"Are you certain of that?" said Otis Yeere.
"Quite. We"re writing about a house now."
Otis Yeere "stopped dead," 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 Gymkhana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man"s going to disappoint me. What shall I do?"
As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring, but on this occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost.
"You have managed cleverly so far," she said. "Speak to him, and ask him what he means."
"I will--at tonight"s dance."
"No-o, not at a dance," said Mrs. Mallowe, cautiously. "Men are never themselves quite at dances. Better wait till tomorrow morning."
"Nonsense. If he"s going to revert in this insane way, there isn"t a day to lose. Are you going? No? Then sit up for me, there"s a dear. I shan"t stay longer than supper under any circ.u.mstances."
Mrs. 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 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, but 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 tomorrow--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 were--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 furiously 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 tomorrow. 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 the 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-- Pa.s.s! There"s a world full of men And women as fair as thou art, Must do such things now and then.
""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"s foot?"
"I didn"t--I didn"t--I didn"t!" said Mrs. Hauksbee, angrily, her eyes filling with tears; "there was no malice at all. Oh, it"s too vexatious!"
"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 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, with deep scorn.
Reviewing the matter as an impartial outsider, it strikes me that I"m about the only person who has profited by the education of Otis Yeere.
It comes to twenty-seven pages and bittock.
AT THE PIT"S MOUTH
Men say it was a stolen tide-- 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 n.o.body 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 be 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-saddles, 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 pa.s.s judgment on circ.u.mstantial 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 soft and fluffy innocence. But she was deadly learned and evil-instructed; and, now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw this, shuddered and almost drew back. Men are occasionally particular, and the least particular men are always the most exacting.