Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/32

 "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—h—h!" said Mrs. Mallowe, in the 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 spoilt everything!"

"Very few men understand 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. 1 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 corner. Protect my character, dear, if it's all over Simla by to-morrow—and then he bobbed