“Idiot! Will you show me the papers, will you speak, and mil you be quick?”
Her most reverent admirers would hardly have recognised the soft-spoken, slow-gestured, quiet-eyed Mrs. Mallowe in the indignant woman who was drumming on Trewinnard’s desk. He submitted to the voice of authority, as he had submitted in the old times, and explained as quickly as might be the cause of the war between the two Departments. In conclusion he handed over the rough sheets of his reply. As she read he watched her with the expectant sickly half-smile of the unaccustomed writer who is doubtful of the success of his work. And another smile followed, but died away as he saw Mrs. Mallowe read his production. All the old phrases out of which she had so carefully drilled him had returned; the unpruned fluency of diction was there, the more luxuriant for being so long cut back; the reckless riotousness of assertion that sacrificed all — even the vital truth that Hatchett would be so sure to take advantage of — for the sake of scoring a point, was there; and through and between every line ran the weak, wilful vanity of the man. Mrs. Mallowe’s mouth hardened.
“And you wrote this!” she said. Then to herself: “He wrote this!”
Trewinnard stepped forward with a gesture habitual to him when he wished to explain. Mrs. Reiver had never asked for explanations. She had told him that all his ways were perfect. Therefore he loved her.
Mrs. Mallowe tore up the papers one by one, saying as she did so: “You were going to cross swords with Hatchett. Do you know your own strength? Oh, Harold, Harold, it is too pitiable! I thought — I thought” Then the great anger that had been growing in her broke out, and she cried: “Oh, you fool! You blind, blind, blind, trumpery fool! Why do I help you? Why do I have anything to do with you? You miserable man! Sit down and write as I dictate. Quickty! And I had chosen you out of a hundred other men! Write! It is a terrible thing to be found out by d mere unseeing male — Thackeray has said it. It is worse, far worse, to be found out by a woman, and in that hour after long years to discover her worth. For ten minutes Trewinnard’s pen scratched across the paper, and Mrs. Mallowe spoke. “And that is all,” she said bitterly. “As you value yourself — your noble, honourable, modest self — keep within that.”
But that was not all — by any means. At least as far as Trewinnard was concerned.
He rose from his chair and delivered his soul of many mad and futile thoughts — such things as a man babbles when he is deserted of the gods, has missed his hold upon the latch-door of Opportunity — and cannot see that the ways are shut. Mrs. Mallowe bore with him to the end, and he stood before her — no enviable creature to look upon.
“A cur as well as a fool!” she said. “Will you be good enough to tell them to bring my horse? I do not trust to your honour — you have none — but I believe that your sense of shame will keep you from speaking of my visit.”
So he was left in the verandah crying “Come back” like a distracted guinea-fowl.
******
“He’s done us in the eye,” grunted Hatehett as he perused the K.P.B. and B. reply. “Look at the cunning of the brute in shifting the issue on to India in that carneying, blarneying way! Only wait until I can get my knife into him again. I’ll stop every bolt-hole before the hunt begins.”
*****
Oh, I believe I have forgotten to mention the success of Mrs. Hauksbee’s revenge. It was so brilliant and overwhelming that she had to cry in Mrs. Mallowe’s arms for the better part of half an hour; and Mrs. Mallowe was just as bad, though she thanked Mrs. Hauksbee several times in the course of the inter- Anew, and Mrs. Hauksbee said that she would repent and reform, and Mrs. Mallowe said: “Hush, dear, hush! I don’t think either of us had anything to be proud of.” And Mrs. Hauksbee said: “Oh, but I didn’t mean it, Polly, I didn’t mean it!” And I stood with my hat in my hand trying to make two very indignant ladies understand that the bearer really had given me “salaam bolta.”
That was an evil quarter minute.
CHATAUQUAED
Tells how the Professor and I found the Precious Rediculouses and how they Chautauquaed at us. Puts into print some sentiments better left unrecorded, and proves that a neglected theory will blossom in congenial soil. Contains fragments of three lectures and a confession.
“But these, in spite of careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half conscious of the garden squirt,
The Spendlings look unhappy.”
OUT of the silence under the apple- trees the Professor spake. One leg thrust from the hammock netting kicked lazily at the blue. There was the crisp crunch of teeth in an apple core.
“Get out of this,” said the Professor lazily. As it was on the banks of the Huehli. so on the green borders of the Musquash and the Ohio — eternal unrest, and the insensate desire to go ahead. I was lapped in a very trance of peace. Even the apples brought no indigestion.
“Permanent Nuisance, what is the matter now?” I grunted.
“G’long out of this and go to Niagara,” said the Professor in jerks. “Spread the ink of description through the waters of the Horseshoe falls — buy a papoose from the tame wild Indian who lives at the Clifton House — take a fifty-cent ride on the Maid of the Mist — go over the falls in a tub.”
“Seriously, is it worth the trouble? Everybody who has ever been within fifty miles of the falls has written his or her impressions. Everybody who has never seen the falls knows all about them, and — besides, I want some more apples. They’re good in this place, ye big fat man,” I quoted.
The Professor retired into his hammock for a while. Then he reappeared flushed with a new thought. “If you want to see something quite new let’s go to Chautauqua.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s a sort of institution. It’s an educational idea, and it lives on the borders of a lake in New York State. I think you’ll find it interesting; and I know it will show you a new side of American life.”
In blank ignorance I consented. Everybody is anxious that I should see as many sides of American life as possible. Here in the East they demand of me what I thought of their West. I dare not answer that it is as far from their notions and motives as Hindustan from Hoboken — that the West, to this poor thinking, is an America which has 110 kinship with its neighbour. Therefore I congratulated them hypocritically upon “their West,” and from their lips learn that there is yet another America, that of the South — alien and distinct. Into the third country, alas! I shall not have time to penetrate. The newspapers and the oratoiy of the day will tell you that all feeling between ‘
the North and South is extinct. None the less the Northerner, outside his newspapers and public men, has a healthy contempt for the Southerner which the latter repays by what seems very like a deep-rooted aversion to the Northerner. I have learned now what the sentiments of the great American nation mean. The North speaks in the name of the country; the West is busy developing its own resources, and the Southerner skulks in his tents. His opinions do not count; but his girls are very beautiful.
So the Professor and I took a train and went to look at the educational idea. From sleepy, quiet little Musquash we rattled through the coal and iron districts of Pennsylvania, her coke ovens flaring into the night and her clamorous foundries waking the silence of the woods in which they lay. Twenty years hence woods and cornfields will be gone, and from Pittsburg to Shenango all will be smoky black as Bradford and Beverly: for each factory is drawing to itself a small town, and year by year the demand for rails increases. The Professor held forth on the labour question, his remarks being prompted by the sight of a train-load of Italians and Hungarians going home from mending a bridge.
“You recollect the Burmese,” said he. “The American is like the Burman in one way. He won’t do heavy manual labour. He knows too much. Consequently he imports the alien to be his hands — just as the Burman gets hold of the Madrassi. If he shuts down all labour immigration he will have to fill up his own dams, cut his cuttings and pile his o
wn embankments. The American citizen won’t like that. He is racially unfit to be a labourer in muttee. He can invent, buy, sell and design, but he cannot waste his time on earthworks. Iswaste, this great people will resume contract labour immigration the minute they find the aliens in their midst are not sufficient for the jobs in hand. If the alien gives them trouble they will shoot him.”
“Yes, they will shoot him,” I said, remembering how only two days before some Hungarians employed on a line near Musquash had seen fit to strike and to roll down rocks on labourers hired to take their places, an amusement which caused the sheriff to open fire with a revolver and wound or kill (it really does not much matter which) two or three of them. Only a man who earns ten pence a day in sunny Itafy knows how to howl for as many shillings in America.
The composition of the crowd in the cars began to attract my attention. There were very many women and a few clergymen. Where you shall find these two together, there also shall be a fad, a hobby, a theory, or a mission.
“These people are going to Chautauqua,” said the Professor. “It’s a sort of open-air college — they call it — but you’ll understand things better when you arrive.” A grim twinkle in the back of his eye awakened all my fears.
“Can you get anything to drink there?” “No.”
“Are you allowed to smoke?”
“Ye-es, in certain places.”
“Are we staying there over Sunday?”
“No” This very emphatically.
Feminine shrieks of welcome: “There’s Sadie!” “Why, Maimie, is that yeou!” “Alf’s in the smoker. Did you bring the baby?” and a profligate expenditure of kisses between bonnet and bonnet told me we had struck a gathering place of the clans. It was midnight. They swept us, this horde of clamouring women, into a Black Maria omnibus and a sumptuous hotel close to the borders of a lake — Lake Chautauqua. Morning showed as pleasant a place of summer pleasuring as ever I wish to see. Smooth-cut lawns of velvet grass, studded with tennis-courts, surrounded the hotel and ran down to the blue waters, which were dotted with rowboats. Young men in wonderful blazers, and maidens in more wonderful tennis costumes; women attired with all the extravagance of unthinking Chicago or the grace of Washington (which is Simla) filled the grounds, and the neat French nurses and exquisitely dressed little children ran about together. There was pickerel-fishing for such as enjoyed it; a bowling-alley, unlimited bath- “
ing and a toboggan, besides many other amusements, all winding up with a dance or a concert at night. Women dominated the sham mediaeval hotel, rampaged about the passages, flirted in the corridors and chased unruly children off the tennis-courts. This place was called Lake- wood. It is a pleasant place for the unregen- erate.
“We go up the lake in a steamer to Chautauqua,” said the Professor.
“But I want to stay here. This is what I understand and like.”
“No, you don’t. You must come along and be educated.”
All the shores of the lake, which is eighteen miles long, are dotted with summer hotels, camps, boat-houses and pleasant places of rest. You go there with all your family to fish and to flirt. There is no special beauty in the landscape of tame cultivated hills and decorous, woolly trees, but good taste and wealth have taken the place in hand, trimmed its borders and made it altogether delightful.
The institution of Chautauqua is the largest village on the lake. I can’t hope to give you an idea of it, but try to imagine the Charles- ville at Mussoorie magnified ten times and set down in the midst of hundreds of tiny little hill houses, each different from its neighbour, brightly painted and constructed of wood. Add something of the peace of dull Dalhousie, flavour with a tincture of missions and the old Polytechnic, Cassell’s Self Educator and a Monday pop, and spread the result out flat on the shores of Naini Tal Lake, which you will please transport to the Dun. But that does not half describe the idea. YvTe watched it through a wicket gate, where we were furnished with a red ticket, price forty cents, and five dollars if you lost it. I naturally lost mine on the spot and was fined accordingly.
Once inside the grounds on the paths that serpentined round the myriad cottages I was lost in admiration of scores of pretty girls, most of them with little books under their arms, and a pretty air of seriousness on their faces. Then I stumbled upon an elaborately arranged mass of artificial hillocks surrounding a mud puddle and a wormy streak of slime connecting it with another mud puddle. Little boulders topped with square pieces of putty were strewn over the hillocks — evidently with intention. When I hit my foot against one such boulder painted “Jericho,” I demanded information in aggrieved tones.
“Hsh!” said the Professor. “It’s a model of Palestine — the Holy Land — done to scale and all that, you know.”
Two young people were flirting on the top of the highest mountain overlooking Jerusalem; the mud puddles were meant for the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, and the twisting gutter was the Jordan. A small boy sat on the city “Safed” and cast his line into Chautauqua Lake. On the whole it did not impress me. The hotel was filled with women, and a large blackboard in the main hall set forth the exercises for the day. It seemed that Chautauqua was a sort of educational syndicate, cum hotel, cum (very mild) Rosherville. There were annually classes of young women and young men who studied in the little cottages for two or three months in the year and went away to self-edueate themselves. There were other classes who learned tilings by correspondence, and yet other classes made up the teachers. All these delights I had missed, but had arrived just in time for a sort of debauch of lectures which concluded the three months’ education. The syndicate in control had hired various lecturers whose names would draw audiences, and these men were lecturing about the labour problem, the servant-girl question, the artistic and political aspect of Greek life, the Pope in the Middle Ages and similar subjects, in all of which young women do naturally take deep delight. Professor Mahaffy (what the devil was he doing in that gallery?) was the Greek art side man, and a Dr. Gunsaulus handled the Pope. The latter I loved forthwith. He had been to some gathering on much the same lines as the Chautauqua one, and had there been detected, in the open daylight, smoking a cigar. One whole lighted cigar. Then his congregation or his class, or the mothers of both of them, wished to know whether this was the sort of conduct for a man professing temperance. I have not heard Dr. Gunsaulus lecture, but he must be a good man. Professor Mahaffy was enjoying himself. I sat close to him at tiffin and heard him arguing with an American professor as to the merits of the American Constitution. Both men spoke that the table might get the benefit of their wisdom, whence I argued that even eminent professors are eminently human.
“Now, for goodness’ sake, behave yourself,” said the Professor. “You are not to ask the whereabouts of a bar. You are not to laugh at anything you see, and you are not to go away and deride this Institution.”
Remember that advice. But I was virtuous throughout, and my virtue brought its own reward. The parlour of the hotel was full of committees of women; some of them were Methodist Episcopalians, some were Congre- gationalists, and some were United Presbyterians: and some were faith healers and Christian Scientists, and all trotted about with notebooks in their hands and the expression of Atlas on their faces. They were connected with missions to the heathen, and so forth, and their deliberations appeared to be controlled by a male missionary. The Professor introduced me to one of them as their friend from India.
“Indeed,” said she; “and of what denomination are you?”
“I — I live in India,” I murmured.
“You are a missionary, then?”
I had obeyed the Professor’s orders all too well. “I am not a missionary,” I said, with, I trust, a decent amount of regret in my tones. She dropped me and I went to find the Professor, who had cowardly deserted me, and I think was laughing on the balcony. It is very hard to persuade a denominational American that a man from India is not a missionary. The home-returned preachers very naturally convey the i
mpression that India is inhabited solely by missionaries.
I heard some of them talking and saw how, all unconsciously, they were hinting the thing which was not. But prejudice governs me against my will. When a woman looks you in the face and pities you for having to associate with “heathen” and “idolaters” — Sikh Sirdar of the north, if you please, Mahommedan gentlemen and the simple-minded J at of the Punjab — what can you do?
The Professor took me out to see the sights, and lest I should be further treated as a denominational missionary I wrapped myself in tobacco smoke. This ensures respectful treatment at Chautauqua. An amphitheatre capable of seating five thousand people is the centre-point of the show. Here the lecturers lecture and the concerts are held, and from here the avenues start. Each cottage is decorated according to the taste of the owner, and is full of girls. The verandahs are alive with them; they fill the sinuous walks; they hurry from lecture to lecture, hatless, and three under one sunshade; they retail little confidences walking arm-in-arm; they giggle for all the world like uneducated maidens, and they walk about and row on the lake with their very young men. The lectures are arranged to suit all tastes. I got hold of one called “The Eschatology of Our Saviour.” It set itself to prove the length, breadth and temperature of Hell from information garnered from the New Testament. I read it in the sunshine under the trees, with these hundreds of pretty maidens pretending to be busy all round; and it did not seem to match the landscape. Then I studied the faces of the crowd. One-quarter were old and worn; the balance were young, innocent, charming and frivolous. I wondered how much they really knew or cared for the art side of Greek life, or the Pope in the Middle Ages; and how much for the young men who walked with them. Also what their ideas of Hell might be. We entered a place called a museum (all the shows here are of an improving tendency), which had evidently been brought together by feminine hands, so jumbled were the exhibits. There was a facsimile of the Rosetta stone, with some printed popular information; an Egyptian camel saddle, miscellaneous truck from the Holy Land, another model of the same, photographs of Rome, badly-blotched drawings of volcanic phenomena, the head of the pike that John Brown took to Harper’s Ferry that time his soul went marching on, casts of doubtful value, and views of Chautauqua, all bundled together without the faintest attempt at arrangement, and all very badly labelled.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 442