THE OTHER MAN.
When the earth was sick and the skies were gray, And the woods were rotted with rain, The Dead Man rode through the autumn day To visit his love again.
Old Ballad.
Far back in the "seventies," before they had built any Public Offices atSimla, and the broad road round Jakko lived in a pigeon-hole in the P.W. D. hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey marry Colonel Schriederling.He could not have been MUCH more than thirty-five years her senior; and,as he lived on two hundred rupees a month and had money of his own,he was well off. He belonged to good people, and suffered in the coldweather from lung complaints. In the hot weather he dangled on the brinkof heat-apoplexy; but it never quite killed him.
Understand, I do not blame Schriederling. He was a good husbandaccording to his lights, and his temper only failed him when he wasbeing nursed. Which was some seventeen days in each month. He was almostgenerous to his wife about money matters, and that, for him, was aconcession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not happy. They married herwhen she was this side of twenty and had given all her poor little heartto another man. I have forgotten his name, but we will call himthe Other Man. He had no money and no prospects. He was not evengood-looking; and I think he was in the Commissariat or Transport. But,in spite of all these things, she loved him very madly; and there wassome sort of an engagement between the two when Schreiderling appearedand told Mrs. Gaurey that he wished to marry her daughter. Then theother engagement was broken off--washed away by Mrs. Gaurey's tears,for that lady governed her house by weeping over disobedience to herauthority and the lack of reverence she received in her old age. Thedaughter did not take after her mother. She never cried. Not even at thewedding.
The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was transferred to as bad astation as he could find. Perhaps the climate consoled him. He sufferedfrom intermittent fever, and that may have distracted him from his othertrouble. He was weak about the heart also. Both ways. One of the valveswas affected, and the fever made it worse. This showed itself later on.
Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took to being ill. Shedid not pine away like people in story books, but she seemed to pickup every form of illness that went about a station, from simple feverupwards. She was never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of times;and the illness made her ugly. Schreiderling said so. He prided himselfon speaking his mind.
When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and wentback to the lairs of his bachelordom. She used to trot up and down SimlaMall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat well on the backof her head, and a shocking bad saddle under her. Schreiderling'sgenerosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle would do fora woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling. She never was asked to dance,because she did not dance well; and she was so dull and uninteresting,that her box very seldom had any cards in it. Schreiderling said thatif he had known that she was going to be such a scare-crow after hermarriage, he would never have married her. He always prided himself onspeaking his mind, did Schreiderling!
He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment. Then sherevived a little, but she never recovered her looks. I found out at theClub that the Other Man is coming up sick--very sick--on an off chanceof recovery. The fever and the heart-valves had nearly killed him. Sheknew that, too, and she knew--what I had no interest in knowing--whenhe was coming up. I suppose he wrote to tell her. They had not seen eachother since a month before the wedding. And here comes the unpleasantpart of the story.
A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one evening.Mrs. Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the Mall all theafternoon in the rain. Coming up along the Cart-road, a tonga passed me,and my pony, tired with standing so long, set off at a canter. Just bythe road down to the Tonga Office Mrs. Schreiderling, dripping from headto foot, was waiting for the tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga wasno affair of mine; and just then she began to shriek. I went back atonce and saw, under the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling kneelingin the wet road by the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaminghideously. Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.
Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on theawning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and moustache, was theOther Man--dead. The sixty-mile up-hill jolt had been too much for hisvalve, I suppose. The tonga-driver said:--"The Sahib died two stages outof Solon. Therefore, I tied him with a rope, lest he should fall outby the way, and so came to Simla. Will the Sahib give me bukshish? IT,"pointing to the Other Man, "should have given one rupee."
The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he enjoyed the joke ofhis arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, in the mud, began to groan. Therewas no one except us four in the office and it was raining heavily. Thefirst thing was to take Mrs. Schreiderling home, and the second was toprevent her name from being mixed up with the affair. The tonga-driverreceived five rupees to find a bazar 'rickshaw for Mrs. Schreiderling.He was to tell the tonga Babu afterwards of the Other Man, and the Babuwas to make such arrangements as seemed best.
Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed out of the rain, and forthree-quarters of an hour we two waited for the 'rickshaw. The OtherMan was left exactly as he had arrived. Mrs. Schreiderling would doeverything but cry, which might have helped her. She tried to scream assoon as her senses came back, and then she began praying for the OtherMan's soul. Had she not been as honest as the day, she would have prayedfor her own soul too. I waited to hear her do this, but she did not.Then I tried to get some of the mud off her habit. Lastly, the 'rickshawcame, and I got her away--partly by force. It was a terrible businessfrom beginning to end; but most of all when the 'rickshaw had to squeezebetween the wall and the tonga, and she saw by the lamp-light that thin,yellow hand grasping the awning-stanchion.
She was taken home just as every one was going to a dance at ViceregalLodge--"Peterhoff" it was then--and the doctor found that she had fallenfrom her horse, that I had picked her up at the back of Jakko, andreally deserved great credit for the prompt manner in which I hadsecured medical aid. She did not die--men of Schreiderling's stamp marrywomen who don't die easily. They live and grow ugly.
She never told of her one meeting, since her marriage, with the OtherMan; and, when the chill and cough following the exposure of thatevening, allowed her abroad, she never by word or sign alluded to havingmet me by the Tonga Office. Perhaps she never knew.
She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shocking bad saddle,looking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner everyminute. Two years afterward, she went Home, and died--at Bournemouth, Ithink.
Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about "mypoor dear wife." He always set great store on speaking his mind, didSchreiderling!