Under the Deodars

‘I’ve seen your husband, Mrs. Boulte.’

There was no necessity for any further explanation. The man’s eyes were fixed, not upon Mrs. Boulte, but her companion. Mrs. Boulte saw the look.

‘Speak to him!’ she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side. ‘Oh, speak to him! Tell him what you told me just now. Tell him you hate him. Tell him you hate him!’

She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the sais, impassive, went forward to hold the horse. Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and dropped the reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy explanations.

‘I’ve nothing to do with it,’ she began coldly; but Mrs. Boulte’s sobs overcame her, and she addressed herself to the man. ‘I don’t know what I am to say, Captain Kurrell. I don’t know what I can call you. I think you’ve you’ve behaved abominably, and she has cut her forehead terribly against the table.’

‘It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t anything,’ said Mrs. Boulte feebly. ‘That doesn’t matter. Tell him what you told me. Say you don’t care for him. Oh, Ted, won’t you believe her?’

‘Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were that you were fond of her once upon a time,’ went on Mrs. Vansuythen.

‘Well!’ said Kurrell brutally. ‘It seems to me that Mrs. Boulte had better be fond of her own husband first.’

‘Stop!’ said Mrs. Vansuythen. ‘Hear me first. I don’t care I don’t want to know anything about you and Mrs. Boulte; but I want you to know that I hate you, that I think you are a cur, and that I’ll never, never speak to you again. Oh, I don’t dare to say what I think of you, you man!’

‘I want to speak to Ted,’ moaned Mrs. Boulte, but the dog-cart rattled on, and Kurrell was left on the road, shamed, and boiling with wrath against Mrs. Boulte.

He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to her own house, and, she being freed from the embarrassment of Mrs. Boulte’s presence, learned for the second time her opinion of himself and his actions.

In the evenings it was the wont of all Kashima to meet at the platform on the Narkarra Road, to drink tea and discuss the trivialities of the day. Major Vansuythen and his wife found themselves alone at the gathering-place for almost the first time in their remembrance; and the cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife’s remarkably reasonable suggestion that the rest of the Station might be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two bungalows and unearthing the population.

‘Sitting in the twilight!’ said he, with great indignation, to the Boultes. ‘That’ll never do! Hang it all, we’re one family here! You must come out, and so must Kurrell. I’ll make him bring his banjo.’

So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good digestion over guilty consciences that all Kashima did turn out, even down to the banjo; and the Major embraced the company in one expansive grin. As he grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her eyes for an instant and looked at all Kashima. Her meaning was clear. Major Vansuythen would never know anything. He was to be the outsider in that happy family whose cage was the Dosehri hills.

‘You’re singing villainously out of tune, Kurrell,’ said the Major truthfully. ‘Pass me that banjo.’

And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out and all Kashima went to dinner.

That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima the life that Mrs. Boulte made when her tongue was loosened in the twilight.

Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since he insists upon keeping up a burdensome geniality, she has been compelled to break her vow of not speaking to Kurrell. This speech, which must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and interest, serves admirably to keep alight the flame of jealousy and dull hatred in Boulte’s bosom, as it awakens the same passions in his wife’s heart. Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen because she has taken Ted from her, and, in some curious fashion, hates her because Mrs. Vansuythen and here the wife’s eyes see far more clearly than the husband’s detests Ted. And Ted that gallant captain and honourable man knows now that it is possible to hate a woman once loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her for ever with blows. Above all, is he shocked that Mrs. Boulte cannot see the error of her ways.

Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all friendship. Boulte has put their relationship on a most satisfactory footing.

‘You’re a blackguard,’ he says to Kurrell, ‘and I’ve lost any self-respect I may ever have had; but when you’re with me, I can feel certain that you are not with Mrs. Vansuythen, or making Emma miserable.’

Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him. Sometimes they are away for three days together, and then the Major insists upon his wife going over to sit with Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs. Vansuythen has repeatedly declared that she prefers her husband’s company to any in the world. From the way in which she clings to him, she would certainly seem to be speaking the truth.

But of course, as the Major says, ‘in a little Station we must all be friendly.’

THE HILL OF ILLUSION

What rendered vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled,
And bade between their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

    – Matthew Arnold.
He. Tell your jhampanies not to hurry so, dear. They forget I’m fresh from the Plains.

She. Sure proof that I have not been going out with any one. Yes, they are an untrained crew. Where do we go?

He. As usual to the world’s end. No, Jakko.

She. Have your pony led after you, then. It’s a long round.

He. And for the last time, thank Heaven!

She. Do you mean that still? I didn’t dare to write to you about it all these months.

He. Mean it! I’ve been shaping my affairs to that end since Autumn. What makes you speak as though it had occurred to you for the first time?

She. I? Oh! I don’t know. I’ve had long enough to think, too.

He. And you’ve changed your mind?

She. No. You ought to know that I am a miracle of constancy. What are your arrangements?

He. Ours, Sweetheart, please.

She. Ours, be it then. My poor boy, how the prickly heat has marked your forehead! Have you ever tried sulphate of copper in water?

He. It’ll go away in a day or two up here. The arrangements are simple enough. Tonga in the early morning reach Kalka at twelve Umballa at seven down, straight by night train, to Bombay, and then the steamer of the 21st for Rome. That’s my idea. The Continent and Sweden a ten-week honeymoon.

She. Ssh! Don’t talk of it in that way. It makes me afraid. Guy, how long have we two been insane?

He. Seven months and fourteen days, I forget the odd hours exactly, but I’ll think.

She. I only wanted to see if you remembered. Who are those two on the Blessington Road?

He. Eabrey and the Penner Woman. What do they matter to us? Tell me everything that you’ve been doing and saying and thinking.

She. Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great deal. I’ve hardly been out at all.

He. That was wrong of you. You haven’t been moping?

She. Not very much. Can you wonder that I’m disinclined for amusement?

He. Frankly, I do. Where was the difficulty?

She. In this only. The more people I know and the more I’m known here, the wider spread will be the news of the crash when it comes. I don’t like that.

He. Nonsense. We shall be out of it.

She. You think so?