Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/44

 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 went into camp for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They possessed 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, for the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But the Government, which is the servant of Fate, 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 Boad, 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 were settled down, they gave a tiny house-warming to all Kashima; and that made all 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 all.

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.