Perhaps Bremmil ought to have
comforted
her.
Kipling - Poems
" 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.
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.
Them 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-gold-mohur 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 [missing] 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 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.
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.
Them 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-gold-mohur 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 [missing] 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.
