Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling

true?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Mrs Vansuythen very softly.
    Mrs Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell forward fainting.
    â€˜What did I tell you?’ said Boulte, as though the conversation had been unbroken. ‘You can see for yourself. She cares for
him
.’ The light began to break into his dull mind, and he went on: ‘And he – what was
he
saying to you?’
    But Mrs Vansuythen, with no heart for explanations or impassioned protestations, was kneeling over Mrs Boulte.
    â€˜Oh, you brute!’ she cried. ‘Are
all
men like this? Help me to get her into my room – and her face is cut against the table. Oh,
will
you be quiet, and help me to carry her? I hate you, and I hate Captain Kurrell. Lift her up carefully, and now – go! Go away!’
    Boulte carried his wife into Mrs Vansuythen’s bedroom, and departed before the storm of that lady’s wrath and disgust, impenitent and burning with jealousy. Kurrell had been making love to Mrs Vansuythen – would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved had forsworn her.
    In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along the road and pulled up with a cheery ‘Good mornin’. Been mashing Mrs Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober, married man, that. What will Mrs Boulte say?’
    Boulte raised his head and said slowly: ‘Oh, you liar!’ Kurrell’s face changed. ‘What’s that?’ he asked quickly.
    â€˜Nothing much,’ said Boulte. ‘Has my wife told you that you two are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough to explain the situation to me. You’ve been a true friend to me, Kurrell – old man – haven’t you?’
    Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence about being willing to give ‘satisfaction’. But his interest in the woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now he was saddled with – Boulte’s voice recalled him.
    â€˜I don’t think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I’m pretty sure you’d get none from killing me.’
    Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his wrongs, Boulte added:
    â€˜Seems rather a pity that you haven’t the decency to keep to the woman, now you’ve got her. You’ve been a true friend to
her
too, haven’t you?’
    Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond him.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ he said.
    Boulte answered more to himself than the questioner: ‘My wife came over to Mrs Vansuythen’s just now; and it seems you’d been telling Mrs Vansuythen that you’d never cared for Emma. I suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs Vansuythen to do with you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.’
    Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by another question: ‘Go on. What happened?’
    â€˜Emma fainted,’ said Boulte simply. ‘But, look here, what had you been saying to Mrs Vansuythen?’
    Kurrell laughed. Mrs Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the man in whose eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.
    â€˜Saying to her? What
does
a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I said pretty much what you’ve said, unless I’m a good deal mistaken.’
    â€˜I spoke the truth,’ said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell. ‘Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.’
    â€˜No! I suppose not. You’re only her husband, y’know. And what did Mrs Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged