A Wayside Comedy
Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore
the misery of man is great upon him.
--Eccles. viii. 6.
Fate and the Government of India have turned the Station of
Kashima into a prison; and, because there is no help for the poor
souls who are now lying there in torment, I write this story,
praying that the Government of India may be moved to scatter the
European population to the four winds.
Kashima is bounded on all sides by the rocktipped circle of the
Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with roses; in Summer, the
roses die and the hot winds blow from the hills; in Autumn, the
white mists from the jhils cover the place as with water, and in
Winter the frosts nip everything young and tender to earth-level.
There is but one view in Kashima a stretch of perfectly flat pasture
and plough-land, running up to the gray-blue scrub of the Dosehri
hills.
There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the
tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the
rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra one
hundred and forty-three miles by road is the nearest station to
Kashima. But Kashima never goes to Narkarra, where there are at
least twelve English people. It stays within the circle of the
Dosehri hills.
All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to do harm;
but all Kashima knows that she, and she alone, brought about their
pain.
Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurrell know this.
They are the English population of Kashima, if we except Major
Vansuythen, who is of no importance whatever, and Mrs.
Vansuythen, who is the most important of all.
You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws
weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public
opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a
certain risk of falling into evil ways. This risk is multiplied by
every addition to the population up to twelve the Jury-number.
After that, fear and consequent restraint begin, and human action
becomes less grotesquely jerky.
There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen arrived.
She was a charming woman, every one said so everywhere; and
she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of
this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and he
was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter
would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair
woman, with very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before
the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes
could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she was to look
upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was 'not
bad-looking, but spoilt by pretending to be so grave.' And yet her
gravity was natural. It was not her habit to smile. She merely went
through life, looking at those who passed; and the women objected
while the men fell down and worshipped.
She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to
Kashima; but Major Vansuythen cannot understand why Mrs.
Boulte does not drop in to afternoon tea at least three times a
week. 'When there are only two women in one Station, they ought
to see a great deal of each other,' says Major Vansuythen.
Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out of those
far-away places where there is society and amusement, Kurrell had
discovered that Mrs. Boulte was the one woman in the world for
him and you dare not blame them. Kashima was as out of the
world as Heaven or the Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept
their secret well. Boulte had no concern in the matter. He was in
camp for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and
neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They had all Kashima
and each other for their very, very own; and Kashima was the
Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte returned from his
wanderings he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call
him 'old fellow,' and the three would dine together. Kashima was
happy then when the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as
Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But the
Government sent Major Vansuythen to Kashima, and with him
came his wife.
The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert
island. When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to
the shore to make him welcome. Kashima assembled at the
masonry platform close to the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for
the Vansuythens. That ceremony was reckoned a formal call, and
made them free of the Station, its rights and privileges. When the
Vansuythens settled down they gave a tiny house-warming to all
Kashima; and that made Kashima free of their house, according to
the immemorial usage of the Station.
Then the Rains came, when no one could go into camp, and the
Narkarra Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the
cup-like pastures of Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep. The
clouds dropped down from the Dosehri hills and covered
everything.
At the end of the Rains Boulte's manner towards his wife changed
and became demonstratively affectionate. They had been married
twelve years, and the change startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her
husband with the hate of a woman who has met with nothing but
kindness from her mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, has done
him a great wrong. Moreover, she had her own trouble to fight
with her watch to keep over her own property, Kurrell. For two
months the Rains had hidden the Dosehri hills and many other
things besides; but, when they lifted, they showed Mrs. Boulte that
her man among men, her Ted for she called him Ted in the old
days when Boulte was out of earshot was slipping the links of the
allegiance.
'The Vansuythen Woman has taken him,' Mrs. Boulte said to
herself; and when Boulte was away, wept over her belief, in the
face of the over-vehement blandishments of Ted. Sorrow in
Kashima is as fortunate as Love because there is nothing to
weaken it save the flight of Time. Mrs. Boulte had never breathed
her suspicion to Kurrell because she was not certain; and her
nature led her to be very certain before she took steps in any
direction. That is why she behaved as she did.
Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the
door-posts of the drawing-room, chewing his moustache. Mrs.
Boulte was putting some flowers into a vase. There is a pretence of
civilisation even in Kashima.
'Little woman,' said Boulte quietly, 'do you care for me?'
'Immensely,' said she, with a laugh. 'Can you ask it?'
'But I'm serious,' said Boulte. 'Do you care for me?'
Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly. 'Do
you want an honest answer?'
'Ye-es, I've asked for it.'
Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes, very
distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding her meaning.
When Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he did a little thing, and
one not to be compared to the deliberate pulling down of a
woman's homestead about her own ears. There was no wise female
friend to advise Mrs. Boulte, the singularly cautious wife, to hold
her hand. She struck at Boulte's heart, because her own was sick
with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out with the long strain of
watching alone through the Rains. There was no plan or purpose in
her speaking. The sentences made themselves; and Boulte listened,
leaning against the door-post with his hands in his pockets. When
all was over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her nose
before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared straight in
front of him at the Dosehri hills.
'Is that all?' he said. 'Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know.'
'What are you going to do?' said the woman, between her sobs.
'Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell, or send you Home,
or apply for leave to get a divorce? It's two days' dƒk into
Narkarra.' He laughed again and went on: 'I'll tell you what you can
do. You can ask Kurrell to dinner tomorrow no, on Thursday, that
will allow you time to pack and you can bolt with him. I give you
my word I won't follow.'
He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte
sat till the moonlight streaked the floor, thinking and thinking and
thinking. She had done her best upon the spur of the moment to
pull the house down; but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not
understand her husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of her
useless truthfulness struck her, and she was ashamed to write to
Kurrell, saying, 'I have gone mad and told everything. My husband
says that I am free to elope with you. Get a dƒk for Thursday, and
we will fly after dinner.' There was a cold-bloodedness about that
procedure which did not appeal to her. So she sat still in her own
house and thought.
At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn
and haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the
evening wore on she muttered some expression of sorrow,
something approaching to contrition. Boulte came out of a brown
study and said, 'Oh, that! I wasn't thinking about that. By the way,
what does Kurrell say to the elopement?'
'I haven't seen him,' said Mrs. Boulte. 'Good God, is that all?'
But Boulte was not listening and her sentence ended in a gulp.
The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did
not appear, and the new lift that she, in the five minutes' madness
of the previous evening, had hoped to build out of the ruins of the
old, seemed to be no nearer.
Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in
the verandah, and went out. The morning wore through, and at
mid-day the tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not
cry. She had finished her crying in the night, and now she did not
want to be left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk
to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps there might be
some comfort to be found in her company. She was the only other
woman in the Station.
In Kashima there are no regular calling-hours. Every one can drop
in upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai
hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens' house to borrow last
week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going
up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge,
entering the house from the back. As she passed through the
dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the
drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying
'But on my Honour! On my Soul and Honour, I tell you she doesn't
care for me. She told me so last night. I would have told you then
if Vansuythen hadn't been with you. If it is for her sake that you'll
have nothing to say to me, you can make your mind easy. It's
Kurrell '
'What?' said Mrs. Vansuythen, with a hysterical little laugh.
'Kurrell! Oh, it can't be! You two must have made some horrible
mistake. Perhaps you you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or
something. Things can't be as wrong as you say.'
Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man's
pleading, and was desperately trying to keep him to a side-issue.
'There must be some mistake,' she insisted, 'and it can be all put
right again.'
Boulte laughed grimly.
'It can't be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had never taken the
least the least interest in your wife, Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He
said he had not. He swore he had not,' said Mrs. Vansuythen.
The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a
little thin woman, with big rings round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuythen
stood up with a gasp.
'What was that you said?' asked Mrs. Boulte. 'Never mind that
man. What did Ted say to you? What did he say to you? What did
he say to you?'
Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the
trouble of her questioner.
'He said I can't remember exactly what he said but I understood
him to say that is But, really, Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange
question?'
'Will you tell me what he said?' repeated Mrs. Boulte. Even a tiger
will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps, and Mrs. Vansuythen
was only an ordinarily good woman. She began in a sort of
desperation: 'Well, he said that the never cared for you at all, and,
of course, there was not the least reason why he should have, and
and that was all.'
'You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was that true?'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Vansuythen very softly.
Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell
forward fainting.
'What did I tell you?' said Boulte, as though the conversation had
been unbroken. 'You can see for yourself. She cares for him.' The
light began to break into his dull mind, and he went on ' And he
what was he saying to you?'
But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for explanations or
impassioned protestations, was kneeling over Mrs. Boulte.
'Oh, you brute!' she cried. 'Are all men like this? Help me to get her
into my room and her face is cut against the table. Oh, will you be
quiet, and help me to carry her? I hate you, and I hate Captain
Kurrell. Lift her up carefully, and now go! Go away!'
Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Vansuythen's bedroom, and
departed before the storm of that lady's wrath and disgust,
impenitent and burning with jealousy. Kurrell had been making
love to Mrs. Vansuythen would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as
he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs.
Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved
had forsworn her.
In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along
the road and pulled up with a cheery 'Good - mornin'. 'Been
mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober,
married man, that. What will Mrs. Boulte say?'
Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.
'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two
are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough
to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me,
Kurrell old man haven't you?'
Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
about being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the
woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was
abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so
easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now
he was saddled with Boulte's voice recalled him.
'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'
Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
wrongs, Boulte added
''Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the
woman, now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too,
haven't you?'
Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond
him.
'What do you mean?' he said.
Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner: 'My wife
came over to Mrs. Vansuythen's just now; and it seems you'd been
telling Mrs. Vansuythen that you'd never cared for Emma. I
suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with
you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.'
Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by
another question: 'Go on. What happened?'
'Emma fainted,' said Boulte simply. 'But, look here, what had you
been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?'
Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made
havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the
man in whose eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.
'Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I
said pretty much what you've said, unless I'm a good deal
mistaken.'
'I spoke the truth,' said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell.
'Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.'
'No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know. And what did
Mrs. Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at
her feet?'
Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.
'I don't think that matters,' Boulte replied; 'and it doesn't concern
you.'
'But it does! I tell you it does' began Kurrell shamelessly.
The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips.
Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed laughed
long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound
the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the
Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might
have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half
the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and
Kurrell was the first to speak.
'Well, what are you going to do?'
Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. 'Nothing,' said he
quietly; 'what's the use? It's too ghastly for anything. We must let
the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't
go on calling you names for ever. Besides which, I don't feel that
I'm much better. We can't get out of this place. What is there to
do?'
Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply.
The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.
'Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don't
care what you do.'
He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him.
Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs.
Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony
grazed by the roadside.
The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs. Vansuythen was
driving home Mrs. Boulte, white and wan, with a cut on her
forehead.
'Stop, please,' said Mrs. Boulte, 'I want to speak to Ted.'
Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte leaned forward,
putting her hand upon the splashboard of the dog-cart, Kurrell
spoke.
'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 END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: A Wayside Comedy
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