Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (224 page)

She. Please don’t, dear. It hurts as much as if you hit me.

He. It isn’t exactly pleasant for me.

She. I can’t help it. I wish I were dead! I can’t trust you, and I don’t trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!

He. Too late now. I don’t understand you I won’t and I can’t trust myself to talk this evening. May I call to-morrow?

She. Yes. No! Oh, give me time! The day after. I get into my ‘rickshaw here and meet Him at Peliti’s. You ride.

He. I’ll go on to Peliti’s too. I think I want a drink. My world’s knocked about my ears and the stars are falling. Who are those brutes howling in the Old Library?

She. They’re rehearsing the singing-quadrilles for the Fancy Ball. Can’t you hear Mrs. Buzgago’s voice? She has a solo. It’s quite a new idea. Listen!

Mrs. Buzgago (in the Old Library, con molt. exp.).

See-saw! Margery Daw!

Sold her bed to lie upon straw.

Wasn’t she a silly slut

To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?

Captain Congleton, I’m going to alter that to ‘flirt.’ It sounds better.

He. No, I’ve changed my mind about the drink. Good-night, little lady. I shall see you to-morrow?

She. Ye es. Good-night, Guy. Don’t be angry with me.

He. Angry! You know I trust you absolutely. Good-night and God bless you!

(Three seconds later. Alone.) Hmm! I’d give something to discover whether there’s another man at the back of all this.

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

     Est fuga, volvitur rota,

        On we drift: where looms the dim port?

     One Two Three Four Five contribute their quota:

        Something is gained if one caught but the import,

     Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

            — Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

‘Dressed! Don’t tell me that woman ever dressed in her life. She stood in the middle of the room while her ayah no, her husband it must have been a man threw her clothes at her. She then did her hair with her fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the bed. I know she did, as well as if I had assisted at the orgy. Who is she?’ said Mrs. Hauksbee.

‘Don’t!’ said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. ‘You make my head ache. I am miserable to-day. Stay me with fondants, comfort me with chocolates, for I am. Did you bring anything from Peliti’s?’

‘Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets when you have answered them. Who and what is the creature? There were at least half-a-dozen men round her, and she appeared to be going to sleep in their midst.’

‘Delville,’ said Mrs. Mallowe, “‘Shady” Delville, to distinguish her from Mrs. Jim of that ilk. She dances as untidily as she dresses, I believe, and her husband is somewhere in Madras. Go and call, if you are so interested.’

‘What have I to do with Shigramitish women? She merely caught my attention for a minute, and I wondered at the attraction that a dowd has for a certain type of man. I expected to see her walk out of her clothes until I looked at her eyes.’

‘Hooks and eyes, surely,’ drawled Mrs. Mallowe.

‘Don’t be clever, Polly. You make my head ache. And round this hayrick stood a crowd of men a positive crowd!’

‘Perhaps they also expected.’

‘Polly, don’t be Rabelaisian!’

Mrs. Mallowe curled herself up comfortably on the sofa, and turned her attention to the sweets. She and Mrs. Hauksbee shared the same house at Simla; and these things befell two seasons after the matter of Otis Yeere, which has been already recorded.

Mrs. Hauksbee stepped into the verandah and looked down upon the Mall, her forehead puckered with thought.

‘Hah!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee shortly. ‘Indeed!’

‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Mallowe sleepily.

‘That dowd and The Dancing Master to whom I object.’

‘Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of reprobate and romantic tendencies, and tries to be a friend of mine.’

‘Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling by nature, and I should imagine that this animal how terrible her bonnet looks from above! is specially clingsome.’

‘She is welcome to The Dancing Master so far as I am concerned. I never could take an interest in a monotonous liar. The frustrated aim of his life is to persuade people that he is a bachelor.’

‘O-oh! I think I’ve met that sort of man before. And isn’t he?’

‘No. He confided that to me a few days ago. Ugh! Some men ought to be killed.’

‘What happened then?’

‘He posed as the horror of horrors a misunderstood man. Heaven knows the femme incomprise is sad enough and bad enough but the other thing!’

‘And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face. Men seldom confide in me. How is it they come to you?’

‘For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the past. Protect me from men with confidences!’

‘And yet you encourage them?’

‘What can I do? They talk, I listen, and they vow that I am sympathetic. I know I always profess astonishment even when the plot is of the most old possible.’

‘Yes. Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to talk, whereas women’s confidences are full of reservations and fibs, except — ’

‘When they go mad and babble of the Unutter-abilities after a week’s acquaintance. Really, if you come to consider, we know a great deal more of men than of our own sex.’

‘And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it. They say we are trying to hide something.’

‘They are generally doing that on their own account. Alas! These chocolates pall upon me, and I haven’t eaten more than a dozen. I think I shall go to sleep.’

‘Then you’ll get fat, dear. If you took more exercise and a more intelligent interest in your neighbours you would — ’

‘Be as much loved as Mrs. Hauksbee. You’re a darling in many ways, and I like you you are not a woman’s woman but why do you trouble yourself about mere human beings?’

‘Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be horribly dull, men and women are the most fascinating things in the whole wide world, lazy one. I am interested in The Dowd I am interested in The Dancing Master I am interested in the Hawley Boy and I am interested in you.’

‘Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property.’

‘Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I’m making a good thing out of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think, and’ here she waved her hands airily “‘whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath joined together let no man put asunder.” That’s all.’

‘And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious detrimental in Simla, and earned the undying hatred of Mamma Holt, what will you do with me, Dispenser of the Destinies of the Universe?’

Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of the fire, and, chin in hand, gazed long and steadfastly at Mrs. Mallowe.

‘I do not know,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘what I shall do with you, dear. It’s obviously impossible to marry you to some one else your husband would object and the experiment might not be successful after all. I think I shall begin by preventing you from what is it? “sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring in the sun.”‘

‘Don’t! I don’t like your quotations. They are so rude. Go to the Library and bring me new books.’

‘While you sleep? No! If you don’t come with me I shall spread your newest frock on my ‘rickshaw-bow, and when any one asks me what I am doing, I shall say that I am going to Phelps’s to get it let out. I shall take care that Mrs. MacNamara sees me. Put your things on, there’s a good girl.’

Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went off to the Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the man who went by the nick-name of The Dancing Master. By that time Mrs. Mallowe was awake and eloquent.

‘That is the Creature!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee, with the air of one pointing out a slug in the road.

‘No,’ said Mrs. Mallowe. ‘The man is the Creature. Ugh! Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought you were coming to tea this evening.’

‘Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?’ answered The Dancing Master. ‘I understood I fancied I’m so sorry How very unfortunate!’

But Mrs. Mallowe had passed on.

‘For the practised equivocator you said he was,’ murmured Mrs. Hauksbee, ‘he strikes me as a failure. Now wherefore should he have preferred a walk with The Dowd to tea with us? Elective affinities, I suppose both grubby. Polly, I’d never forgive that woman as long as the world rolls.’

‘I forgive every woman everything,’ said Mrs. Mallowe. ‘He will be a sufficient punishment for her. What a common voice she has!’

Mrs. Delville’s voice was not pretty, her carriage was even less lovely, and her raiment was strikingly neglected. All these things Mrs. Mallowe noticed over the top of a magazine.

‘Now what is there in her?’ said Mrs. Hauksbee. ‘Do you see what I meant about the clothes falling off? If I were a man I would perish sooner than be seen with that rag-bag. And yet, she has good eyes, but Oh!’

‘What is it?’

‘She doesn’t know how to use them! On my honour, she does not. Look! Oh look! Untidiness I can endure, but ignorance never! The woman’s a fool.’

‘Hsh! She’ll hear you.’

‘All the women in Simla are fools. She’ll think I mean some one else. Now she’s going out. What a thoroughly objectionable couple she and The Dancing Master make! Which reminds me. Do you suppose they’ll ever dance together?’

‘Wait and see. I don’t envy her the conversation of The Dancing Master loathly man! His wife ought to be up here before long?’

‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘Only what he told me. It may be all a fiction. He married a girl bred in the country, I think, and, being an honourable, chivalrous soul, told me that he repented his bargain and sent her to her as often as possible a person who has lived in the Doon since the memory of man and goes to Mussoorie when other people go Home. The wife is with her at present. So he says.’

‘Babies?’

‘One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him for it. He thought he was being epigrammatic and brilliant.’

‘That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because he is generally in the wake of some girl, disappointing the Eligibles. He will persecute May Holt no more, unless I am much mistaken.’

‘No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while.’

‘Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?’

‘Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I tell you. Don’t you know that type of man?’

‘Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general rule, when a man begins to abuse his wife to me, I find that the Lord gives me wherewith to answer him according to his folly; and we part with a coolness between us. I laugh.’

‘I’m different. I’ve no sense of humour.’

‘Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I care to think about. A well-educated sense of humour will save a woman when Religion, Training, and Home influences fail; and we may all need salvation sometimes.’

‘Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humour?’

‘Her dress betrays her. How can a Thing who wears her supplement under her left arm have any notion of the fitness of things much less their folly? If she discards The Dancing Master after having once seen him dance, I may respect her. Otherwise — ’

‘But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear? You saw the woman at Peliti’s half an hour later you saw her walking with The Dancing Master an hour later you met her here at the Library.’

‘Still with The Dancing Master, remember.’

‘Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of that should you imagine — ’

‘I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that The Dancing Master is attracted to The Dowd because he is objectionable in every way and she in every other. If I know the man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at present.’

‘She is twenty years younger than he.’

‘Poor wretch! And, in the end, after he has posed and swaggered and lied he has a mouth under that ragged moustache simply made for lies he will be rewarded according to his merits.’

‘I wonder what those really are,’ said Mrs. Mallowe.

But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to the shelf of the new books, was humming softly: ‘What shall he have who killed the Deer?’ She was a lady of unfettered speech.

One month later she announced her intention of calling upon Mrs. Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning wrappers, and there was a great peace in the land.

‘I should go as I was,’ said Mrs. Mallowe. ‘It would be a delicate compliment to her style.’

Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

‘Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I should put on this robe, after all the others, to show her what a morning-wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her. As it is, I shall go in the dove-coloured sweet emblem of youth and innocence and shall put on my new gloves.’

‘If you really are going, dirty tan would be too good; and you know that dove-colour spots with the rain.’

‘I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one cannot expect very much from a woman who puts a lace tucker into her habit.’

‘Just Heavens! When did she do that?’

‘Yesterday riding with The Dancing Master. I met them at the back of Jakko, and the rain had made the lace lie down. To complete the effect, she was wearing an unclean terai with the elastic under her chin. I felt almost too well content to take the trouble to despise her.’

‘The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?’

‘Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did? He stared in the rudest way, and just when I thought he had seen the elastic, he said, “There’s something very taking about that face.” I rebuked him on the spot. I don’t approve of boys being taken by faces.’

‘Other than your own. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if the Hawley Boy immediately went to call.’