No More Learning

I was standing with my head downward and my hands
over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing each other. I could not see
who was next me till the flashes came.

Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss
Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of me. I recognized the eldest
Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger
had not. All the electricity in the air had gone into my body and I was
quivering and tingling from head to foot--exactly as a corn shoots and
tingles before rain. It was a grand storm.

The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and pitching it to leeward in
great heaps; and the heat beat up from the ground like the heat of the
Day of Judgment.

The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard a
despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly and
softly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind: "O my
God! " Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying:
"Where is my horse? Get my horse. I want to go home. I WANT to go home.
Take me home. "

I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened her;
so I said there was no danger, but she must wait till the storm blew
over. She answered: "It is not THAT! It is not THAT! I want to go home!
O take me away from here! "

I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her brush
past me and go away. It was too dark to see where. Then the whole sky
was split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end of the world
were coming, and all the women shrieked.

Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and heard
Saumarez bellowing in my ear. Through the rattling of the trees and
howling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once, but at last
I heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one! What shall I do? "
Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence to me. I was never a
friend of his, nor am I now; but I fancy neither of us were ourselves
just then. He was shaking as he stood with excitement, and I was feeling
queer all over with the electricity.

I could not think of anything to say except:--"More fool you for
proposing in a dust-storm. " But I did not see how that would improve the
mistake.

Then he shouted: "Where's Edith--Edith Copleigh? " Edith was the youngest
sister. I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do you want with HER? "
Would you believe it, for the next two minutes, he and I were shouting
at each other like maniacs--he vowing that it was the youngest sister he
had meant to propose to all along, and I telling him till my throat
was hoarse that he must have made a mistake! I can't account for
this except, again, by the fact that we were neither of us ourselves.
Everything seemed to me like a bad dream--from the stamping of the
horses in the darkness to Saumarez telling me the story of his loving
Edith Copleigh since the first. He was still clawing my shoulder and
begging me to tell him where Edith Copleigh was, when another lull came
and brought light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the
plain in front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon was low
down, and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes about
an hour before the real one. But the light was very faint, and the dun
cloud roared like a bull. I wondered where Edith Copleigh had gone; and
as I was wondering I saw three things together: First Maud Copleigh's
face come smiling out of the darkness and move towards Saumarez, who was
standing by me. I heard the girl whisper, "George," and slide her arm
through the arm that was not clawing my shoulder, and I saw that look on
her face which only comes once or twice in a lifetime--when a woman is
perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-colored
fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and is loved. At
the same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard Maud Copleigh's voice,
and fifty yards away from the clump of orange-trees I saw a brown
holland habit getting upon a horse.

It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quick
to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to the
habit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain. I'll
fetch her back! " and I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a perfectly
unnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order,
and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe the happy look out of Maud
Copleigh's face. All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wondered
how he would do it.

I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly on
some pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she saw me,
and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called back over her
shoulder--"Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away! " two or three times;
but my business was to catch her first, and argue later. The ride just
fitted in with the rest of the evil dream. The ground was very bad, and
now and again we rushed through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in
the skirts of the flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing
that brought up a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the
half light and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain,
flickered the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed for
the Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the river
through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. In
cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country
at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning
crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils.
I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the
aftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove us
downwind like pieces of paper.

I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs and
the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon through
the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was
literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the gray
stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up dead lame. My brute was used
up altogether. Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, plastered with dust,
her helmet off, and crying bitterly. "Why can't you let me alone? " she
said. "I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh, PLEASE let me go! "

"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has
something to say to you. "

It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh;
and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I could
not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told me. I thought he
could do that better himself. All her pretence about being tired and
wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked herself to and fro in the
saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. I
am not going to repeat what she said, because she was utterly unstrung.

This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I, almost
an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved her
and she was to come back to hear him say so! I believe I made myself
understood, for she gathered the gray together and made him hobble
somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm went thundering
down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out that
she had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister
and had wanted to go home and cry in peace, as an English girl should.
She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and
babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was
perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the
place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I,
ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of this
misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.

When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that followed
the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away. They
were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all.

His face was white and drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came
forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from her saddle, he
kissed her before all the picnic. It was like a scene in a theatre, and
the likeness was heightened by all the dust-white, ghostly-looking men
and women under the orange-trees, clapping their hands, as if they
were watching a play--at Saumarez's choice. I never knew anything so
un-English in my life.

Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would come
out to look for us, and WOULD I be good enough to ride home with Maud
Copleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.

So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two; Saumarez
walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse.

The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt we
were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women and that
the "Great Pop Picnic" was a thing altogether apart and out of the
world--never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and the
tingle in the hot air.

I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went in
for a bath and some sleep.

There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never be written.
. . . unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.




THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES.

Thus, for a season, they fought it fair--
She and his cousin May--
Tactful, talented, debonnaire,
Decorous foes were they;
But never can battle of man compare
With merciless feminine fray.
--Two and One.

Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to
prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.

Pluffles was a subaltern in the "Unmentionables. " He was callow, even
for a subaltern. He was callow all over--like a canary that had not
finished fledging itself. The worst of it was he had three times as much
money as was good for him; Pluffles' Papa being a rich man and Pluffles
being the only son. Pluffles' Mamma adored him. She was only a little
less callow than Pluffles and she believed everything he said.

Pluffles' weakness was not believing what people said. He preferred what
he called "trusting to his own judgment. " He had as much judgment as he
had seat or hands; and this preference tumbled him into trouble once or
twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever manufactured came about at
Simla--some years ago, when he was four-and-twenty.

He began by trusting to his own judgment, as usual, and the result
was that, after a time, he was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver's
'rickshaw wheels.

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless it was her dress.

She was bad from her hair--which started life on a Brittany's girl's
head--to her boot-heels, which were two and three-eighth inches high.
She was not honestly mischievous like Mrs. Hauksbee; she was wicked in a
business-like way.

There was never any scandal--she had not generous impulses enough for
that. She was the exception which proved the rule that Anglo-Indian
ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at Home.

She spent her life in proving that rule.

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fervently. They heard far
too much to clash; but the things they said of each other were
startling--not to say original. Mrs. Hauksbee was honest--honest as her
own front teeth--and, but for her love of mischief, would have been
a woman's woman. There was no honesty about Mrs. Reiver; nothing but
selfishness. And at the beginning of the season, poor little Pluffles
fell a prey to her. She laid herself out to that end, and who was
Pluffles, to resist? He went on trusting to his judgment, and he got
judged.

I have seen Hayes argue with a tough horse--I have seen a tonga-driver
coerce a stubborn pony--I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a
hard keeper--but the breaking-in of Pluffles of the "Unmentionables" was
beyond all these. He learned to fetch and carry like a dog, and to
wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs. Reiver. He learned to keep
appointments which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of keeping. He learned
to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of giving
him. He learned to shiver for an hour and a quarter on the windward side
of Elysium while Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come for a
ride. He learned to hunt for a 'rickshaw, in a light dress-suit under
a pelting rain, and to walk by the side of that 'rickshaw when he had
found it. He learned what it was to be spoken to like a coolie and
ordered about like a cook. He learned all this and many other things
besides. And he paid for his schooling.

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it was fine and impressive,
that it gave him a status among men, and was altogether the thing to do.
It was nobody's business to warn Pluffles that he was unwise. The pace
that season was too good to inquire; and meddling with another man's
folly is always thankless work.

Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when he
heard how things were going. But Pluffles had got himself engaged to a
girl in England the last time he went home; and if there was one
thing more than another which the Colonel detested, it was a married
subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the education of Pluffles, and
said it was "good training for the boy. " But it was not good training in
the least. It led him into spending money beyond his means, which were
good: above that, the education spoilt an average boy and made it a
tenth-rate man of an objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and
his little bill at Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game alone,
knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for the sake of
a girl she had never seen. Pluffles' fiancee was to come out, under the
chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was time to
interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to
do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs. Hauksbee's
experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain
circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver's
stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off
that engagement for nothing at all--simply to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who,
in return, would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long as
she found it worth her while.

She said she knew the signs of these things. If she did not, no one else
could.

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the guns of the enemy;
just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried away Bremmil under Mrs. Hauksbee's
eyes.

This particular engagement lasted seven weeks--we called it the Seven
Weeks' War--and was fought out inch by inch on both sides. A detailed
account would fill a book, and would be incomplete then.

Any one who knows about these things can fit in the details for himself.
It was a superb fight--there will never be another like it as long as
Jakko stands--and Pluffles was the prize of victory.

People said shameful things about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what
she was playing for. Mrs. Reiver fought, partly because Pluffles was
useful to her, but mainly because she hated Mrs. Hauksbee, and the
matter was a trial of strength between them. No one knows what Pluffles
thought. He had not many ideas at the best of times, and the few he
possessed made him conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee said:--"The boy must be
caught; and the only way of catching him is by treating him well. "

So she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long as
the issue was doubtful. Little by little, Pluffles fell away from his
old allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom he was made much of.
He was never sent on out-post duty after 'rickshaws any more, nor was
he given dances which never came off, nor were the drains on his
purse continued. Mrs. Hauksbee held him on the snaffle; and after his
treatment at Mrs. Reiver's hands, he appreciated the change.

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about himself, and made him
talk about her own merits. Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won
his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home,
speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a "piece of boyish folly. "
This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon, and discoursing
in what he considered a gay and fascinating style.

Mrs.
Hauksbee had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and
blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby Majors.

At a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to that
lady's character. Some men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles after
the manner of a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years,
instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke with a sort of throaty
quaver in her voice which had a soothing effect, though what she said
was anything but soothing. She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to
say meanness, of Pluffles' conduct, and the smallness of his views. Then
he stammered something about "trusting to his own judgment as a man of
the world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next. It
would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman; but
in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only made
him feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some superior kind of
church. Little by little, very softly and pleasantly, she began taking
the conceit out of Pluffles, as you take the ribs out of an umbrella
before re-covering it. She told him what she thought of him and his
judgment and his knowledge of the world; and how his performances had
made him ridiculous to other people; and how it was his intention to
make love to herself if she gave him the chance. Then she said
that marriage would be the making of him; and drew a pretty little
picture--all rose and opal--of the Mrs. Pluffles of the future going
through life relying on the "judgment" and "knowledge of the world" of
a husband who had nothing to reproach himself with. How she reconciled
these two statements she alone knew. But they did not strike Pluffles as
conflicting.

Hers was a perfect little homily--much better than any clergyman could
have given--and it ended with touching allusions to Pluffles' Mamma and
Papa, and the wisdom of taking his bride Home.

Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think over what she had said.
Pluffles left, blowing his nose very hard and holding himself very
straight. Mrs. Hauksbee laughed.

What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter of the engagement only
Mrs. Reiver knew, and she kept her own counsel to her death. She would
have liked it spoiled as a compliment, I fancy.

Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauksbee during the next few days.
They were all to the same end, and they helped Pluffles in the path of
Virtue.

Mrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her wing to the last.

Therefore she discountenanced his going down to Bombay to get married.
"Goodness only knows what might happen by the way! " she said. "Pluffles
is cursed with the curse of Reuben, and India is no fit place for him! "

In the end, the fiancee arrived with her aunt; and Pluffles, having
reduced his affairs to some sort of order--here again Mrs. Hauksbee
helped him--was married.

Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when both the "I wills" had been
said, and went her way.

Pluffles took her advice about going Home. He left the Service, and is
now raising speckled cattle inside green painted fences somewhere at
Home. I believe he does this very judiciously. He would have come to
extreme grief out here.

For these reasons if any one says anything more than usually nasty about
Mrs. Hauksbee, tell him the story of the Rescue of Pluffles.




CUPID'S ARROWS.

Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,
By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;
Log in the reh-grass, hidden and alone;
Bund where the earth-rat's mounds are strown;
Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals;
Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels,
Jump if you dare on a steed untried--Safer it is to go wide--
go wide!
Hark, from in front where the best men ride:--
"Pull to the off, boys! Wide! Go wide! "
--The Peora Hunt.

Once upon a time there lived at Simla a very pretty girl, the daughter
of a poor but honest District and Sessions Judge. She was a good girl,
but could not help knowing her power and using it.

Her Mamma was very anxious about her daughter's future, as all good
Mammas should be.

When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor and has the right of wearing
open-work jam-tart jewels in gold and enamel on his clothes, and of
going through a door before every one except a Member of Council, a
Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is worth marrying. At least, that
is what ladies say. There was a Commissioner in Simla, in those days,
who was, and wore, and did, all I have said. He was a plain man--an ugly
man--the ugliest man in Asia, with two exceptions. His was a face to
dream about and try to carve on a pipe-head afterwards. His name was
Saggott--Barr-Saggott--Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow.

Departmentally, he was one of the best men the Government of India
owned. Socially, he was like a blandishing gorilla.

When he turned his attentions to Miss Beighton, I believe that Mrs.

Beighton wept with delight at the reward Providence had sent her in her
old age.

Mr. Beighton held his tongue. He was an easy-going man.

Now a Commissioner is very rich. His pay is beyond the dreams of
avarice--is so enormous that he can afford to save and scrape in a way
that would almost discredit a Member of Council. Most Commissioners
are mean; but Barr-Saggott was an exception. He entertained royally; he
horsed himself well; he gave dances; he was a power in the land; and he
behaved as such.

Consider that everything I am writing of took place in an almost
pre-historic era in the history of British India. Some folk may remember
the years before lawn-tennis was born when we all played croquet. There
were seasons before that, if you will believe me, when even croquet
had not been invented, and archery--which was revived in England in
1844--was as great a pest as lawn-tennis is now. People talked learnedly
about "holding" and "loosing," "steles," "reflexed bows," "56-pound
bows," "backed" or "self-yew bows," as we talk about "rallies,"
"volleys," "smashes," "returns," and "16-ounce rackets. "

Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies' distance--60 yards, that
is--and was acknowledged the best lady archer in Simla. Men called her
"Diana of Tara-Devi. "

Barr-Saggott paid her great attention; and, as I have said, the heart of
her mother was uplifted in consequence. Kitty Beighton took matters more
calmly. It was pleasant to be singled out by a Commissioner with letters
after his name, and to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feelings.
But there was no denying the fact that Barr-Saggott was phenomenally
ugly; and all his attempts to adorn himself only made him more
grotesque. He was not christened "The Langur"--which means gray ape--for
nothing. It was pleasant, Kitty thought, to have him at her feet, but
it was better to escape from him and ride with the graceless Cubbon--the
man in a Dragoon Regiment at Umballa--the boy with a handsome face, and
no prospects. Kitty liked Cubbon more than a little. He never pretended
for a moment the he was anything less than head over heels in love with
her; for he was an honest boy. So Kitty fled, now and again, from the
stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the company of young Cubbon, and
was scolded by her Mamma in consequence. "But, Mother," she said, "Mr.
Saggott is such--such a--is so FEARFULLY ugly, you know! "

"My dear," said Mrs. Beighton, piously, "we cannot be other than an
all-ruling Providence has made us. Besides, you will take precedence of
your own Mother, you know! Think of that and be reasonable. "

Then Kitty put up her little chin and said irreverent things about
precedence, and Commissioners, and matrimony. Mr. Beighton rubbed the
top of his head; for he was an easy-going man.

Late in the season, when he judged that the time was ripe, Barr-Saggott
developed a plan which did great credit to his administrative powers.
He arranged an archery tournament for ladies, with a most sumptuous
diamond-studded bracelet as prize.

He drew up his terms skilfully, and every one saw that the bracelet was
a gift to Miss Beighton; the acceptance carrying with it the hand and
the heart of Commissioner Barr-Saggott. The terms were a St. Leonard's
Round--thirty-six shots at sixty yards--under the rules of the Simla
Toxophilite Society.

All Simla was invited. There were beautifully arranged tea-tables under
the deodars at Annandale, where the Grand Stand is now; and, alone in
its glory, winking in the sun, sat the diamond bracelet in a blue velvet
case. Miss Beighton was anxious--almost too anxious to compete. On the
appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down to Annandale to witness the
Judgment of Paris turned upside down.

Kitty rode with young Cubbon, and it was easy to see that the boy
was troubled in his mind. He must be held innocent of everything that
followed. Kitty was pale and nervous, and looked long at the bracelet.
Barr-Saggott was gorgeously dressed, even more nervous than Kitty, and
more hideous than ever.

Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as befitted the mother of a
potential Commissioneress, and the shooting began; all the world
standing in a semicircle as the ladies came out one after the other.

Nothing is so tedious as an archery competition. They shot, and they
shot, and they kept on shooting, till the sun left the valley, and
little breezes got up in the deodars, and people waited for Miss
Beighton to shoot and win. Cubbon was at one horn of the semicircle
round the shooters, and Barr-Saggott at the other. Miss Beighton was
last on the list. The scoring had been weak, and the bracelet, PLUS
Commissioner Barr-Saggott, was hers to a certainty.

The Commissioner strung her bow with his own sacred hands. She stepped
forward, looked at the bracelet, and her first arrow went true to a
hair--full into the heart of the "gold"--counting nine points.

Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and his Devil prompted
Barr-Saggott to smile. Now horses used to shy when Barr-Saggott smiled.

Kitty saw that smile. She looked to her left-front, gave an almost
imperceptible nod to Cubbon, and went on shooting.

I wish I could describe the scene that followed. It was out of the
ordinary and most improper. Miss Kitty fitted her arrows with immense
deliberation, so that every one might see what she was doing. She was
a perfect shot; and her 46-pound bow suited her to a nicety. She pinned
the wooden legs of the target with great care four successive times. She
pinned the wooden top of the target once, and all the ladies looked at
each other. Then she began some fancy shooting at the white, which,
if you hit it, counts exactly one point. She put five arrows into the
white. It was wonderful archery; but, seeing that her business was to
make "golds" and win the bracelet, Barr-Saggott turned a delicate green
like young water-grass. Next, she shot over the target twice, then wide
to the left twice--always with the same deliberation--while a chilly
hush fell over the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her handkerchief.
Then Kitty shot at the ground in front of the target, and split several
arrows. Then she made a red--or seven points--just to show what she
could do if she liked, and finished up her amazing performance with some
more fancy shooting at the target-supports. Here is her score as it was
picked off:--

Gold. Red. Blue. Black. White. Total Hits. Total Score Miss Beighton
1 1 0 0 5 7 21

Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven into
his legs instead of the target's, and the deep stillness was broken by
a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of
triumph: "Then I'VE won! "

Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence of
the people. No training could help her through such a disappointment.
Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place,
while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed snapping
the bracelet on the snubby girl's raw, red wrist. It was an awkward
scene--most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty
to the mercy of her Mamma.

But Cubbon took her away instead, and--the rest isn't worth printing.




HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.

Then a pile of heads be laid--
Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
Where the Oxus ripples by.

Grimly spake Atulla Khan:--
"Love hath made this thing a Man. "
--Oatta's Story.

If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past
Trades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your
respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line where the last
drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would be
easier to talk to a new-made Duchess on the spur of the moment than
to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or
hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in
their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish
pride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes the Black
in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and
strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this
people--understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the
man who imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and
then we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime,
any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or
inference.

Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children
who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.
The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It
never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own
affairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important
things in the world to Miss Vezzis.

Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as
black as a boot, and to our standard of taste, hideously ugly.

She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and when she lost her
temper with the children, she abused them in the language of the
Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese, and part Native.
She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she preferred being
called "Miss Vezzis. "

Every Sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see her
Mamma, who lived, for the most part, on an old cane chair in a greasy
tussur-silk dressing-gown and a big rabbit-warren of a house full of
Vezzises, Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gansalveses, and a floating
population of loafers; besides fragments of the day's bazar, garlic,
stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings
for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah
puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns. Miss
Vezzis drew twenty rupees a month for acting as nurse, and she
squabbled weekly with her Mamma as to the percentage to be given towards
housekeeping.

When the quarrel was over, Michele D'Cruze used to shamble across the
low mud wall of the compound and make love to Miss Vezzis after the
fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged about with much ceremony.
Michele was a poor, sickly weed and very black; but he had his pride.
He would not be seen smoking a huqa for anything; and he looked down on
natives as only a man with seven-eighths native blood in his veins can.
The Vezzis Family had their pride too. They traced their descent from
a mythical plate-layer who had worked on the Sone Bridge when railways
were new in India, and they valued their English origin. Michele was
a Telegraph Signaller on Rs. 35 a month. The fact that he was in
Government employ made Mrs. Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings of his
ancestors.

There was a compromising legend--Dom Anna the tailor brought it from
Poonani--that a black Jew of Cochin had once married into the D'Cruze
family; while it was an open secret that an uncle of Mrs. D'Cruze was at
that very time doing menial work, connected with cooking, for a Club in
Southern India! He sent Mrs D'Cruze seven rupees eight annas a month;
but she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all the same.

However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis brought herself
to overlook these blemishes and gave her consent to the marriage of her
daughter with Michele, on condition that Michele should have at least
fifty rupees a month to start married life upon. This wonderful prudence
must have been a lingering touch of the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshire
blood; for across the Borderline people take a pride in marrying when
they please--not when they can.

Having regard to his departmental prospects, Miss Vezzis might as well
have asked Michele to go away and come back with the Moon in his pocket.
But Michele was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and that helped him to
endure. He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one Sunday, and after Mass,
walking home through the hot stale dust with her hand in his, he swore
by several Saints, whose names would not interest you, never to forget
Miss Vezzis; and she swore by her Honor and the Saints--the oath runs
rather curiously; "In nomine Sanctissimae--" (whatever the name of the
she-Saint is) and so forth, ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss
on the left cheek, and a kiss on the mouth--never to forget Michele.

Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis dropped tears
upon the window-sash of the "Intermediate" compartment as he left the
Station.

If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see a long line
skirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras. Michele was ordered to
Tibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this line, to send messages
on from Berhampur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and his
chances of getting fifty rupees a month out of office hours. He had the
noise of the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali Babu for company; nothing more.
He sent foolish letters, with crosses tucked inside the flaps of the
envelopes, to Miss Vezzis.

When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his chance came.

Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of Our
Authority are always before a native he is as incapable as a child of
understanding what authority means, or where is the danger of disobeying
it. Tibasu was a forgotten little place with a few Orissa Mohamedans
in it. These, hearing nothing of the Collector-Sahib for some time,
and heartily despising the Hindu Sub-Judge, arranged to start a little
Mohurrum riot of their own. But the Hindus turned out and broke their
heads; when, finding lawlessness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans
together raised an aimless sort of Donnybrook just to see how far they
could go. They looted each other's shops, and paid off private grudges
in the regular way. It was a nasty little riot, but not worth putting in
the newspapers.

Michele was working in his office when he heard the sound that a man
never forgets all his life--the "ah-yah" of an angry crowd.

[When that sound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick,
droning ut, the man who hears it had better go away if he is alone. ] The
Native Police Inspector ran in and told Michele that the town was in an
uproar and coming to wreck the Telegraph Office.

The Babu put on his cap and quietly dropped out of the window; while
the Police Inspector, afraid, but obeying the old race-instinct
which recognizes a drop of White blood as far as it can be diluted,
said:--"What orders does the Sahib give? "

The "Sahib" decided Michele. Though horribly frightened, he felt that,
for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial uncle in
his pedigree, was the only representative of English authority in the
place. Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees, and took the
situation on himself.