No More Learning

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.

Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind, she alone
knows. He seemed to take an unqualified interest in everything connected
with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-Chisane likeness, and he
said one or two things which, if Alice Chisane had been still betrothed
to him, could scarcely have been excused, even on the grounds of the
likeness. But Mrs. Haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long
time in making Hannasyde see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been
to him because of her strange resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde
groaned in his saddle and said, "Yes, indeed," and busied himself with
preparations for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and
miserable.

The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her off
at the Railway Station. She was very grateful for his kindness and the
trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one
who knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And Hannasyde abused
the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the people on the platform,
and prayed that the roof might fall in and slay him.

As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of the
window to say goodbye:--"On second thoughts au revoir, Mr. Hannasyde. I
go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you in Town. "

Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly:--"I hope
to Heaven I shall never see your face again! "

And Mrs. Haggert understood.




WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE.

I closed and drew for my love's sake,
That now is false to me,
And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss,
And set Dumeny free.

And ever they give me praise and gold,
And ever I moan my loss,
For I struck the blow for my false love's sake,
And not for the men at the Moss.
--Tarrant Moss.

One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of atmosphere in
the painter's sense. There are no half-tints worth noticing. Men stand
out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone them down, and nothing to
scale them against. They do their work, and grow to think that there is
nothing but their work, and nothing like their work, and that they are
the real pivots on which the administration turns. Here is an instance
of this feeling. A half-caste clerk was ruling forms in a Pay Office. He
said to me:--"Do you know what would happen if I added or took away one
single line on this sheet? " Then, with the air of a conspirator:--"It
would disorganize the whole of the Treasury payments throughout the
whole of the Presidency Circle! Think of that? "

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own
particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill
themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils through a
district of five thousand square miles.

There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the
Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad.
This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days,
to say:--"Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any
living man. " If you did not say this, you were considered one of mean
understanding.

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal
complications across the Border is of more use; but in Wressley's time,
much attention was paid to the Central Indian States. They were called
"foci" and "factors," and all manner of imposing names.

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. When Wressley
lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were
"assisting the Empire to grapple with seriouspolitical contingencies. "
In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit
near and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall.

Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm, and, to keep
him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was made much
of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was.

He did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what
he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite
so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of India as
Wressley of the Foreign Office. There might be other good men, but the
known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley of the Foreign
Office. We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle"
a fractious big man and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and so
keep all his team level. He conveyed to Wressley the impression which I
have just set down; and even tough men are apt to be disorganized by a
Viceroy's praise. There was a case once--but that is another story.

All India knew Wressley's name and office--it was in Thacker and Spink's
Directory--but who he was personally, or what he did, or what his
special merits were, not fifty men knew or cared. His work filled all
his time, and he found no leisure to cultivate acquaintances beyond
those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots in their 'scutcheons.
Wressley would have made a very good Clerk in the Herald's College had
he not been a Bengal Civilian.

Upon a day, between office and office, great trouble came to
Wressley--overwhelmed him, knocked him down, and left him gasping
as though he had been a little school-boy. Without reason, against
prudence, and at a moment's notice, he fell in love with a frivolous,
golden-haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall on a high, rough
waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap crammed over her eyes. Her name was
Venner--Tillie Venner--and she was delightful.

She took Wressley's heart at a hand-gallop, and Wressley found that it
was not good for man to live alone; even with half the Foreign Office
Records in his presses.

Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was slightly ridiculous.

He did his best to interest the girl in himself--that is to say,
his work--and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear
interested in what, behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs";
for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing
about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort
of error before now.

Providence, however, had care of Wressley. He was immensely struck with
Miss Venner's intelligence. He would have been more impressed had
he heard her private and confidential accounts of his calls. He held
peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls. He said that the best work
of a man's career should be laid reverently at their feet.

Ruskin writes something like this somewhere, I think; but in ordinary
life a few kisses are better and save time.

About a month after he had lost his heart to Miss Venner, and had been
doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his "Native Rule
in Central India" struck Wressley and filled him with joy. It was, as he
sketched it, a great thing--the work of his life--a really comprehensive
survey of a most fascinating subject--to be written with all the special
and laboriously acquired knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office--a
gift fit for an Empress.

He told Miss Venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped, on his
return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance. Would she wait?
Certainly she would. Wressley drew seventeen hundred rupees a month. She
would wait a year for that. Her mamma would help her to wait.

So Wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents, about
a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to Central India
with his notion hot in his head. He began his book in the land he was
writing of. Too much official correspondence had made him a frigid
workman, and he must have guessed that he needed the white light of
local color on his palette. This is a dangerous paint for amateurs to
play with.

Heavens, how that man worked! He caught his Rajahs, analyzed his Rajahs,
and traced them up into the mists of Time and beyond, with their
queens and their concubines. He dated and cross-dated, pedigreed and
triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted,
selected, inferred, calendared and counter-calendared for ten hours a
day. And, because this sudden and new light of Love was upon him, he
turned those dry bones of history and dirty records of misdeeds into
things to weep or to laugh over as he pleased. His heart and soul were
at the end of his pen, and they got into the ink. He was dowered with
sympathy, insight, humor and style for two hundred and thirty days and
nights; and his book was a Book. He had his vast special knowledge with
him, so to speak; but the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry
and the power of the output, were beyond all special knowledge. But I
doubt whether he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may
have lost some happiness. He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for
himself.

Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.

Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in India where every
one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven, by the women
who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to take up points
alone. A good man once started, goes forward; but an average man, so
soon as the woman loses interest in his success as a tribute to her
power, comes back to the battalion and is no more heard of.

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, blushing and
stammering, presented it to Miss Venner. She read a little of it.

I give her review verbatim:--"Oh, your book? It's all about those
how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it. ". . . . . . . . .

Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,--I am not
exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl. All that he could say
feebly was:--"But, but it's my magnum opus! The work of my life. " Miss
Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but she knew that Captain
Kerrington had won three races at the last Gymkhana. Wressley didn't
press her to wait for him any longer. He had sense enough for that.

Then came the reaction after the year's strain, and Wressley went back
to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering,
report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees
a month. He abided by Miss Venner's review. Which proves that the
inspiration in the book was purely temporary and unconnected with
himself. Nevertheless, he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn, five
packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense from Bombay, of the best
book of Indian history ever written.

When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I was turning over
his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of "Native Rule in
Central India"--the copy that Miss Venner could not understand. I read
it, sitting on his mule-trucks, as long as the light lasted, and offered
him his own price for it. He looked over my shoulder for a few pages and
said to himself drearily:--"Now, how in the world did I come to write
such damned good stuff as that? " Then to me:--"Take it and keep
it. Write one of your penny-farthing yarns about its birth.
Perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may have been ordained to that
end. "

Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office was once, struck me
as about the bitterest thing that I had ever heard a man say of his own
work.




BY WORD OF MOUTH.

Not though you die tonight, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
I shall but love you more,
Who from Death's house returning, give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
--Shadow Houses.

This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and
where the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long enough
in this country to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only
write the story as it happened.

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse,"
because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good
Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even with our Deputy
Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse.
He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking as himself. She was
a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "Squash" Hillardyce of the Berars, who
married his Chief's daughter by mistake. But that is another story.

A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is
nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years.
This is a delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one
another. They can live absolutely alone and without interruption--just
as the Dormice did. These two little people retired from the world after
their marriage, and were very happy. They were forced, of course,
to give occasional dinners, but they made no friends hereby, and the
Station went its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally,
that Dormouse was the best of good fellows, though dull. A Civil Surgeon
who never quarrels is a rarity, appreciated as such.

Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of all
in India, where we are few in the land, and very much dependent on each
other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the
world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of
typhoid broke out in the Station in the heart of the cold weather, and
his wife went down. He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted
before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burning with something worse
than simple fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call
on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.
Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very helpless
in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses,
minute by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise's
ears for what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to
look after the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station
that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five
cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did
their best. The women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned
to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those
typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of
the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were
going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise
got a relapse and died in a week and the Station went to the funeral.
Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be
taken away.

After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be
comforted. He did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should
go on leave, and the other men of his own Service told him so. Dumoise
was very thankful for the suggestion--he was thankful for anything in
those days--and went to Chini on a walking-tour.

Chini is some twenty marches from Simla, in the heart of the Hills, and
the scenery is good if you are in trouble. You pass through big,
still deodar-forests, and under big, still cliffs, and over big, still
grass-downs swelling like a woman's breasts; and the wind across the
grass, and the rain among the deodars says:--"Hush--hush--hush. " So
little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to wear down his grief with a
full-plate camera, and a rifle. He took also a useless bearer, because
the man had been his wife's favorite servant. He was idle and a thief,
but Dumoise trusted everything to him.

On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bagi, through the
Forest Reserve which is on the spur of Mount Huttoo. Some men who have
travelled more than a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is
one of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, and ends
suddenly in bleak, nipped hill-side and black rocks. Bagi dak-bungalow
is open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi.
Perhaps that was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven
in the evening, and his bearer went down the hill-side to the village
to engage coolies for the next day's march. The sun had set, and the
night-winds were beginning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise leaned on
the railing of the verandah, waiting for his bearer to return. The man
came back almost immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a
rate that Dumoise fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was running as
hard as he could up the face of the hill.

But there was no bear to account for his terror. He raced to the
verandah and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face
iron-gray. Then he gurgled:--"I have seen the Memsahib! I have seen the
Memsahib! "

"Where? " said Dumoise.

"Down there, walking on the road to the village. She was in a blue
dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said:--'Ram Dass, give
my salaams to the Sahib, and tell him that I shall meet him next month
at Nuddea. ' Then I ran away, because I was afraid. "

What Dumoise said or did I do not know. Ram Dass declares that he said
nothing, but walked up and down the verandah all the cold night, waiting
for the Memsahib to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into
the dark like a madman. But no Memsahib came, and, next day, he went on
to Simla cross-questioning the bearer every hour.

Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise and that she had
lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully
repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram Dass adhered.

He did not know where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would
most certainly never go to Nuddea; even though his pay were doubled.

Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing whatever to do with a doctor
serving in the Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles from
Meridki.

Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki
there to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him
during his tour.