Speaker 1: His wedded wife by Rudyard Kipling crime murder in the
market place, and each will turn upon his neighbor anxious
eyes that ask art thou the man we hunted cane
some centuries ago across the world. That bread the fear
of our own misdeeds maintained to day Bybart's moralities. Shakespeare
says something about worms, or it may be giant or beetles,
turning a few tread on them too severely. The safest
plan is never to tread on a warm not even
on the last new subaltern from home, with his buttons
hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of
sappy English beef in his cheeks. This is the story
of the worm that turned. For the sake of brevity,
we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay say the worm, although
he really was an exceedingly pretty boy without hair on
his face and with a waist like a girl's when
he came out to the second Shikaries and was made
unhappy in several ways. The Shikaris are a high caste regiment,
and you must be able to do things well, play
a banjo, or ride more than little, or sing or
act to get on with them. The worm did nothing
except fall off his pony and knocked chips out of
gate posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous. After
a time. He objected to whist cut the cloth at
Billiard's sang out of tune, kept very much to himself,
and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at home. Four
of these five things were vices, which the Sikaries objected
to and set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how
subalterns are by brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to
be ferocious. It is good and wholesome and does no
one any harm unless tempers are lost, and then there
is trouble. There was a man once, but that is
another story. The sickeries sicred the Warm very much, and
he bore everything without winking. He was so good and
so anxious to learn, and flushed so pink that his
education was cut short, and he was left to his
own devices by every one except the senior subaltern, who
continued to make life a burden to the Warm. The
senior Subalton, meant no harm, but his chiffe was coarse,
and he didn't quite understand where to stop. He had
been waiting too long for his company, and that always
sour as a man. Also, he was in love, which
made him worse. One day, after he had borrowed the
worm's trap for a lady who never existed, had used
it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to
the worm purporting to come from the lady, and was
telling the mess all about it. The worm rose and
his place and said, in his quiet ladylike boys, that
was a very pretty sale. But i'll lay you a
month's pay to a month's pay when you get your step.
That I work a sell on you that you'll remember
for the rest of your days, and the regiment after
you when you're dead. Were broke, the worm wasn't angry
in the least, and the rest of the mess shouted.
Then the senior subaltern looked at the worm from the
boots upward and down again, and said, done baby. The
worm took the rest of the mess to witness that
the bed had been taken, and retired into a book
with a sweet smile. Two months passed, and the senior
subaltern still educated the worm, who began to move about
a little more as the hot water came on. I
have said that the senior sobaltern was in love. The
curious thing is that a girl was in love with
the senior sobaltron. Though the colonel said awful things, and
the major snorted, and married captains looked unutterable wisdom, and
the juniors coughed. Those two were engaged. The senior subaltron
was so pleased with getting his company and his acceptance
at the same time that he forgot to bother the worm.
The girl was a pretty girl and had money of
her own. She does not come into this story at all.
One night, at the beginning of the hot Water, all
the except the worm, who had gone to his own
room to write home letters, were sitting on the platform
outside the mess house. The band had finished playing, but
no one wanted to go in, and the captain's wives
were there also. The folly of a man in love
is unlimited. The senior sobaltern had been holding forth on
the merits of the girl he was engaged to, and
the ladies were purring approval, while the men yawned. When
there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and
the tired, faint voice lifted itself, Who is my husband?
I do not wish in the least to reflect on
the morality of the shickeries. But it is on record
that four men jumped up as if they had been shot.
Three of them were married men. Perhaps they were afraid
that their wives had come from home unbeknounced. The fourth
said that he had did on the impulse of the moment.
He explained us afterwards. Then the voice cried, oh, Lionel,
Lionel was the senior Soubaltron's name. A woman came into
the little circle of light by the candles on the
peg tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where
the senior Subaltrin was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet,
feeling that things were going to happen, and ready to
believe the worst. In this bad, small world of ours,
one knows so little of the life of the next man,
which after all is entirely his own concern, that one
is not surprised when a crash comes. Anything might turn
up any time for any one. Perhaps the senior subaltern
had been trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that way.
Occasionally we didn't know, we wanted to hear, And the
captain's wives were as anxious as we if he had
been trapped, he was to be excused. For the woman
from nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray traveling dress,
was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full
of tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, and
her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear.
As soon as the senior subaltern stood up, she threw
her arms round his neck and called him quite darling,
and said she could not bear waiting alone in England,
and his letters were so short and cold, and she
was his to the end of the world, and would
he forgive her? This did not sound quite like a
lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative. Saying seemed
black indeed, and the captain's wives peered under their eyebrows
at the senior's obaltern, and the colonel's face said like
the day of judgment, framed in gray bristoles, and no
one spoke for a while. Next the colonel said very shortly, well, sir,
and the woman saw afresh. The senior Soubletrin was half
choked with the arms round his neck, but he gasped out,
it's a lie. I've never had a wife in my life.
Don't swear, said the colonel. Come into the mess. We
must sift this clear somehow, And he sighed to himself,
for he believed in his sickeries, did the colonel. We
tripped into the ante room under the four lights, and
there we saw how beautiful the woman was. She stood
up in the middle of us, all sometimes choking with crying,
then hard and proud, and then holding out her arms
to the senior Soblechrin. It was like the fourth act
of a tragedy. She told us how the senior Subatrin
had married her when he was home on leave eighteen
months before, and she seemed to know all that we knew,
and more too, of his people and his past life.
He was white and ere, she gray, trying now and
again to break into the torrent of her words. And we,
noting how lovely she was, and what a criminal he looked,
esteemed him a beast of the worst kind. We felt
sorry for him, though I shall never forget the indictment
of the senior Subaltrin by his wife, nor will he.
It was so sudden, rushing out of the dog unannounced
into our door lives. The captain's wives stood back, but
their eyes were alight, and you could see that they
had already convicted and sentenced the senior subaltern. The colonel
seemed five years older. One major was shading his eyes
with his hand and watching the woman from underneath it.
Another was chewing his mustache and smiling quietly, as if
he were witnessing a play falling the open space in
the center by the whiz tables, the senior Sobaltron's terrier
was hunting for fleas. I remember all this as clearly
as though a photograph were in my hand. I remember
the look of horror on the senior Sobaltron's face. It
was rather like seeing a man hanged, but much more interesting. Finally,
the woman wound up by saying that the senior subletron
carried the double F M in a tattoo on his
left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of
the bachelor majors said, very politely, I presume that your
marriage certificate would be more to the purpose. That roused
the woman. She stood up and sneered at the senior
sobatron for a cur and abused the major and the
colonel and all the rest. Then she wept, and then
she pulled a paper from her breast, saying, imperily take
that and let my husband, my lawfully wearted husband, read
it aloud if he dare. There was a hush, and
the man looked into each other's eyes, as the senior
subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way and
took the paper. We were wondering as we stared whether
there was anything against any one of us that might
turn a plater on the senior. Sobatron's throat was dry,
but as he ran his eye over the paper, he
broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief and said
to the woman, you young black god. But the woman
had fled through a door, and on the paper was written,
this is to certify that I, the worm, have paid
in full my debts to the senior subaltern, and further
that the senior subaltern is my debtor by agreement on
the twenty third of February, as by the mens attested
to the extent of one man's captain's pay in the
lawful currency of the Indian Empire. Then a deputation set
off for the Worm's quarters and found him betwixt and between,
unlacing his stays with the hat, with surge dress, et cetera.
On the bed. He came over as he was, and
the securies shouted till the gunner's men sent over to
know if they might have a share of the fun.
I think we were all except the colonel and the
senior Subalgurn a little disappointed that the scandal had come
to nothing, but that is human nature. There could be
no two words about the Worm's acting. It leaned as
near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of
a joke can. When most of the subalterns sat upon
him with sofa cushions to find out why he had
not said that acting was his strong point, he answered
very quietly, I don't think you ever asked me. I
used to act at home with my sisters. But no
acting with girls could account for the Worm's display that night. Personally,
I think it was in bad taste. Besides being dangerous.
There is no sort of use in playing with fire,
even for fun. The sickeries made him president of the
Regimental Dramatic Club, and when the senior Subalterne paid up
his debt, which he did at once, the worm sank
the money in scenery and dresses. He was a good worm,
and the chickeries are proud of him. The only drawback
is that he has been christened Missus senors Sobaltrin, and
as there are now two mistress senor Sobaltrins in the station,
this is sometimes confusing to strangers. Later on, I will
tell you of a case something like this, but with
all the chest left out and nothing in it, but
real trouble.