Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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The Babu put on his cap and quietly dropped out of the window;
while the Police Inspector, afraid, but obeying the old race-
instinct which recognizes a drop of White blood as far as it can be
diluted, said:--"What orders does the Sahib give?"

The "Sahib" decided Michele. Though horribly frightened, he felt
that, for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial
uncle in his pedigree, was the only representative of English
authority in the place. Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the
fifty rupees, and took the situation on himself. There were seven
native policemen in Tibasu, and four crazy smooth-bore muskets
among them. All the men were gray with fear, but not beyond
leading. Michele dropped the key of the telegraph instrument, and
went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob. As the
shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and
fired; the men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.

The whole crowd--curs to the backbone--yelled and ran; leaving
one
man dead, and another dying in the road. Michele was sweating
with
fear, but he kept his weakness under, and went down into the town,
past the house where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The
streets were empty. Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for
the mob had been taken at the right time.

Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message to
Chicacola asking for help. Before an answer came, he received a
deputation of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge
said his actions generally were "unconstitional," and trying to
bully him. But the heart of Michele D'Cruze was big and white in
his breast, because of his love for Miss Vezzis, the nurse-girl,
and because he had tasted for the first time Responsibility and
Success. Those two make an intoxicating drink, and have ruined
more men than ever has Whiskey. Michele answered that the Sub-
Judge might say what he pleased, but, until the Assistant Collector
came, the Telegraph Signaller was the Government of India in
Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be held accountable for
further rioting. Then they bowed their heads and said: "Show
mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back in great fear; each
accusing the other of having begun the rioting.

Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,
Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the
Assistant
Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence
of this young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more
and more into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended,
with the strain on the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears,
bred by sorrow that he had killed a man, shame that he could not
feel as uplifted as he had felt through the night, and childish
anger that his tongue could not do justice to his great deeds. It
was the White drop in Michele's veins dying out, though he did not
know it.

But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schooled those
men
of Tibasu, and had conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellent
official turned green, he found time to draught an official letter
describing the conduct of Michele. Which letter filtered through
the Proper Channels, and ended in the transfer of Michele up-
country once more, on the Imperial salary of sixty-six rupees a
month.

So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and
ancientry;
and now there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the
verandahs of the Central Telegraph Office.

But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves were to be
his reward Michele could never, never repeat what he did at
Tibasu
for the sake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl.

Which proves that, when a man does good work out of all
proportion
to his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back
of the virtue.

The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.

WATCHES OF THE NIGHT.

What is in the Brahmin's books that is in the Brahmin's heart.
Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world.
Hindu Proverb.

This began in a practical joke; but it has gone far enough now, and
is getting serious.

Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a
plain leather guard.

The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard, the lip-
strap of a curb-chain. Lip-straps make the best watch guards.

They are strong and short. Between a lip-strap and an ordinary
leather guard there is no great difference; between one Waterbury
watch and another there is none at all. Every one in the station
knew the Colonel's lip-strap. He was not a horsey man, but he
liked people to believe he had been on once; and he wove fantastic
stories of the hunting-bridle to which this particular lip-strap
had belonged. Otherwise he was painfully religious.

Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the Club--both late for
their engagements, and both in a hurry. That was Kismet. The
two
watches were on a shelf below the looking-glass--guards hanging
down. That was carelessness. Platte changed first, snatched a
watch, looked in the glass, settled his tie, and ran. Forty
seconds later, the Colonel did exactly the same thing; each man
taking the other's watch.

You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply
suspicious. They seem--for purely religious purposes, of course--
to know more about iniquity than the Unregenerate. Perhaps they
were specially bad before they became converted! At any rate, in
the imputation of things evil, and in putting the worst
construction on things innocent, a certain type of good people may
be trusted to surpass all others. The Colonel and his Wife were of
that type. But the Colonel's Wife was the worst. She
manufactured
the Station scandal, and--TALKED TO HER AYAH! Nothing
more need be
said. The Colonel's Wife broke up the Laplace's home. The
Colonel's Wife stopped the Ferris-Haughtrey engagement. The
Colonel's Wife induced young Buxton to keep his wife down in the
Plains through the first year of the marriage. Whereby little Mrs.

Buxton died, and the baby with her. These things will be
remembered against the Colonel's Wife so long as there is a
regiment in the country.

But to come back to the Colonel and Platte. They went their
several ways from the dressing-room. The Colonel dined with two
Chaplains, while Platte went to a bachelor-party, and whist to
follow.

Mark how things happen! If Platte's sais had put the new saddle-
pad on the mare, the butts of the territs would not have worked
through the worn leather, and the old pad into the mare's withers,
when she was coming home at two o'clock in the morning. She
would
not have reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and
sent Platte flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept
lawn; and this tale would never have been written. But the mare
did all these things, and while Platte was rolling over and over on
the turf, like a shot rabbit, the watch and guard flew from his
waistcoat--as an Infantry Major's sword hops out of the scabbard
when they are firing a feu de joie--and rolled and rolled in the
moonlight, till it stopped under a window.

Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, put the cart
straight, and went home.

Mark again how Kismet works! This would not happen once in a
hundred years. Towards the end of his dinner with the two
Chaplains, the Colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the
table to look at some Mission Reports. The bar of the watch-guard
worked through the buttonhole, and the watch--Platte's watch--slid
quietly on to the carpet. Where the bearer found it next morning
and kept it.

Then the Colonel went home to the wife of his bosom; but the
driver
of the carriage was drunk and lost his way. So the Colonel
returned at an unseemly hour and his excuses were not accepted.
If
the Colonel's Wife had been an ordinary "vessel of wrath
appointed
for destruction," she would have known that when a man stays
away
on purpose, his excuse is always sound and original. The very
baldness of the Colonel's explanation proved its truth.

See once more the workings of Kismet! The Colonel's watch
which
came with Platte hurriedly on to Mrs. Larkyn's lawn, chose to stop
just under Mrs. Larkyn's window, where she saw it early in the
morning, recognized it, and picked it up. She had heard the crash
of Platte's cart at two o'clock that morning, and his voice calling
the mare names. She knew Platte and liked him. That day she
showed him the watch and heard his story. He put his head on one
side, winked and said:--"How disgusting! Shocking old man! with
his religious training, too! I should send the watch to the
Colonel's Wife and ask for explanations."

Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces--whom she had
known when Laplace and his wife believed in each other--and
answered:--"I will send it. I think it will do her good. But
remember, we must NEVER tell her the truth."

Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel's possession,
and thought that the return of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a
soothing note from Mrs. Larkyn, would merely create a small
trouble
for a few minutes. Mrs. Larkyn knew better. She knew that any
poison dropped would find good holding-ground in the heart of the
Colonel's Wife.

The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on the Colonel's
calling-hours, were sent over to the Colonel's Wife, who wept in
her own room and took counsel with herself.

If there was one woman under Heaven whom the Colonel's Wife
hated
with holy fervor, it was Mrs. Larkyn. Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous
lady, and called the Colonel's Wife "old cat." The Colonel's Wife
said that somebody in Revelations was remarkably like Mrs.
Larkyn.

She mentioned other Scripture people as well. From the Old
Testament. [But the Colonel's Wife was the only person who
cared
or dared to say anything against Mrs. Larkyn. Every one else
accepted her as an amusing, honest little body.] Wherefore, to
believe that her husband had been shedding watches under that
"Thing's" window at ungodly hours, coupled with the fact of his
late arrival on the previous night, was . . . . .

At this point she rose up and sought her husband. He denied
everything except the ownership of the watch. She besought him,
for his Soul's sake, to speak the truth. He denied afresh, with
two bad words. Then a stony silence held the Colonel's Wife,
while
a man could draw his breath five times.

The speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours. It was
made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age
and
sunken cheeks; deep mistrust born of the text that says even little
babies' hearts are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of
Mrs. Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the Colonel's Wife's
upbringing.

Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped Waterbury,
ticking
away in the palm of her shaking, withered hand. At that hour, I
think, the Colonel's Wife realized a little of the restless
suspicions she had injected into old Laplace's mind, a little of
poor Miss Haughtrey's misery, and some of the canker that ate into
Buxton's heart as he watched his wife dying before his eyes. The
Colonel stammered and tried to explain. Then he remembered that
his watch had disappeared; and the mystery grew greater. The
Colonel's Wife talked and prayed by turns till she was tired, and
went away to devise means for "chastening the stubborn heart of
her
husband." Which translated, means, in our slang, "tail-twisting."

You see, being deeply impressed with the doctrine of Original Sin,
she could not believe in the face of appearances. She knew too
much, and jumped to the wildest conclusions.

But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as she had spoilt the
life of the Laplaces. She had lost her faith in the Colonel, and--
here the creed-suspicion came in--he might, she argued, have erred
many times, before a merciful Providence, at the hands of so
unworthy an instrument as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt.

He was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate. This may sound too
sudden a revulsion for a long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable
fact that, if a man or woman makes a practice of, and takes a
delight in, believing and spreading evil of people indifferent to
him or her, he or she will end in believing evil of folk very near
and dear. You may think, also, that the mere incident of the watch
was too small and trivial to raise this misunderstanding. It is
another aged fact that, in life as well as racing, all the worst
accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down fences. In the
same way, you sometimes see a woman who would have made a
Joan of
Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces
over all the mean worry of housekeeping. But that is another
story.

Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it
insisted so strongly on the villainy of men. Remembering what
she
had done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-
farthing attempts she made to hide it from the Station. But the
Station knew and laughed heartlessly; for they had heard the story
of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. Larkyn's lips.

Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel
had not cleared himself:--"This thing has gone far enough. I move
we tell the Colonel's Wife how it happened." Mrs. Larkyn shut her
lips and shook her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must
bear her punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a
frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected deep hate.
So
Platte took no action, and came to believe gradually, from the
Colonel's silence, that the Colonel must have "run off the line"
somewhere that night, and, therefore, preferred to stand sentence
on the lesser count of rambling into other people's compounds out
of calling hours. Platte forgot about the watch business after a
while, and moved down-country with his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn
went
home when her husband's tour of Indian service expired. She
never
forgot.

But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too
far. The mistrust and the tragedy of it--which we outsiders cannot
see and do not believe in--are killing the Colonel's Wife, and are
making the Colonel wretched. If either of them read this story,
they can depend upon its being a fairly true account of the case,
and can "kiss and make friends."

Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watching an Engineer being
shelled by his own Battery. Now this shows that poets should not
write about what they do not understand. Any one could have told
him that Sappers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of
the Service. But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute
Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the same.

THE OTHER MAN.

When the earth was sick and the skies were gray,
And the woods were rotted with rain,
The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
To visit his love again.
Old Ballad.

Far back in the "seventies," before they had built any Public
Offices at Simla, and the broad road round Jakko lived in a
pigeon-
hole in the P. W. D. hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey marry
Colonel Schriederling. He could not have been MUCH more than
thirty-five years her senior; and, as he lived on two hundred
rupees a month and had money of his own, he was well off. He
belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from
lung
complaints. In the hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat-
apoplexy; but it never quite killed him.

Understand, I do not blame Schriederling. He was a good husband
according to his lights, and his temper only failed him when he
was
being nursed. Which was some seventeen days in each month. He
was
almost generous to his wife about money matters, and that, for
him,
was a concession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not happy. They
married her when she was this side of twenty and had given all her
poor little heart to another man. I have forgotten his name, but
we will call him the Other Man. He had no money and no
prospects.

He was not even good-looking; and I think he was in the
Commissariat or Transport. But, in spite of all these things, she
loved him very madly; and there was some sort of an engagement
between the two when Schreiderling appeared and told Mrs.
Gaurey
that he wished to marry her daughter. Then the other engagement
was broken off--washed away by Mrs. Gaurey's tears, for that lady
governed her house by weeping over disobedience to her authority
and the lack of reverence she received in her old age. The
daughter did not take after her mother. She never cried. Not even
at the wedding.

The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was transferred to as bad
a station as he could find. Perhaps the climate consoled him. He
suffered from intermittent fever, and that may have distracted him
from his other trouble. He was weak about the heart also. Both
ways. One of the valves was affected, and the fever made it worse.

This showed itself later on.

Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took to being
ill.

She did not pine away like people in story books, but she seemed
to
pick up every form of illness that went about a station, from
simple fever upwards. She was never more than ordinarily pretty
at
the best of times; and the illness made her ugly. Schreiderling
said so. He prided himself on speaking his mind.

When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and
went back to the lairs of his bachelordom. She used to trot up and
down Simla Mall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat
well on the back of her head, and a shocking bad saddle under her.

Schreiderling's generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any
saddle would do for a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling.
She
never was asked to dance, because she did not dance well; and she
was so dull and uninteresting, that her box very seldom had any
cards in it. Schreiderling said that if he had known that she was
going to be such a scare-crow after her marriage, he would never
have married her. He always prided himself on speaking his mind,
did Schreiderling!

He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment.

Then she revived a little, but she never recovered her looks. I
found out at the Club that the Other Man is coming up sick--very
sick--on an off chance of recovery. The fever and the heart-valves
had nearly killed him. She knew that, too, and she knew--what I
had no interest in knowing--when he was coming up. I suppose he
wrote to tell her. They had not seen each other since a month
before the wedding. And here comes the unpleasant part of the
story.

A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one
evening. Mrs. Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the
Mall all the afternoon in the rain. Coming up along the Cart-road,
a tonga passed me, and my pony, tired with standing so long, set
off at a canter. Just by the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs.

Schreiderling, dripping from head to foot, was waiting for the
tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga was no affair of mine; and
just then she began to shriek. I went back at once and saw, under
the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling kneeling in the wet
road
by the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaming hideously.

Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.

Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on
the awning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and
moustache,
was the Other Man--dead. The sixty-mile up-hill jolt had been too
much for his valve, I suppose. The tonga-driver said:--"The Sahib
died two stages out of Solon. Therefore, I tied him with a rope,
lest he should fall out by the way, and so came to Simla. Will the
Sahib give me bukshish? IT," pointing to the Other Man, "should
have given one rupee."

The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he enjoyed the
joke of his arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, in the mud, began to
groan. There was no one except us four in the office and it was
raining heavily. The first thing was to take Mrs. Schreiderling
home, and the second was to prevent her name from being mixed
up
with the affair. The tonga-driver received five rupees to find a
bazar 'rickshaw for Mrs. Schreiderling. He was to tell the tonga
Babu afterwards of the Other Man, and the Babu was to make such
arrangements as seemed best.

Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed out of the rain, and
for three-quarters of an hour we two waited for the 'rickshaw. The
Other Man was left exactly as he had arrived. Mrs. Schreiderling
would do everything but cry, which might have helped her. She
tried to scream as soon as her senses came back, and then she
began
praying for the Other Man's soul. Had she not been as honest as
the day, she would have prayed for her own soul too. I waited to
hear her do this, but she did not. Then I tried to get some of the
mud off her habit. Lastly, the 'rickshaw came, and I got her away--
parrtly by force. It was a terrible business from beginning to
end; but most of all when the 'rickshaw had to squeeze between the
wall and the tonga, and she saw by the lamp-light that thin, yellow
hand grasping the awning-stanchion.

She was taken home just as every one was going to a dance at
Viceregal Lodge--"Peterhoff" it was then--and the doctor found
that
she had fallen from her horse, that I had picked her up at the back
of Jakko, and really deserved great credit for the prompt manner in
which I had secured medical aid. She did not die--men of
Schreiderling's stamp marry women who don't die easily. They
live
and grow ugly.

She never told of her one meeting, since her marriage, with the
Other Man; and, when the chill and cough following the exposure
of
that evening, allowed her abroad, she never by word or sign
alluded
to having met me by the Tonga Office. Perhaps she never knew.

She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shocking bad
saddle,
looking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner
every
minute. Two years afterward, she went Home, and died--at
Bournemouth, I think.

Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about
"my
poor dear wife." He always set great store on speaking his mind,
did Schreiderling!

CONSEQUENCES.

Rosicrucian subtleties
In the Orient had rise;
Ye may find their teachers still
Under Jacatala's Hill.

Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus,
Read what Flood the Seeker tells us
Of the Dominant that runs
Through the cycles of the Suns--
Read my story last and see
Luna at her apogee.

There are yearly appointments, and two-yearly appointments, and
five-yearly appointments at Simla, and there are, or used to be,
permanent appointments, whereon you stayed up for the term of
your
natural life and secured red cheeks and a nice income. Of course,
you could descend in the cold weather; for Simla is rather dull
then.

Tarrion came from goodness knows where--all away and away in
some
forsaken part of Central India, where they call Pachmari a
"Sanitarium," and drive behind trotting bullocks, I believe. He
belonged to a regiment; but what he really wanted to do was to
escape from his regiment and live in Simla forever and ever. He
had no preference for anything in particular, beyond a good horse
and a nice partner. He thought he could do everything well; which
is a beautiful belief when you hold it with all your heart. He was
clever in many ways, and good to look at, and always made people
round him comfortable--even in Central India.

So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever and amusing,
he
gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive
everything
but stupidity. Once he did her great service by changing the date
on an invitation-card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished
to
attend, but couldn't because she had quarrelled with the A.-D.-C.,
who took care, being a mean man, to invite her to a small dance on
the 6th instead of the big Ball of the 26th. It was a very clever
piece of forgery; and when Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C.
her
invitation-card, and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his
vendettas, he really thought he had made a mistake; and--which
was
wise--realized that it was no use to fight with Mrs. Hauksbee. She
was grateful to Tarrion and asked what she could do for him. He
said simply: "I'm a Freelance up here on leave, and on the lookout
for what I can loot. I haven't a square inch of interest in all
Simla. My name isn't known to any man with an appointment in
his
gift, and I want an appointment--a good, sound, pukka one. I
believe you can do anything you turn yourself to do. Will you help
me?" Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed the last of
her riding-whip through her lips, as was her custom when thinking.

Then her eyes sparkled, and she said:--"I will;" and she shook
hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this great
woman, took no further thought of the business at all. Except to
wonder what sort of an appointment he would win.

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