False Dawn
To-night God knows what thing shall tide,
The Earth is racked and faint--
Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed;
And we, who from the Earth were made,
Thrill with our Mother's pain.
In Durance.
No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; though women
may sometimes whisper it to one another after a dance, when they
are putting up their hair for the night and comparing lists of
victims. A man, of course, cannot assist at these functions. So
the tale must be told from the outside--in the dark--all wrong.
Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments
reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later
on. Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will
find that you do yourself harm.
Saumarez knew this when he made up his mind to propose to the elder
Miss Copleigh. Saumarez was a strange man, with few merits, so far
as men could see, though he was popular with women, and carried
enough conceit to stock a Viceroy's Council and leave a little over
for the Commander-in-Chief's Staff. He was a Civilian. Very many
women took an interest in Saumarez, perhaps, because his manner to
them was offensive. If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset
of your acquaintance, he may not love you, but he will take a deep
interest in your movements ever afterwards. The elder Miss
Copleigh was nice, plump, winning and pretty. The younger was not
so pretty, and, from men disregarding the hint set forth above, her
style was repellant and unattractive. Both girls had, practically,
the same figure, and there was a strong likeness between them in
look and voice; though no one could doubt for an instant which was
the nicer of the two.
Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they came into the station
from Behar, to marry the elder one. At least, we all made sure
that he would, which comes to the same thing. She was two and
twenty, and he was thirty-three, with pay and allowances of nearly
fourteen hundred rupees a month. So the match, as we arranged it,
was in every way a good one. Saumarez was his name, and summary
was his nature, as a man once said. Having drafted his Resolution,
he formed a Select Committee of One to sit upon it, and resolved to
take his time. In our unpleasant slang, the Copleigh girls "hunted
in couples." That is to say, you could do nothing with one without
the other. They were very loving sisters; but their mutual
affection was sometimes inconvenient. Saumarez held the balance-
hair true between them, and none but himself could have said to
which side his heart inclined; though every one guessed. He rode
with them a good deal and danced with them, but he never succeeded
in detaching them from each other for any length of time.
Women said that the two girls kept together through deep mistrust,
each fearing that the other would steal a march on her. But that
has nothing to do with a man. Saumarez was silent for good or bad,
and as business-likely attentive as he could be, having due regard
to his work and his polo. Beyond doubt both girls were fond of
him.
As the hot weather drew nearer, and Saumarez made no sign, women
said that you could see their trouble in the eyes of the girls--
that they were looking strained, anxious, and irritable. Men are
quite blind in these matters unless they have more of the woman
than the man in their composition, in which case it does not matter
what they say or think. I maintain it was the hot April days that
took the color out of the Copleigh girls' cheeks. They should have
been sent to the Hills early. No one--man or woman--feels an angel
when the hot weather is approaching. The younger sister grew more
cynical--not to say acid--in her ways; and the winningness of the
elder wore thin. There was more effort in it.
Now the Station wherein all these things happened was, though not a
little one, off the line of rail, and suffered through want of
attention. There were no gardens or bands or amusements worth
speaking of, and it was nearly a day's journey to come into Lahore
for a dance. People were grateful for small things to interest
them.
About the beginning of May, and just before the final exodus of
Hill-goers, when the weather was very hot and there were not more
than twenty people in the Station, Saumarez gave a moonlight
riding-picnic at an old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the
river. It was a "Noah's Ark" picnic; and there was to be the usual
arrangement of quarter-mile intervals between each couple, on
account of the dust. Six couples came altogether, including
chaperons. Moonlight picnics are useful just at the very end of
the season, before all the girls go away to the Hills. They lead
to understandings, and should be encouraged by chaperones;
especially those whose girls look sweetish in riding habits. I
knew a case once. But that is another story. That picnic was
called the "Great Pop Picnic," because every one knew Saumarez
would propose then to the eldest Miss Copleigh; and, beside his
affair, there was another which might possibly come to happiness.
The social atmosphere was heavily charged and wanted clearing.
We met at the parade-ground at ten: the night was fearfully hot.
The horses sweated even at walking-pace, but anything was better
than sitting still in our own dark houses. When we moved off under
the full moon we were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez
rode with the Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the
procession, wondering with whom Saumarez would ride home. Every
one was happy and contented; but we all felt that things were going
to happen. We rode slowly: and it was nearly midnight before we
reached the old tomb, facing the ruined tank, in the decayed
gardens where we were going to eat and drink. I was late in coming
up; and before I went into the garden, I saw that the horizon to
the north carried a faint, dun-colored feather. But no one would
have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment as
this picnic--and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.
We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out a banjo--which
is a most sentimental instrument--and three or four of us sang.
You must not laugh at this. Our amusements in out-of-the-way
Stations are very few indeed. Then we talked in groups or
together, lying under the trees, with the sun-baked roses dropping
their petals on our feet, until supper was ready. It was a
beautiful supper, as cold and as iced as you could wish; and we
stayed long over it.
I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter; but nobody
seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind
began lashing the orange-trees with a sound like the noise of the
sea. Before we knew where we were, the dust-storm was on us, and
everything was roaring, whirling darkness. The supper-table was
blown bodily into the tank. We were afraid of staying anywhere
near the old tomb for fear it might be blown down. So we felt our
way to the orange-trees where the horses were picketed and waited
for the storm to blow over. Then the little light that was left
vanished, and you could not see your hand before your face. The
air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed of the river, that
filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and coated eyebrows
and moustaches. It was one of the worst dust-storms of the year.
We were all huddled together close to the trembling horses, with
the thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting like
water from a sluice, all ways at once. There was no danger, of
course, unless the horses broke loose. I was standing with my head
downward and my hands over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing
each other. I could not see who was next me till the flashes came.
Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss
Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of me. I recognized the
eldest Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and
the younger had not. All the electricity in the air had gone into
my body and I was quivering and tingling from head to foot--exactly
as a corn shoots and tingles before rain. It was a grand storm.
The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and pitching it to
leeward in great heaps; and the heat beat up from the ground like
the heat of the Day of Judgment.
The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard a
despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly
and softly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind:
"O my God!" Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms,
saying: "Where is my horse? Get my horse. I want to go home. I
WANT to go home. Take me home."
I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened
her; so I said there was no danger, but she must wait till the
storm blew over. She answered: "It is not THAT! It is not THAT!
I want to go home! O take me away from here!"
I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her
brush past me and go away. It was too dark to see where. Then the
whole sky was split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end
of the world were coming, and all the women shrieked.
Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and
heard Saumarez bellowing in my ear. Through the rattling of the
trees and howling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once,
but at last I heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one! What
shall I do?" Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence to
me. I was never a friend of his, nor am I now; but I fancy neither
of us were ourselves just then. He was shaking as he stood with
excitement, and I was feeling queer all over with the electricity.
I could not think of anything to say except:--"More fool you for
proposing in a dust-storm." But I did not see how that would
improve the mistake.
Then he shouted: "Where's Edith--Edith Copleigh?" Edith was the
youngest sister. I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do you
want with HER?" Would you believe it, for the next two minutes, he
and I were shouting at each other like maniacs--he vowing that it
was the youngest sister he had meant to propose to all along, and I
telling him till my throat was hoarse that he must have made a
mistake! I can't account for this except, again, by the fact that
we were neither of us ourselves. Everything seemed to me like a
bad dream--from the stamping of the horses in the darkness to
Saumarez telling me the story of his loving Edith Copleigh since
the first. He was still clawing my shoulder and begging me to tell
him where Edith Copleigh was, when another lull came and brought
light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the plain in
front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon was low
down, and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes
about an hour before the real one. But the light was very faint,
and the dun cloud roared like a bull. I wondered where Edith
Copleigh had gone; and as I was wondering I saw three things
together: First Maud Copleigh's face come smiling out of the
darkness and move towards Saumarez, who was standing by me. I
heard the girl whisper, "George," and slide her arm through the arm
that was not clawing my shoulder, and I saw that look on her face
which only comes once or twice in a lifetime-when a woman is
perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-
colored fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and
is loved. At the same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard Maud
Copleigh's voice, and fifty yards away from the clump of orange-
trees I saw a brown holland habit getting upon a horse.
It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quick
to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to
the habit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain.
I'll fetch her back!" and I ran out to get at my own horse. I had
a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done
decently and in order, and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe
the happy look out of Maud Copleigh's face. All the time I was
linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he would do it.
I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly
on some pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she
saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called
back over her shoulder--"Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away!"
two or three times; but my business was to catch her first, and
argue later. The ride just fitted in with the rest of the evil
dream. The ground was very bad, and now and again we rushed
through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in the skirts of the
flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing that brought up
a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light
and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain, flickered
the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed for the
Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the river
through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig
over. In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such
a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the
lightning crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit
in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and
lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and
caught us both, and drove us downwind like pieces of paper.
I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs
and the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon
through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years,
and I was literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my
gaiters when the gray stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up
dead lame. My brute was used up altogether. Edith Copleigh was in
a sad state, plastered with dust, her helmet off, and crying
bitterly. "Why can't you let me alone?" she said. "I only wanted
to get away and go home. Oh, PLEASE let me go!"
"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has
something to say to you."
It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss
Copleigh; and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my
horse, I could not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told
me. I thought he could do that better himself. All her pretence
about being tired and wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked
herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind
blew her black hair to leeward. I am not going to repeat what she
said, because she was utterly unstrung.
This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I,
almost an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez
loved her and she was to come back to hear him say so! I believe I
made myself understood, for she gathered the gray together and made
him hobble somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm
went thundering down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain
fell. I found out that she had been standing close to Saumarez
when he proposed to her sister and had wanted to go home and cry in
peace, as an English girl should. She dabbled her eyes with her
pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of
sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was perfectly
unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the
place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and
I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of
this misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.
When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that
followed the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone
away. They were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all.
His face was white and drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he
came forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from her
saddle, he kissed her before all the picnic. It was like a scene
in a theatre, and the likeness was heightened by all the dust-
white, ghostly-looking men and women under the orange-trees,
clapping their hands, as if they were watching a play--at
Saumarez's choice. I never knew anything so un-English in my life.
Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would come
out to look for us, and WOULD I be good enough to ride home with
Maud Copleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.
So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two;
Saumarez walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his
horse.
The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt
we were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women and
that the "Great Pop Picnic" was a thing altogether apart and out of
the world--never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm
and the tingle in the hot air.
I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went
in for a bath and some sleep.
There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never be
written . . . . unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.
-THE END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: False Dawn
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