No More Learning

He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it were
on his face, and changed to a nervous grin--the sort of grin men wear
when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to be
sinking by the stem, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to
realize what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the
drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and it was giving way under
her. "What are you doing? " said the Man's Wife. The Tertium Quid gave no
answer. He grinned nervously and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped
with her forefeet on the road, and the struggle began. The Man's Wife
screamed, "Oh, Frank, get off! "

But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle--his face blue and
white--and he looked into the Man's Wife's eyes. Then the Man's Wife
clutched at the mare's head and caught her by the nose instead of the
bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down with a scream, the
Tertium Quid upon her, and the nervous grin still set on his face.

The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose earth
falling off the roadway, and the sliding roar of the man and horse going
down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on Frank to leave his
mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He was underneath the mare,
nine hundred feet below, spoiling a patch of Indian corn.
As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of the
evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a temporarily mad
horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes and her mouth open, and
her head like the head of the Medusa. She was stopped by a man at the
risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp heap, and put on
the bank to explain herself. This wasted twenty minutes, and then she
was sent home in a lady's 'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her
hands picking at her riding-gloves.

She was in bed through the following three days, which were rainy; so
she missed attending the funeral of the Tertium Quid, who was lowered
into eighteen inches of water, instead of the twelve to which he had
first objected.




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 bound on all sides by the rock-tipped 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 hills 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 grey-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.