No More Learning

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 groove. "

"How do you mean? " asked Pagett.

"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 the 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, Pathans, and Gurkhas 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 he 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.

"Hello, 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 Bokhar 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 probably be beaten, Pagett rose to
look at his mount, a red, lathered Biloch mare, with a curious lyrelike
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 goodbye.

"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 tomorrow 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 enterprise? "

"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, I 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 remarry, 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 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 indifference, 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 Punjab 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 preferred 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 hominem 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. In the
case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests
of the altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahminical, 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 be leaders, but they have no social weight
here. "

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.





VOLUME V 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 Kotgarh side; so, next
season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission
to be baptized. The Kotgarh Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and
"Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarh Valley and carried off Sonoo and
Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the wife of
the then Chaplain of Kotgarh.
This was after the reign of the Moravian
missionaries, but before Kotgarh 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 Kotgarh,
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
Kotgarh and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping
down the breakneck descent into Kotgarh 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 Kotgarh 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 Kotgarh
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 it 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.