No More Learning

He had never looked upon his acquaintance with Mrs. Hauksbee as a matter
for general interest.

The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feeling to the man of no account.
It was intensified later in the day when a luncher at the Club said,
spitefully, "Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are going it.
Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most dangerous woman in
Simla? "

Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh when, would his new clothes be
ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee,
coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked down upon him
approvingly. "He's learning to carry himself as if he were a man,
instead of a piece of furniture, and"--she screwed up her eyes to see
the better through the sunlight--"he is a man when he holds himself like
that. Oh blessed Conceit, what should we be without you? "

With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis Yeere
discovered that he could enter a room without breaking into a gentle
perspiration--could cross one, even to talk to Mrs. Hauksbee, as though
rooms were meant to be crossed. He was for the first time in nine years
proud of himself, and contented with his life, satisfied with his new
clothes, and rejoicing in the friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Conceit is what the poor fellow wants," she said in confidence to Mrs.
Mallowe. "I believe they must use Civilians to plough the fields with in
Lower Bengal. You see I have to begin from the very beginning--haven't
I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he is immensely improved
since I took him in hand. Only give me a little more time and he won't
know himself. "

Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what he had been. One of
his own rank and file put the matter brutally when he asked Yeere, in
reference to nothing, "And who has been making you a Member of Council,
lately? You carry the side of half a dozen of 'em. "

"I--I'm awf'ly sorry. I didn't mean it, you know," said Yeere,
apologetically.

"There'll be no holding you," continued the old stager, grimly. "Climb
down, Otis--climb down, and get all that beastly affectation knocked out
of you with fever! Three thousand a month wouldn't support it. "

Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauksbee. He had come to look upon
her as his Mother Confessor.

"And you apologized! " she said. "Oh, shame! I hate a man who apologizes.
Never apologize for what your friend called 'side. ' Never! It's a man's
business to be insolent and overbearing until he meets with a stronger.
Now, you bad boy, listen to me. "

Simply and straightforwardly, as the 'rickshaw loitered round Jakko,
Mrs. Hauksbee preached to Otis Yeere the Great Gospel of Conceit,
illustrating it with living pictures encountered during their Sunday
afternoon stroll.

"Good gracious! " she ended, with the personal argument, "you'll
apologize next for being my attache? "

"Never! " said Otis Yeere. "That's another thing altogether. I shall
always be"--

"What's coming? " thought Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Proud of that," said Otis.

"Safe for the present," she said to herself.

"But I'm afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshurun, you know. When
he waxed fat, then he kicked. It's the having no worry on one's mind and
the Hill air, I suppose. "

"Hill air, indeed! " said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself. "He'd have been
hiding in the Club till the last day of his leave, if I hadn't
discovered him. " And aloud--"Why shouldn't you be? You have every right
to. "

"I! Why? "

"Oh, hundreds of things. I'm not going to waste this lovely afternoon
by explaining; but I know you have. What was that heap of manuscript you
showed me about the grammar of the aboriginal--what's their names? "

"Gullals. A piece of nonsense. I've far too much work to do to bother
over Gullals now. You should see my District. Come down with your
husband some day and I'll show you round. Such a lovely place in the
Rains! A sheet of water with the railway-embankment and the snakes
sticking out, and, in the summer, green flies and green squash. The
people would die of fear if you shook a dogwhip at 'em. But they know
you're forbidden to do that, so they conspire to make your life a burden
to you. My District's worked by some man at Darjiling, on the strength
of u native pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place! "

Otis Yeere laughed bitterly.

"There's not the least necessity that you should stay in it. Why do
you? "

"Because I must. How'm I to get out of it? "

"How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren't so many people on
the road, I'd like to box your ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look, There
is young Hexarly with six years' service and half your talents. He asked
for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the Convent! There's
McArthurson who has come to his present position by asking--sheer,
downright asking--after he had pushed himself out of the rank and file.
One man is as good as another in your service--believe me. I've seen
Simla for more seasons than I care to think about. Do you suppose men
are chosen for appointments because of their special fitness beforehand?
You have all passed a high test--what do you call it? --in the beginning,
and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you can all
work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it insolence, call
it anything you like, but ask! Men argue--yes, I know what men say--that
a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him.
A weak man doesn't say: 'Give me this and that. ' He whines 'Why haven't
I been given this and that? ' If you were in the Army, I should say learn
to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it is--ask! You
belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet,
or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking
to escape from a squashy green district where you admit you are not
master. Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is
a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were
extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India to take you
over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand chance
if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You have twice the
wits and three times the presence of the men up here, and, and"--

Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued--"and in any way you
look at it, you ought to. You who could go so far! "

"I don't know," said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. "1 haven't such a good opinion of myself. "

It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back
'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly,
almost too tenderly, "I believe in you if you mistrust yourself. Is that
enough, my friend? "

"It is enough," answered Otis, very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had dreamed
eight years ago, but through them all ran, as sheet-lightning through
golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's violet eyes.

Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life--the only existence
in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among
men and women, in the pauses between dance, play and Gymkhana, that Otis
Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self-confidence in his eyes,
had "done something decent" in the wilds whence he came. He had brought
an erring Municipality to reason, appropriated the funds on his own
responsibility, and saved the lives of hundreds, He knew more about
the Gullals than any living man. Had a vast knowledge of the aboriginal
tribes; was, in spite of his juniority, the greatest authority on the
aboriginal Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till
The Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs. Hauksbee, and prided himself
upon picking people's brains, explained they were a tribe of ferocious
hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship even the Great Indian
Empire would find it worth her while to secure. Now we know that Otis
Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS notes of six years' standing on
the same Gullals. He had told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the
fever their negligence had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk,
and savagely angry at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned
the collective eyes of his "intelligent local board" for a set of
haramzadas. Which act of "brutal and tyrannous oppression" won him
a Reprimand Royal from the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as
amended for Northern consumption we find no record of this. Hence we are
forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee "edited" his reminiscences before
sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well knew, to exaggerate good or
evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as befitted the hero of many tales.

"You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now,
and talk your brightest and best," said Mrs. Hauksbee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of or
above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his head, he can meet
both sexes on equal ground--an advantage never intended by Providence,
who fashioned Man on one day and Woman on another, in sign that neither
should know more than a very little of the other's life. Such a man goes
far, or, the counsel being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world
seeks the reason.

Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee who, again, had all Mrs. Mallowe's wisdom
at her disposal, proud of himself and, in the end, believing in himself
because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for any fortune that
might befall, certain that it would be good. He would fight for his own
hand, and intended that this second struggle should lead to better issue
than the first helpless surrender of the bewildered 'Stunt.

What might have happened, it is impossible to say. This lamentable thing
befell, bred directly by a statement of Mrs. Hauksbee that she would
spend the next season in Darjiling.

"Are you certain of that? " said Otis Yeere.

"Quite. We're writing about a house now. "

Otis Yeere "stopped dead," as Mrs. Hauksbee put it in discussing the
relapse with Mrs. Mallowe.

"He has behaved," she said, angrily, "just like Captain Kerrington's
pony--only Otis is a donkey--at the last Gymkhana. Planted his forefeet
and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man's going to disappoint
me. What shall I do? "

As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring, but on this
occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost.

"You have managed cleverly so far," she said. "Speak to him, and ask him
what he means. "

"I will--at tonight's dance. "

"No-o, not at a dance," said Mrs. Mallowe, cautiously. "Men are never
themselves quite at dances. Better wait till tomorrow morning. "

"Nonsense. If he's going to revert in this insane way, there isn't a day
to lose. Are you going? No? Then sit up for me, there's a dear. I shan't
stay longer than supper under any circumstances. "

Mrs. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long and earnestly into
the fire, and sometimes smiling to herself.

* * * * *

"Oh! oh! oh! The man's an idiot! A raving, positive idiot! I'm sorry I
ever saw him! "

Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe's house, at midnight, almost in
tears.

"What in the world has happened? " said Mrs. Mallowe, but her eyes showed
that she had guessed an answer.

"Happened! Everything has happened! He was there. I went to him and
said, 'Now, what does this nonsense mean? ' Don't laugh, dear, I can't
bear it. But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a square, and
I sat it out with him and wanted an explanation, and he said--Oh! I
haven't patience with such idiots!
You know what I said about going
to Darjiling next year? It doesn't matter to me where I go. I'd have
changed the Station and lost the rent to have saved this. He said, in
so many words, that he wasn't going to try to work up any more,
because--because he would be shifted into a province away from
Darjiling, and his own District, where these creatures are, is within a
day's journey"--

"Ah-hh! " said Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully
tracked an obscure word through a large dictionary.

"Did you ever hear of anything so mad--so absurd? And he had the ball
at his feet. He had only to kick it! I would have made him anything!
Anything in the wide world. He could have gone to the world's end. I
would have helped him. I made him, didn't I, Polly? Didn't I create
that man? Doesn't he owe everything to me? And to reward me, just when
everything was nicely arranged, by this lunacy that spoiled everything! "

"Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly. "

"Oh, Polly, don't laugh at me! I give men up from this hour. I could
have killed him then and there. What right had this man--this Thing I
had picked out of his filthy paddy-fields--to make love to me? "

"He did that, did he? "

"He did. I don't remember half he said, I was so angry. Oh, but such
a funny thing happened! I can't help laughing at it now, though I felt
nearly ready to cry with rage. He raved and I stormed--I'm afraid we
must have made an awful noise in our kala juggah. Protect my character,
dear, if it's all over Simla by tomorrow--and then he bobbed forward in
the middle of this insanity--I firmly believe the man's demented--and
kissed me! "

"Morals above reproach," purred Mrs. Mallowe.

"So they were--so they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't believe
he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and
it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin--here. "
Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan. "Then, of
course, I was furiously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman,
and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily
that I couldn't be very angry. Then I came away straight to you. "

"Was this before or after supper? "

"Oh! before--oceans before. Isn't it perfectly disgusting? "

"Let me think. I withhold judgment till tomorrow. Morning brings
counsel. "

But morning brought only a servant with a dainty bouquet of Annandale
roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at the dance at Viceregal Lodge that
night.

"He doesn't seem to be very penitent," said Mrs. Mallowe. "What's the
billet-doux in the centre? "

Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly folded note,--another accomplishment
that she had taught Otis,--read it, and groaned tragically.

"Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry! Is it his own, do you think?
Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a maudlin idiot! "

"No. It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and, in view of the facts of
the case, as Jack says, uncommonly well chosen. Listen:

"'Sweet thou has trod on a heart--
Pass! There's a world full of men
And women as fair as thou art,
Must do such things now and then.

"'Thou only hast stepped unaware--
Malice not one can impute;
And why should a heart have been there,
In the way of a fair woman's foot? '

"I didn't--I didn't--I didn't! " said Mrs. Hauksbee, angrily, her
eyes filling with tears; "there was no malice at all. Oh, it's too
vexatious! "

"You've misunderstood the compliment," said Mrs. Mallowe. "He clears
you completely and--ahem--I should think by this, that he has cleared
completely too. My experience of men is that when they begin to quote
poetry, they are going to flit. Like swans singing before they die, you
know. "

"Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way. "

"Do I? Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I should say that
you've done a certain amount of damage to his heart. "

"Oh, you never can tell about a man! " said Mrs. Hauksbee, with deep
scorn.

* * * * *

Reviewing the matter as an impartial outsider, it strikes me that I'm
about the only person who has profited by the education of Otis Yeere.
It comes to twenty-seven pages and bittock.




AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

Men say it was a stolen tide--
The Lord that sent it he knows all,
But in mine ear will aye abide
The message that the bells let fall,
And awesome bells they were to me,
That in the dark rang, "Enderby. "
--Jean Ingelow.

Once upon a time there was a man and his Wife and a Tertium Quid.

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The Man should
have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the Tertium Quid,
who, again, should have married a wife of his own, after clean and
open flirtations, to which nobody can possibly object, round Jakko or
Observatory Hill. When you see a young man with his pony in a white
lather, and his hat on the back of his head flying down-hill at fifteen
miles an hour to meet a girl who will be properly surprised to meet
him, you naturally approve of that young man, and wish him Staff
Appointments, and take an interest in his welfare, and, as the proper
time comes, give them sugar-tongs or side-saddles, according to your
means and generosity.

The Tertium Quid flew down-hill on horseback, but it was to meet the
Man's Wife; and when he flew up-hill it was for the same end. The Man
was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend on dresses and
four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive luxuries of that kind. He
worked very hard, and sent her a letter or a post-card daily. She also
wrote to him daily, and said that she was longing for him to come up to
Simla. The Tertium Quid used to lean over her shoulder and laugh as she
wrote the notes. Then the two would ride to the Post Office together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to pass
judgment on circumstantial evidence, which is the most untrustworthy in
the Courts. For these reasons, and for others which need not appear,
I decline to state positively whether there was anything irretrievably
wrong in the relations between the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If
there was, and hereon you must form your own opinion, it was the Man's
Wife's fault. She was kittenish in her manners, wearing generally an
air of soft and fluffy innocence. But she was deadly learned and
evil-instructed; and, now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw
this, shuddered and almost drew back. Men are occasionally particular,
and the least particular men are always the most exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of tearing friendships. Certain
attachments which have set and crystallized through half a dozen seasons
acquire almost the sanctity of the marriage bond, and are revered as
such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all appearance,
equally venerable, never seem to win any recognized official status;
while a chance-sprung acquaintance now two months born, steps into the
place which by right belongs to the senior. There is no law reducible to
print which regulates these affairs.

Some people have a gift which secures them infinite toleration, and
others have not. The Man's Wife had not. If she looked over the garden
wall, for instance, women taxed her with stealing their husbands. She
complained pathetically that she was not allowed to choose her own
friends. When she put up her big white muff to her lips, and gazed over
it and under her eyebrows at you as she said this thing, you felt
that she had been infamously misjudged, and that all the other women's
instincts were all wrong; which was absurd. She was not allowed to own
the Tertium Quid in peace; and was so strangely constructed that she
would not have enjoyed peace had she been so permitted. She preferred
some semblance of intrigue to cloak even her most commonplace actions.

After two months of riding, first round Jakko, then Elysium, then Summer
Hill, then Observatory Hill, then under Jutogh, and lastly up and down
the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, she said to the
Tertium Quid, "Frank, people say we are too much together, and people
are so horrid. "

The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid people
were unworthy of the consideration of nice people.

"But they have done more than talk--they have written--written to my
hubby--I'm sure of it," said the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter
from her husband out of her saddle-pocket and gave it to the Tertium
Quid.

It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in the
Plains on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight
hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers. It is said
that, perhaps, she had no thought of the unwisdom of allowing her name
to be so generally coupled with the Tertium Quid's; that she was too
much of a child to understand the dangers of that sort of thing; that
he, her husband, was the last man in the world to interfere jealously
with her little amusements and interests, but that it would be better
were she to drop the Tertium Quid quietly and for her husband's sake.
The letter was sweetened with many pretty little pet names, and it
amused the Tertium Quid considerably. He and She laughed over it, so
that you, fifty yards away, could see their shoulders shaking while the
horses slouched along side by side.

Their conversation was not worth reporting. The upshot of it was that,
next day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid together. They
had both gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a rule, is only visited
officially by the inhabitants of Simla.

A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding, and the
coffin creaking as it swings between the bearers, is one of the most
depressing things on this earth, particularly when the procession passes
under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe Hotel, where the sun is
shut out and all the hill streams are wailing and weeping together as
they go down the valleys.

Occasionally folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are
transferred so often that, at the end of the second year, the Dead have
no friends--only acquaintances who are far too busy amusing themselves
up the hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a Cemetery as
a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man would have said simply
"Let people talk. We'll go down the Mall. " A woman is made differently,
especially if she be such a woman as the Man's Wife. She and the Tertium
Quid enjoyed each other's society among the graves of men and women whom
they had known and danced with aforetime.

They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to
the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground and where
the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are not ready.
Each well-regulated India Cemetery keeps half a dozen graves permanently
open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these
are more usually baby's size, because children who come up weakened and
sick from the Plains often succumb to the effects of the Rains in
the Hills or get pneumonia from their ayahs taking them through damp
pine-woods after the sun has set. In Cantonments, of course, the man's
size is more in request; these arrangements varying with the climate and
population.

One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just arrived in the
Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground. They had marked out a
full-size grave, and the Tertium Quid asked them whether any Sahib was
sick. They said that they did not know; but it was an order that they
should dig a Sahib's grave.

"Work away," said the Tertium Quid, "and let's see how it's done. "

The coolies worked away, and the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid watched
and talked for a couple of hours while the grave was being deepened Then
a coolie, taking the earth in blankets as it was thrown up, jumped over
the grave.

"That's queer," said the Tertium Quid. "Where's my ulster? "

"What's queer? " said the Man's Wife.

"I have got a chill down my back just as if a goose had walked over my
grave. "

"Why do you look at the thing, then? " said the Man's Wife. "Let us go. "

The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave, and stared without
answering for a space. Then he said, dropping a pebble down, "It
is nasty and cold; horribly cold. I don't think I shall come to the
Cemetery any more. I don't think grave-digging is cheerful. "

The two talked and agreed that the Cemetery was depressing. They also
arranged for a ride next day out from the Cemetery through the Mashobra
Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, because all the world was going to a
garden-party at Viceregal Lodge, and all the people of Mashobra would go
too.

Coming up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid's horse tried to bolt up
hill, being tired with standing so long, and managed to strain a back
sinew.

"I shall have to take the mare tomorrow," said the Tertium Quid, "and
she will stand nothing heavier than a snaffle. "

They made their arrangements to meet in the Cemetery, after allowing
all the Mashobra people time to pass into Simla. That night it rained
heavily, and next day, when the Tertium Quid came to the trysting-place,
he saw that the new grave had a foot of water in it, the ground being a
tough and sour clay.

"'Jove! That looks beastly," said the Tertium Quid. "Fancy being boarded
up and dropped into that well! "

They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing with the snaffle and
picking her way as though she were shod with satin, and the sun shining
divinely. The road below Mashobra to Fagoo is officially styled the
Himalayan-Thibet Road; but in spite of its name it is not much more than
six feet wide in most places, and the drop into the valley below must be
anything between one and two thousand feet.

"Now we're going to Thibet," said the Man's Wife merrily, as the horses
drew near to Fagoo. She was riding on the cliff-side.

"Into Thibet," said the Tertium Quid, "ever so far from people who say
horrid things, and hubbies who write stupid letters. With you--to the
end of the world! "

A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner, and the mare went
wide to avoid him--forefeet in and haunches out, as a sensible mare
should go.

"To the world's end," said the Man's Wife, and looked unspeakable things
over her near shoulder at the Tertium Quid.

He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it were
on his face, and changed to a nervous grin--the sort of grin men wear
when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to be
sinking by the stem, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to
realize what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the
drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and it was giving way under
her. "What are you doing? " said the Man's Wife. The Tertium Quid gave no
answer. He grinned nervously and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped
with her forefeet on the road, and the struggle began. The Man's Wife
screamed, "Oh, Frank, get off! "

But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle--his face blue and
white--and he looked into the Man's Wife's eyes. Then the Man's Wife
clutched at the mare's head and caught her by the nose instead of the
bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down with a scream, the
Tertium Quid upon her, and the nervous grin still set on his face.

The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose earth
falling off the roadway, and the sliding roar of the man and horse going
down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on Frank to leave his
mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He was underneath the mare,
nine hundred feet below, spoiling a patch of Indian corn.

As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of the
evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a temporarily mad
horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes and her mouth open, and
her head like the head of the Medusa. She was stopped by a man at the
risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp heap, and put on
the bank to explain herself. This wasted twenty minutes, and then she
was sent home in a lady's 'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her
hands picking at her riding-gloves.

She was in bed through the following three days, which were rainy; so
she missed attending the funeral of the Tertium Quid, who was lowered
into eighteen inches of water, instead of the twelve to which he had
first objected.




A WAYSIDE COMEDY

Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore
the misery of man is great upon him.
--Eccles. viii. 6.

Fate and the Government of India have turned the Station of Kashima into
a prison; and, because there is no help for the poor souls who are now
lying there in torment, I write this story, praying that the Government
of India may be moved to scatter the European population to the four
winds.

Kashima is bound on all sides by the rock-tipped circle of the Dosehri
hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with roses; in Summer, the roses die and
the hot winds blow from the hills; in Autumn, the white mists from
the hills cover the place as with water; and in Winter the frosts nip
everything young and tender to earth-level. There is but one view in
Kashima--a stretch of perfectly flat pasture and plough-land, running up
to the grey-blue scrub of the Dosehri hills.

There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the tigers
have been long since hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the
snipe only come once a year. Narkarra--one hundred and forty-three miles
by road--is the nearest station to Kashima. But Kashima never goes
to Narkarra, where there are at least twelve English people. It stays
within the circle of the Dosehri hills.

All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to do harm; but all
Kashima knows that she, and she alone, brought about their pain.

Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurrell know this.