Produced by Donald Lainson
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
By Rudyard Kipling
CONTENTS
LESPETH
THREE AND AN EXTRA
THROWN AWAY
MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS
YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER
FALSE DAWN
THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES
CUPID'S ARROWS
HIS CHANCE IN LIFE
WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
THE OTHER MAN
CONSEQUENCES
THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN MCGOGGIN
A GERM DESTROYER
KIDNAPPED
THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY
THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
HIS WEDDED WIFE
THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
BEYOND THE PALE
IN ERROR
A BANK FRAUD
TOD'S AMENDMENT
IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH
PIG
THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS
THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE
VENUS ANNODOMINI
THE BISARA OF POORER
THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS
THE STORY OF MUHAMMID DIN
ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS
WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE
BY WORD OF MOUTH
TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
LISPETH.
Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
The Convert.
She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife. One
year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their only
poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side; so, next
season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission
to be baptized. The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and
“Lispeth” is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.
Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo and
Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the wife of
the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was after the reign of the Moravian
missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten her title of
“Mistress of the Northern Hills.”
Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own
people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not
know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely, she is
worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a
Greek face--one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom.
She was of a pale, ivory color and, for her race, extremely tall. Also,
she possessed eyes that were wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in
the abominable print-cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her
on the hill-side unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of
the Romans going out to slay.
Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when she
reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated her
because she had, they said, become a memsahib and washed herself daily;
and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with her. Somehow,
one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten in her shoes, to clean
plates and dishes. So she played with the Chaplain's children and took
classes in the Sunday School, and read all the books in the house, and
grew more and more beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy tales. The
Chaplain's wife said that the girl ought to take service in Simla as a
nurse or something “genteel.” But Lispeth did not want to take service.
She was very happy where she was.
When travellers--there were not many in those years--came to Kotgarth,
Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear they might take
her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the unknown world.
One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth went
out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies--a mile
and a half out, and a ride back again. She covered between twenty and
thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and about, between
Kotgarth and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping
down the breakneck descent into Kotgarth with something heavy in her
arms. The Chaplain's wife was dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth
came in breathing hard and very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put
it down on the sofa, and said simply:
“This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt himself.
We will nurse him, and when he is well, your husband shall marry him to
me.”
This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial
views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the man on
the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman, and his head
had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth said she had found
him down the khud, so she had brought him in. He was breathing queerly
and was unconscious.
He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew something of
medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she meant
to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely on the
impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, and repeated her
first proposition. It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out
uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.
Lispeth, having found the man she worshipped, did not see why she should
keep silent as to her choice. She had no intention of being sent away,
either. She was going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough
to marry her. This was her little programme.
After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman
recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and
Lispeth--especially Lispeth--for their kindness. He was a traveller in
the East, he said--they never talked about “globe-trotters” in those
days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and small--and had come from
Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and butterflies among the Simla hills. No
one at Simla, therefore, knew anything about him. He fancied he must
have fallen over the cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk,
and that his coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled. He thought
he would go back to Simla when he was a little stronger. He desired no
more mountaineering.
He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength slowly.
Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his wife;
so the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told him how matters stood in
Lispeth's heart. He laughed a good deal, and said it was very pretty and
romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas; but, as he was engaged to a
girl at Home, he fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly he would
behave with discretion. He did that. Still he found it very pleasant to
talk to Lispeth, and walk with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and
call her pet names while he was getting strong enough to go away. It
meant nothing at all to him, and everything in the world to Lispeth. She
was very happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man
to love.
Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide her feelings, and
the Englishman was amused. When he went away, Lispeth walked with him,
up the Hill as far as Narkunda, very troubled and very miserable. The
Chaplain's wife, being a good Christian and disliking anything in
the shape of fuss or scandal--Lispeth was beyond her management
entirely--had told the Englishman to tell Lispeth that he was coming
back to marry her. “She is but a child, you know, and, I fear, at heart
a heathen,” said the Chaplain's wife. So all the twelve miles up the
hill the Englishman, with his arm around Lispeth's waist, was assuring
the girl that he would come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him
promise over and over again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had
passed out of sight along the Muttiani path.
Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarth again, and said to the
Chaplain's wife: “He will come back and marry me. He has gone to his
own people to tell them so.” And the Chaplain's wife soothed Lispeth
and said: “He will come back.” At the end of two months, Lispeth grew
impatient, and was told that the Englishman had gone over the seas
to England. She knew where England was, because she had read little
geography primers; but, of course, she had no conception of the nature
of the sea, being a Hill girl. There was an old puzzle-map of the World
in the House. Lispeth had played with it when she was a child. She
unearthed it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to
herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was. As she had no
ideas of distance or steamboats, her notions were somewhat erroneous. It
would not have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct;
for the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill girl.
He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting in Assam.
He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth's name did not appear.
At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to Narkunda
to see if her Englishman was coming along the road. It gave her comfort,
and the Chaplain's wife, finding her happier, thought that she was
getting over her “barbarous and most indelicate folly.” A little later
the walks ceased to help Lispeth and her temper grew very bad. The
Chaplain's wife thought this a profitable time to let her know the real
state of affairs--that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep
her quiet--that he had never meant anything, and that it was “wrong and
improper” of Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of
a superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his own
people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible, because he
had said he loved her, and the Chaplain's wife had, with her own lips,
asserted that the Englishman was coming back.
“How can what he and you said be untrue?” asked Lispeth.
“We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child,” said the Chaplain's
wife.
“Then you have lied to me,” said Lispeth, “you and he?”
The Chaplain's wife bowed her head, and said nothing. Lispeth was
silent, too for a little time; then she went out down the valley, and
returned in the dress of a Hill girl--infamously dirty, but without the
nose and ear rings. She had her hair braided into the long pig-tail,
helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear.
“I am going back to my own people,” said she. “You have killed Lispeth.
There is only left old Jadeh's daughter--the daughter of a pahari and
the servant of Tarka Devi. You are all liars, you English.”
By the time that the Chaplain's wife had recovered from the shock of the
announcement that Lispeth had 'verted to her mother's gods, the girl had
gone; and she never came back.
She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the
arrears of the life she had stepped out of; and, in a little time, she
married a wood-cutter who beat her, after the manner of paharis, and her
beauty faded soon.
“There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the
heathen,” said the Chaplain's wife, “and I believe that Lispeth was
always at heart an infidel.” Seeing she had been taken into the Church
of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do
credit to the Chaplain's wife.
Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She always had a perfect
command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk, could sometimes
be induced to tell the story of her first love-affair.
It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so like
a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been “Lispeth of the Kotgarth
Mission.”
THREE AND--AN EXTRA.
“When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with
sticks but with gram.”
Punjabi Proverb.
After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a little
one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by both
parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the current.
In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did not set in till the
third year after the wedding. Bremmil was hard to hold at the best
of times; but he was a beautiful husband until the baby died and Mrs.
Bremmil wore black, and grew thin, and mourned as if the bottom of the
universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil ought to have comforted her. He
tried to do so, I think; but the more he comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil
grieved, and, consequently, the more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The
fact was that they both needed a tonic. And they got it. Mrs. Bremmil
can afford to laugh now, but it was no laughing matter to her at the
time.
You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she existed
was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the “Stormy
Petrel.” She had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge.
She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling,
violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to
mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise
up, and call her--well--NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant,
and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils of
malice and mischievousness. She could be nice, though, even to her own
sex. But that is another story.
Bremmil went off at score after the baby's death and the general
discomfort that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him. She took no
pleasure in hiding her captives. She annexed him publicly, and saw that
the public saw it. He rode with her, and walked with her, and talked
with her, and picnicked with her, and tiffined at Peliti's with her,
till people put up their eyebrows and said: “Shocking!” Mrs. Bremmil
stayed at home turning over the dead baby's frocks and crying into the
empty cradle. She did not care to do anything else. But some eight dear,
affectionate lady-friends explained the situation at length to her in
case she should miss the cream of it. Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly,
and thanked them for their good offices. She was not as clever as Mrs.
Hauksbee, but she was no fool. She kept her own counsel, and did not
speak to Bremmil of what she had heard. This is worth remembering.
Speaking to, or crying over, a husband never did any good yet.
When Bremmil was at home, which was not often, he was more affectionate
than usual; and that showed his hand. The affection was forced partly to
soothe his own conscience and partly to soothe Mrs. Bremmil. It failed
in both regards.
Then “the A.-D.-C. in Waiting was commanded by Their Excellencies, Lord
and Lady Lytton, to invite Mr. and Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil to Peterhoff on
July 26th at 9.30 P. M.”--“Dancing” in the bottom-left-hand corner.
“I can't go,” said Mrs. Bremmil, “it is too soon after poor little
Florrie... but it need not stop you, Tom.”
She meant what she said then, and Bremmil said that he would go just to
put in an appearance. Here he spoke the thing which was not; and Mrs.
Bremmil knew it. She guessed--a woman's guess is much more accurate than
a man's certainty--that he had meant to go from the first, and with Mrs.
Hauksbee. She sat down to think, and the outcome of her thoughts was
that the memory of a dead child was worth considerably less than the
affections of a living husband. She made her plan and staked her
all upon it. In that hour she discovered that she knew Tom Bremmil
thoroughly, and this knowledge she acted on.
“Tom,” said she, “I shall be dining out at the Longmores' on the evening
of the 26th. You'd better dine at the club.”
This saved Bremmil from making an excuse to get away and dine with
Mrs. Hauksbee, so he was grateful, and felt small and mean at the same
time--which was wholesome. Bremmil left the house at five for a ride.
About half-past five in the evening a large leather-covered basket came
in from Phelps' for Mrs. Bremmil. She was a woman who knew how to dress;
and she had not spent a week on designing that dress and having it
gored, and hemmed, and herring-boned, and tucked and rucked (or whatever
the terms are) for nothing. It was a gorgeous dress--slight mourning. I
can't describe it, but it was what The Queen calls “a creation”--a thing
that hit you straight between the eyes and made you gasp. She had not
much heart for what she was going to do; but as she glanced at the long
mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had never looked so
well in her life. She was a large blonde and, when she chose, carried
herself superbly.
After the dinner at the Longmores, she went on to the dance--a little
late--and encountered Bremmil with Mrs. Hauksbee on his arm. That
made her flush, and as the men crowded round her for dances she looked
magnificent. She filled up all her dances except three, and those she
left blank. Mrs. Hauksbee caught her eye once; and she knew it was
war--real war--between them. She started handicapped in the struggle,
for she had ordered Bremmil about just the least little bit in the world
too much; and he was beginning to resent it. Moreover, he had never seen
his wife look so lovely. He stared at her from doorways, and glared at
her from passages as she went about with her partners; and the more he
stared, the more taken was he. He could scarcely believe that this was
the woman with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who used to weep
over the eggs at breakfast.
Mrs. Hauksbee did her best to hold him in play, but, after two dances,
he crossed over to his wife and asked for a dance.
“I'm afraid you've come too late, MISTER Bremmil,” she said, with her
eyes twinkling.
Then he begged her to give him a dance, and, as a great favor, she
allowed him the fifth waltz. Luckily 5 stood vacant on his programme.
They danced it together, and there was a little flutter round the room.
Bremmil had a sort of notion that his wife could dance, but he never
knew she danced so divinely. At the end of that waltz he asked for
another--as a favor, not as a right; and Mrs. Bremmil said: “Show me
your programme, dear!” He showed it as a naughty little schoolboy hands
up contraband sweets to a master. There was a fair sprinkling of “H”
on it besides “H” at supper. Mrs. Bremmil said nothing, but she smiled
contemptuously, ran her pencil through 7 and 9--two “H's”--and returned
the card with her own name written above--a pet name that only she and
her husband used. Then she shook her finger at him, and said, laughing:
“Oh, you silly, SILLY boy!”
Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and--she owned as much--felt that she had the
worst of it. Bremmil accepted 7 and 9 gratefully. They danced 7, and
sat out 9 in one of the little tents. What Bremmil said and what Mrs.
Bremmil said is no concern of any one's.
When the band struck up “The Roast Beef of Old England,” the two went
out into the verandah, and Bremmil began looking for his wife's dandy
(this was before 'rickshaw days) while she went into the cloak-room.
Mrs. Hauksbee came up and said: “You take me in to supper, I think, Mr.
Bremmil.” Bremmil turned red and looked foolish. “Ah--h'm! I'm going
home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee. I think there has been a little
mistake.” Being a man, he spoke as though Mrs. Hauksbee were entirely
responsible.
Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloak-room in a swansdown cloak with a
white “cloud” round her head. She looked radiant; and she had a right
to.
The couple went off in the darkness together, Bremmil riding very close
to the dandy.
Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me--she looked a trifle faded and jaded in
the lamplight: “Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a
clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.”
Then we went in to supper.
THROWN AWAY.
“And some are sulky, while some will plunge
[So ho! Steady! Stand still, you!]
Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge.
[There! There! Who wants to kill you?]
Some--there are losses in every trade--
Will break their hearts ere bitted and made,
Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard,
And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard.”
Toolungala Stockyard Chorus.
To rear a boy under what parents call the “sheltered life system” is, if
the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise. Unless he
be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass through many unnecessary
troubles; and may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply from ignorance
of the proper proportions of things.
Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot.
He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and
Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots
are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the
unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes
abroad, at six months, a well-mannered little beast with a chastened
appetite. If he had been kept away from boots, and soap, and big dogs
till he came to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, just
consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be! Apply that motion
to the “sheltered life,” and see how it works. It does not sound pretty,
but it is the better of two evils.
There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the “sheltered life”
theory; and the theory killed him dead. He stayed with his people all
his days, from the hour he was born till the hour he went into Sandhurst
nearly at the top of the list. He was beautifully taught in all that
wins marks by a private tutor, and carried the extra weight of “never
having given his parents an hour's anxiety in his life.” What he learnt
at Sandhurst beyond the regular routine is of no great consequence.
He looked about him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, very
good. He ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst not so high as he went
in. Then there was an interval and a scene with his people, who expected
much from him. Next a year of living “unspotted from the world” in a
third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were children, and all
the seniors old women; and lastly he came out to India, where he was cut
off from the support of his parents, and had no one to fall back on in
time of trouble except himself.
Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things
too seriously--the midday sun always excepted. Too much work and too
much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or
too much drink. Flirtation does not matter because every one is being
transferred and either you or she leave the Station, and never return.
Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output
and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work
does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on
longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because
you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and
most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness
does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die
another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours
between death and burial. Nothing matters except Home furlough and
acting allowances, and these only because they are scarce. This is a
slack, kutcha country where all men work with imperfect instruments; and
the wisest thing is to take no one and nothing in earnest, but to escape
as soon as ever you can to some place where amusement is amusement and a
reputation worth the having.
But this Boy--the tale is as old as the Hills--came out, and took all
things seriously. He was pretty and was petted. He took the pettings
seriously, and fretted over women not worth saddling a pony to call
upon. He found his new free life in India very good. It DOES look
attractive in the beginning, from a Subaltern's point of view--all
ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. He tasted it as the puppy tastes
the soap. Only he came late to the eating, with a growing set of
teeth. He had no sense of balance--just like the puppy--and could not
understand why he was not treated with the consideration he received
under his father's roof. This hurt his feelings.
He quarrelled with other boys, and, being sensitive to the marrow,
remembered these quarrels, and they excited him. He found whist, and
gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after office)
good; but he took them seriously too, just as he took the “head” that
followed after drink. He lost his money over whist and gymkhanas because
they were new to him.
He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much energy and interest
over a two-goldmohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with their manes
hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One-half of this came from
inexperience--much as the puppy squabbles with the corner of the
hearth-rug--and the other half from the dizziness bred by stumbling out
of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a livelier one. No
one told him about the soap and the blacking because an average man
takes it for granted that an average man is ordinarily careful in regard
to them. It was pitiful to watch The Boy knocking himself to pieces, as
an over-handled colt falls down and cuts himself when he gets away from
the groom.
This unbridled license in amusements not worth the trouble of breaking
line for, much less rioting over, endured for six months--all through
one cold weather--and then we thought that the heat and the knowledge
of having lost his money and health and lamed his horses would sober
The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred this would have happened. You can see the principle working in
any Indian Station. But this particular case fell through because The
Boy was sensitive and took things seriously--as I may have said some
seven times before. Of course, we couldn't tell how his excesses struck
him personally. They were nothing very heart-breaking or above the
average. He might be crippled for life financially, and want a little
nursing. Still the memory of his performances would wither away in
one hot weather, and the shroff would help him to tide over the money
troubles. But he must have taken another view altogether and have
believed himself ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to him
severely when the cold weather ended. That made him more wretched than
ever; and it was only an ordinary “Colonel's wigging!”
What follows is a curious instance of the fashion in which we are all
linked together and made responsible for one another. THE thing that
kicked the beam in The Boy's mind was a remark that a woman made when he
was talking to her. There is no use in repeating it, for it was only a
cruel little sentence, rapped out before thinking, that made him flush
to the roots of his hair. He kept himself to himself for three days, and
then put in for two days' leave to go shooting near a Canal Engineer's
Rest House about thirty miles out. He got his leave, and that night
at Mess was noisier and more offensive than ever. He said that he was
“going to shoot big game”, and left at half-past ten o'clock in an
ekka. Partridge--which was the only thing a man could get near the Rest
House--is not big game; so every one laughed.
Next morning one of the Majors came in from short leave, and heard
that The Boy had gone out to shoot “big game.” The Major had taken an
interest in The Boy, and had, more than once, tried to check him in
the cold weather. The Major put up his eyebrows when he heard of the
expedition and went to The Boy's room, where he rummaged.
Presently he came out and found me leaving cards on the Mess. There was
no one else in the ante-room.
He said: “The Boy has gone out shooting. DOES a man shoot tetur with a
revolver and a writing-case?”
I said: “Nonsense, Major!” for I saw what was in his mind.
He said: “Nonsense or nonsense, I'm going to the Canal now--at once. I
don't feel easy.”
Then he thought for a minute, and said: “Can you lie?”
“You know best,” I answered. “It's my profession.”
“Very well,” said the Major; “you must come out with me now--at
once--in an ekka to the Canal to shoot black-buck. Go and put on
shikar-kit--quick--and drive here with a gun.”
The Major was a masterful man; and I knew that he would not give orders
for nothing. So I obeyed, and on return found the Major packed up in an
ekka--gun-cases and food slung below--all ready for a shooting-trip.
He dismissed the driver and drove himself. We jogged along quietly
while in the station; but as soon as we got to the dusty road across the
plains, he made that pony fly. A country-bred can do nearly anything at
a pinch. We covered the thirty miles in under three hours, but the poor
brute was nearly dead.
Once I said: “What's the blazing hurry, Major?”
He said, quietly: “The Boy has been alone, by himself, for--one, two,
five--fourteen hours now! I tell you, I don't feel easy.”
This uneasiness spread itself to me, and I helped to beat the pony.
When we came to the Canal Engineer's Rest House the Major called for The
Boy's servant; but there was no answer. Then we went up to the house,
calling for The Boy by name; but there was no answer.
“Oh, he's out shooting,” said I.
Just then I saw through one of the windows a little hurricane-lamp
burning. This was at four in the afternoon. We both stopped dead in the
verandah, holding our breath to catch every sound; and we heard, inside
the room, the “brr--brr--brr” of a multitude of flies. The Major said
nothing, but he took off his helmet and we entered very softly.
The Boy was dead on the charpoy in the centre of the bare, lime-washed
room. He had shot his head nearly to pieces with his revolver. The
gun-cases were still strapped, so was the bedding, and on the table lay
The Boy's writing-case with photographs. He had gone away to die like a
poisoned rat!
The Major said to himself softly: “Poor Boy! Poor, POOR devil!” Then he
turned away from the bed and said: “I want your help in this business.”
Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, I saw exactly what that help
would be, so I passed over to the table, took a chair, lit a cheroot,
and began to go through the writing-case; the Major looking over my
shoulder and repeating to himself: “We came too late!--Like a rat in a
hole!--Poor, POOR devil!”
The Boy must have spent half the night in writing to his people, and to
his Colonel, and to a girl at Home; and as soon as he had finished, must
have shot himself, for he had been dead a long time when we came in.
I read all that he had written, and passed over each sheet to the Major
as I finished it.
We saw from his accounts how very seriously he had taken everything.
He wrote about “disgrace which he was unable to bear”--“indelible
shame”--“criminal folly”--“wasted life,” and so on; besides a lot of
private things to his Father and Mother too much too sacred to put into
print. The letter to the girl at Home was the most pitiful of all; and
I choked as I read it. The Major made no attempt to keep dry-eyed.
I respected him for that. He read and rocked himself to and fro, and
simply cried like a woman without caring to hide it. The letters were so
dreary and hopeless and touching. We forgot all about The Boy's follies,
and only thought of the poor Thing on the charpoy and the scrawled
sheets in our hands. It was utterly impossible to let the letters go
Home. They would have broken his Father's heart and killed his Mother
after killing her belief in her son.
At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said: “Nice sort of thing
to spring on an English family! What shall we do?”
I said, knowing what the Major had brought me but for: “The Boy died
of cholera. We were with him at the time. We can't commit ourselves to
half-measures. Come along.”
Then began one of the most grimy comic scenes I have ever taken part
in--the concoction of a big, written lie, bolstered with evidence, to
soothe The Boy's people at Home. I began the rough draft of a letter,
the Major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered up all the
stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in the fireplace. It was a
hot, still evening when we began, and the lamp burned very badly. In due
course I got the draft to my satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy was
the pattern of all virtues, beloved by his regiment, with every promise
of a great career before him, and so on; how we had helped him through
the sickness--it was no time for little lies, you will understand--and
how he had died without pain. I choked while I was putting down these
things and thinking of the poor people who would read them. Then I
laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, and the laughter mixed
itself up with the choke--and the Major said that we both wanted drinks.
I am afraid to say how much whiskey we drank before the letter was
finished. It had not the least effect on us. Then we took off The Boy's
watch, locket, and rings.
Lastly, the Major said: “We must send a lock of hair too. A woman values
that.”
But there were reasons why we could not find a lock fit to send. The Boy
was black-haired, and so was the Major, luckily. I cut off a piece of
the Major's hair above the temple with a knife, and put it into the
packet we were making. The laughing-fit and the chokes got hold of me
again, and I had to stop. The Major was nearly as bad; and we both knew
that the worst part of the work was to come.
We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, seals, ring, letter, and
lock of hair with The Boy's sealing-wax and The Boy's seal.
Then the Major said: “For God's sake let's get outside--away from the
room--and think!”
We went outside, and walked on the banks of the Canal for an hour,
eating and drinking what we had with us, until the moon rose. I know now
exactly how a murderer feels. Finally, we forced ourselves back to the
room with the lamp and the Other Thing in it, and began to take up
the next piece of work. I am not going to write about this. It was too
horrible. We burned the bedstead and dropped the ashes into the Canal;
we took up the matting of the room and treated that in the same way.
I went off to a village and borrowed two big hoes--I did not want the
villagers to help--while the Major arranged--the other matters. It took
us four hours' hard work to make the grave. As we worked, we argued out
whether it was right to say as much as we remembered of the Burial
of the Dead. We compromised things by saying the Lord's Prayer with a
private unofficial prayer for the peace of the soul of The Boy. Then we
filled in the grave and went into the verandah--not the house--to lie
down to sleep. We were dead-tired.
When we woke the Major said, wearily: “We can't go back till to-morrow.
We must give him a decent time to die in. He died early THIS morning,
remember. That seems more natural.” So the Major must have been lying
awake all the time, thinking.
I said: “Then why didn't we bring the body back to the cantonments?”
The Major thought for a minute:--“Because the people bolted when they
heard of the cholera. And the ekka has gone!”
That was strictly true. We had forgotten all about the ekka-pony, and he
had gone home.
So, we were left there alone, all that stifling day, in the Canal Rest
House, testing and re-testing our story of The Boy's death to see if it
was weak at any point. A native turned up in the afternoon, but we said
that a Sahib was dead of cholera, and he ran away. As the dusk gathered,
the Major told me all his fears about The Boy, and awful stories of
suicide or nearly-carried-out suicide--tales that made one's hair crisp.
He said that he himself had once gone into the same Valley of the Shadow
as the Boy, when he was young and new to the country; so he understood
how things fought together in The Boy's poor jumbled head. He also said
that youngsters, in their repentant moments, consider their sins much
more serious and ineffaceable than they really are. We talked together
all through the evening, and rehearsed the story of the death of The
Boy. As soon as the moon was up, and The Boy, theoretically, just
buried, we struck across country for the Station. We walked from eight
till six o'clock in the morning; but though we were dead-tired, we did
not forget to go to The Boy's room and put away his revolver with the
proper amount of cartridges in the pouch. Also to set his writing-case
on the table. We found the Colonel and reported the death, feeling more
like murderers than ever. Then we went to bed and slept the clock round;
for there was no more in us.
The tale had credence as long as was necessary, for every one forgot
about The Boy before a fortnight was over. Many people, however, found
time to say that the Major had behaved scandalously in not bringing in
the body for a regimental funeral. The saddest thing of all was a letter
from The Boy's mother to the Major and me--with big inky blisters all
over the sheet. She wrote the sweetest possible things about our great
kindness, and the obligation she would be under to us as long as she
lived.
All things considered, she WAS under an obligation; but not exactly as
she meant.
MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS.
When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?
Mahomedan Proverb.
Some people say that there is no romance in India. Those people are
wrong. Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for us. Sometimes
more.
Strickland was in the Police, and people did not understand him; so
they said he was a doubtful sort of man and passed by on the other side.
Strickland had himself to thank for this. He held the extraordinary
theory that a Policeman in India should try to know as much about the
natives as the natives themselves. Now, in the whole of Upper India,
there is only ONE man who can pass for Hindu or Mohammedan, chamar or
faquir, as he pleases. He is feared and respected by the natives from
the Ghor Kathri to the Jamma Musjid; and he is supposed to have the gift
of invisibility and executive control over many Devils. But what good
has this done him with the Government? None in the world. He has never
got Simla for his charge; and his name is almost unknown to Englishmen.
Strickland was foolish enough to take that man for his model; and,
following out his absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no
respectable man would think of exploring--all among the native
riff-raff. He educated himself in this peculiar way for seven years, and
people could not appreciate it. He was perpetually “going Fantee” among
the natives, which, of course, no man with any sense believes in. He was
initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad once, when he was on leave; he
knew the Lizard-Song of the Sansis, and the Halli-Hukk dance, which is
a religious can-can of a startling kind. When a man knows who dances the
Halli-Hukk, and how, and when, and where, he knows something to be proud
of. He has gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland was not proud,
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the Death
Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had mastered the
thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-thief alone
near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of a Border mosque and
conducted service in the manner of a Sunni Mollah.
His crowning achievement was spending eleven days as a faquir in the
gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and there picking up the threads of
the great Nasiban Murder Case. But people said, justly enough: “Why on
earth can't Strickland sit in his office and write up his diary, and
recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up the incapacity of his
seniors?” So the Nasiban Murder Case did him no good departmentally;
but, after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his outlandish
custom of prying into native life. By the way, when a man once acquires
a taste for this particular amusement, it abides with him all his days.
It is the most fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where
other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what
he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time,
stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while. He
was a quiet, dark young fellow--spare, black-eyes--and, when he was not
thinking of something else, a very interesting companion. Strickland
on Native Progress as he had seen it was worth hearing. Natives hated
Strickland; but they were afraid of him. He knew too much.
When the Youghals came into the station, Strickland--very gravely, as he
did everything--fell in love with Miss Youghal; and she, after a
while, fell in love with him because she could not understand him. Then
Strickland told the parents; but Mrs. Youghal said she was not going to
throw her daughter into the worst paid Department in the Empire, and old
Youghal said, in so many words, that he mistrusted Strickland's ways
and works, and would thank him not to speak or write to his daughter
any more. “Very well,” said Strickland, for he did not wish to make
his lady-love's life a burden. After one long talk with Miss Youghal he
dropped the business entirely.
The Youghals went up to Simla in April.
In July, Strickland secured three months' leave on “urgent private
affairs.” He locked up his house--though not a native in the Providence
would wittingly have touched “Estreekin Sahib's” gear for the world--and
went down to see a friend of his, an old dyer, at Tarn Taran.
Here all trace of him was lost, until a sais met me on the Simla Mall
with this extraordinary note:
“Dear old man,
“Please give bearer a box of cheroots--Supers, No. I, for preference.
They are freshest at the Club. I'll repay when I reappear; but at
present I'm out of Society.
“Yours,
“E. STRICKLAND.”
I ordered two boxes, and handed them over to the sais with my love. That
sais was Strickland, and he was in old Youghal's employ, attached to
Miss Youghal's Arab. The poor fellow was suffering for an English
smoke, and knew that whatever happened I should hold my tongue till the
business was over.
Later on, Mrs. Youghal, who was wrapped up in her servants, began
talking at houses where she called of her paragon among saises--the man
who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for
the breakfast-table, and who blacked--actually BLACKED--the hoofs of his
horse like a London coachman! The turnout of Miss Youghal's Arab was a
wonder and a delight. Strickland--Dulloo, I mean--found his reward
in the pretty things that Miss Youghal said to him when she went out
riding. Her parents were pleased to find she had forgotten all her
foolishness for young Strickland and said she was a good girl.
Strickland vows that the two months of his service were the most rigid
mental discipline he has ever gone through. Quite apart from the little
fact that the wife of one of his fellow-saises fell in love with him and
then tried to poison him with arsenic because he would have nothing
to do with her, he had to school himself into keeping quiet when Miss
Youghal went out riding with some man who tried to flirt with her, and
he was forced to trot behind carrying the blanket and hearing every
word! Also, he had to keep his temper when he was slanged in “Benmore”
porch by a policeman--especially once when he was abused by a Naik he
had himself recruited from Isser Jang village--or, worse still, when a
young subaltern called him a pig for not making way quickly enough.
But the life had its compensations. He obtained great insight into the
ways and thefts of saises--enough, he says, to have summarily convicted
half the chamar population of the Punjab if he had been on business. He
became one of the leading players at knuckle-bones, which all jhampanis
and many saises play while they are waiting outside the Government House
or the Gaiety Theatre of nights; he learned to smoke tobacco that was
three-fourths cowdung; and he heard the wisdom of the grizzled Jemadar
of the Government House saises, whose words are valuable. He saw many
things which amused him; and he states, on honor, that no man can
appreciate Simla properly, till he has seen it from the sais's point of
view. He also says that, if he chose to write all he saw, his head would
be broken in several places.
Strickland's account of the agony he endured on wet nights, hearing the
music and seeing the lights in “Benmore,” with his toes tingling for a
waltz and his head in a horse-blanket, is rather amusing. One of these
days, Strickland is going to write a little book on his experiences.
That book will be worth buying; and even more, worth suppressing.
Thus, he served faithfully as Jacob served for Rachel; and his leave was
nearly at an end when the explosion came. He had really done his best to
keep his temper in the hearing of the flirtations I have mentioned; but
he broke down at last. An old and very distinguished General took
Miss Youghal for a ride, and began that specially offensive
“you're-only-a-little-girl” sort of flirtation--most difficult for
a woman to turn aside deftly, and most maddening to listen to. Miss
Youghal was shaking with fear at the things he said in the hearing of
her sais. Dulloo--Strickland--stood it as long as he could. Then he
caught hold of the General's bridle, and, in most fluent English,
invited him to step off and be heaved over the cliff. Next minute Miss
Youghal began crying; and Strickland saw that he had hopelessly given
himself away, and everything was over.
The General nearly had a fit, while Miss Youghal was sobbing out the
story of the disguise and the engagement that wasn't recognized by the
parents. Strickland was furiously angry with himself and more angry
with the General for forcing his hand; so he said nothing, but held
the horse's head and prepared to thrash the General as some sort of
satisfaction, but when the General had thoroughly grasped the story, and
knew who Strickland was, he began to puff and blow in the saddle, and
nearly rolled off with laughing. He said Strickland deserved a V. C.,
if it were only for putting on a sais's blanket. Then he called himself
names, and vowed that he deserved a thrashing, but he was too old to
take it from Strickland. Then he complimented Miss Youghal on her lover.
The scandal of the business never struck him; for he was a nice old man,
with a weakness for flirtations. Then he laughed again, and said
that old Youghal was a fool. Strickland let go of the cob's head,
and suggested that the General had better help them, if that was his
opinion. Strickland knew Youghal's weakness for men with titles and
letters after their names and high official position. “It's rather like
a forty-minute farce,” said the General, “but begad, I WILL help, if
it's only to escape that tremendous thrashing I deserved. Go along
to your home, my sais-Policeman, and change into decent kit, and I'll
attack Mr. Youghal. Miss Youghal, may I ask you to canter home and wait?”
. . . . . . . . .
About seven minutes later, there was a wild hurroosh at the Club. A
sais, with a blanket and head-rope, was asking all the men he knew: “For
Heaven's sake lend me decent clothes!” As the men did not recognize him,
there were some peculiar scenes before Strickland could get a hot bath,
with soda in it, in one room, a shirt here, a collar there, a pair
of trousers elsewhere, and so on. He galloped off, with half the Club
wardrobe on his back, and an utter stranger's pony under him, to the
house of old Youghal. The General, arrayed in purple and fine linen, was
before him. What the General had said Strickland never knew, but Youghal
received Strickland with moderate civility; and Mrs. Youghal, touched
by the devotion of the transformed Dulloo, was almost kind. The General
beamed, and chuckled, and Miss Youghal came in, and almost before old
Youghal knew where he was, the parental consent had been wrenched out
and Strickland had departed with Miss Youghal to the Telegraph Office
to wire for his kit. The final embarrassment was when an utter stranger
attacked him on the Mall and asked for the stolen pony.
So, in the end, Strickland and Miss Youghal were married, on the strict
understanding that Strickland should drop his old ways, and stick to
Departmental routine, which pays best and leads to Simla. Strickland
was far too fond of his wife, just then, to break his word, but it was
a sore trial to him; for the streets and the bazars, and the sounds in
them, were full of meaning to Strickland, and these called to him to
come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I
will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long
since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would
call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the
marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a
man would master, he must always continue to learn.
But he fills in his Departmental returns beautifully.
YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.
I am dying for you, and you are dying for another.
Punjabi Proverb.