Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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THE CONVERT.

She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife.
One
year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their
only poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side;
so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to
the Mission to be baptized. The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her
Elizabeth, and "Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo
and Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the
wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was after the reign of
the Moravian missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten
her title of "Mistress of the Northern Hills."

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her
own people would have done as much for her under any
circumstances,
I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows
lovely, she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look
upon. Lispeth had a Greek face--one of those faces people paint so
often, and see so seldom. She was of a pale, ivory color and, for
her race, extremely tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were
wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in the abominable print-
cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her on the hill-
side unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the
Romans going out to slay.

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when
she reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls. Her own people
hated
her because she had, they said, become a memsahib and washed
herself daily; and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with
her. Somehow, one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten in
her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. So she played with the
Chaplain's children and took classes in the Sunday School, and
read
all the books in the house, and grew more and more beautiful, like
the Princesses in fairy tales. The Chaplain's wife said that the
girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something
"genteel." But Lispeth did not want to take service. She was very
happy where she was.

When travellers--there were not many in those years--came to
Kotgarth, Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear
they might take her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the
unknown world.

One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth
went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English
ladies--a mile and a half out, and a ride back again. She covered
between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all
about and about, between Kotgarth and Narkunda. This time she
came
back at full dusk, stepping down the breakneck descent into
Kotgarth with something heavy in her arms. The Chaplain's wife
was
dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing hard
and
very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa,
and said simply:

"This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt
himself. We will nurse him, and when he is well, your husband
shall marry him to me."

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her
matrimonial
views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the
man on the sofa needed attention first. He was a young
Englishman,
and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged.
Lispeth
said she had found him down the khud, so she had brought him in.

He was breathing queerly and was unconscious.

He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew
something of
medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she
meant to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her
severely
on the impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, and
repeated her first proposition. It takes a great deal of
Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as
falling in love at first sight. Lispeth, having found the man she
worshipped, did not see why she should keep silent as to her
choice. She had no intention of being sent away, either. She was
going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough to marry
her. This was her little programme.

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman
recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and
Lispeth--especially Lispeth--for their kindness. He was a
traveller in the East, he said--they never talked about "globe-
trotters" in those days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and
small--and had come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and
butterflies among the Simla hills. No one at Simla, therefore,
knew anything about him. He fancied he must have fallen over the
cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk, and that his
coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled. He thought he
would
go back to Simla when he was a little stronger. He desired no
more
mountaineering.

He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength
slowly.

Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his
wife; so the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told him how
matters stood in Lispeth's heart. He laughed a good deal, and said
it was very pretty and romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas;
but, as he was engaged to a girl at Home, he fancied that nothing
would happen. Certainly he would behave with discretion. He did
that. Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, and walk
with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and call her pet names
while he was getting strong enough to go away. It meant nothing
at
all to him, and everything in the world to Lispeth. She was very
happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man to
love.

Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide her feelings,
and the Englishman was amused. When he went away, Lispeth
walked
with him, up the Hill as far as Narkunda, very troubled and very
miserable. The Chaplain' s wife, being a good Christian and
disliking anything in the shape of fuss or scandal--Lispeth was
beyond her management entirely--had told the Englishman to tell
Lispeth that he was coming back to marry her. "She is but a child,
you know, and, I fear, at heart a heathen," said the Chaplain's
wife. So all the twelve miles up the hill the Englishman, with his
arm around Lispeth's waist, was assuring the girl that he would
come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him promise over and
over
again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed out of
sight along the Muttiani path.

Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarth again, and said to
the Chaplain's wife: "He will come back and marry me. He has
gone
to his own people to tell them so." And the Chaplain's wife
soothed Lispeth and said: "He will come back." At the end of two
months, Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the Englishman
had gone over the seas to England. She knew where England was,
because she had read little geography primers; but, of course, she
had no conception of the nature of the sea, being a Hill girl.

There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the House. Lispeth
had
played with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and
put it together of evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to
imagine where her Englishman was. As she had no ideas of
distance
or steamboats, her notions were somewhat erroneous. It would not
have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct; for
the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill
girl. He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting
in Assam. He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth's
name
did not appear.

At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to
Narkunda to see if her Englishman was coming along the road. It
gave her comfort, and the Chaplain's wife, finding her happier,
thought that she was getting over her "barbarous and most
indelicate folly." A little later the walks ceased to help Lispeth
and her temper grew very bad. The Chaplain's wife thought this a
profitable time to let her know the real state of affairs--that the
Englishman had only promised his love to keep her quiet--that he
had never meant anything, and that it was "wrong and improper" of
Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of a
superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his
own people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible,
because he had said he loved her, and the Chaplain's wife had,
with
her own lips, asserted that the Englishman was coming back.

"How can what he and you said be untrue?" asked Lispeth.

"We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child," said the
Chaplain's wife.

"Then you have lied to me," said Lispeth, "you and he?"

The Chaplain's wife bowed her head, and said nothing. Lispeth
was
silent, too for a little time; then she went out down the valley,
and returned in the dress of a Hill girl--infamously dirty, but
without the nose and ear rings. She had her hair braided into the
long pig-tail, helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear.

"I am going back to my own people," said she. "You have killed
Lispeth. There is only left old Jadeh's daughter--the daughter of
a pahari and the servant of Tarka Devi. You are all liars, you
English."

By the time that the Chaplain's wife had recovered from the shock
of the announcement that Lispeth had 'verted to her mother's gods,
the girl had gone; and she never came back.

She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the
arrears of the life she had stepped out of; and, in a little time,
she married a wood-cutter who beat her, after the manner of
paharis, and her beauty faded soon.

"There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the
heathen," said the Chaplain's wife, "and I believe that Lispeth was
always at heart an infidel." Seeing she had been taken into the
Church of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement
does not do credit to the Chaplain's wife.

Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She always had a
perfect command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk,
could sometimes be induced to tell the story of her first love-
affair.

It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so
like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of the
Kotgarth Mission."

THREE AND--AN EXTRA.

"When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with
sticks but with gram."
Punjabi Proverb.

After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a
little one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by
both parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the
current.

In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did not set in
till the third year after the wedding. Bremmil was hard to hold at
the best of times; but he was a beautiful husband until the baby
died and Mrs. Bremmil wore black, and grew thin, and mourned as
if
the bottom of the universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil ought
to have comforted her. He tried to do so, I think; but the more he
comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, consequently, the
more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The fact was that they both
needed a tonic. And they got it. Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh
now, but it was no laughing matter to her at the time.

You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she
existed was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the
"Stormy Petrel." She had won that title five times to my own
certain knowledge. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny,
woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest
manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at
afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call
her--well--NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant, and
sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils
of
malice and mischievousness. She could be nice, though, even to
her
own sex. But that is another story.

Bremmil went off at score after the baby's death and the general
discomfort that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him. She
took
no pleasure in hiding her captives. She annexed him publicly, and
saw that the public saw it. He rode with her, and walked with her,
and talked with her, and picnicked with her, and tiffined at
Peliti's with her, till people put up their eyebrows and said:
"Shocking!" Mrs. Bremmil stayed at home turning over the dead
baby's frocks and crying into the empty cradle. She did not care
to do anything else. But some eight dear, affectionate lady-
friends explained the situation at length to her in case she should
miss the cream of it. Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly, and thanked
them for their good offices. She was not as clever as Mrs.

Hauksbee, but she was no fool. She kept her own counsel, and did
not speak to Bremmil of what she had heard. This is worth
remembering. Speaking to, or crying over, a husband never did
any
good yet.

When Bremmil was at home, which was not often, he was more
affectionate than usual; and that showed his hand. The affection
was forced partly to soothe his own conscience and partly to
soothe
Mrs. Bremmil. It failed in both regards.

Then "the A.-D.-C. in Waiting was commanded by Their
Excellencies,
Lord and Lady Lytton, to invite Mr. and Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil to
Peterhoff on July 26th at 9.30 P. M."--"Dancing" in the bottom-
left-hand corner.

"I can't go," said Mrs. Bremmil, "it is too soon after poor little
Florrie . . . but it need not stop you, Tom."

She meant what she said then, and Bremmil said that he would go
just to put in an appearance. Here he spoke the thing which was
not; and Mrs. Bremmil knew it. She guessed--a woman's guess is
much more accurate than a man's certainty--that he had meant to
go
from the first, and with Mrs. Hauksbee. She sat down to think, and
the outcome of her thoughts was that the memory of a dead child
was
worth considerably less than the affections of a living husband.

She made her plan and staked her all upon it. In that hour she
discovered that she knew Tom Bremmil thoroughly, and this
knowledge
she acted on.

"Tom," said she, "I shall be dining out at the Longmores' on the
evening of the 26th. You'd better dine at the club."

This saved Bremmil from making an excuse to get away and dine
with
Mrs. Hauksbee, so he was grateful, and felt small and mean at the
same time--which was wholesome. Bremmil left the house at five
for
a ride. About half-past five in the evening a large leather-
covered basket came in from Phelps' for Mrs. Bremmil. She was a
woman who knew how to dress; and she had not spent a week on
designing that dress and having it gored, and hemmed, and
herring-
boned, and tucked and rucked (or whatever the terms are) for
nothing. It was a gorgeous dress--slight mourning. I can't
describe it, but it was what The Queen calls "a creation"--a thing
that hit you straight between the eyes and made you gasp. She had
not much heart for what she was going to do; but as she glanced at
the long mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had
never looked so well in her life. She was a large blonde and, when
she chose, carried herself superbly.

After the dinner at the Longmores, she went on to the dance--a
little late--and encountered Bremmil with Mrs. Hauksbee on his
arm.

That made her flush, and as the men crowded round her for dances
she looked magnificent. She filled up all her dances except three,
and those she left blank. Mrs. Hauksbee caught her eye once; and
she knew it was war--real war--between them. She started
handicapped in the struggle, for she had ordered Bremmil about
just
the least little bit in the world too much; and he was beginning to
resent it. Moreover, he had never seen his wife look so lovely.

He stared at her from doorways, and glared at her from passages as
she went about with her partners; and the more he stared, the more
taken was he. He could scarcely believe that this was the woman
with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who used to weep over
the eggs at breakfast.

Mrs. Hauksbee did her best to hold him in play, but, after two
dances, he crossed over to his wife and asked for a dance.

"I'm afraid you've come too late, MISTER Bremmil," she said,
with
her eyes twinkling.

Then he begged her to give him a dance, and, as a great favor, she
allowed him the fifth waltz. Luckily s stood vacant on his
programme. They danced it together, and there was a little flutter
round the room. Bremmil had a sort of notion that his wife could
dance, but he never knew she danced so divinely. At the end of
that waltz he asked for another--as a favor, not as a right; and
Mrs. Bremmil said: "Show me your programme, dear!" He showed
it as
a naughty little schoolboy hands up contraband sweets to a master.

There was a fair sprinkling of "H" on it besides "H" at supper.

Mrs. Bremmil said nothing, but she smiled contemptuously, ran
her
pencil through 7 and 9--two "H's"--and returned the card with her
own name written above--a pet name that only she and her
husband
used. Then she shook her finger at him, and said, laughing: "Oh,
you silly, SILLY boy!"

Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and--she owned as much--felt that she
had
the worst of it. Bremmil accepted 7 and 9 gratefully. They danced
7, and sat out 9 in one of the little tents. What Bremmil said and
what Mrs. Bremmil said is no concern of any one's.

When the band struck up "The Roast Beef of Old England," the
two
went out into the verandah, and Bremmil began looking for his
wife's dandy (this was before 'rickshaw days) while she went into
the cloak-room. Mrs. Hauksbee came up and said: "You take me
in to
supper, I think, Mr. Bremmil." Bremmil turned red and looked
foolish. "Ah--h'm! I'm going home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee.
I
think there has been a little mistake." Being a man, he spoke as
though Mrs. Hauksbee were entirely responsible.

Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloak-room in a swansdown cloak
with a
white "cloud" round her head. She looked radiant; and she had a
right to.

The couple went off in the darkness together, Bremmil riding very
close to the dandy.

Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me--she looked a trifle faded and
jaded
in the lamplight: "Take my word for it, the silliest woman can
manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage
a
fool."

Then we went in to supper.

THROWN AWAY.

"And some are sulky, while some will plunge
[So ho! Steady! Stand still, you!]
Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge.

[There! There! Who wants to kill you?]
Some--there are losses in every trade--
Will break their hearts ere bitted and made,
Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard,
And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard."
Toolungala Stockyard Chorus.

To rear a boy under what parents call the "sheltered life system"
is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not
wise. Unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass
through many unnecessary troubles; and may, possibly, come to
extreme grief simply from ignorance of the proper proportions of
things.

Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked
boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that
blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he
argues
that soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the
house
will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being
young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a
well-mannered
little beast with a chastened appetite. If he had been kept away
from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity
full-grown and with developed teeth, just consider how fearfully
sick and thrashed he would be! Apply that motion to the
"sheltered
life," and see how it works. It does not sound pretty, but it is
the better of two evils.

There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the
"sheltered
life" theory; and the theory killed him dead. He stayed with his
people all his days, from the hour he was born till the hour he
went into Sandhurst nearly at the top of the list. He was
beautifully taught in all that wins marks by a private tutor, and
carried the extra weight of "never having given his parents an
hour's anxiety in his life." What he learnt at Sandhurst beyond
the regular routine is of no great consequence. He looked about
him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, very good. He
ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst not so high as he went in.

Them there was an interval and a scene with his people, who
expected much from him. Next a year of living "unspotted from
the
world" in a third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were
children, and all the seniors old women; and lastly he came out to
India, where he was cut off from the support of his parents, and
had no one to fall back on in time of trouble except himself.

Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take
things too seriously--the midday sun always excepted. Too much
work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too
much
assorted vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter
because every one is being transferred and either you or she leave
the Station, and never return. Good work does not matter, because
a man is judged by his worst output and another man takes all the
credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because
other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India
than
anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must
repeat
them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most
amusements only mean trying to win another person's money.

Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and
if you die another man takes over your place and your office in the
eight hours between death and burial. Nothing matters except
Home
furlough and acting allowances, and these only because they are
scarce. This is a slack, kutcha country where all men work with
imperfect instruments; and the wisest thing is to take no one and
nothing in earnest, but to escape as soon as ever you can to some
place where amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the
having.

But this Boy--the tale is as old as the Hills--came out, and took
all things seriously. He was pretty and was petted. He took the
pettings seriously, and fretted over women not worth saddling a
pony to call upon. He found his new free life in India very good.

It DOES look attractive in the beginning, from a Subaltern's point
of view--all ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. He tasted it as
the puppy tastes the soap. Only he came late to the eating, with a
growing set of teeth. He had no sense of balance--just like the
puppy--and could not understand why he was not treated with the
consideration he received under his father's roof. This hurt his
feelings.

He quarrelled with other boys, and, being sensitive to the marrow,
remembered these quarrels, and they excited him. He found whist,
and gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after
office) good; but he took them seriously too, just as he took the
"head" that followed after drink. He lost his money over whist and
gymkhanas because they were new to him.

He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much energy and
interest over a two-goldmohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with
their manes hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One-half of this
came from inexperience--much as the puppy squabbles with the
corner
of the hearth-rug--and the other half from the dizziness bred by
stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a
livelier one. No one told him about the soap and the blacking
because an average man takes it for granted that an average man is
ordinarily careful in regard to them. It was pitiful to watch The
Boy knocking himself to pieces, as an over-handled colt falls down
and cuts himself when he gets away from the groom.

This unbridled license in amusements not worth the trouble of
breaking line for, much less rioting over, endured for six months--
all through one cold weather--and then we thought that the heat
and
the knowledge of having lost his money and health and lamed his
horses would sober The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this would have happened. You
can see the principle working in any Indian Station. But this
particular case fell through because The Boy was sensitive and
took
things seriously--as I may have said some seven times before. Of
course, we couldn't tell how his excesses struck him personally.

They were nothing very heart-breaking or above the average. He
might be crippled for life financially, and want a little nursing.

Still the memory of his performances would wither away in one
hot
weather, and the shroff would help him to tide over the money
troubles. But he must have taken another view altogether and have
believed himself ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to
him severely when the cold weather ended. That made him more
wretched than ever; and it was only an ordinary "Colonel's
wigging!"

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