Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition




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
"ou a Membet 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

T~ EDUCATION OF OTIS VEERE
107


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?"

"G'œllals. 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
MeAr
thurson 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 servie~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 bejorehand? 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 had, 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, inust 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 Darjilmg
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 contin'ted-
A98
"VORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

"and in any way you look at it, you ought to. You who could go so
far!"

"T 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, hut it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the
ungloved paw that rested on the turn~d-backed '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 dramas that he had
dreamed eight years ago, but
through them all ran, as sheet-lightning through golden cloud, the
light of Mrs. Hauksbce's violet
eyes.

Curious and impcnetrable 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 a~original Gullals.
No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The 'lussuek,
who had been calling on Mrs.
~aukshee, and prided himself upon pick-
mg 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 savagel~ 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 Bengat
Government; hut in the anecdote as amended for Northern
consumption we find no record of
this. Hence we ~re forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee edited
his reminiscences before
sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she wel~ 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. Haukshee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a ma~ who has the counsel of a
woman of or above the world to
back him. So lon~ as he keeps his head, he can meet both sexes
on equal ground-an advantag6
never intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and
Woman on another, in sign
that neither should knov' more than a very little of the other'a h'fe.
Such a man goes far, or, the
counsel being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world
seeks the reason.

Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee who,

ThE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE
190

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 Veere.

"Quite. We're writing about a house ~iow.

Otis Yeere "stopped d~ad," 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 Gymichana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on
another step. Polly, my man's going
to disappoint me. What shall I do?"

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

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

'I will-at to~night's dance."

"N~o, not at a dance," said Mrs. Mallowe, cautiously. "Men are
never ~themselves quite at
dances. Better wait 'ill to-morrow morning."

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

Mr~. 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

200
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

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, hut
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 to-morrow-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 wer~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 juriously 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 to-morrow. 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
th,'. 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 thefl


"'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 5 foot?'


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

201
AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

"You've misunderstood the compliment," said Mrs. Mallowe. "He
clears you completely
and-ahem-1 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.


At the Pit's Mouth

Men say it was a stolen tid~


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 he 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-saddlei 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

AT THE PIT'S MOUTh
201


"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 sing'ng 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.



At the Pit's Mouth

Men say it was a stolen tid~


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 Ingelaw~


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 Tertiuin 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 he 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-saddle~ 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

201
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

œoft and fluffy innocence. But she was deidlily learned and
evil-instructed; and, now and again,
when the mask dropped, men saw this, snuduered and~almost
drew back. Men are occasionally
parucular, and the least particular men are always the most
exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of tearing friendships. Certain
attachments ~icli 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 ~enior. There is no law
reducible to print which regulates these affairs.

Some people have a gjft which secures them infinite teleration,
and others have not. The Man's
Wife had not. If she looked over the garden wall, for in-stance,
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 ~he 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
cornmonpiace actions.

Afte~ two months of riding, first
round Jakko, then Elysium, then Sum mer Hill, then Observatory
Hill, thep. 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 oi 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 an~ gave it to the
Tertium Quid.

It was an honest letter, written b~ an honest man, then stewing in
th~ Plains on two hundred
rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundre~ 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,

AT THE PIT'la, MOUTh
203

next day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid
together. They had both gone down
to the Cemetery, whiob, 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 bearer~, 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 bill 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 themsel"es 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
,'ize, 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 blan. kets
as it was thrown up, jumped over the grave.

"That'~ 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 Mm's Wife. "Let us
go."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.