No More Learning

The servant knew no more what he had bought than
the master; but a man looking over Churton's collection of
curiosities--Churton was an Assistant Commissioner by the way--saw and
held his tongue. He was an Englishman; but knew how to believe. Which
shows that he was different from most Englishmen. He knew that it was
dangerous to have any share in the little box when working or dormant;
for unsought Love is a terrible gift.

Pack--"Grubby" Pack, as we used to call him--was, in every way, a nasty
little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake. He was three
inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword was
a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, I suppose, it
was his wizenedness and worthlessness that made him fall so hopelessly
in love with Miss Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five foot seven in
her tennis shoes. He was not content with falling in love quietly,
but brought all the strength of his miserable little nature into the
business. If he had not been so objectionable, one might have pitied
him. He vapored, and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and
tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis's big, quiet, gray eyes,
and failed. It was one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in
this country where we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on
one side, without the faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis
looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road. He had
no prospects beyond Captain's pay, and no wits to help that out by one
anna. In a large-sized man, love like his would have been touching.

In a good man it would have been grand. He being what he was, it was
only a nuisance.

You will believe this much. What you will not believe, is what follows:
Churton, and The Man who Knew that the Bisara was, were lunching at the
Simla Club together. Churton was complaining of life in general. His
best mare had rolled out of stable down the hill and had broken her
back; his decisions were being reversed by the upper Courts, more
than an Assistant Commissioner of eight years' standing has a right to
expect; he knew liver and fever, and, for weeks past, had felt out of
sorts. Altogether, he was disgusted and disheartened.

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world knows, in two
sections, with an arch-arrangement dividing them. Come in, turn to your
own left, take the table under the window, and you cannot see any one
who has come in, turning to the right, and taken a table on the right
side of the arch. Curiously enough, every word that you say can be
heard, not only by the other diner, but by the servants beyond the
screen through which they bring dinner. This is worth knowing: an
echoing-room is a trap to be forewarned against.

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man who Knew told
Churton the story of the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length than
I have told it to you in this place; winding up with the suggestion that
Churton might as well throw the little box down the hill and see whether
all his troubles would go with it. In ordinary ears, English ears, the
tale was only an interesting bit of folk-lore. Churton laughed,
said that he felt better for his tiffin, and went out. Pack had been
tiffining by himself to the right of the arch, and had heard everything.
He was nearly mad with his absurd infatuation for Miss Hollis that all
Simla had been laughing about.

It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves beyond reason, he
is ready to go beyond reason to gratify his feelings. Which he would not
do for money or power merely. Depend upon it, Solomon would never have
built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with queer names, if
there had not been trouble of some kind in his zenana, and nowhere else.
But this is beside the story. The facts of the case are these: Pack
called on Churton next day when Churton was out, left his card, and
STOLE the Bisara of Pooree from its place under the clock on the
mantelpiece! Stole it like the thief he was by nature. Three days later,
all Simla was electrified by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted
Pack--the shrivelled rat, Pack! Do you desire clearer evidence than
this? The Bisara of Pooree had been stolen, and it worked as it had
always done when won by foul means.

There are three or four times in a man's life when he is justified in
meddling with other people's affairs to play Providence.

The Man who Knew felt that he WAS justified; but believing and acting on
a belief are quite different things. The insolent satisfaction of Pack
as he ambled by the side of Miss Hollis, and Churton's striking release
from liver, as soon as the Bisara of Pooree had gone, decided the Man.
He explained to Churton and Churton laughed, because he was not brought
up to believe that men on the Government House List steal--at least
little things. But the miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that
tailor, Pack, decided him to take steps on suspicion. He vowed that he
only wanted to find out where his ruby-studded silver box had vanished
to. You cannot accuse a man on the Government House List of stealing.
And if you rifle his room you are a thief yourself. Churton, prompted
by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary. If he found nothing in Pack's
room. . . . but it is not nice to think of what would have happened in
that case.

Pack went to a dance at Benmore--Benmore WAS Benmore in those days, and
not an office--and danced fifteen waltzes out of twenty-two with Miss
Hollis. Churton and The Man took all the keys that they could lay hands
on, and went to Pack's room in the hotel, certain that his servants
would be away. Pack was a cheap soul. He had not purchased a decent
cash-box to keep his papers in, but one of those native imitations that
you buy for ten rupees. It opened to any sort of key, and there at the
bottom, under Pack's Insurance Policy, lay the Bisara of Pooree!

Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of Pooree in his pocket, and
went to the dance with The Man. At least, he came in time for supper,
and saw the beginning of the end in Miss Hollis's eyes. She was
hysterical after supper, and was taken away by her Mamma.

At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in his pocket, Churton twisted
his foot on one of the steps leading down to the old Rink, and had to be
sent home in a rickshaw, grumbling. He did not believe in the Bisara of
Pooree any the more for this manifestation, but he sought out Pack and
called him some ugly names; and "thief" was the mildest of them. Pack
took the names with the nervous smile of a little man who wants both
soul and body to resent an insult, and went his way. There was no public
scandal.

A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis.

There had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said.

So he went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if he
lives to be a Colonel.

Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of Pooree as a
gift. The Man took it, went down to the Cart Road at once, found an ekka
pony with a blue head-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the
necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven that he was
rid of a danger. Remember, in case you ever find it, that you must not
destroy the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain why just now,
but the power lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max
Muller could tell you more about it than I.

You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. If ever you come
across a little silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch long
by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold
cloth, inside it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will
discover for yourself whether my story is true or false.

Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you had
not killed yourself in the beginning.




THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS.

"If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious? "
--Opium Smoker's Proverb.

This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste,
spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and
I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions so:--

It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'
quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque
of Wazir Khan. I don't mind telling any one this much, but I defy him
to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might
even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none
the wiser. We used to call the gully, "the Gully of the Black Smoke,"
but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey
couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you
reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.

It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it
first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that
he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped
bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up
north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in
peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and
not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find
all over the City. No; the old man knew his business thoroughly, and he
was most clean for a Chinaman. He was a one-eyed little chap, not much
more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone. All the
same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen.
Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day
and night, night and day, was a caution. I've been at it five years, and
I can do my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a child to
Fung-Tching that way. All the same, the old man was keen on his money,
very keen; and that's what I can't understand. I heard he saved a good
deal before he died, but his nephew has got all that now; and the old
man's gone back to China to be buried.

He kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat
as a new pin. In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss--almost
as ugly as Fung-Tching--and there were always sticks burning under his
nose; but you never smelt 'em when the pipes were going thick. Opposite
the Joss was Fung-Tching's coffin. He had spent a good deal of his
savings on that, and whenever a new man came to the Gate he was always
introduced to it. It was lacquered black, with red and gold writings
on it, and I've heard that Fung-Tching brought it out all the way from
China. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I know that, if I
came first in the evening, I used to spread my mat just at the foot of
it. It was a quiet corner you see, and a sort of breeze from the gully
came in at the window now and then. Besides the mats, there was no other
furniture in the room--only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and
blue and purple with age and polish.

Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place "The Gate of a Hundred
Sorrows. " (He was the only Chinaman I know who used bad-sounding fancy
names. Most of them are flowery. As you'll see in Calcutta. ) We used
to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows on you so much, if you're
white, as the Black Smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium doesn't
tell on him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good deal. Of
course, there are some people that the Smoke doesn't touch any more than
tobacco would at first. They just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep
naturally, and next morning they are almost fit for work. Now, I was
one of that sort when I began, but I've been at it for five years pretty
steadily, and its different now. There was an old aunt of mine, down
Agra way, and she left me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a
month secured. Sixty isn't much. I can recollect a time, seems hundreds
and hundreds of years ago, that I was getting my three hundred a month,
and pickings, when I was working on a big timber contract in Calcutta.

I didn't stick to that work for long. The Black Smoke does not allow of
much other business; and even though I am very little affected by it, as
men go, I couldn't do a day's work now to save my life. After all, sixty
rupees is what I want. When old Fung-Tching was alive he used to draw
the money for me, give me about half of it to live on (I eat very
little), and the rest he kept himself. I was free of the Gate at any
time of the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when I liked,
so I didn't care. I know the old man made a good thing out of it; but
that's no matter. Nothing matters, much to me; and, besides, the money
always came fresh and fresh each month.

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was first opened. Me,
and two Baboos from a Government Office somewhere in Anarkulli, but they
got the sack and couldn't pay (no man who has to work in the daylight
can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a Chinaman
that was Fung-Tching's nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of
money somehow; an English loafer--Mac-Somebody I think, but I have
forgotten--that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they
said he had saved Fung-Tching's life at some trial in Calcutta when
he was a barrister): another Eurasian, like myself, from Madras; a
half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the
North. I think they must have been Persians or Afghans or something.
There are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular. I
don't know what happened to the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died
after six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles
and nose-ring for himself. But I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank
as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in
a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air.

They found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me,
the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used
to live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians.
The Memsahib looks very old now. I think she was a young woman when the
Gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds
and hundreds of years old. It is very hard to keep count of time in the
Gate, and besides, time doesn't matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees
fresh and fresh every month.

A very, very long while ago, when I used to be getting three hundred
and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at
Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she's dead now. People said that I
killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Perhaps I did, but it's so long
since it doesn't matter. Sometimes when I first came to the Gate, I used
to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and done with long ago, and
I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month, and am quite happy.
Not DRUNK happy, you know, but always quiet and soothed and contented.

How did I take to it? It began at Calcutta. I used to try it in my own
house, just to see what it was like. I never went very far, but I think
my wife must have died then. Anyhow, I found myself here, and got to
know Fung-Tching. I don't remember rightly how that came about; but he
told me of the Gate and I used to go there, and, somehow, I have never
got away from it since. Mind you, though, the Gate was a respectable
place in Fung-Tching's time where you could be comfortable, and not at
all like the chandoo-khanas where the niggers go. No; it was clean and
quiet, and not crowded. Of course, there were others beside us ten
and the man; but we always had a mat apiece with a wadded woollen
head-piece, all covered with black and red dragons and things; just like
a coffin in the corner.

At the end of one's third pipe the dragons used to move about and fight.
I've watched 'em, many and many a night through. I used to regulate
my Smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to make 'em stir.
Besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old Fung-Tching
is dead. He died a couple of years ago, and gave me the pipe I always
use now--a silver one, with queer beasts crawling up and down the
receiver-bottle below the cup. Before that, I think, I used a big bamboo
stem with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green jade mouthpiece.
It was a little thicker than a walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet,
very sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn't, and
I've got to clean it out now and then, that's a great deal of trouble,
but I smoke it for the old man's sake. He must have made a good thing
out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best
stuff you could get anywhere.

When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it
the "Temple of the Three Possessions;" but we old ones speak of it
as the "Hundred Sorrows," all the same. The nephew does things very
shabbily, and I think the Memsahib must help him. She lives with him;
same as she used to do with the old man. The two let in all sorts of low
people, niggers and all, and the Black Smoke isn't as good as it used
to be. I've found burnt bran in my pipe over and over again. The old man
would have died if that had happened in his time. Besides, the room
is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. The
coffin has gone--gone to China again--with the old man and two ounces of
smoke inside it, in case he should want 'em on the way.

The Joss doesn't get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used to;
that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He's all brown, too, and
no one ever attends to him. That's the Memsahib's work, I know; because,
when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a
waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss
wouldn't know the difference. So now we've got the sticks mixed with
a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour longer to burn, and smell
stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get
on if they try that sort of thing.

The Joss doesn't like it. I can see that. Late at night, sometimes, he
turns all sorts of queer colors--blue and green and red--just as he used
to do when old Fung-Tching was alive; and he rolls his eyes and stamps
his feet like a devil.

I don't know why I don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a little
room of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if
I went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's so much
trouble, and I've grown to be very fond of the Gate. It's not much to
look at. Not what it was in the old man's time, but I couldn't leave it.
I've seen so many come in and out. And I've seen so many die here on the
mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I've seen some
things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange
when you're on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was,
it wouldn't matter.

Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his people, and never got
in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and such. But the nephew
isn't half so careful.
He tells everywhere that he keeps a "first-chop"
house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like
Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a little bit more known
than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. The nephew daren't get
a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. He has
to keep us three of course--me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian.
We're fixtures.

But he wouldn't give us credit for a pipeful--not for anything.

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and
the Madras man are terrible shaky now. They've got a boy to light their
pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them
carried out before me. I don't think I shall ever outlive the Memsahib
or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black-Smoke, and
Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him, though he DOES smoke
cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her
time; and SHE died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the
old man hung up her pipe just above the Joss. He was always fond of her,
I fancy. But he took her bangles just the same.

I should like to die like the bazar-woman--on a clean, cool mat with a
pipe of good stuff between my lips. When I feel I'm going, I shall ask
Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and
fresh, as long as he pleases, and watch the black and red dragons have
their last big fight together; and then. . . .

Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters much to me--only I wished
Tsin-ling wouldn't put bran into the Black Smoke.




THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN.

"Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home little
children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying. "
--Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood
on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was
cleaning for me.

"Does the Heaven-born want this ball? " said Imam Din, deferentially.

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a
polo-ball to a khitmatgar?

"By Your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and
desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself. "

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting
to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the
verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of
small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground.
Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his
treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo-ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was
aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a
ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the
tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning
to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the
"little son. "

He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in
his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into
the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground
with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what
was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the
servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever
done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing
sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner
who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief.

"This boy," said Imam Din, judicially, "is a budmash, a big budmash.
He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior. " Renewed
yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam
Din.

"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib is not angry, and take him
away. " Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had
now gathered all his shirt round his neck, string-wise, and the yell
subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said Imam
Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is Muhammad Din, and he
is a budmash. " Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round,
in his father's arms, and said gravely:--"It is true that my name is
Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a MAN! "

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did
he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the compound,
we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was
confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side and "Salaam Muhammad Din" from
mine. Daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the
fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered
trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that
my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the
compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands
of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down
the ground. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six
shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that
circle again, was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick
alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a
little bank of dust. The bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea for
the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did
not much disfigure my garden.

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then
or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me
unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads,
dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all
hope of mending. Next morning I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to
himself over the ruin I had wrought.

Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for
spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish using bad language
the while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at effacing every trace
of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful
apologetic face that he said, "Talaam Tahib," when I came home from the
office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that
by my singular favor he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased.
Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an
edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble
orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning
magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth
water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy,
from my fowls--always alone and always crooning to himself.

A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his
little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something
more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I
disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his
crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in dust. It
would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two
yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never
completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive,
and no "Talaam Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to
the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day, Imam Din told me
that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He
got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left Imam
Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met
on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one
other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that
was left of little Muhammad Din.




ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS.

If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care
that you do not fall in.
--Hindu Proverb.

Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a
young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is
an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important and business-like,
and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of liver, or suffers
from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very
happy in a tender, twilight fashion.

Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him. It was four
years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it.

She had married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning, she
had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more than
a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in his
welfare. " This startlingly new and original remark gave Hannasyde
something to think over for two years; and his own vanity filled in
the other twenty-four months. Hannasyde was quite different from Phil
Garron, but, none the less, had several points in common with that far
too lucky man.

He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It
brought him happily through the Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely.
There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which
he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex
to him. Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He
kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while.

Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the
Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill,
one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down
in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the
girl who had made him so happily unhappy.

Hannasyde leaned against the railing and gasped. He wanted to run
downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went
forward with most of his blood in his temples. It was impossible, for
many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl he had
known. She was, he discovered later, the wife of a man from Dindigul, or
Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she had come up to Simla
early in the season for the good of her health.

She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of the
season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla again, her
proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde, raw and
savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with himself
for one measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you must
decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love, and how
much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself, affected
the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human likelihood
cross his path again. So whatever he did didn't much matter. She was
marvellously like the girl who "took a deep interest" and the rest of
the formula. All things considered, it would be pleasant to make the
acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a very
little time--to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again. Every
one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular monomania
was his old love, Alice Chisane.

He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as
he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the
facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties,
and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and
rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are
matters of private arrangement.

Hannasyde had started with the intention of seeing a likeness, and
he ended by doing much more. He wanted to be deceived, he meant to be
deceived, and he deceived himself very thoroughly. Not only were the
face and figure, the face and figure of Alice Chisane, but the voice and
lower tones were exactly the same, and so were the turns of speech; and
the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of gait and gesticulation,
were absolutely and identically the same. The turn of the head was the
same; the tired look in the eyes at the end of a long walk was the same;
the sloop and wrench over the saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the
same; and once, most marvellous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to
herself in the next room, while Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a
ride, hummed, note for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice in the
second line:--"Poor Wandering One! " exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed
it for Hannasyde in the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual
woman herself--in the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she
and Alice Chisane being cast in different moulds. But all that
Hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was this maddening and
perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner. He was bent on making
a fool of himself that way; and he was in no sort disappointed.

Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always pleasant to
any sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of the world,
could make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.

He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man habitually--to
meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes.

Anything she told him to do was law; and he was, there could be no
doubting it, fond of her company so long as she talked to him, and kept
on talking about trivialities. But when she launched into expression of
her personal views and her wrongs, those small social differences
that make the spice of Simla life, Hannasyde was neither pleased nor
interested. He didn't want to know anything about Mrs. Landys-Haggert,
or her experiences in the past--she had travelled nearly all over the
world, and could talk cleverly--he wanted the likeness of Alice Chisane
before his eyes and her voice in his ears.

Anything outside that, reminding him of another personality jarred, and
he showed that it did.

Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert turned on
him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. "Mr. Hannasyde,"
said she, "will you be good enough to explain why you have appointed
yourself my special cavalier servente? I don't understand it. But I
am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that you don't care the least
little bit in the world for ME. " This seems to support, by the way, the
theory that no man can act or tell lies to a woman without being found
out. Hannasyde was taken off his guard. His defence never was a strong
one, because he was always thinking of himself, and he blurted out,
before he knew what he was saying, this inexpedient answer:--"No more I
do. "

The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Haggert laugh.
Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's lucid explanation,
Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of scorn in her
voice:--"So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of
your tattered affections on, am I? "

Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted himself
generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane, which was
unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that Mrs. Haggert
had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde.

Only--only no woman likes being made love through instead of
to--specially on behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing.

Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular exhibition
of himself. He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of
Simla.

When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place and Mrs.
Haggert to hers. "It was like making love to a ghost," said Hannasyde
to himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my work. " But
he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-Chisane ghost; and he
could not be certain whether it was Haggert or Chisane that made up the
greater part of the pretty phantom. . . . . . . . . .

He got understanding a month later.

A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a
heartless Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to the
other. You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy till
he or she dies. There was a case once--but that's another story.

Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the Frontier at
two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step, from
Dindigul to his station. He dropped Mrs. Haggert at Lucknow, to stay
with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the Chutter
Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home a little
comfortable. Lucknow was Hannasyde's station, and Mrs. Haggert stayed
a week there. Hannasyde went to meet her. And the train came in,
he discovered which he had been thinking of for the past month. The
unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. The Lucknow week, with two
dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides together, clinched matters;
and Hannasyde found himself pacing this circle of thought:--He
adored Alice Chisane--at least he HAD adored her. AND he admired
Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like Alice Chisane. BUT Mrs.
Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice Chisane, being a thousand
times more adorable. NOW Alice Chisane was "the bride of another," and
so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good and honest wife too. THEREFORE,
he, Hannasyde, was. . . . here he called himself several hard names,
and wished that he had been wise in the beginning.