If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care that you
do not fall in.--_Hindu Proverb._
Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a
young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is an
unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important and business-like, and
_blasé_, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of fever, or suffers
from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very happy
in a tender, twilight fashion,
Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a godsend to him. It was four
years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it. She had
married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning, she had told
Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more than a sister to
him, she would always take the deepest interest in his welfare." This
startlingly new and original remark gave Hannasyde something to think over
for two years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four months.
Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Garron, but, none the less, had
several points in common with that far too lucky man.
He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It
brought him happily through one Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely.
There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which he
helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex to him.
Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He kept his
wounded heart all to himself for a while.
Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla know the slope from the
Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill,
one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down in
a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the girl
who had made him so happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned against the railings
and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was
impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his temples. It
was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be
the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later, the wife of a man
from Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she had
come up to Simla early in the season for the good of her health. She was
going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of the season; and
in all likelihood would never return to Simla again; her proper
Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night Hannasyde, raw and savage from
the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with himself for one
measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you must decide for
yourself how much genuine affection for the old Love, and how much a very
natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself, affected the decision.
Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human likelihood cross his path
again. So whatever he did didn't much matter. She was marvelously like the
girl who "took a deep interest" and the rest of the formula. All things
considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of Mrs.
Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a very little time--to make
believe that he was with Alice Chisane again. Every one is more or less
mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular monomania was his old love, Alice
Chisane.
He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as he
could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the
facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties, and
tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and
rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are
matters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention
of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. He wanted to be
deceived, he meant to be deceived, and he deceived himself very
thoroughly. Not only were the face and figure the face and figure of Alice
Chisane, but the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so were
the turns of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of
gait and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the same. The turn
of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes at the end of a long
walk was the same; the stoop-and-wrench over the saddle to hold in a
pulling horse was the same; and once, most marvelous of all, Mrs.
Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next room, while Hannasyde was
waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note for note, with a throaty
quiver of the voice in the second line, "Poor Wandering One!" exactly as
Alice Chisane had hummed it for Hannasyde in the dusk of an English
drawing-room. In the actual woman herself--in the soul of her--there was
not the least likeness; she and Alice Chisane being cast in different
moulds. But all that Hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was
this maddening and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner. He
was bent on making a fool of himself that way; and he was in no sort
disappointed.
Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always pleasant to any
sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of the world, could
make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.
He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man habitually--to
meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes. Anything she told him to do
was law; and he was, there could be no doubting it, fond of her company so
long as she talked to him, and kept on talking about trivialities. But
when she launched into expression of her personal views and her wrongs,
those small social differences that make the spice of Simla life,
Hannasyde was neither pleased nor interested. He didn't want to know
anything about Mrs. Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in the past--she
had traveled nearly all over the world, and could talk cleverly--he wanted
the likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and her voice in his ears.
Anything outside that, reminding him of another personality, jarred, and
he showed that it did.
Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert turned on him,
and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. "Mr. Hannasyde," said she,
"will you be good enough to explain why you have appointed yourself my
special _cavalier servente?_ I don't understand it. But I am perfectly
certain, somehow or other, that you don't care the least little bit in the
world for _me_." This seems to support, by the way, the theory that no man
can act or tell lies to a woman without being found out. Hannasyde was
taken off his guard. His defence never was a strong one, because he was
always thinking of himself, and he blurted out, before he knew what he was
saying, this inexpedient answer, "No more I do."
The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Landys-Haggert
laugh. Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's lucid
explanation Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of scorn in her
voice, "So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of your
tattered affections on, am I?"
Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted himself
generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane, which was
unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that Mrs. Haggert
had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde. Only ... only
no woman likes being made love through instead of to--specially on behalf
of a musty divinity of four years' standing.
Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular exhibition of
himself. He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of
Simla.
When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place and Mrs.
Haggert to hers, "It was like making love to a ghost," said Hannasyde to
himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my work." But he
found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-Chisane ghost; and he could
not be certain whether it was Haggert or Chisane that made up the greater
part of the pretty phantom.
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He got understanding a month later.
A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a heartless
Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to the other. You can
never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy till he or she dies.
There was a case once--but that's another story.
Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the Frontier at two
days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step, from
Dindigul to his station. He dropped Mrs. Haggert at Lucknow, to stay with
some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the Chutter Munzil, and
to come on when he had made the new home a little comfortable. Lucknow was
Hannasyde's station, and Mrs. Haggert stayed a week there. Hannasyde went
to meet her. As the train came in, he discovered what he had been thinking
of for the past month. The unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. The
Lucknow week, with two dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides
together, clinched matters; and Hannasyde found himself pacing this circle
of thought:--He adored Alice Chisane, at least he _had_ adored her. _And_
he admired Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like Alice Chisane. _But_
Mrs. Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice Chisane, being a
thousand times more adorable. _Now_ Alice Chisane was "the bride of
another," and so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good and honest wife too.
_Therefore_ he, Hannasyde, was ... here he called himself several hard
names, and wished that he had been wise in the beginning.
Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind, she alone
knows. He seemed to take an unqualified interest in everything connected
with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-Chisane likeness, and he
said one or two things which, if Alice Chisane had been still betrothed to
him, could scarcely have been excused, even on the grounds of the
likeness. But Mrs. Haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long time
in making Hannasyde see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been to him
because of her strange resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde groaned in
his saddle and said, "Yes, indeed," and busied himself with preparations
for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and miserable.
The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her off at the
Railway Station. She was very grateful for his kindness and the trouble he
had taken, and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one who knew the
Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And Hannasyde abused the coolies
with the luggage, and hustled the people on the platform, and prayed that
the roof might fall in and slay him.
As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of the window
to say good-bye--"On second thoughts _au revoir_, Mr. Hannasyde. I go Home
in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you in Town."
Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly--"I hope to
Heaven I shall never see your face again!"
And Mrs. Haggert understood.