took more exercise and a more
+intelligent interest in your neighbours you would '
+
+'Be as much loved as Mrs. Hauksbee. You're a darling in many
+ways, and I like you you are not a woman's woman but why do you
+trouble yourself about mere human beings?'
+
+'Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be horribly
+dull, men and women are the most fascinating things in the whole
+wide world, lazy one. I am interested in The Dowd  I am interested
+in The Dancing Master I am interested in the Hawley Boy and I am
+interested in you.'
+
+'Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property.'
+
+'Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out
+of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his
+Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from
+him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think, and' here
+she waved her hands airily '''whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath joined
+together let no man put asunder." That's all.'
+
+'And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious
+detrimental in Simla, and earned the undying hatred of Mamma
+Holt, what will you do with me, Dispenser of the Destinies of the
+Universe?'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of the fire, and,
+chin in hand, gazed long and steadfastly at Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+'I do not know,' she said, shaking her head, 'what I shall do with
+you, dear. It's obviously impossible to marry you to some one else
+your husband would object and the experiment might not be
+successful after all. I think I shall begin by preventing you from
+what is it? ''sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring in the sun."'
+
+'Don't! I don't like your quotations. They are so rude. Go to the
+Library and bring me new books.'
+
+'While you sleep? No! If you don't come with me I shall spread
+your newest frock on my 'rickshaw-bow, and when any one asks
+me what I am doing, I shall say that I am going to Phelps's to get it
+let out. I shall take care that Mrs. MacNamara sees me. Put your
+things on, there's a good girl.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went off to the
+Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the man who went by
+the nick-name of The Dancing Master. By that time Mrs. Mallowe
+was awake and eloquent.
+
+'That is the Creature!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, with the air of one
+pointing out a slug in the road.
+
+'No,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'The man is the Creature. Ugh!
+Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought you were coming to tea this
+evening.'
+
+'Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?' answered The Dancing
+Master. 'I understood   I fancied I'm so sorry How very
+unfortunate!'  
+
+But Mrs. Mallowe had passed on.
+
+'For the practised equivocator you said he was,' murmured Mrs.
+Hauksbee, 'he strikes me as a failure. Now wherefore should he
+have preferred a walk with The Dowd to tea with us? Elective
+affinities, I suppose both grubby. Polly, I'd never forgive that
+woman as long as the world rolls.'
+
+'I forgive every woman everything,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'He will be
+a sufficient punishment for her. What a common voice she has!'
+
+Mrs. Delville's voice was not pretty, her carriage was even less
+lovely, and her raiment was strikingly neglected. All these things
+Mrs. Mallowe noticed over the top of a magazine.
+
+'Now what is there in her?' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'Do you see what I
+meant about the clothes falling off? If I were a man I would perish
+sooner than be seen with that rag-bag. And yet, she has good eyes,
+but Oh!'
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'She doesn't know how to use them! On my honour, she does not.
+Look! Oh look! Untidiness I can endure, but ignorance never! The
+woman's a fool.'
+
+'Hsh! She'll hear you.'
+
+'All the women in Simla are fools. She'll think I mean some one
+else. Now she's going out. What a thoroughly objectionable couple
+she and The Dancing Master make! Which reminds me. Do you
+suppose they'll ever dance together?'
+
+'Wait and see. I don't envy her the conversation of The Dancing
+Master loathly man! His wife ought to be up here before long?'
+
+'Do you know anything about him?'
+
+'Only what he told me. It may be all a fiction. He married a girl
+bred in the country, I think, and, being an honourable, chivalrous
+soul, told me that he repented his bargain and sent her to her as
+often as possible a person who has lived in the Doon since the
+memory of man and goes to Mussoorie when other people go
+Home. The wife is with her at present. So he says.'
+
+'Babies?'
+
+'One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him
+for it. He thought he was being epigrammatic and brilliant.'
+
+'That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because he is
+generally in the wake of some girl, disappointing the Eligibles. He
+will persecute May Holt no more, unless I am much mistaken.'
+
+'No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while.'
+
+'Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?'
+
+'Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I tell
+you. Don't you know that type of man?'
+
+'Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general rule, when a man
+begins to abuse his wife to me, I find that the Lord gives me
+wherewith to answer him according to his folly; and we part with a
+coolness between us. I laugh.'
+
+'I'm different. I've no sense of humour.'
+
+'Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I
+care to think about. A well-educated sense of humour will save a
+woman when Religion, Training, and Home influences fail; and
+we may all need salvation sometimes.'
+
+'Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humour?'
+
+'Her dress bewrays her. How can a Thing who wears her
+supplŠment under her left arm have any notion of the fitness of
+things much less their folly? If she discards The Dancing Master
+after having once seen him dance, I may respect her. Otherwise '
+
+'But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear? You
+saw the woman at Peliti's half an hour later you saw her walking
+with The Dancing Master an hour later you met her here at the
+Library.'
+
+'Still with The Dancing Master, remember.'
+
+'Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of
+that should you imagine '
+
+'I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that
+The Dancing Master is attracted to The Dowd because he is
+objectionable in every way and she in every other. If I know the
+man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at
+present.'
+
+'She is twenty years younger than he.'
+
+'Poor wretch! And, in the end, after he has posed and swaggered
+and lied he has a mouth under that ragged moustache simply made
+for lies he will be rewarded according to his merits.'
+
+'I wonder what those really are,' said Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to the shelf of the new books,
+was humming softly: 'What shall he have who killed the Deer?' She
+was a lady of unfettered speech.
+
+One month later she announced her intention of calling upon Mrs.
+Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning
+wrappers, and there was a great peace in the land.
+
+'I should go as I was,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'It would be a delicate
+compliment to her style.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.
+
+'Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I
+should put on this robe, after all the others, to show her what a
+morning-wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her. As it is, I shall
+go in the dove-coloured sweet emblem of youth and innocence and
+shall put on my new gloves.'
+
+'If you really are going, dirty tan would be too good; and you know
+that dove-colour spots with the rain.'
+
+'I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one
+cannot expect very much from a woman who puts a lace tucker
+into her habit.'
+
+'Just Heavens! When did she do that?'
+
+'Yesterday riding with The Dancing Master. I met them at the back
+of Jakko, and the rain had made the lace lie down. To complete the
+effect, she was wearing an unclean terai with the elastic under her
+chin. I felt almost too well content to take the trouble to despise
+her.'
+
+'The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?'
+
+'Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did?
+He stared in the rudest way, and just when I thought he had seen
+the elastic, he said, ''There's something very taking about that
+face." I rebuked him on the spot. I don't approve of boys being
+taken by faces.'
+
+'Other than your own. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if the
+Hawley Boy immediately went to call.'
+
+'I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and
+his wife when she comes up. I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent
+and the Delville woman together.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee departed and, at the end of an hour, returned
+slightly flushed.
+
+'There is no limit to the treachery of youth! I ordered the Hawley
+Boy, as he valued my patronage, not to call. The first person I
+stumble over literally stumble over in her poky, dark little
+drawing-room is, of course, the Hawley Boy. She kept us waiting
+ten minutes, and then emerged as though she had been tipped out
+of the dirtyclothes-basket. You know my way, dear, when I am at
+all put out. I was Superior, crrrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes
+to Heaven, and had heard of nothing 'dropped my eyes on the
+carpet and ''really didn't know" 'played with my cardcase and
+''supposed so." The Hawley Boy giggled like a girl, and I had to
+freeze him with scowls between the sentences.'
+
+'And she?'
+
+'She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and managed to convey
+the impression that she was suffering from stomach-ache, at the
+very least. It was all I could do not to ask after her symptoms.
+When I rose, she grunted just like a buffalo in the water too lazy to
+move.'
+
+'Are you certain? '
+
+'Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer laziness, nothing else or her
+garments were only constructed for sitting down in. I stayed for a
+quarter of an hour trying to penetrate the gloom, to guess what her
+surroundings were like, while she stuck out her tongue.'
+
+'Lu cy!'
+
+'Well I'll withdraw the tongue, though I'm sure if she didn't do it
+when I was in the room, she did the minute I was outside. At any
+rate, she lay in a lump and grunted. Ask the Hawley Boy, dear. I
+believe the grunts were meant for sentences, but she spoke so
+indistinctly that I can't swear to it.'
+
+'You are incorrigible, simply.'
+
+'I am not! Treat me civilly, give me peace with honour, don't put
+the only available seat facing the window, and a child may eat jam
+in my lap before Church. But I resent being grunted at. Wouldn't
+you? Do you suppose that she communicates her views on life and
+love to The Dancing Master in a set of modulated ''Grmphs"?'
+
+'You attach too much importance to The Dancing Master.'
+
+'He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost cordial at the
+sight of him. He smiled greasily, and moved about that darkened
+dog-kennel in a suspiciously familiar way.'
+
+'Don't be uncharitable. Any sin but that I'll forgive.'
+
+'Listen to the voice of History. I am only describing what I saw. He
+entered, the heap on the sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy
+and I came away together. He is disillusioned, but I felt it my duty
+to lecture him severely for going there. And that's all.'
+
+'Now for Pity's sake leave the wretched creature and The Dancing
+Master alone. They never did you any harm.'
+
+'No harm? To dress as an example and a stumbling-block for half
+Simla, and then to find this Person who is dressed by the hand of
+God not that I wish to disparage Him for a moment, but you know
+the tikka dhurzie way He attires those lilies of the field this Person
+draws the eyes of men and some of them nice men? It's almost
+enough to make one discard clothing. I told the Hawley Boy so.'
+
+'And what did that sweet youth do?'
+
+'Turned shell-pink and looked across the far blue hills like a
+distressed cherub. Am I talking wildly, Polly? Let me say my say,
+and I shall be calm. Otherwise I may go abroad and disturb Simla
+with a few original reflections. Excepting always your own sweet
+self, there isn't a single woman in the land who understands me
+when I am what's the word?'
+
+'Tˆte-fˆl‚e,' suggested Mrs. Mallowe.
+
+'Exactly! And now let us have tiffin. The demands of Society are
+exhausting, and as Mrs. Delville says ' Here Mrs. Hauksbee, to the
+horror of the khitmatgars, lapsed into a series of grunts, while Mrs.
+Mallowe stared in lazy surprise.
+
+'''God gie us a guid conceit of oorselves,"' said Mrs. Hauksbee
+piously, returning to her natural speech. 'Now, in any other woman
+that would have been vulgar. I am consumed with curiosity to see
+Mrs. Bent. I expect complications.'
+
+'Woman of one idea,' said Mrs. Mallowe shortly; 'all complications
+are as old as the hills! I have lived through or near all all All!'
+
+'And yet do not understand that men and women never behave
+twice alike. I am old who was young if ever I put my head in your
+lap, you dear, big sceptic, you will learn that my parting is gauze
+but never, no never, have I lost my interest in men and women.
+Polly, I shall see this business out to the bitter end.'
+
+'I am going to sleep,' said Mrs. Mallowe calmly. 'I never interfere
+with men or women unless I am compelled,' and she retired with
+dignity to her own room.
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee's curiosity was not long left ungratified, for Mrs.
+Bent came up to Simla a few days after the conversation faithfully
+reported above, and pervaded the Mall by her husband's side
+
+'Behold!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, thoughtfully rubbing her nose. 'That
+is the last link of the chain, if we omit the husband of the Delville,
+whoever he may be. Let me consider. The Bents and the Delvilles
+inhabit the same hotel; and the Delville is detested by the Waddy
+do you know the Waddy? who is almost as big a dowd. The Waddy
+also abominates the male Bent, for which, if her other sins do not
+weigh too heavily, she will eventually go to Heaven.'
+
+'Don't be irreverent,' said Mrs. Mallowe, 'I like Mrs. Bent's face.'
+
+'I am discussing the Waddy,' returned Mrs. Hauksbee loftily. 'The
+Waddy will take the female Bent apart, after having borrowed yes!
+everything that she can, from hairpins to babies' bottles. Such, my
+dear, is life in a hotel. The Waddy will tell the female Bent facts
+and fictions about The Dancing Master and The Dowd.'
+
+'Lucy, I should like you better if you were not always looking into
+people's back-bedrooms.'
+
+'Anybody can look into their front drawingrooms; and remember
+whatever I do, and whatever I look, I never talk as the Waddy will.
+Let us hope that The Dancing Master's greasy smile and manner of
+the pedagogue will soften the heart of that cow, his wife. If mouths
+speak truth, I should think that little Mrs. Bent could get very
+angry on occasion.'
+
+'But what reason has she for being angry?'
+
+'What reason! The Dancing Master in himself is a reason. How
+does it go? ''If in his life some trivial errors fall, Look in his face
+and you'll believe them all." I am prepared to credit any evil of The
+Dancing Master, because I hate him so. And The Dowd is so
+disgustingly badly dressed '
+
+'That she, too, is capable of every iniquity? I always prefer to
+believe the best of everybody. It saves so much trouble.'
+
+'Very good. I prefer to believe the worst. It saves useless
+expenditure of sympathy. And you may be quite certain that the
+Waddy believes with me.'
+
+Mrs. Mallowe sighed and made no answer.
+
+The conversation was holden after dinner while Mrs. Hauksbee
+was dressing for a dance.
+
+'I am too tired to go,' pleaded Mrs. Mallowe, and Mrs. Hauksbee
+left her in peace till two in the morning, when she was aware of
+emphatic knocking at her door.
+
+'Don't be very angry, dear,' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'My idiot of an
+ayah has gone home, and, as I hope to sleep to-night, there isn't a
+soul in the place to unlace me.'
+
+'Oh, this is too bad!' said Mrs. Mallowe sulkily.
+
+''Cant help it. I'm a lone, lorn grass-widow, dear, but I will not
+sleep in my stays. And such news too! Oh, do unlace me, there's a
+darling! The Dowd The Dancing Master I and the Hawley Boy
+You know the North verandah?'
+
+'How can I do anything if you spin round like this?' protested Mrs.
+Mallowe, fumbling with the knot of the laces.
+
+'Oh, I forget. I must tell my tale without the aid of your eyes. Do
+you know you've lovely eyes, dear? Well, to begin with, I took the
+Hawley Boy to a kala juggah.'
+
+'Did he want much taking?'
+
+'Lots! There was an arrangement of loose-boxes in kanats, and she
+was in the next one talking to him.'
+
+'Which? How? Explain.'
+
+'You know what I mean The Dowd and The Dancing Master. We
+could hear every word, and we listened shamelessly 'specially the
+Hawley Boy. Polly, I quite love that woman!'
+
+'This is interesting. There! Now turn round. What happened?'
+
+'One moment. Ah h! Blessed relief. I've been looking forward to
+taking them off for the last half-hour which is ominous at my time
+of life. But, as I was saying, we listened and heard The Dowd
+drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid or a
+blue-blooded Aide-de-Camp. ''Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond
+o' me," she said, and The Dancing Master owned it was so in
+language that nearly made me ill. The Dowd reflected for a while.
+Then we heard her say, ''Look he-ere, Mister Bent, why are you
+such an aw-ful liar?" I nearly exploded while The Dancing Master
+denied the charge. It seems that he never told her he was a married
+man.'
+
+'I said he wouldn't.'
+
+'And she had taken this to heart, on personal grounds, I suppose.
+She drawled along for five minutes, reproaching him with his
+perfidy, and grew quite motherly. ''Now you've got a nice little
+wife of your own you have," she said. ''She's ten times too good for
+a fat old man like you, and, look he-ere, you never told me a word
+about her, and I've been thinkin' about it a good deal, and I think
+you're a liar." Wasn't that delicious? The Dancing Master
+maundered and raved till the Hawley Boy suggested that he should
+burst in and beat him. His voice runs up into an impassioned
+squeak when he is afraid. The Dowd must be an extraordinary
+woman. She explained that had he been a bachelor she might not
+have objected to his devotion; but since he was a married man and
+the father of a very nice baby, she considered him a hypocrite, and
+this she repeated twice. She wound up her drawl with: ''An' I'm
+tellin' you this because your wife is angry with me, an' I hate
+quarrellin' with any other woman, an' I like your wife. You know
+how you have behaved for the last six weeks. You shouldn't have
+done it, indeed you shouldn't. You're too old an' too fat." Can't you
+imagine how The Dancing Master would wince at that! ''Now go
+away," she said. ''I don't want to tell you what I think of you,
+because I think you are not nice. I'll stay he-ere till the next dance
+begins." Did you think that the creature had so much in her?'
+
+'I never studied her as closely as you did. It sounds unnatural. What
+happened?'
+
+'The Dancing Master attempted blandishment, reproof, jocularity,
+and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch
+the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of
+each sentence and, in the end, he went away swearing to himself,
+quite like a man in a novel. He looked more objectionable than
+ever. I laughed. I love that woman in spite of her clothes. And now
+I'm going to bed. What do you think of it?'
+
+'I shan't begin to think till the morning,' said Mrs. Mallowe,
+yawning. 'Perhaps she spoke the truth. They do fly into it by
+accident sometimes.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee's account of her eavesdropping was an ornate one,
+but truthful in the main. For reasons best known to herself, Mrs.
+'Shady' Delville had turned upon Mr. Bent and rent him limb from
+limb, casting him away limp and disconcerted ere she withdrew
+the light of her eyes from him permanently. Being a man of
+resource, and anything but pleased in that he had been called both
+old and fat, he gave Mrs. Bent to understand that he had, during
+her absence in the Doon, been the victim of unceasing persecution
+at the hands of Mrs. Delville, and he told the tale so often and with
+such eloquence that he ended in believing it, while his wife
+marvelled at the manners and customs of 'some women.' When the
+situation showed signs of languishing, Mrs. Waddy was always on
+hand to wake the smouldering fires of suspicion in Mrs. Bent's
+bosom and to contribute generally to the peace and comfort of the
+hotel. Mr. Bent's life was not a happy one, for if Mrs. Waddy's
+story were true, he was, argued his wife, untrustworthy to the last
+degree. If his own statement was true, his charms of manner and
+conversation were so great that he needed constant surveillance.
+And he received it, till he repented genuinely of his marriage and
+neglected his personal appearance. Mrs. Delville alone in the hotel
+was unchanged. She removed her chair some six paces towards the
+head of the table, and occasionally in the twilight ventured on
+timid overtures of friendship to Mrs. Bent, which were repulsed.
+
+'She does it for my sake,' hinted the virtuous Bent.
+
+'A dangerous and designing woman,' purred Mrs. Waddy.
+
+Worst of all, every other hotel in Simla was full!
+
+'Polly, are you afraid of diphtheria?'
+
+'Of nothing in the world except small-pox, Diphtheria kills, but it
+doesn't disfigure. Why do you ask?'
+
+'Because the Bent baby has got it, and the whole hotel is upside
+down in consequence. The Waddy has ''set her five young on the
+rail" and fled. The Dancing Master fears for his precious throat,
+and that miserable little woman, his wife, has no notion of what
+ought to be done. She wanted to put it into a mustard bath for
+croup!'
+
+'Where did you learn all this?'
+
+'Just now, on the Mall. Dr. Howlen told me. The manager of the
+hotel is abusing the Bents, and the Bents are abusing the manager.
+They are a feckless couple.'
+
+'Well. What's on your mind?'
+
+'This; and I know it's a grave thing to ask.
+
+Would you seriously object to my bringing the child over here,
+with its mother?'
+
+'On the most strict understanding that we see nothing of the
+Dancing Master.'
+
+'He will be only too glad to stay away. Polly, you're an angel. The
+woman really is at her wits' end.'
+
+'And you know nothing about her, careless, and would hold her up
+to public scorn if it gave you a minute's amusement. Therefore you
+risk your life for the sake of her brat. No, Loo, I'm not the angel. I
+shall keep to my rooms and avoid her. But do as you please only
+tell me why you do it.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee's eyes softened; she looked out of the window and
+back into Mrs. Mallowe's face.
+
+'I don't know,' said Mrs. Hauksbee simply.
+
+'You dear!'
+
+'Polly! and for aught you knew you might have taken my fringe off.
+Never do that again without warning. Now we'll get the rooms
+ready. I don't suppose I shall be allowed to circulate in society for
+a month.'
+
+'And I also. Thank goodness I shall at last get all the sleep I want.'
+
+Much to Mrs. Bent's surprise she and the baby were brought over
+to the house almost before she knew where she was. Bent was
+devoutly and undisguisedly thankful, for he was afraid of the
+infection, and also hoped that a few weeks in the hotel alone with
+Mrs. Delville might lead to explanations. Mrs. Bent had thrown
+her jealousy to the winds in her fear for her child's life.
+
+'We can give you good milk,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to her, 'and our
+house is much nearer to the Doctor's than the hotel, and you won't
+feel as though you were living in a hostile camp. Where is the dear
+Mrs. Waddy? She seemed to be a particular friend of yours.'
+
+'They've all left me,' said Mrs. Bent bitterly. 'Mrs. Waddy went
+first. She said I ought to be ashamed of myself for introducing
+diseases there, and I am sure it wasn't my fault that little Dora '
+
+'How nice!' cooed Mrs. Hauksbee. 'The Waddy is an infectious
+disease herself ''more quickly caught than the plague and the taker
+runs presently mad." I lived next door to her at the Elysium, three
+years ago. Now see, you won't give us the least trouble, and I've
+ornamented all the house with sheets soaked in carbolic. It smells
+comforting, doesn't it? Remember I'm always in call, and my
+ayah's at your service when yours goes to her meals, and and if you
+cry I'll never forgive you.'
+
+Dora Bent occupied her mother's unprofitable attention through the
+day and the night. The Doctor called thrice in the twenty-four
+hours, and the house reeked with the smell of the Condy's Fluid,
+chlorine-water, and carbolic acid washes. Mrs. Mallowe kept to
+her own rooms she considered that she had made sufficient
+concessions in the cause of humanity and Mrs. Hauksbee was
+more esteemed by the Doctor as a help in the sick-room than the
+half-distraught mother.
+
+'I know nothing of illness,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to the Doctor. 'Only
+tell me what to do, and I'll do it.'
+
+'Keep that crazy woman from kissing the child, and let her have as
+little to do with the nursing as you possibly can,' said the Doctor;
+'I'd turn her out of the sick-room, but that I honestly believe she'd
+die of anxiety. She is less than no good, and I depend on you and
+the ayahs, remember.'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee accepted the responsibility, though it painted olive
+hollows under her eyes and forced her to her oldest dresses. Mrs.
+Bent clung to her with more than childlike faith.
+
+'I know you'll make Dora well, won't you?' she said at least twenty
+times a day; and twenty times a day Mrs. Hauksbee answered
+valiantly, 'Of course I will.'
+
+But Dora did not improve, and the Doctor seemed to be always in
+the house.
+
+'There's some danger of the thing taking a bad turn,' he said; 'I'll
+come over between three and four in the morning to-morrow.'
+
+'Good gracious!' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'He never told me what the
+turn would be! My education has been horribly neglected; and I
+have only this foolish mother-woman to fall back upon.'
+
+The night wore through slowly, and Mrs. Hauksbee dozed in a
+chair by the fire. There was a dance at the Viceregal Lodge, and
+she dreamed of it till she was aware of Mrs. Bent's anxious eyes
+staring into her own.
+
+'Wake up! Wake up! Do something!' cried Mrs. Bent piteously.
+'Dora's choking to death! Do you mean to let her die?'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee jumped to her feet and bent over the bed. The child
+was fighting for breath, while the mother wrung her hands
+despairingly.
+
+'Oh, what can I do? What can you do? She won't stay still! I can't
+hold her. Why didn't the Doctor say this was coming?' screamed
+Mrs. Bent. 'Won't you help me? She's dying!'
+
+'I I've never seen a child die before!' stammered Mrs. Hauksbee
+feebly, and then let none blame her weakness after the strain of
+long watching she broke down, and covered her face with her
+hands. The ayahs on the threshold snored peacefully.
+
+There was a rattle of 'rickshaw wheels below, the clash of an
+opening door, a heavy step on the stairs, and Mrs. Delville entered
+to find Mrs. Bent screaming for the Doctor as she ran round the
+room. Mrs. Hauksbee, her hands to her ears, and her face buried in
+the chintz of a chair, was quivering with pain at each cry from the
+bed, and murmuring, 'Thank God, I never bore a child! Oh! thank
+God, I never bore a child!'
+
+Mrs. Delville looked at the bed for an instant, took Mrs. Bent by
+the shoulders, and said quietly, 'Get me some caustic. Be quick.'
+
+The mother obeyed mechanically. Mrs. Delville had thrown
+herself down by the side of the child and was opening its mouth.
+
+'Oh, you're killing her!' cried Mrs. Bent. 'Where's the Doctor?
+Leave her alone!'
+
+Mrs. Delville made no reply for a minute, but busied herself with
+the child.
+
+'Now the caustic, and hold a lamp behind my shoulder. Will you
+do as you are told? The acid-bottle, if you don't know what I mean,'
+she said.
+
+A second time Mrs. Delville bent over the child. Mrs. Hauksbee,
+her face still hidden, sobbed and shivered. One of the ayahs
+staggered sleepily into the room, yawning: 'Doctor Sahib come.'
+
+Mrs. Delville turned her head.
+
+'You're only just in time,' she said. 'It was chokin' her when I came,
+an' I've burnt it.'
+
+'There was no sign of the membrane getting to the air-passages
+after the last steaming. It was the general weakness I feared,' said
+the Doctor half to himself, and he whispered as he looked, 'You've
+done what I should have been afraid to do without consultation.'
+
+'She was dyin',' said Mrs. Delville, under her breath. 'Can you do
+anythin'? What a mercy it was I went to the dance!'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee raised her head.
+
+'Is it all over?' she gasped. 'I'm useless  I'm worse than useless!
+What are you doing here?'
+
+She stared at Mrs. Delville, and Mrs. Bent, realising for the first
+time who was the Goddess from the Machine, stared also.
+
+Then Mrs. Delville made explanation, putting on a dirty long glove
+and smoothing a crumpled and ill-fitting ball-dress.
+
+'I was at the dance, an' the Doctor was tellin' me about your baby
+bein' so ill. So I came away early, an' your door was open, an' I I
+lost my boy this way six months ago, an' I've been tryin' to forget it
+ever since, an' I I I am very sorry for intrudin' an' anythin' that has
+happened.'
+
+Mrs. Bent was putting out the Doctor's eye with a lamp as he
+stooped over Dora.
+
+'Take it away,' said the Doctor. 'I think the child will do, thanks to
+you, Mrs. Delville. I should have come too late, but, I assure you'
+he was addressing himself to Mrs. Delville 'I had not the faintest
+reason to expect this. The membrane must have grown like a
+mushroom. Will one of you help me, please?'
+
+He had reason for the last sentence. Mrs. Hauksbee had thrown
+herself into Mrs. Delville's arms, where she was weeping bitterly,
+and Mrs. Bent was unpicturesquely mixed up with both, while
+from the tangle came the sound of many sobs and much
+promiscuous kissing.
+
+'Good gracious! I've spoilt all your beautiful roses!' said Mrs.
+Hauksbee, lifting her head from the lump of crushed gum and
+calico atrocities on Mrs. Delville's shoulder and hurrying to the
+Doctor.
+
+Mrs. Delville picked up her shawl, and slouched out of the room,
+mopping her eyes with the glove that she had not put on.
+
+'I always said she was more than a woman,' sobbed Mrs. Hauksbee
+hysterically, 'and that proves it!'
+
+Six weeks later Mrs. Bent and Dora had returned to the hotel. Mrs.
+Hauksbee had come out of the Valley of Humiliation, had ceased
+to reproach herself for her collapse in an hour of need, and was
+even beginning to direct the affairs of the world as before.
+
+'So nobody died, and everything went off as it should, and I kissed
+The Dowd, Polly. I feel so old. Does it show in my face?'
+
+'Kisses don't as a rule, do they? Of course you know what the result
+of The Dowd's providential arrival has been.'
+
+'They ought to build her a statue only no sculptor dare copy those
+skirts.'
+
+'Ah!' said Mrs. Mallowe quietly. 'She has found another reward.
+The Dancing Master has been smirking through Simla, giving
+every one to understand that she came because of her undying love
+for him for him to save his child, and all Simla naturally believes
+this.'
+
+'But Mrs. Bent '
+
+'Mrs. Bent believes it more than any one else. She won't speak to
+The Dowd now. Isn't The Dancing Master an angel?'
+
+Mrs. Hauksbee lifted up her voice and raged till bed-time. The
+doors of the two rooms stood open.
+
+'Polly,' said a voice from the darkness, 'what did that
+American-heiress-globe-trotter girl say last season when she was
+tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd
+adjective that made the man who picked her up explode.'
+
+'''Paltry,"' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'Through her nose like this ''Ha-ow
+pahltry!"'
+
+'Exactly,' said the voice. 'Ha-ow pahltry it all is!'
+
+'Which?'
+
+'Everything. Babies, Diphtheria, Mrs. Bent and The Dancing
+Master, I whooping in a chair, and The Dowd dropping in from the
+clouds. I wonder what the motive was all the motives.'
+
+'Um!'
+
+'What do you think?'
+
+'Don't ask me. Go to sleep.'
+
+Only a Subaltern
+
+. . . . Not only to enforce by command, but to encourage by
+example the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endurance
+of the difficulties and privations inseparable from Military Service.
+--Bengal Army Regulations.
+
+They made Bobby Wick pass an examination at Sandhurst. He was
+a gentleman before he was gazetted, so, when the Empress
+announced that 'Gentleman-Cadet Robert Hanna Wick' was posted
+as Second Lieutenant to the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Krab
+Bokhar, he became an officer and a gentleman, which is an
+enviable thing; and there was joy in the house of Wick where
+Mamma Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees and
+offered incense to Bobby by virtue of his achievements.
+
+Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, holding authority
+over three millions of men in the Chota-Buldana Division,
+building great works for the good of the land, and doing his best to
+make two blades of grass grow where there was but one before. Of
+course, nobody knew anything about this in the little English
+village where he was just 'old Mr. Wick,' and had forgotten that he
+was a Companion of the Order of the Star of India.
+
+He patted Bobby on the shoulder and said: 'Well done, my boy!'
+
+There followed, while the uniform was being prepared, an interval
+of pure delight, during which Bobby took brevet-rank as a 'man' at
+the women-swamped tennis-parties and tea-fights of the village,
+and, I daresay, had his joining-time been extended, would have
+fallen in love with several girls at once. Little country villages at
+Home are very full of nice girls, because all the young men come
+out to India to make their fortunes.
+
+'India,' said Papa Wick, 'is the place. I've had thirty years of it and,
+begad, I'd like to go back again. When you join the Tail Twisters
+you'll be among friends, if every one hasn't forgotten Wick of
+Chota-Buldana, and a lot of people will be kind to you for our
+sakes. The mother will tell you more about outfit than I can; but
+remember this. Stick to your Regiment, Bobby  stick to your
+Regiment. You'll see men all round you going into the Staff Corps,
+and doing every possible sort of duty but regimental, and you may
+be tempted to follow suit. Now so long as you keep within your
+allowance, and I haven't stinted you there, stick to the Line, the
+whole Line, and nothing but the Line. Be careful how you back
+another young fool's bill, and if you fall in love with a woman
+twenty years older than yourself, don't tell me about it, that's all.'
+
+With these counsels, and many others equally valuable, did Papa
+Wick fortify Bobby ere that last awful night at Portsmouth when
+the Officers' Quarters held more inmates than were provided for by
+the Regulations, and the liberty-men of the ships fell foul of the
+drafts for India, and the battle raged from the Dockyard Gates even
+to the slums of Longport, while the drabs of Fratton came down
+and scratched the faces of the Queen's Officers.
+
+Bobby Wick, with an ugly bruise on his freckled nose, a sick and
+shaky detachment to man uvre inship, and the comfort of fifty
+scornful females to attend to, had no time to feel home-sick till the
+Malabar reached mid-Channel, when he doubled his emotions with
+a little guard-visiting and a great many other matters.
+
+The Tail Twisters were a most particular Regiment. Those who
+knew them least said that they were eaten up with 'side.' But their
+reserve and their internal arrangements generally were merely
+protective diplomacy. Some five years before, the Colonel
+commanding had looked into the fourteen fearless eyes of seven
+plump and juicy subalterns who had all applied to enter the Staff
+Corps, and had asked them why the three stars should he, a colonel
+of the Line, command a dashed nursery for double-dashed
+bottle-suckers who put on condemned tin spurs and rode qualified
+mokes at the hiatused heads of forsaken Black Regiments. He was
+a rude man and a terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures
+[with the half-butt as an engine of public opinion] till the rumour
+went abroad that young men who used the Tail Twisters as a
+crutch to the Staff Corps had many and varied trials to endure.
+However, a regiment had just as much right to its own secrets as a
+woman.
+
+When Bobby came up from Deolali and took his' place among the
+Tail Twisters, it was gently but firmly borne in upon him that the
+Regiment was his father and his mother and his indissolubly
+wedded wife, and that there was no crime under the canopy of
+heaven blacker than that of bringing shame on the Regiment,
+which was the best-shooting, best-drilled, best-set-up, bravest,
+most illustrious, and in all respects most desirable Regiment
+within the compass of the Seven Seas. He was taught the legends
+of the Mess Plate, from the great grinning Golden Gods that had
+come out of the Summer Palace in Pekin to the silver-mounted
+markhor-horn snuff-mull presented by the last C.O. [he who spake
+to the seven subalterns]. And every one of those legends told him
+of battles fought at long odds, without fear as without support; of
+hospitality catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and
+steady as the fighting-line; of honour won by hard roads for
+honour's sake; and of instant and unquestioning devotion to the
+Regiment the Regiment that claims the lives of all and lives for
+ever.
+
+More than once, too, he came officially into contact with the
+Regimental colours, which looked like the lining of a bricklayer's
+hat on the end of a chewed stick. Bobby did not kneel and worship
+them, because British subalterns are not constructed in that
+manner. Indeed, he condemned them for their weight at the very
+moment that they were filling with awe and other more noble
+sentiments.
+
+But best of all was the occasion when he moved with the Tail
+Twisters in review order at the breaking of a November day.
+Allowing for duty-men and sick, the Regiment was one thousand
+and eighty strong, and Bobby belonged to them; for was he not a
+Subaltern of the Line the whole Line, and nothing but the Line as
+the tramp of two thousand one hundred and sixty sturdy
+ammunition boots attested? He would not have changed places
+with Deighton of the Horse Battery, whirling by in a pillar of cloud
+to a chorus of 'Strong right! Strong left!' or Hogan-Yale of the
+White Hussars, leading his squadron for all it was worth, with the
+price of horseshoes thrown in; or 'Tick' Boileau, trying to live up to
+his fierce blue and gold turban while the wasps of the Bengal
+Cavalry stretched to a gallop in the wake of the long, lollopping
+Walers of the White Hussars.
+
+They fought through the clear cool day, and Bobby felt a little
+thrill run down his spine when he heard the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of
+the empty cartridge-cases hopping from the breech-blocks after the
+roar of the volleys; for he knew that he should live to hear that
+sound in action. The review ended in a glorious chase across the
+plain  batteries thundering after cavalry to the huge disgust of the
+White Hussars, and the Tyneside Tail Twisters hunting a Sikh
+Regiment, till the lean lathy Singhs panted with exhaustion. Bobby
+was dusty and dripping long before noon, but his enthusiasm was
+merely focused not diminished.
+
+He returned to sit at the feet of Revere, his 'skipper,' that is to say,
+the Captain of his Company, and to be instructed in the dark art
+and mystery of managing men, which is a very large part of the
+Profession of Arms.
+
+'If you haven't a taste that way,' said Revere between his puffs of
+his cheroot, 'you'll never be able to get the hang of it, but
+remember, Bobby, 't isn't the best drill, though drill is nearly
+everything, that hauls a Regiment through Hell and out on the
+other side. It's the man who knows how to handle men goat-men,
+swine-men, dog-men, and so on.'
+
+'Dormer, for instance,' said Bobby, 'I think he comes under the
+head of fool-men. He mopes like a sick owl.'
+
+'That's where you make your mistake, my son. Dormer isn't a fool
+yet, but he's a dashed dirty soldier, and his room corporal makes
+fun of his socks before kit-inspection. Dormer, being two-thirds
+pure brute, goes into a corner and growls.'
+
+'How do you know?' said Bobby admiringly.
+
+'Because a Company commander has to know these things
+because, if he does not know, he may have crime ay, murder
+brewing under his very nose and yet not see that it's there. Dormer
+is being badgered out of his mind big as he is and he hasn't
+intellect enough to resent it. He's taken to quiet boozing, and,
+Bobby, when the butt of a room goes on the drink, or takes to
+moping by himself, measures are necessary to pull him out of
+himself.'
+
+'What measures? 'Man can't run round coddling his men for ever.'
+
+'No. The men would precious soon show him that he was not
+wanted. You've got to '
+
+Here the Colour-Sergeant entered with some papers; Bobby
+reflected for a while as Revere looked through the Company
+forms.
+
+'Does Dormer do anything, Sergeant?' Bobby asked with the air of
+one continuing an interrupted conversation.
+
+'No, sir. Does 'is dooty like a hortomato,' said the Sergeant, who
+delighted in long words. 'A dirty soldier and 'e's under full
+stoppages for new kit. It's covered with scales, sir.'
+
+'Scales? What scales?'
+
+'Fish-scales, sir. 'E's always pokin' in the mud by the river an'
+a-cleanin' them muchly-fish with 'is thumbs.' Revere was still
+absorbed in the Company papers, and the Sergeant, who was
+sternly fond of Bobby, continued ' 'E generally goes down there
+when 'e's got 'is skinful, beggin' your pardon, sir, an' they do say
+that the more lush in-he-briated 'e is, the more fish 'e catches. They
+call 'im the Looney Fishmonger in the Comp'ny, sir.'
+
+Revere signed the last paper and the Sergeant retreated.
+
+'It's a filthy amusement,' sighed Bobby to himself. Then aloud to
+Revere: 'Are you really worried about Dormer?'
+
+'A little. You see he's never mad enough to send to hospital, or
+drunk enough to run in, but at any minute he may flare up,
+brooding and sulking as he does. He resents any interest being
+shown in him, and the only time I took him out shooting he all but
+shot me by accident.' 
+
+'I fish,' said Bobby with a wry face. 'I hire a country-boat and go
+down the river from Thursday to Sunday, and the amiable Dormer
+goes with me  if you can spare us both.'
+
+'You blazing young fool!' said Revere, but his heart was full of
+much more pleasant words.
+
+Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with Private Dormer for mate,
+dropped down the river on Thursday morning the Private at the
+bow, the Subaltern at the helm. The Private glared uneasily at the
+Subaltern, who respected the reserve of the Private.
+
+After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and said 'Beg y'
+pardon, sir, but was you ever on the Durh'm Canal?'
+
+'No,' said Bobby Wick. 'Come and have some tiffin.'
+
+They ate in silence. As the evening fell, Private Dormer broke
+forth, speaking to himself 
+
+'Hi was on the Durh'm Canal, jes' such a night, come next week
+twelve month, a-trailin' of my toes in the water.' He smoked and
+said no more till bedtime.
+
+The witchery of the dawn turned the gray river-reaches to purple,
+gold, and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept
+across the splendours of a new heaven.
+
+Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the
+glory below and around.
+
+'Well damn my eyes!' said Private Dormer in an awed whisper.
+'This 'ere is like a bloomin' gallantry-show!' For the rest of the day
+he was dumb, but achieved an ensanguined filthiness through the
+cleaning of big fish.
+
+The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer had been
+struggling with speech since noon. As the lines and luggage were
+being disembarked, he found tongue.
+
+'Beg y' pardon, sir,' he said, 'but would you  would you min' shakin'
+'ands with me, sir?'
+
+'Of course not,' said Bobby, and he shook accordingly. Dormer
+returned to barracks and Bobby to mess.
+
+'He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think,' said Bobby. 'My
+aunt, but he's a filthy sort of animal! Have you ever seen him clean
+''them muchly-fish with 'is thumbs"?'
+
+'Anyhow,' said Revere three weeks later, 'he's doing his best to
+keep his things clean.'
+
+When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for
+Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.
+
+'As good a boy as I want,' said Revere the admiring skipper.
+
+'The best of the batch,' said the Adjutant to the Colonel. 'Keep back
+that young skrim-shanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit
+up.'
+
+So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of
+gorgeous raiment.
+
+''Son of Wick old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner,
+dear,' said the aged men.
+
+'What a nice boy!' said the matrons and the maids.
+
+'First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri ipping!' said Bobby Wick, and
+ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.
+
+'We're in a bad way,' wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two
+months. 'Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is
+fairly rotten with it two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in
+cells drinking to keep off fever and the Companies on parade
+fifteen file strong at the outside. There's rather more sickness in
+the out-villages than I care for, but then I'm so blistered with
+prickly-heat that I'm ready to hang myself. What's the yarn about
+your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope?
+You're over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the
+Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you
+attempt it.'
+
+It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a
+much-more-to-be-respected Commandant. The sickness in the
+out-villages spread, the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then
+came the news that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The
+message flashed to the Hill stations. 'Cholera Leave stopped
+Officers recalled.' Alas for the white gloves in the neatly-soldered
+boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to be, the
+loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid! Without demur and
+without question, fast as tonga could fly or pony gallop, back to
+their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were hastening
+to their weddings, fled the subalterns.
+
+Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal
+Lodge where he had  But only the Haverley girl knows what Bobby
+had said, or how many waltzes he had claimed for the next ball.
+Six in the morning saw Bobby at the Tonga Office in the
+drenching rain, the whirl of the last waltz still in his ears, and an
+intoxication due neither to wine nor waltzing in his brain.
+
+'Good man!' shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery through the
+mist. 'Whar you raise dat tonga? I'm coming with you. Ow! But I've
+a head and a half. I didn't sit out all night. They say the Battery's
+awful bad,' and he hummed dolorously 
+
+Leave the what at the what's-its-name,
+
+Leave the flock without shelter,
+
+Leave the corpse uninterred,
+
+Leave the bride at the altar!
+
+'My faith! It'll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this
+journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachwan!'
+
+On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers
+discussing the latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was
+here that Bobby learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.
+
+'They went into camp,' said an elderly Major recalled from the
+whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, 'they went
+into camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred
+and ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so many
+ghosts with sore eyes. A Madras Regiment could have walked
+through 'em.'
+
+'But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!' said Bobby.
+
+'Then you'd better make them as fit as bedamned when you rejoin,'
+said the Major brutally.
+
+Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed window-pane
+as the train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the
+health of the Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her
+contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie
+Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their
+strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up
+the last straggler of the little army that was to fight a fight in which
+was neither medal nor honour for the winning, against an enemy
+none other than 'the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday.'
+
+And as each man reported himself, he said: 'This is a bad business,'
+and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery
+in the cantonment was under canvas, the sickness bearing them
+company.
+
+Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters'
+temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy's neck
+for the joy of seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.
+
+'Keep' em amused and interested,' said Revere. 'They went on the
+drink, poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no
+improvement. Oh, it's good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a
+never mind.'
+
+Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary
+mess dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly
+weeping over the condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far
+forgot himself as to insinuate that the presence of the officers
+could do no earthly good, and that the best thing would be to send
+the entire Regiment into hospital and 'let the doctors look after
+them.' Porkiss was demoralised with fear, nor was his peace of
+mind restored when Revere said coldly: 'Oh! The sooner you go
+out the better, if that's your way of thinking. Any public school
+could send us fifty good men in your place, but it takes time, time,
+Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble, to make a
+Regiment. 'S'pose you're the person we go into camp for, eh?'
+
+Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear
+which a drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later,
+quitted this world for another where, men do fondly hope,
+allowances are made for the weaknesses of the flesh. The
+Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily across the Sergeants'
+Mess tent when the news was announced.
+
+'There goes the worst of them,' he said. 'It'll take the best, and then,
+please God, it'll stop.' The Sergeants were silent till one said: 'It
+couldn't be him!' and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.
+
+Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
+rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing
+the faint-hearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when
+there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good
+cheer for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun
+pony round the outskirts of the camp, and heading back men who,
+with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always
+wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from
+rain-flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude
+speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends
+the men without 'townies'; organising, with banjos and burnt cork,
+Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full
+play; and generally, as he explained, 'playing the giddy garden-goat
+all round.'
+
+'You're worth half-a-dozen of us, Bobby,' said Revere in a moment
+of enthusiasm. 'How the devil do you keep it up?'
+
+Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the
+breast-pocket of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of
+badly-written letters which perhaps accounted for the power that
+possessed the boy. A letter came to Bobby every other day. The
+spelling was not above reproach, but the sentiments must have
+been most satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby's eyes softened
+marvellously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for
+a while ere, shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.
+
+By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and
+the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds
+indeed, was a mystery to both skipper and C. O., who learned from
+the regimental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in
+request in the hospital tents than the Reverend John Emery.
+
+'The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?' said
+the Colonel, who did his daily round and ordered the men to get
+well with a hardness that did not cover his bitter grief.
+
+'A little, sir,' said Bobby.
+
+''Shouldn't go there too often if I were you. They say it's not
+contagious, but there's no use in running unnecessary risks. We
+can't afford to have you down, y'know.'
+
+Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-runner
+plashed his way out to the camp with the mail-bags, for the rain
+was falling in torrents. Bobby received a letter, bore it off to his
+tent, and, the programme for the next week's Sing-song being
+satisfactorily disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an hour the
+unhandy pen toiled over the paper, and where sentiment rose to
+more than normal tide-level, Bobby Wick stuck out his tongue and
+breathed heavily. He was not used to letter-writing.
+
+'Beg y' pardon, sir,' said a voice at the tent door; 'but Dormer's
+'orrid bad, sir, an' they've taken him orf, sir.'
+
+'Damn Private Dormer and you too!' said Bobby Wick, running the
+blotter over the half-finished letter. 'Tell him I'll come in the
+morning.'
+
+''E's awful bad, sir,' said the voice hesitatingly. There was an
+undecided squelching of heavy boots.
+
+'Well?' said Bobby impatiently.
+
+'Excusin' 'imself before'and for takin' the liberty, 'e says it would be
+a comfort for to assist 'im, sir, if '
+
+'Tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here, come in out of the rain till I'm
+ready. What blasted nuisances you are! That's brandy. Drink some;
+you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell me if I go too fast.'
+
+Strengthened by a four-finger 'nip' which he swallowed without a
+wink, the Hospital Orderly kept up with the slipping, mud-stained,
+and very disgusted pony as it shambled to the hospital tent.
+
+Private Dormer was certainly ''orrid bad.' He had all but reached
+the stage of collapse and was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+'What's this, Dormer?' said Bobby, bending over the man. 'You're
+not going out this time. You've got to come fishing with me once
+or twice more yet.'
+
+The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said, 'Beg y'
+pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now, but would you min" oldin' my'
+and, sir?'
+
+Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy cold hand closed on
+his own like a vice, forcing a lady's ring which was on the little
+finger deep into the flesh. Bobby set his lips and waited, the water
+dripping from the hem of his trousers. An hour passed and the
+grasp of the hand did not relax, nor did the expression of the drawn
+face change. Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with
+the left hand, his right arm was numbed to the elbow, and resigned
+himself to a night of pain.
+
+Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on the side of a
+sick man's cot, and a Doctor in the doorway using language unfit
+for publication.
+
+'Have you been here all night, you young ass?' said the Doctor.
+
+'There or thereabouts,' said Bobby ruefully. 'He's frozen on to me.'
+
+Dormer's mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed.
+The clinging hand opened, and Bobby's arm fell useless at his side.
+
+'He'll do,' said the Doctor quietly. 'It must have been a toss-up all
+through the night. 'Think you're to be congratulated on this case.'
+
+'Oh, bosh!' said Bobby. 'I thought the man had gone out long ago
+only only I didn't care to take my hand away. Rub my arm down,
+there's a good chap. What a grip the brute has! I'm chilled to the
+marrow!' He passed out of the tent shivering.
+
+Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by
+strong waters. Four days later he sat on the side of his cot and said
+to the patients mildly: 'I'd 'a' liken to 'a' spoken to 'im so I should.'
+
+But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter he had the
+most persistent correspondent of any man in camp and was even
+then about to write that the sickness had abated, and in another
+week at the outside would be gone. He did not intend to say that
+the chill of a sick man's hand seemed to have struck into the heart
+whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such length. He did
+intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the forthcoming
+Sing-song whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to
+write on many other matters which do not concern us, and
+doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache
+which made him dull and unresponsive at mess.
+
+'You are overdoing it, Bobby,' said his skipper. ''Might give the rest
+of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the
+whole Mess rolled into one. Take it easy.'
+
+'I will,' said Bobby. 'I'm feeling done up. somehow.' Revere looked
+at him anxiously and said nothing.
+
+There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a
+rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a
+paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers and the rush of a
+galloping horse.
+
+'Wot's up?' asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the
+answer 'Wick, 'e's down.'
+
+They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. 'Any one but
+Bobby and I shouldn't have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right.'
+
+'Not going out this journey,' gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from
+the doolie. 'Not going out this journey.' Then with an air of
+supreme conviction  'I can't, you see.'
+
+'Not if I can do anything!' said the Surgeon-Major, who had
+hastened over from the mess where he had been dining.
+
+He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the
+life of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy
+apparition in a bluegray dressing-gown who stared in horror at the
+bed and cried 'Oh, my Gawd! It can't be 'im!' until an indignant
+Hospital Orderly whisked him away.
+
+If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby
+would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days,
+and the Surgeon-Major's brow uncreased. 'We'll save him yet,' he
+said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain,
+had a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced
+joyously in the mud.
+
+'Not going out this journey,' whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at
+the end of the third day.
+
+'Bravo!' said the Surgeon-Major. 'That's the way to look at it,
+Bobby.'
+
+As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby's mouth, and he
+turned his face to the tent wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major
+frowned.
+
+'I'm awfully tired,' said Bobby, very faintly. 'What's the use of
+bothering me with medicine? I don't want it. Let me alone.'
+
+The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift
+away on the easy tide of Death.
+
+'It's no good,' said the Surgeon-Major. 'He doesn't want to live. He's
+meeting it, poor child.' And he blew his nose.
+
+Half a mile away the regimental band was playing the overture to
+the Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of
+danger. The clash of the brass and the wail of the horns reached
+Bobby's ears.
+
+Is there a single joy or pain,
+
+That I should never kno ow?
+
+You do not love me, 'tis in vain,
+
+Bid me good-bye and go!
+
+An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy's face, and he
+tried to shake his head.
+
+The Surgeon-Major bent down 'What is it, Bobby?' 'Not that waltz,'
+muttered Bobby. 'That's our own our very ownest own.   Mummy
+dear.'
+
+With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early
+next morning.
+
+Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went into
+Bobby's tent to write a letter to Papa Wick which should bow the
+white head of the ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the
+keenest sorrow of his life. Bobby's little store of papers lay in
+confusion on the table, and among them a half-finished letter. The
+last sentence ran: 'So you see, darling, there is really no fear,
+because as long as I know you care for me and I care for you,
+nothing can touch me.'
+
+Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out his eyes
+were redder than ever.
+
+Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not
+unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a convalescent and should
+have been tenderly treated.
+
+'Ho!' said Private Conklin. 'There's another bloomin' orf'cer da ed.'
+
+The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a
+smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bedgown was
+regarding him with deep disfavour.
+
+'You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf'cer? Bloomin'
+orf'cer? I'll learn you to misname the likes of 'im. Hangel! Bloomin'
+Hangel! That's wot'e is!'
+
+And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the
+punishment that he did not even order Private Dormer back to his
+cot.
+
+In the Matter of a Private
+
+Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier's life for me! Shout, boys, shout! for it
+makes you jolly and free.
+     --The Ramrod Corps.
+
+PEOPLE who have seen, say that one of the quaintest spectacles of
+human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls' school. It starts
+without warning, generally on a hot afternoon among the
+elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. 
+Then she throws up her head, and cries, "Honk, honk, honk," like a
+wild goose, and tears mix with the laughter.  If the n,istres. be wise
+she will rap out something severc at this point O check matters. If
+she be tender-hearted, and send for a drink of water, the chances
+are largely in favor of another girl laughing at the afflicted one and
+herself collapsing. Thus Lhe trouble spreads, and may end in half
+of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys' school rocking and
+whooping together.   Given a week of warm weather, two stately
+promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle
+of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a
+few other things, some amazing effects develop.  At least this is
+what folk say who have had experience.
+
+Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a
+British Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any
+comparison being made between their respective charges.  But it is
+a fact that, under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be
+worked up into ditthering, rippling hysteria.  He does not weep, but
+he shows his trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into
+the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a
+Martini from a Snider say: "Take away the brute's ammunition!"
+
+Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
+virtuous people, nemands that he shall have his am-munition to his
+hand. He doesn't wear silk stockings, and he really ought to he
+supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions;
+but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic
+defender of the national honor" one day, and "a brutal and
+licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he
+looks upon you with suspicion.  There is nobody to speak for
+Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him; and
+nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not
+always know what is the matter with himself.
+
+That is the prologue.  This is the story:
+
+Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi
+M'Kenna, whose history is well known in the regiment and
+elsewhere. He had his Colonel's permission, and, being popular
+with the men, every arrangement had been made to give the
+wedding what Private Ortheris called "eeklar."  It fell in the heart
+of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to
+the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that
+the affair would he only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that
+the "eeklar" of that was meagre.  Miss M'Kenna did not care so
+much.  The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her
+wedding-dress, and she was very busy.  Slane was, just then, the
+only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more
+or less miserable.
+
+And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work
+was over at eight in the morning, and for the rest of the day they
+could lie on their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the
+punkab-coolies. They enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle
+of the day, and then threw themselves down on their cots and
+sweated and slept till it was cool enough to go out with their
+"towny," whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words,
+and the Adjective, and whose views on every conceivable question
+they had heard many times before.
+
+There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance
+Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any
+profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96
+degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103
+degrees at midnight.  Very few men, even though they get a
+pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can
+continue drinkmg for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died,
+and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave
+them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever
+or cholera. The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch
+the shadow of the barrack creeping across the blinding white dust. 
+That was a gay life.
+
+They lounged about cantonments-it was too hot for any sort of
+game, and almost too hot for vice-and fuddled themselves in the
+evening, and filled themselves to distension with the healthy
+nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the
+less exercise they took and more explosive they grew.  Then
+tempers began to wear away, and men fell a-brooding over insults
+real or imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of.  The tone
+of the repartees changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: "I'll
+knock your silly face in," men grew laboriously p0lite and hinted
+that the cantonments were not big enough for themselves and their
+enemy, and that there would he more space for one of the two in
+another place.
+
+It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of
+the case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons
+in an aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots
+side by side, and would sometimes  spend  a  long  afternoon
+swearing at each other; but Simmons was afraid of Losson and
+dared not challenge him to a fight.  He thought over the words in
+the hot still nights, and half the hate he felt toward Losson be
+vented on the wretched punkahcoolie.
+
+Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little cage,
+and lowered the cage into the cool darkness of a well, and sat on
+the well-curb, shouting bad language down to the parrot. He taught
+it to say:  "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and several
+other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big gross man,
+and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the sentence
+correctly.  Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the room
+were laughing at him--the parrot was such a disreputable puff of
+green feathers and it looked so human when it chattered. Losson
+used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of the cot, and ask the
+parrot what it thought of Simmons.  The parrot would answer:
+"Simmons, ye so-oor."  "Good boy," Losson used to say, scratching
+the parrot's head; "ye 'ear that, Sim?" And Simmons used to turn
+over on his stomach and make answer:  "I 'ear. Take 'eed you don't
+'ear something one of these days."
+
+In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of blind
+rage came upon Simmonr and held him till he trembled all over,
+while he thought in how many different ways he would slay
+Losson.  Sometimes he would picture himself trampling the life
+out of the man, with heavy ammunition-boots, and at others
+smashing in his face with the butt, and at others jumping on his
+shoulders and dragging the head back till the neckbone cracked. 
+Then his mouth would feel hot and fevered, and he would reach
+out for another sup of the beer in the pannikin.
+
+But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with
+him longest was one connected with the great roll of fat under
+Losson's right ear.  He noticed it first on a moonlight night, and
+thereafter it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of
+fat. A man could get his hand upon it and tear away one side of the
+neck; or he could place the muzzle of a rifle on it and blow away
+all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and
+contented and well-to-do,  when he, Simmons, was the butt of the
+room, Some day, perhaps, he would show those who laughed at the
+"Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as the rest, and
+held a man's life in the crook of his forefinger.  When Losson
+snored, Simmons hated him more bitterly than ever.  Why should
+Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay awake hour
+after hour, tossing and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain
+gnawing into his right side and his head throbbing and aching after
+Canteen?  He thought over this for many nights, and the world
+became unprofitable to him.  He even blunted his naturally fine
+appetite with beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot talked
+at and made a mock of him.
+
+The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than
+before. A Sergeant's wife died of heat--apoplexy in the night, and
+the rumor ran abroad that it was cholera.  Men rejoiced openly,
+hoping that it would spread and send them into camp.  But that
+was a false alarm.
+
+It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the
+deep double verandas for "Last Posts," when Simmons went to the
+box at the foot of his bed, took aut his pipe, and slammed the lid
+down with a bang that echoed through the deserted barrack like the
+crack of a rifle.  Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no
+notice; but their nerves were fretted to fiddle-strings. They jumped
+up, and three or four clattered into the barrack-room only to find
+Simmons kneeling by his box.
+
+"Owl It's you, is it?" they said and laughed  foolishly.   "We
+thought 'twas"--
+
+Simmons rose slowly.  If the accident had so shaken his fellows,
+what would not the reality do?
+
+"You thought it was--did you? And what makes you think?" he
+said, iashmg himself into madness as he went on; "to Hell with
+your thinking, ye dirty spies."
+
+"Simmons, ye so-oor," chuckled the parrot in the veranda, sleepily,
+recognizing a well-known voice. Now that was absolutely all.
+
+The tension snapped.  Simmons fell back on the arm-rack
+deliberately,--the men were at the far end of the room,--and took
+out his rifle and packet of ammunition. "Don't go playing the goat,
+Sim!"  said Losson.  "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his
+voice.  Another man stooped, slipped his boot and hurled it at
+Simmon's head.  The prompt answer was a shot  which, fired at
+random, found its billet in Losson's throat. Losson fell forward
+without a word, and the others scattered.
+
+"You thought it was!" yelled Simmons.  "You're drivin' me to it!  I
+tell you you're drivin' me to it!  Get up, Losson, an' don't lie
+shammin' there-you an' your blasted parrit that druv me to it!"
+
+But there was an unaffected reality about Losson's pose that
+showed Simmons what he had done. The men were still clamoring
+n the veranda. Simmons appropriated two more packets of
+ammunition and ran into the moonlight, muttering:  "I'll make a
+night of it. Thirty roun's, an' the last for myself. Take you that, you
+dogs!"
+
+He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on
+the veranda, but the bullet flew high, and landed in the brickwork
+with a vicious phant that made some of the younger ones turn pale.
+It is, as musketry theorists observe, one thing to fire and another to
+be fired at.
+
+Then the instinct of the chase flared up.  The news spread from
+barrack to barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture
+of Simmons, the wild beast, who was heading for the Cavalry
+parade-ground, stopping now and again to send back a shot and a
+Lurse in the direction of his pursuers.
+
+"I'll learn you to spy on me!" he shouted;  "I'll learn you to give me
+dorg's names!  Come on the 'ole lot O' you!  Colonel John Anthony
+Deever, C.B.!"-he turned toward the Infantry Mess and shook his
+rifle-"you think yourself the devil of a man-but I tell 'jou that if you
+Put your ugly old carcass outside O' that door, I'll make you the
+poorest-lookin' man in the army. Come  out,  Colonel  John 
+Anthony Deever, C.B.!  Come out and see me practiss on the
+rainge.  I'm the crack shot of the 'ole bloomin' battalion." In proof
+of which statement Simmons fired at the lighted windows of the
+mess-house.
+
+"Private Simmons, E Comp'ny, on the Cavalry p'rade-ground, Sir,
+with thirty rounds," said a Sergeant breathlessly to the Colonel. 
+"Shootin' right and lef', Sir.  Shot Private Losson What's to be
+done, Sir?"
+
+Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B., sallied out, only to be saluted
+by s spurt of dust at his feet.
+
+"Pull up!" said the Second in Command; "I don't want my step in
+that way, Colonel.  He's as dangerous as a mad dog."
+
+"Shoot him like one, then," said the Colonel, bitterly, "if he won't
+take his chance, My regiment, too!  If it had been the Towheads I
+could have under stood."
+
+Private Simmons had occupied a strong position near a well on the
+edge of the parade-ground, and was defying the regiment to come
+on.  The regiment was not anxious to comply, for there is small
+honor in being shot by a fellow-private.  Only Corporal Slane, rifle
+in band, threw himself down on the ground, and wormed his way
+toward the well.
+
+"Don't shoot," said he to the men round him; "like as not you'll hit
+me. I'll catch the beggar, livin'."
+
+Simmons ceased shouting for a while, and the noise of trap-wheels
+could be heard across the plain.  Major Oldyne Commanding the
+Horse Battery, was coming back from a dinner in the Civil Lines;
+was driving after his usual custom--that is to say, as fast as the
+horse could go.
+
+"A orf'cer!  A blooming spangled orf'cer," shrieked Simmons; "I'll
+make a scarecrow of that orf'cer!" The trap stopped.
+
+"What's this?" demanded the Major of Gunners.  "You there, drop
+your rifle."
+
+"Why, it's Jerry Blazes!  I ain't got no quarrel with you, Jerry
+Blazes. Pass frien', an' all's well!"
+
+But Jerry Blazes had not the faintest intention of passing a
+dangerous murderer.  He was, as his adoring Battery swore  long 
+and  fervently,  without knowledge of fear, and they were surely
+the best judges, for Jerry Blazes, it was notorious, had done his
+possible to kill a man each time the Battery went out.
+
+He walked toward Simmons, with the intention of rushing him,
+and knocking him down.
+
+"Don't make me do it, Sir," said Simmons; "I ain't got nothing agin
+you. Ah! you would?"--the Major broke into a run--"Take that
+then!"
+
+The Major dropped with a bullet through his shoulder, and
+Simmons stood over him. He had lost the satisfaction of killing
+Losson in the desired way: hut here was a helpless body to his
+hand.  Should be slip in another cartridge, and blow off the head,
+or with the butt smash in the white face? He stopped to consider,
+and a cry went up from the far side of the parade-ground: "He's
+killed Jerry Blazes!" But in the shelter of the well-pillars Simmons
+was safe except when he stepped out to fire.  "I'll blow yer
+'andsome 'ead off, Jerry Blazes," said Simmons, reflectively.  "Six
+an' three is nine an one is ten, an' that leaves me another nineteen,
+an' one for myself."  He tugged at the string of the second packet 
+of  ammunition.   Corporal Slane crawled out of the shadow of a
+bank into the moonlight.
+
+"I see you!" said Simmons.  "Come a bit furder on an' I'll do for
+you."
+
+"I'm comm'," said Corporal Slane, briefly; "you've done a bad day's
+work, Sim.  Come out 'ere an' come back with me."
+
+"Come to,"-laugbed Simmons, sending a cartridge home with his
+thumb. "Not before I've settled you an' Jerry Blazes."
+
+The Corporal was lying at full length in the dust of the
+parade-ground, a rifle under him.  Some of the less-cautious men
+in the distance shouted: "Shoot 'im! Shoot 'im, Slane !"
+
+"You move 'and or foot, Slane," said Simmons, "an' I'll kick Jerry
+Blazes' 'ead in, and shoot you after."
+
+"I ain't movin'," said the Corporal, raising his head; "you daren't 'it
+a man on 'is legs. Let go O' Jerry Blazes an' come out O' that with
+your fistes. Come an' 'it me.  You daren't, you bloomin'
+dog-shooter!"
+
+"I dare."
+
+"You lie, you man-sticker.  You sneakin', Sheeny butcher, you lie. 
+See there!"  Slane kicked the rifle away, and stood up in the peril
+of his life. "Come on, now!"
+
+The temptation was more than Simmons could resist, for the
+Corporal in his white clothes offered a perfect mark.
+
+"Don't misname me," shouted Simmons, firing as he spoke.  The
+shot missed, and the shooter, blind with rage, threw his rifle down
+and rushed at Slane from the protection of the well. Within
+striking distance, he kicked savagely at Slane's stomach, but the
+weedy Corporal knew something of Simmons's weakness, and
+knew, too, the deadly guard for that kick.  Bowing forward and
+drawing up his right leg till the heel of the right foot was set some
+three inches above the inside of the left knee-cap, he met the blow
+standing on one leg--exactly as Gonds stand when they
+meditate--and ready for the fall that would follow. There was an
+oath, the Corporal fell over his own left as shinbone met shinbone,
+and the Private collapsed, his right leg broken an inch above the
+ankle.
+
+"'Pity you don't know that guard, Sim," said Slane, spitting out the
+dust as he rose.  Then raising his voice-- "Come an' take him orf. 
+I've bruk 'is leg."  This was not strictly true, for the Private had
+accomplished his own downfall, since it is the special merit of that
+leg-guard that the harder the kick the greater the kicker's
+discomfiture.
+
+Slane walked to Jerry Blazes and hung over him with ostentatious
+anxiety,  while  Simmons,  weeping with pain, was carried away.  "
+'Ope you ain't 'urt badly, Sir," said Slane.  The Major had fainted,
+and there was an ugly, ragged hole through the top of his arm. 
+Slane knelt down and murmured. "S'elp me, I believe 'e's dead.
+Well, if that ain't my blooming luck all over!"
+
+But the Major was destined to lead his Battery afield for many a
+long day with unshaken nerve. He was removed, and nursed and
+petted into convalescence, while the Battery discussed the wisdom
+of capturing Simmons, and blowing him from a gun. They idolized
+their Major, and his reappearance on parade brought about a scene
+nowhere provided for in the Army Regulations.
+
+Great, too, was the glory that fell to Slane's share. The Gunners
+would have made him drunk thrice a day for at least a fortnight.
+Even the Colonel of his own regiment complimented him upon his
+coolness, and the local paper called him a hero.  These things did
+not puff him up.  When the Major offered him money and thanks,
+the virtuous Corporal took the one and put aside the other.  But he
+had a request to make and prefaced it with many a "Beg y'pardon,
+Sir." Could the Major see his way to letting the Slane M'Kenna
+wedding be adorned by the presence of four Battery horses to pull
+a hired barouche?  The Major could, and so could the Battery. 
+Excessively so. It was a gorgeous wedding.
+
+*   *   *   *   *   *
+
+"Wot did I do it for?" said Corporal Slane.  "For the 'orses O'
+course. Jhansi ain't a beauty to look at, but I wasn't goin' to 'ave a
+hired turn-out. Jerry Blazes?  If I 'adn't 'a' wanted something, Sim
+might ha' blowed Jerry Blazes' blooming 'ead into Hirish stew for
+aught I'd 'a' cared."
+
+And they hanged Private Simmons-hanged him as high as Haman
+in hollow square of the regiment; and the Colonel said it was
+Drink; and the Chaplain was sure it was the Devil; and Simmons
+fancied it was both, but he didn't know, and only hoped his fate
+would be a warning to his companions; and half a dozen
+"intelligent publicists" wrote six beautiful leading articles on
+"'The Prevalence of Crime in the Army."
+
+But not a soul thought of comparing the "bloody-minded
+Simmons" to the squawking, gaping schoolgirl with which this
+story opens.
+
+The Enlightenments of Pagett, M.P.
+
+"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field
+ring with their importunate chink while thousands of great cattle,
+reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and
+are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are
+the only inhabitants of the field-that, of course, they are many in
+number or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled,
+meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the
+hour."-Burke: "Reflections on the Revolution in France."
+
+THEY were sitting in the veranda of "the splendid palace of an
+Indian Pro-Consul"; surrounded by all the glory and mystery of the
+immemorial East. In plain English it was a one-storied,
+ten-roomed, whitewashed, mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry
+garden of dusty tamarisk trees and divided from the road by a low
+mud wall. The green parrots screamed overhead as they flew in
+battalions to the river for their morning drink.  Beyond the wall,
+clouds of fine dust showed where the cattle and goats of the city
+were passing afield to graze. The remorseless white light of the
+winter sunshine of Northern India lay upon everything and
+improved nothing, from the whining Peisian-wheel by the
+lawn-tennis court to the long perspective of level road and the
+blue, domed tombs of Mohammedan saints just visible above the
+trees.
+
+"A Happy New Year," said Orde to his guest.  "It's the first you've
+ever spent out of England, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes.  'Happy New Year,"  said Pagett, smiling at the sunshine. 
+"What a divine climate you have here!  Just think of the brown
+cold fog hanging over London now!"  And he rubbed his hands.
+
+It was more than twenty years since he had last seen Orde, his
+schoolmate, and their paths in the world had divided early.  The
+one had quitted college to become a cog-wheel in the machinery of
+the great Indian Government; the other more blessed with goods,
+had been whirled into a similar position in the English scheme.
+Three successive elections had not affected Pagett's position with a
+loyal constituency, and he had grown insensibly to regard himself
+in some sort as a pillar of the Empire, whose real worth would be
+known later on. After a few years of conscientious attendance at
+many divisions, after newspaper battles innumerable and the
+publication  of  interminable  correspondence, and more hasty
+oratory than in his calmer moments he cared to think upon, it
+occurred to him, as it had occurred to many of his fellows in
+Parliament, that a tour to India would enable him to sweep a larger
+lyre and address himself to the problems of Imperial
+administration with a firmer hand. Accepting, therefore, a general
+invitation extended to him by Orde some years before, Pagett had
+taken ship to Karachi, and only over-night had been received with
+joy by the Deputy-Commissioner of Amara.  They had sat late,
+discussing the changes and chances of twenty years, recalling the
+names of the dead, and weighing the futures of the living, as is the
+custom of men meeting after intervals of action.
+
+Next morning they smoked the after breakfast pipe in the veranda,
+still regarding each other curiously, Pagett, in a light grey
+frock-coat and garments much too thin for the time of the year,
+and a puggried sun-hat carefully and wonderfully made.  Orde in a
+shooting coat, riding breeches, brown cowhide boots with spurs,
+and a battered flax helmet.  He had ridden some miles in the early
+morning to inspect a doubtful river dam.  The men's faces differed
+as much as their attire.  Orde's worn and wrinkled around the eyes,
+and grizzled at the temples, was the harder and more square of the
+two, and it was with something like envy that the owner looked at
+the comfortable outlines of Pagett's blandly receptive countenance,
+the clear skin, the untroubled eye, and the mobile, clean-shaved
+lips.
+
+"And this is India!" said Pagett for the twentieth time staring long
+and intently at the grey feathering of tbe tamarisks.
+
+"One portion of India only. It's very much like this for 300 miles in
+every direction.  By the way, now that you have rested a little--I
+wouldn't ask the old question before--what d'you think of the
+country?"
+
+'Tis the most pervasive country that ever yet was seen.  I acquired
+several pounds of your country coming up from Karachi. The air is
+heavy with it, and for miles and miles along that distressful
+eternity of rail there's no horizon to show where air and earth
+separate."
+
+"Yes.  It isn't easy to see truly or far in India.  But you had a decent
+passage out, hadn't you?"
+
+"Very good on the whole.  Your Anglo-Indian may be
+unsympathetic about one's political views; but he has reduced ship
+life to a science."
+
+"The Anglo-Indian is a political orphan, and if he's wise he won't
+be in a hurry to be adopted by your party grandmothers. But how
+were your companions, unsympathetic?"
+
+"Well, there was a man called Dawlishe,  a  judge  somewhere  in 
+this country it seems, and a capital partner at whist by the way, and
+when I wanted to talk to him about the progress of India in a
+political sense (Orde hid a grin, which might or might not have
+been sympathetic), the National Congress movement, and other
+things in which, as a Member of Parliament, I'm of course
+interested, he shifted the subject, and when I once cornered him,
+he looked me calmly in the eye, and said: 'That's all Tommy rot.
+Come and have a game at Bull.' You may laugh; but that isn't the
+way to treat a great and important question; and, knowing who I
+was. well. I thought it rather rude, don't you know; and yet
+Dawlishe is a thoroughly good fellow."
+
+"Yes; he's a friend of mine, and one of the straightest men I know.
+I suppose, like many Anglo-Indians, he felt it was hopeless to give
+you any just idea of any Indian question without the documents
+before you, and in this case the documents you want are the
+country and the people."
+
+"Precisely.  That was why I came straight to you, bringing an open
+mind to bear on things. I'm anxious to know what popular feeling
+in India is really like y'know, now that it has wakened into political
+life.  The National Congress, in spite of Dawlishe, must have
+caused great excitement among the masses?"
+
+"On the contrary, nothing could be more tranquil than the state of
+popular feeling; and as to excitement, the people would as soon be
+excited over the 'Rule of Three' as over the Congress."
+
+"Excuse me, Orde, but do you think you are a fair judge? Isn't the
+official Anglo-Indian naturally jealous of any external influences
+that might move the masses, and so much opposed to liberal ideas,
+truly liberal ideas, that he can scarcely be expected to regard a
+popular movement with fairness?"
+
+"What  did  Dawlishe  say  about Tommy Rot?  Think a moment,
+old man.  You and I were brought up together; taught by the same
+tutors, read the same books, lived the same life, and new
+languages, and work among new races; while you, more fortunate,
+remain at home.  Why should I change my mind our mind-because
+I change my sky?  Why should I and the few hundred Englishmen
+in my service become unreasonable, prejudiced fossils, while you
+and your newer friends alone remain bright and open-minded? 
+You surely don't fancy civilians are members of a Primrose
+League?"
+
+"Of course not, but the mere position of an English official gives
+him a point of view which cannot but bias his mind on this
+question."  Pagett moved his knee up and down a little uneasily as
+he spoke.
+
+"That sounds plausible enough, but, like more plausible notions on
+Indian matters, I believe it's a mistake. You'll find when you come
+to consult the unofficial Briton that our fault, as a class--I speak of
+the civilian now-is rather to magnify the progress that has been
+made toward liberal institutions. It is of English origin, such as it
+is, and the stress of our work since the Mutiny--only thirty years
+ago--has been in that direction. No, I think you will get no fairer or
+more dispassionate view of the Congress business than such men
+as I can give you.  But I may as well say at once that those who
+know most of India, from the inside, are inclined to wonder at the
+noise our scarcely begun experiment makes in England."
+
+"But surely the gathering together of Congress delegates is of itself
+a new thing."
+
+"There's nothing new under the sun When Europe was a jungle
+half Asia flocked to the canonical conferences of Buddhism; and
+for centuries the people have gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak,
+and Benares in immense numbers. A great meeting, what you call
+a mass meeting, is really one of the oldest and most popular of
+Indian institutions In the case of the Congress meetings, the only
+notable fact is that the priests of the altar are British, not Buddhist,
+Jam or Brahmanical, and that the whole thing is a British
+contrivance kept alive by the efforts of Messrs. Hume, Eardley,
+Norton, and Digby."
+
+"You mean to say, then, it s not a spontaneous movement?"
+
+"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the
+word? This seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to
+know a great deal about it; try it by the touchstone of
+subscriptions, a coarse but fairly trustworthy criterion, and there is
+scarcely the color of money in it. The delegates write from
+England that they are out of pocket for working expenses, railway
+fares, and stationery--the mere pasteboard and scaffolding of their
+show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere financial inanition."
+
+"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps,
+too poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the
+agitation," Pagett insisted.
+
+"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement
+is the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord
+Dufferin described it, when compared with the people proper, but
+still a very interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It
+is composed almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly
+castes who have received an English education."
+
+"Surely that s a very important class. Its members must be the
+ordained leaders of popular thought."
+
+"Anywhere else they might he leaders, but they have no social
+weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been
+employed in clerical work for generations they have no prac. tical
+knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he it
+scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart he
+may be, is not the colonel. You see, the writer class in India has
+never till now aspired to anything like command. It wasn t allowed
+to. The Indian gentleman, for thousands of years past, has
+resembled Victor Hugo's noble:
+
+'Un vrai sire
+Chatelain
+Laisse ecrire
+Le vilain.
+Sa main digne
+Quand il signe
+Egratigne
+Le velin. 
+
+And the little egralignures he most likes to make have been scored
+pretty deeply by the sword."
+
+"But this is childish and medheval nonsense!"
+
+"Precisely; and from your, or rather our, point of view the pen is
+mightier than the sword. In this country it's otherwise. The fault
+lies in our Indian balances, not yet adjusted to civilized weights
+and measures."
+
+"Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural
+aspirations and wishes of the people at large, though it may not
+exactly lead them, and, in spite of all you say, Orde, I defy you to
+find a really sound English Radical who would not sympathize
+with those aspirations."
+
+Pagett spoke with some warmth, and he had scarcely ceased when
+a well appointed dog-cart turned into the compound gates, and
+Orde rose saying:
+
+"Here is Edwards, the Master of the Lodge I neglect so diligently,
+come to talk about accounts, I suppose."
+
+As the vehicle drove up under the porch Pagett also rose, saying
+with the trained effusion born of much practice:
+
+"But this is also my friend, my old and valued friend Edwards.  I'm
+delighted to see you. I knew you were in India, but not exactly
+where."
+
+"Then it isn't accounts, Mr. Edwards," said Orde, cheerily.
+
+"Why, no, sir; I heard Mr. Pagett was coming, and as our works
+were closed for the New Year I thought I would drive over and see
+him."
+
+"A very happy thought.  Mr. Edwards, you may not know, Orde,
+was a leading member of our Radical Club at Switebton when I
+was beginning political life, and I owe much to his exertions.
+There's no pleasure like meeting an old friend, except, perhaps,
+making a new one. I suppose, Mr. Edwards, you stick to the good
+old cause?"
+
+"Well, you see, sir, things are different out here. There's precious
+little one can find to say against the Government, which was the
+main of our talk at home, and them that do say things are not the
+sort o' people a man who respects himself would like to be mixed
+up with.  There are no politics, in a manner of speaking, in India.
+It's all work."
+
+"Surely you are mistaken, my good friend.  Why I have come all
+the way from England just to see the working of this great National
+movement."
+
+"I don't know where you're going to find the nation as moves to
+begin with, and then you'll be hard put to it to find what they are
+moving about.  It's like this, sir," said Edwards, who had not quite
+relished being called "my good friend."  "They haven't got any
+grievance--nothing to hit with, don't you see, sir; and then there's
+not much to hit against, because the Government is more like a
+kind of general Providence, directing an old--established state of
+things, than that at home, where there's something new thrown
+down for us to fight about every three months."
+
+"You are probably, in your workshops, full of Eng'ish mechanics,
+out of the way of learning what the masses think."
+
+"I don't know so much about that. There are four of us English
+foremen, and between seven and eight hundred native fitters, 
+smiths, carpenters, painters, and such like."
+
+"And they are full of the Congress, of course?"
+
+"Never hear a word of it from year's end to year's end, and I speak
+the talk too.  But I wanted to ask how things are going on at
+home--old Tyler and Brown and the rest?"
+
+"We will speak of them presently, but your account of the
+indifference of your men surprises me almost as much as your
+own.  I fear you are a backslider from the good old doctrine, Ed
+wards."   Pagett spoke as one who mourned the death of a near
+relative.
+
+"Not a bit, Sir, but I should be if I took up with a parcel of baboos,
+pleaders, and schoolboys, as never did a day's work in their lives,
+and couldn't if they tried. And if you was to poll us English railway
+men, mechanics, tradespeople, and the like of that all up and down
+the country from Peshawur to Calcutta, you would find us mostly
+in a tale together. And yet you know we're the same English you
+pay some respect to at home at 'lection time, and we have the pull
+o' knowing something about it."
+
+"This is very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and
+perhaps you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will
+talk things over at leisure.  And about all old friends and old
+times," added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of
+disappointment in the mechanic's face.
+
+Nodding briefly to Orde, Edwards mounted his dog-cart and drove
+off.
+
+"It's very disappointing," said the
+Member to Orde, who, while his friend discoursed with Edwards,
+had been looking over a bundle of sketches drawn on grey paper in
+purple ink, brought to him by a Chuprassee.
+
+"Don't let it trouble you, old chap," 'said Orde, sympathetically.
+"Look here a moment, here are some sketches by the man who
+made the carved wood screen you admired so much in the
+dining-room, and wanted a copy of, and the artist himself is here
+too."
+
+"A native?" said Pagett.
+
+"Of course," was the reply, "Bishen Siagh is his name, and he has
+two brothers to help him.  When there is an important job to do,
+the three go 'ato partnership, but they spend most of their time and
+all their money in litigation over an inheritance, and I'm afraid they
+are getting involved,  Thoroughbred Sikhs of the old rock,
+obstinate, touchy, bigoted, and cunning, but good men for all that.
+Here is Bishen
+Singn -shall we ask him about the Congress?"
+
+But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had
+never heard of it, and he listened with a puzzled face and
+obviously feigned interest to Orde's account of its aims and
+objects, finally shaking his vast white turban with great
+significance when he learned that it was promoted by certam 
+pleaders named by Orde, and by educated natives.  He began with
+labored respect to explain how he was a poor man with no concern
+in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but
+presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound
+of which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail,
+as he denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with
+words who filched his field from him, the men whose backs were
+never bowed in honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the
+Bengali.  He and one of his brothers had seen Calcutta, and being
+at work there had Bengali carpenters given to them as assistants.
+
+"Those  carpenters!"  said  Bishen Singh.  "Black apes were more
+efficient workmates, and as for the Bengali babu-tchick!"  The
+guttural click needed no interpretation, but Orde translated the
+rest, while Pagett gazed with in.. terest at the wood-carver.
+
+"He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali,"
+said the
+M.P.
+
+"Yes, it's very sad that for ages outside Bengal there should he so
+bitter a prejudice.  Pride of race, which also means race-hatred, is
+the plague and curse of India and it spreads far," pointed with his
+riding-whip to the large map of India on the veranda wall.
+
+"See! I begin with the North," said he. "There's the Afghan, and, as
+a highlander, he despises all the dwellers in Hindoostan-with the
+exception of the Sikh, whom he hates as cordially as the Sikh hates
+him.  The Hindu loathes  Sikh and Afghan, and the Rajput--that's  a 
+little  lower  down across this yellow blot of desert--has a strong
+objection, to put it mildly, to the Maratha who, by the way,
+poisonously hates the Afghan. Let's go North a minute. The Sindhi
+hates everybody I've mentioned. Very good, we'll take less warlike
+races.  The cultivator of Northern India domineers over the man in
+the next province, and the Behari of the Northwest ridicules the
+Bengali. They are all at one on that point. I'm giving you merely
+the roughest possible outlines of the facts, of course."
+
+Bishen Singh, his clean cut nostrils still quivering, watched the
+large sweep of the whip as it traveled from the frontier, through
+Sindh, the Punjab and Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of the
+Jumna
+
+"Hate--eternal and inextinguishable hate," concluded Orde,
+flicking the lash of the whip across the large map from East to
+West as he sat down.  "Remember  Canning's  advice  to  Lord
+Granville, 'Never write or speak of Indian things without looking at
+a map.'"
+
+Pagett opened his eyes, Orde resumed.  "And the race-hatred is
+only a part of it.  What's really the matter with Bisben Singh is
+class-hatred, which, unfortunately, is even more intense and
+more widely spread. That's one of the little drawbacks of caste,
+which some of your recent English writers find an impeccable
+system."
+
+The wood-carver was glad to be recalled to the business of his
+craft, and his eyes shone as he received instructions for a carved
+wooden doorway for Pagett, which he promised should be
+splendidly executed and despatched to England in six months.  It is
+an irrelevant detail, but in spite of Orde's reminders, fourteen
+months elapsed before the work was finished.  Business over,
+Bishen Singh hung about, reluctant to take his leave, and at last
+joining his hands and approaching Orde with bated breath and
+whispering hum. bleness, said he had a petition to make. Orde's
+face suddenly lost all trace of expression.  "Speak on, Bishen
+Singh," said he, and the carver in a whining tone explained that his
+case against his brothers was fixed for hearing b& fore  a native 
+judge  and-here he dropped his voice still lower tid he was
+summarily stopped by Orde, who sternly pointed to the gate with
+an emphatic Begone!
+
+Bishen Singh, showing but little sign of discomposure, salaamed
+respectfully to the friends and departed.
+
+Pagett looked inquiry;  Orde with complete recovery of his usual
+urbanity, replied:  "It's nothing, only the old story, he wants his
+case to be tried by an English judge-they all do that-but when he
+began to hint that the other side were in improper relations with
+the native judge I had to shut him up. Gunga Ram, the man he
+wanted to make insinuations about, may not be very bright; but
+he's as honest as day-light on the bench.  But that's just what one
+can't get a native to believe."
+
+"Do you really mean to say these people prefer to have their cases
+tried by English judges?"
+
+'Why, certainly."
+
+Pagett  drew a  long breath.  "I didn't know that before."  At this
+point a phaeton entered the compound, and Orde rose with
+"Confound it, there's old Rasul Ah Khan come to pay one of his
+tiresome duty calls.  I'm afraid we shall never get through our little
+Congress discussion."
+
+Pagett was an aimost silent spectator of the grave formalities of a
+visit paid by a punctilious  old Mahommedan gentleman to an
+Indian official; and was much impressed by the distinction of
+manner and fine appearance of the Mohammedan landholder. 
+When the exhange of polite banalities came to a pause, he
+expressed a wish to learn the courtly visitor's opinion of the
+National Congress.
+
+Orde  reluctantly  interpreted,  and with a smile which even
+Mohammedan politeness could not save from bitter scorn, Rasul
+Ah Khan intimated that he knew nothing about it and cared still
+less. It was a kind of talk encouraged by the Government for some
+mysterious purpose of its own, and for his own part he wondered
+and held his peace.
+
+Pagett was far from satisfied with this, and wished to have the old
+gentleman's opinion on the propriety of managing all Indian affairs
+on the basis of an elective system.
+
+Orde did his best to explain, but it was plain the visitor was bored
+and bewildered.  Frankly, he didn't think much of committees; they
+had a Municipal Committee at Lahore and had elected a menial
+servant, an orderly, as a member.  He had been informed of this on
+good authority, and after that, committees had ceased to interest
+him. But all was according to the rule of Government, and, please
+God, it was all for the best.
+
+"What an old fossil it is!" cried Pagett, as Orde returned from
+seeing his guest to the door; "just like some old blue-blooded
+hidalgo of Spain. What does he really think of the Congress after
+all, and of the elective system?"
+
+"Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election
+is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans,
+the mast mas terful and powerful minority in the country, to
+contemplate their own extinction with joy.  The worst of it is that
+he and his co-religionists, who are many, and the landed
+proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are frightened and put out by this
+electiop business and by the importance we have bestowed on
+lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have, up to now, been
+in abject submission to them. They say little, hut after all they are
+the most important fagots in the great bundle of communities, and
+all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for their
+estrangement.  They have controlled the land."
+
+"But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your
+municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the
+principle is accepted in your centres, don't you know, it is bound to
+spread, and these important--ah'm people of yours would learn it
+like the rest. I see no difficulty at all," and the smooth lips closed
+with the complacent snap habitual to Pagett, M.P., the "man of
+cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows."
+
+Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.
+
+"The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn
+from scores of municipalities, others have had to be summarily
+suppressed, and, outside the Presidency towns, the actual work
+done has been badly performed.  This is of less moment, perhaps-it
+only sends up the local death-rates-than the fact that the public
+interest in municipal elections, never very strong, has waned, and
+is waning, in spite of careful nursing on the part of Government
+servants."
+
+"Can you explain this lack of interest?" said Pagett, putting aside
+the rest of Orde's remarks.
+
+"You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every
+thousand af our population can spell.  Then they are infinitely
+more interested in religion and caste questions than in any sort of
+politics.  When the business of mere existence is over, their minds
+are occupied  by a  series  of  interests, pleasures, rituals,
+superstitions, and the like, based on centuries of tradition and
+usage.  You, perhaps, find it hard to conceive of people absolutely
+devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the daily paper, and the
+printed speech are unknown, and you would describe their life as
+blank.  That's a profound mistake. You are in another land, another
+century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family merely,
+and not the community, is all-important.  The average Oriental
+cannot be brought to look beyond his clan.  His life, too, is naore
+complete and self-sufficing, and
+less sordid and low-thoughted than you might imagine.  It is
+bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never empty. You and I
+are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to forget that it is
+the man that is elemental, not the book.
+
+
+'The corn and the cattle are all my care, And the rest is the will of
+God.'
+
+Why should such folk look up from their immemorially appointed
+round of duty and interests to meddle with the unknown and fuss
+with voting-papers. How would you, atop of all your interests care
+to conduct even one-tenth of your life according to the manners
+and customs of the Papuans, let's say? That's what it comes to."
+
+"But if they won't take the trouble to vote, why do you anticipate
+that Mohammedans, proprietors, and the rest would be crushed by
+majorities of them?"
+
+Again Pagett disregarded the closing sentence.
+
+"Because,  though the landholders would not move a finger on any
+purely political question, they could be raised in dangerous
+excitement by religious hatreds. Already the first note of this has
+been sounded by the people who are trying to get up an agitation
+on the cow-killing question, and every year there is trouble over
+the Mohammedan Muharrum processions.
+
+"But who looks after the popular rights, being thus unrepresented?"
+
+"The Government of Hcr Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, in
+which, if the Congress promoters are to be believed, the people
+have an implicit trust; for the Congress circular, specially prepared
+for rustic comprehension, says the movement is 'for the remission
+of tax, the advancement of Hindnstan, and the strengthening of the
+British Govemment.' This paper is headed in large letters-
+
+'MAV THE PROSPEEITY OF THE EMPIRE OF INDIA
+ENDURE."'
+
+"Really!" said Pagett, "that shows some cleverness.  But there are
+things better worth imi'ation in our English methods of-er-political
+statement than this sort of amiable fraud."
+
+"Anyhow," resumed Orde, "you perceive that not a word is said
+about elections and the elective principle, and the reticence of the
+Congress promoters here shows they are wise in their generation."
+
+"But the elective principle must triumph in the end, and the little
+difficulties you seem to anticipate would give way on the
+introduction of a well-balanced scheme, capable of indefinite
+extension."
+
+"But is it possible to devise a scheme which, always assuming that
+the people took any interest in it, without enormous expense,
+ruinous dislocation of the administ:ation and danger to the public
+peace, can satisfy the aspirations of Mr. Hume and his following,
+and yet safeguard the interests of the Mahommedans, the landed
+and wealthy classes, the Conservative Hindus, the Eurasians, 
+Parsees,  Sikhs,  Rajputs, native Christians, domiciled Europeans
+and others, who are each important and powerful in their way?"
+
+Pagett's attention, however, was diverted to the gate, where a
+group of cultivators stood in apparent hesitation.
+
+"Here are the twelve Apostles, hy
+Jove -come straight out of Raffaele's cartoons," said the M.P., with
+the fresh appreciation of a newcomer.
+
+Orde, loth to be interrupted, turned impatiently toward the
+villagers, and their leader, handing his long staff to one of his
+companions, advanced to the house.
+
+"It is old Jelbo, the Lumherdar, or head-man of Pind Sharkot, and a
+very' intelligent man for a villager."
+
+The Jat farmer had removed his shoes and stood smiling on the
+edge of the veranda. His strongly marked features glowed with
+russet bronze, and his bright eyes gleamed under deeply set brows,
+contracted by lifelong exposure to sunshine.  His beard and
+moustache streaked with grey swept from bold cliffs of brow and
+cheek in the large sweeps one sees drawn by Michael Angelo, and
+strands of long black hair mingled with the irregularly piled
+wreaths and folds of his turban.  The drapery of stout blue cotton
+cloth thrown over his broad shoulders and girt round his narrow
+loins, hung from his tall form in broadly sculptured folds, and he
+would have made a superb model for an artist in search of a
+patriarch.
+
+Orde greeted him cordially, and after a polite pause the
+countryman started off with a long story told with impressive
+earnestness.  Orde listened and smiled,  interrupting  the  speaker
+at 'times to argue and reason with him in a tone which Pagett could
+hear was kindly, and finally checking the flux of words was about
+to dismiss him, when Pagett suggested that he should be asked
+about the National Congress.
+
+But Jelloc had never heard of it. He was a poor man and such
+things, by the favor of his Honor, did not concern him.
+
+"What's the matter with your big friend  that he was  so terribly in
+earnest?" asked Pagett, when he had left.
+
+"Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next
+village, who have had smallpox and cattle plague pretty badly, and
+by the help of a wizard, a currier, and several pigs have passed it
+on to his own village.  'Wants to know if they can't be run in for
+this awful crime. It seems they made a dreadful charivari at the
+village boundary, threw a quantity of spell-bearing objects over the
+border, a buffalo's skull and other things; then branded a
+chamur-what you would call a currier-on his hinder parts and
+drove him and a number of pigs over into JelIno's village. Jelbo
+says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these
+proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson,
+rattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him
+punished for bewitching them and inflicting small-pox."
+
+"And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?"
+
+"Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some
+ground of complaint  against  those  Sansis.   I asked if he would
+likc a native superintendent of police with some men to make
+inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather
+worse than smallpox and criminal tribes put together."
+
+"Criminal tribes-er-I don't quite understand," said Paget~
+
+"We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack
+anti-British days became robbers, in various kind. and preye~ on
+the people.  They are being restrained and reclaimed little by little,
+and in time will become useful; citizens, but they still cherish
+hereditary traditions of crime, and are a difficult lot to deal with. 
+By the way what; about the political rights of these folk under your
+schemes?  The country people call them vermin, but I sup-pose
+they would be electors with the rest."
+
+"Nonsense-special provision would be made for them in a
+well-considered electoral scheme, and they would doubtless be
+treated with fitting severity," said Pagett, with a magisterial air.
+
+"Severity, yes-but whether it would be fitting is doubtful. Even
+those poor devils have rights, and, after all, they only practice what
+they have been taught."
+
+"But criminals, Ordel"
+
+"Yes,  criminals  with  codes  and rituals of crime, gods and
+godlings of crime, and a hundred songs and sayings in praise of it.
+Puzzling, isn't it?"
+
+"It's simply dreadful.  They ought to be put down at once.  Are
+there many of them?"
+
+"Not more than about sixty thousand in this province, for many of
+the trlbes broadly described as criminal are really vagabond and
+crimlnal only on occasion, while others are being settled and
+reclaimed. They are of great antiquity, a legacy from the past, the
+golden, glorious Aryan past of Max Muller, Birdwood and the rest
+of your spindrift philosophers."
+
+An orderly brought a card to Orde who took it with a movement of
+irritation at the interruption, and banded it to Pagett; a large card
+with a ruled border in red ink, and in the centre in schoolboy
+copper plate, Mr. Dma Nath. "Give salaam," said the civilian, and
+there entered in haste a slender youth, clad in a closely fitting coat
+of grey homespun, tight trousers, patent-leather shoes, and a small
+black velvet cap. His thin cheek twitched, and his eyes wandered
+restlessly, for the young man was evidently nervous and
+uncomfortable, though striving to assume a free and easy air.
+
+"Your honor may perhaps remember me," he said in Englisb, and
+Orde scanned him keenly.
+
+"I know your face somehow.  You belonged to the Shershah
+district I think, when I was in charge there?"
+
+"Yes, Sir, my father is writer at Shershah, and your honor gave me
+a prize when I was first in the Middle School examination five
+years ago.  Since then I have prosecuted my studies, and I am now
+second year's student in the Mission College."
+
+"Of course: you are Kedar Nath's son
+-the boy who said he liked geography better than play or sugar
+cakes, and I didn't believe you.  How is your father getting on?"
+
+"He is well, and he sends his salaam, but his circumstances are
+depressed, and be also is down on his luck."
+
+"You learn English idiom". at the Mission College, it seems."
+
+"Yes, sir, they are the best idioms, and my father ordered me to ask
+your honor to say a word for him to the present incumbent  of your
+honor's shoes, the latchet of which he is not
+worthy to open, and who knows not Joseph; for things are different
+at Sher shah now, and my father wants promotion."
+
+"Your father is a good man, and I will do what I can for him."
+
+At this point a telegram was handed to Orde, who, after glancing at
+it, said he must leave his young friend whom he introduced to
+Pagett, "a member of the English House of Commons who wishes
+to learn about India."
+
+Orde bad scarcely retired with his telegram when Pagett began:
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me something of the National Congress
+movement?"
+
+"Sir, it is the greatest movement of modern times, and one in
+which all edvcated men like us must join. All our students are for
+the Congress."
+
+"Excepting, I suppose, Mahommedans, and the Christians?" said
+Pagett, quick to use his recent instruction.
+
+"These are some mere exceptions to the universal rule."
+
+"But the people outside the College, the working classes, the
+agriculturists; your father and mother, for instance."
+
+"My mother," said the young man, with a visible effort to bring
+himself to pronounce the word, "has no ideas, and my father is not
+agriculturist, nor working class; he is of the Kayeth caste; but he
+had not the advantage of a collegiate education, and he does not
+know much of the Congress.  It is a movement for the educated
+young-man"
+-connecting adjective and noun in a sort of vocal hyphen.
+
+"Ah, yes," said Pagett, feeling he was a little off the rails, "and
+what are the benefits you expect to gain by it?"
+
+"Oh, sir, everything.  England owes its greatness to Parliamentary
+institutions, and we should at once gain the same high position in
+scale of nations. Sir, we wish to have the sciences, the arts, the
+manufactures, the industrial factories, with steam engines, and
+other motive powers and public meetings, and debates. Already we
+have a debating club in connection with the college, and elect a
+Mr. Speaker.  Sir, the progress must come. You also are a Member
+of Parliament and worship the great Lord Ripon," said the youth,
+breathlessly, and his black eyes flashed as he finished his
+commaless sentences.
+
+"Well," said Pagett, drily, "it has not vet occurred to me to worship
+his Lord-ship, although I believe he is a very worthy man, and I am
+not sure that England owes quite all the things you name to the
+House of Commons. You see, my young friend, the growth of a
+nation like ours is slow, subject to many influences, and if you
+have read your history aright"-"Sir. I know it all-all!  Norman
+Conquest, Magna Charta, Runnymede, Reformation,  Tudors, 
+Stuarts,  Mr. Milton and Mr. Burke, and I have read something of
+Mr. Herbert Spencer and Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' Reynolds'
+Mysteries of the Court,' and Pagett felt like one who had pulled
+the string of a shower-bath unawares, and hastened to stop the
+torrent with a qtlestion as to what particular grievances of the
+people of India the attention of an elected assembly should be first
+directed.  But young Mr. Dma Nath was slow to particularize. 
+There were many, very many demanding consideration.  Mr.
+Pagett would like to hear of one or two typical examples.
+The Repeal of the Arms Act was at last named, and the student
+learned for the first time that a license was necessary before an
+Englishman could carry a gun in England. Then natives of India
+ought to be allowed to become Volunteer Riflemen if they chose,
+and the absolute equality of the Oriental with his European
+fellow-subject in civil status should be proclaimed on principle,
+and the Indian Army should be considerably reduced.  The student
+was not, however, prepared with answers to Mr. Pagett's mildest
+questions on these points, and he returned to vague generalities,
+leaving the M.P. so much impressed with the crudity of his views
+that he was glad on Orde's return to say good-bye to his "very
+interesting" young friend.
+
+"What do you think of young India?" asked Orde.
+
+"Curious, very curious-and callow."
+
+"And yet," the civilian replied, "one can scarcely help
+sympathizing with him for his mere youth's sake.  The young
+orators of the Oxford Union arrived at the  same  conclusions  and 
+showed doubtless just the same enthusiasm. If there were any
+political analogy between  India  and  England,  if  the thousand
+races of this Empire were one, if there were any chance even of
+their learning to speak one language, if, in short, India were a
+Utopia of the debating-room, and not a real land, this kind of talk
+might be worth listening to, but it is all based on false analogy and
+ignorance of the facts."
+
+"But he is a native and knows the facts."
+
+"He is a sort of English schoolboy, but married three years, and the
+father of two weaklings, and knows less than most English
+schoolboys. You saw all he is and knows, and such ideas as he has
+acquired are directly hostile to the most cherished convictions of
+the vast majority of the people."
+
+"But what does he mean by saying he is a student of a mission
+college? Is he a Christian?"
+
+"He meant just what he said, and he is not a Christian, nor ever
+will he be. Good people in America, Scotland and England, most
+of whom would never dream of collegiate education for their own
+sons, are pinching themselves to bestow it in pure waste on Indian
+youths.  Their scheme is an oblique, subterranean attack on
+heathenism; the theory being that with the jam of secular
+education, leading to a University degree, the pill of moral or
+religious instruction may he coaxed down the heathen gullet."
+
+"But does it succeed; do they make converts?"
+
+"They make no converts, for the subtle Oriental swallows the jam
+and rejects the pill; but the mere example of the sober, righteous,
+and godly lives of the principals and professors who are most
+excellent and devoted men, must have a certain moral value. Yet,
+as Lord Lansdowne pointed out the other day, the market is
+dangerously overstocked with graduates of our Universities who
+look for employment in the  administration.   An  immense number
+are employed, but year by year the college mills grind out
+increasing lists of youths foredoomed to failure and 
+disappointment, and meanwhile, trade. manufactures. and the
+industrial
+arts are neglected, and in fact regarded with contempt by our new
+literary mandarins in posse."
+
+"But  our  young  friend  said  he wanted steam-engines and
+factories," said Pagett.
+
+"Yes, he would like to direct such concerns.  He wants to begin at
+the top, for manual labor is held to be discreditable, and he would
+never defile his hands by the apprenticeship which the architects,
+engineers, and manufacturers of England cheerfully undergo; and
+he would be aghast to learn that the leading names of industrial
+enterprise in England belonged a generation or two since, or now
+belong, to men who wrought with their own hands. And, though he
+talks glibly of manufacturers, he refuses to see that the Indian
+manufacturer of the future will be the despised workman of the
+present. It was proposed, for example, a few weeks ago, that a
+certain municipality in this province should establish an
+elementary technical school for the sons of workmen. The stress of
+the opposition to the plan came from a pleader who owed all he
+had to a college education bestowed on him gratis by Government
+and missions. You would have fancied some fine old crusted Tory
+squire of the last generation was speaking. 'These people,' he said,
+'want no education, for they learn their trades from their fathers,
+and to teach a workman's son the elements of mathematics and
+physical science would give him ideas above his business.  They
+must be kept in their place, and it was idle to imagine that there
+was any science in wood or iron work.'  And he carried his point.
+But the Indian workman will rise in the social scale in spite of the
+new literary caste."
+
+"In England we have scarcely begun to realize that there is an
+industrial class in this country, yet, I suppose, the example of men,
+like Edwards for instance, must tell," said Pagett, thoughtfully.
+
+"That you shouldn't know much about it is natural enough, for
+there are but few sources of information. India in this, as in other
+respects, is like a badly kept ledger-not written up to date.  And
+men like Edwards are, in reality, missionaries, who by precept and
+example are teaching more lessons than they know. Only a few,
+however, of their crowds of subordinates seem to care to try to
+emulate them, and aim at individual advancement; the rest drop
+into the ancient Indian caste gr('ove."
+
+"How do you mean?" asked he, "Well, it is found that the new
+railway and factory workmen, the fitter, the smith, the
+engine-driver, and the rest are already forming separate hereditary
+castes. You may notice this down at Jamalpur in Bengal, one of
+the oldest railway centres; and at other places, and in other
+industries, they are following the same inexorable Indian law."
+
+"Which means?" queried Pagett.
+
+"It means that the rooted habit of the people is to gather in small
+self-contained, self-sufficing family groups with no thought or care
+for any interests but their own-a habit which is scarcely compatible
+with the right acceptation of the elective principle."
+
+"Yet you must admit, Orde, that though our young friend was not
+able to expound tbe faith that is in him, your Indian army is too
+big."
+
+"Not nearly big enough for its main purpose.  And, as a side issue,
+there are certain powerful minorities of fighting folk whose
+interests an Asiatic Government is bound to consider.  Arms is as
+much a means of livelihood as civil employ under Government and
+law. And it would be a heavy strain on British bayonets to hold
+down Sikhs, Jats, Bilochis, Rohillas, Rajputs, Bhils, Dogras,
+Pahtans, and Gurkbas to abide by the decisions of a numerical
+majority opposed to their interests. Leave the 'numerical majority'
+to itself without the British bayonets-a flock of sheep might as
+reasonably hope to manage a troop of collies."
+
+"This  complaint  about  excessive growth of the army is akin to
+another contention of the Congress party. They protest against the
+malversation of the whole of the moneys raised by additional taxes
+as a Famine Insurance Fund to  other  purposes.  You  must  be
+aware that this special Famine Fund has all been spent on frontier
+roads and defences and strategic railway schemes as a protection
+against Russia."
+
+"But  there was  never a  special famine fund raised by special
+taxation and put by as in a box.  No sane administrator would
+dream of such a thing. In a time of prosperity a finance minister,
+rejoicing in a margin, proposed to annually apply a million and a
+half to the construction of railways and canals for the protection of
+districts liable to scarcity, and to the reduction of the annual loans
+for public works. But times were not always prosperous, and the
+finance minister had to choose whether be would bang up the
+insurance scheme for a year or impose fresh taxation.  When a
+farmer hasn't got the little surplus he hoped to have for buying a
+new wagon and draining a low-lying field corner, you don't accuse
+him of malversation, if he spends what he has on the necessary
+work of the rest of his farm."
+
+A clatter of hoofs was heard, and Orde looked up with vexation,
+but his brow cleared as a horseman halted under the porch.
+
+"HelIn, Orde! just looked in to ask if you are coming to polo on
+Tuesday: we want you badly to help to crumple up the Krab
+Bokbar team."
+
+Orde explained that he had to go out into the District, and while
+the visitor complained that though good men wouldn't play, duffers
+were always keen, and that his side would probalny be beaten,
+Pagett rose to look at his mount, a red, lathered Biloch mare, with
+a curious lyre-like incurving of the ears.  "Quite a little
+thoroughbred in all other respects," said the M.P., and Orde
+presented Mr. Reginald Burke, Manager of the Siad and Sialkote
+Bank to his friend.
+
+"Yes, she's as good as they make 'em, and she's all the female I
+possess and spoiled in consequence, aren't you, old girl?" said
+Burke, patting the mare's glossy neck as she backed and plunged.
+
+"Mr. Pagett," said Orde, "has been asking me about the Congress. 
+What is your opinion?"  Burke turned to the M. P. with a frank
+smile.
+
+"Well, if it's all the same to you, sir, I should say, Damn the
+Congress, but then I'm no politician, but only a business man."
+
+"You find it a tiresome subject?"
+
+"Yes, it's all that, and worse than
+that, for this kind of agitation is anything but wholesome for the
+country."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"It would be a long job to explain, and Sara here won't stand, but
+you know how sensitive capital is, and how timid investors are. 
+All this sort of rot is likely to frighten them, and we can't afford to
+frighten them. The passengers aboard an Ocean steamer don't feel
+reassured when the ship's way is stopped, and they hear the
+workmen's hammers tinkering at the engines down below. The old
+Ark's going on all right as she is, and only wants quiet and room to
+move. Them's my sentiments, and those of some other people who
+have to do with money and business."
+
+"Then you are a thick-and-thin supporter of the Government as it
+is."
+
+"Why, no!  The Indian Government is much too timid with its
+money-like an old maiden aunt of mine-always in a funk about her
+investments. They don't spend half enough on railways for
+instance, and they are slow in a general way, and ought to be made
+to sit up in all that concerns the encouragement of private
+enterprise, and coaxing out into use the millions of capital that lie
+dormant in the country."
+
+The mare was dancing with impatience, and Burke was evidently
+anxious to be off, so the men wished him good-bye.
+
+"Who is your genial friend who condemns both Congress and
+Government in a breath?" asked Pagett, with an amused smile.
+
+"Just now he is Reggie Burke, keener on polo than on anything
+else, but if you go to the Sind and Sialkote Bank to-morrow you
+would find Mr. Reginald Burke a very capable man of business,
+known and liked by an immense constituency North and South of
+this."
+
+"Do you think he is right about the Government's want of
+enterpnse?"
+
+"I should hesitate to say. Better consult the merchants and
+chambers of commerce in Cawnpore, Madras, Bombay, and
+Calcutta. But though these bodies would like, as Reggie puts it, to
+make Government sit up, it is an elementary consideration in
+governing a country like India, which must be administered for the
+benefit of the people at large, that the counsels of those who resort
+to it for the sake of making money should be judiciously weighed
+and not allowed to overpower the rest. They are welcome guests
+here, as a matter of course, but it has been found best to restrain
+their influence.  Thus the rights of plantation laborers, factory
+operatives, and the like, have been protected, and the capitalist,
+eager to get on, has not always regarded Government action with
+favor.  It is quite conceivable that under an elective system the
+commercial communities of the great towns might find means to
+secure majorities on labor questions and on financial matters."
+
+"They would act at least with intelligence and consideration."
+
+"Intelligence, yes; but as to consideration, who at the present
+moment most bitterly resents the tender solicitude of Lancashire
+for the welfare and protection of the Indian factory operative? 
+English and native capitalists running cotton mills and factories."
+
+"But is the solicitude of Lancashire in this matter entirely
+disinterested?"
+
+"It is no business of mine to say. I merely indicate an example of
+how a powerful  commercial  interest  might hamper a
+Government intent in the first place on the larger interests of
+humanity."
+
+Orde broke off to listen a moment. "There's Dr. Lathrop talking to
+my wife in the drawing-room," said he.
+
+"Surely not; that's a lady's voice, and if my ears don't deceive me,
+an American."
+
+"Exactly, Dr. Eva McCreery Lathrop, chief of the new Women's
+Hospital here, and a very good fellow forbye.  Good-morning,
+Doctor," he said, as a graceful figure came out on the veranda,
+"you seem to be in trouble. I hope Mrs. Orde was able to help
+you."
+
+"Your wife is real kind and good, ] always come to her when I'm in
+a fix but I fear it's more than comforting I want."
+
+"You work too hard and wear yourself out," said Orde, kindly. 
+"Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Pagett, just fresh from home, and
+anxious to learn his India.  You could tell him something of that
+more important half of which a mere man knows so little."
+
+"Perhaps I could if I'd any heart to do it, but I'm in trouble, I've lost
+a case, a case that was  doing well, through nothing in the world
+but inattention on the part of a nurse I had begun to trust. And
+when I spoke only a small piece of my mind she collapsed in a
+whining heap on the floor.  It is hopeless."
+
+The men were silent, for the blue eyes of the lady doctor were dim.
+Recovering herself she looked up with a smile, half sad, half
+humorous, "And I am in a whining heap, too; but what phase of
+Indian life are you particularly interested in, sir?"
+
+"Mr. Pagett intends to study the political aspect of things and the
+possibility of bestowing electoral institutions on the people."
+
+"Wouldn't it be as much to the purpose to bestow point-lace collars
+on them?  They need many things more urgently than votes.  Why
+it's like giving a bread-pill for a broken leg."
+
+"Er-I  don't  quite  follow,"  said Pagett, uneasily.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with this country is not in the least
+political, but an all round entanglement of physical, social, and
+moral evils and corruptions, all more or less due to the unnatural
+treatment of women. You can't gather figs from thistles, and so
+long as the system of infant marriage, the prohibition of the
+remarriage of widows, the lifelong imprisonment of wives and
+mothers in a worse than penal confinement, and the withholding
+from them of any kind of education or treatment as rational beings
+continues, the country can't advance a step.  Half of it is morally
+dead, and worse than dead, and that's just the half from which we
+have a right to look for the best impulses.   It's  right  here where 
+the trouble is, and not in any political considerations whatsoever."
+
+"But do they marry so early?" said Pagett, vaguely.
+
+"The  average  age is  seven, but thousands are married still earlier.
+One result is that girls of twelve and thirteen have to bear the
+burden of wifehood and motherhood, and, as might be expected,
+the rate of mortality both for mothers and children is terrible. 
+Pauperism, domestic unhappiness, and a low state of health are
+only a few of the consequences of this.  Then, when, as frequently
+happens, the boy-husband dies prematurely, his widow is
+condemned to worse than death.  She may not re-marry, must live
+a secluded and despised life, a life so unnatural that she sometimes
+prefers suicide; more often she goes astray. You don't know in
+England what such words as 'infant-marriage, baby-wife,
+girl-mother, and virgin-widow' mean; but they mean unspeakable
+horrors here."
+
+"Well, but the advanced political party here will surely make it
+their business to advocate social reforms as well as political ones,"
+said Pagett.
+
+"Very surely they will do no such thing," said the lady doctor,
+emphatically. "I wish I could make you understand. Why, even of
+the funds devoted to the Marchioness of Dufferin's organization
+for medical aid to the women of India, it was said in print and in
+speech, that they would be better spent on more college
+scholarships for men. And in all the advanced parties' talk-God
+forgive them--and in all their programmes, they carefully avoid all
+such subjects. They will talk about the protection of the cow, for
+that's an ancient superstition--they can all understand that; but the
+protection of the women is a new and dangerous idea." She turned
+to Pagett impulsively:
+
+"You are a member of the English Parliament. Can you do
+nothing? The foundations of their life are rotten-utterly and
+bestially rotten.  I could tell your wife things that I couldn't tell
+you.  I know the life--the inner life that belongs to the native, and I
+know nothing else; and believe me you might as well try to grow
+golden-rod in a mushroom-pit as to make anything of a people that
+are born and reared as these --these things're.  The men talk of
+their rights and privileges.  I have seen the women that bear these
+very men, and again-may God forgive the men!"
+
+Pagett's eyes opened with a large wonder.  Dr. Lathrop rose
+tempestuously.
+
+"I must be off to lecture," said she, "and I'm sorry that I can't show
+you my hospitals; but you had better believe, sir, that it's more
+necessary for India than all the elections in creation."
+
+"That's a woman with a mission, and no mistake," said Pagett, after
+a pause.
+
+"Yes; she believes in her work, and so do I," said Orde.  "I've a
+notion that in the end it will be found that the most helpful work
+done for India in this generation was wrought by Lady Dufferin in
+drawing attention-what work that was, by the way, even with her
+husband's great name to back it to the needs of women here. In
+effect, native habits and beliefs are an organized conspiracy
+against the laws of health and happy life--but there is some
+dawning of hope now."
+
+"How d' you account for the general indifferencc, then?"
+
+"I suppose it's due in part to their fatalism and their utter
+indifference to all human suffering. How much do you imagine the
+great province of the Pun-jab with over twenty million people and
+half a score rich towns has contributed to the maintenance of civil
+dispensaries last year? About seven thousand rupees."
+
+"That's seven hundred pounds," said Pagett, quickly.
+
+"I wish it was," replied Orde; "but anyway, it's an absurdly
+inadequate sum, and shows one of the blank sides of Oriental
+character."
+
+Pagett was silent for a long time. The question of direct and
+personal pain did not lie within his researches.  He pre ferred to
+discuss the weightier matters of the law, and contented himself
+with murmuring: "They'll do better later on." Then, with a rush,
+returning to his first thought:
+
+"But, my dear Orde, if it's merely a class movement of a local and
+temporary character, how d' you account for Bradlaugh, who is at
+least a man of sense taking it up?"
+
+"I know nothing of the champion of the New Brahmins but what I
+see in the papers.  I suppose there is something tempting in being
+hailed by a large assemblage as the representative of the
+aspirations of two hundred and fifty millions of people.  Such a
+man looks 'through all the roaring and the wreaths,' and does not
+reflect that it is a false perspective, which, as a matter of fact,
+hides the real complex and manifold India from his gaze.  He can
+scarcely be expected to distinguish between the ambitions of a new
+oligarchy and the real wants of the people of whom he knows
+nothing. But it's strange that a professed Radical should come to be
+the chosen advocate of a movement which has for its aim the
+revival of an ancient tyranny. Shows how even Radicalism  can 
+fall  into  academic grooves and miss the essential truths of its own
+creed.  Believe me, Pagett, to deal with India you want first-hand
+knowledge and experience.  I wish he would come and live here
+for a couple of years or so."
+
+"Is not this rather an ad hminem style of argument?"
+
+"Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought
+not to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and
+upbringing of the man.  You must admit that the monumental 
+complacency with which he trotted out his ingenious little
+Constitution for India showed a strange want of imagination and
+the sense of humor."
+
+"No, I don't quite admit it," said Pagett.
+
+"Well, you know him and I don't, but that's how it strikes a
+stranger."  He turned on his heel and paced the veranda
+thoughtfully. "And, after all, the burden of the actual, daily
+unromantic toil falls on the shoulders of the men out here, and not
+on his own. He enjoys all the privileges of recommendation
+without responsibility, and we-well, perhaps, when you've seen a
+little more of India you'll understand.  To begin with, our death
+rate's five times higher than yours-I speak now for the brutal
+bureaucrat--and we work on the refuse of worked-out cities and
+exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead."
+
+Pagett laughed.  "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde."
+
+"Is it?  Let's see," said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara,
+striding into the sunshine toward a half-naked gardener potting
+roses. He took the man's hoe, and went to a rain-scarped bank at
+the bottom of the garden.
+
+"Come here, Pagett," he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil.  After
+three strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half
+of a clanking skeleton that settled at Pagett's feet in an unseemly
+jumble of bones.  The M.P. drew back.
+
+"Our houses are built on cemeteries," said Orde. "There are scores
+of thousands of graves within ten miles."
+
+Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a
+man who has but little to do with the dead. "India's a very curious
+place," said he, after a pause.
+
+"Ah? You'll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch,"
+said Orde.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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