No More Learning

"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. They
are the English population of Kashima, if we except Major Vansuythen,
who is of no importance whatever, and Mrs. Vansuythen, who is the most
important of all.

You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws weaken
in a small and hidden community where there is no public opinion. When
a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of
falling into evil ways. The risk is multiplied by every addition to
the population up to twelve--the Jury-number. After that, fear and
consequent restraint begin, and human action becomes less grotesquely
jerky.

There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen arrived. She was a
charming woman, every one said so everywhere; and she charmed every
one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, since Fate is so
perverse, she cared only for one man, and he was Major Vansuythen. Had
she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been intelligible to
Kashima. But she was a fair woman, with very still grey eyes, the color
of a lake just before the light of the sun touches it. No man who had
seen those eyes, could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she was
to look upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was "not
bad looking, but spoiled by pretending to be so grave. " And yet her
gravity was natural It was not her habit to smile. She merely went
through life, looking at those who passed; and the women objected while
the men fell down and worshipped.

She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to Kashima; but
Major Vansuythen cannot understand why Mrs. Boulte does not drop in
to afternoon tea at least three times a week. "When there are only two
women in one Station, they ought to see a great deal of each other,"
says Major Vansuythen.

Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out of those far-away
places where there is society and amusement, Kurrell had discovered that
Mrs. Boulte was the one woman in the world for him and--you dare not
blame them. Kashima was as out of the world as Heaven or the Other
Place, and the Dosehri hills kept their secret well. Boulte had no
concern in the matter. He was in camp for a fortnight at a time. He was
a hard, heavy man, and neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They
had all Kashima and each other for their very, very own; and Kashima
was the Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte returned from his
wanderings he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call him "old
fellow," and the three would dine together. Kashima was happy then when
the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as Narkarra or the railway
that ran down to the sea. But the Government sent Major Vansuythen to
Kashima, and with him came his wife.

The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert island.
When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to the shore to
make him welcome. Kashima assembled at the masonry platform close to
the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for the Vansuythens. That ceremony was
reckoned a formal call, and made them free of the Station, its rights
and privileges. When the Vansuythens were settled down, they gave a tiny
housewarming to all Kashima; and that made Kashima free of their house,
according to the immemorial usage of the Station.

Then the Rains came, when no one could go into camp, and the Narkarra
Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the cup-like pastures
of Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep. The clouds dropped down from the
Dosehri hills and covered everything.

At the end of the Rains, Boulte's manner toward his wife changed and
became demonstratively affectionate. They had been married twelve years,
and the change startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her husband with the hate
of a woman who has met with nothing but kindness from her mate, and, in
the teeth of this kindness, had done him a great wrong. Moreover,
she had her own trouble to fight with--her watch to keep over her own
property, Kurrell. For two months the Rains had hidden the Dosehri hills
and many other things besides; but when they lifted, they showed Mrs.
Boulte that her man among men, her Ted--for she called him Ted in the
old days when Boulte was out of earshot--was slipping the links of the
allegiance.

"The Vansuythen Woman has taken him," Mrs. Boulte said to herself;
and when Boulte was away, wept over her belief, in the face of the
over-vehement blandishments of Ted. Sorrow in Kashima is as fortunate
as Love, because there is nothing to weaken it save the flight of Time.
Mrs. Boulte had never breathed her suspicion to Kurrell because she was
not certain; and her nature led her to be very certain before she took
steps in any direction. That is why she behaved as she did.

Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the
door-posts of the drawing-room, chewing his moustache. Mrs. Boulte was
putting some flowers into a vase. There is a pretence of civilization
even in Kashima.

"Little woman," said Boulte, quietly, "do you care for me? "

"Immensely," said she, with a laugh. "Can you ask it? "

"But I'm serious," said Boulte. "Do you care for me? "

Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly. "Do you want
an honest answer? "

"Ye-es, I've asked for it. "

Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes, very
distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding her meaning. When
Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he did a little thing, and one not to
be compared to the deliberate pulling down of a woman's homestead about
her own ears. There was no wise female friend to advise Mrs. Boulte,
the singularly cautious wife, to hold her hand. She struck at Boulte's
heart, because her own was sick with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out
with the long strain of watching alone through the Rains. There was
no plan or purpose in her speaking. The sentences made themselves; and
Boulte listened leaning against the door-post with his hands in his
pockets. When all was over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her
nose before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared straight in
front of him at the Dosehri hills.

"Is that all? " he said. "Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know. "

"What are you going to do? " said the woman, between her sobs.

"Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell or send you Home, or
apply for leave to get a divorce? It's two days' dak into Narkarra. " He
laughed again and went on: "I'll tell you what you can do. You can ask
Kurrell to dinner tomorrow--no, on Thursday, that will allow you time to
pack--and you can bolt with him. I give you my word I won't follow. "

He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte sat till
the moonlight streaked the floor, thinking and thinking and thinking.
She had done her best upon the spur of the moment to pull the house
down; but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not understand her
husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of her useless truthfulness
struck her, and she was ashamed to write to Kurrell, saying: "I have
gone mad and told everything. My husband says that I am free to elope
with you. Get a dak for Thursday, and we will fly after dinner. " There
was a cold-bloodedness about that procedure which did not appeal to her.
So she sat still in her own house and thought.

At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn and
haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the evening wore
on, she muttered some expression of sorrow, something approaching to
contrition. Boulte came out of a brown study and said, "Oh, that! I
wasn't thinking about that. By the way, what does Kurrell say to the
elopement? "

"I haven't seen him," said Mrs. Boulte. "Good God! is that all? "

But Boulte was not listening, and her sentence ended in a gulp.

The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did not
appear, and the new life that she, in the five minutes' madness of the
previous evening, had hoped to build out of the ruins of the old, seemed
to be no nearer.

Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in the
veranda, and went out. The morning wore through, and at midday the
tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not cry. She had finished
her crying in the night, and now she did not want to be left alone.
Perhaps the Vansuythen woman would talk to her; and, since talking
opens the heart, perhaps there might be some comfort to be found in her
company. She was the only other woman in the Station.

In Kashima there are no regular calling-hours. Every one can drop in
upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai hat, and
walked across to the Vansuythens's house to borrow last week's Queen.
The two compounds touched, and instead of going up the drive, she
crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house from
the back. As she passed through the dining-room, she heard, behind
the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband's voice,
saying--"But on my Honor! On my Soul and Honor, I tell you she doesn't
care for me. She told me so last night. I would have told you then if
Vansuythen hadn't been with you. If it is for her sake that you'll have
nothing to say to me, you can make your mind easy. It's Kurrell. "

"What? " said Mrs. Vansuythen, with an hysterical little laugh. "Kurrell!
Oh, it can't be. You two must have made some horrible mistake. Perhaps
you--you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or something. Things can't
be as wrong as you say. "

Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man's pleading, and
was desperately trying to keep him to a side-issue.

"There must be some mistake," she insisted, "and it can be all put right
again. "

Boulte laughed grimly.

"It can't be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had never taken the
least--the least interest in your wife, Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He
said he had not. He swore he had not," said Mrs. Vansuythen.

The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a
little, thin woman with big rings round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuythen stood
up with a gasp.

"What was that you said? " asked Mrs. Boulte. "Never mind that man. What
did Ted say to you? What did he say to you? What did he say to you? "

Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the
trouble of her questioner.

"He said--I can't remember exactly what he said--but I understood him
to say--that is--But, really, Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange
question? "

"Will you tell me what he said? " repeated Mrs. Boulte.

Even a tiger will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps, and Mrs.
Vansuythen was only an ordinarily good woman. She began in a sort of
desperation: "Well, he said that he never cared for you at all, and,
of course, there was not the least reason why he should have,
and--and--that was all.