Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling Page A

heart at her feet?’
    Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.
    â€˜I don’t think that matters,’ Boulte replied; ‘and it doesn’t concern you.’
    â€˜But it does! I tell you it does’ – began Kurrell shamelessly.
    The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte’s lips. Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed – laughed long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound – the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and Kurrell was the first to speak.
    â€˜Well, what are you going to do?’
    Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. ‘Nothing,’ said he quietly. ‘What’s the use? It’s too ghastly for anything. We must let the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can’t go on calling you names for ever. Besides which, I don’t feel that I’m much better. We can’t get out of this place. What
is
there to do?’
    Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply. The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.
    â€˜Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows
I
don’t care what you do.’
    He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him. Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs Boulte or Mrs Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony grazed by the roadside.
    The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs Vansuythen was driving home Mrs Boulte, white and wan, with a cut on her forehead.
    â€˜Stop, please,’ said Mrs Boulte. ‘I want to speak to Ted.’
    Mrs Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs Boulte leaned forward, putting her hand upon the splash-board of the dog-cart, Kurrell spoke.
    â€˜I’ve seen your husband, Mrs Boulte.’
    There was no necessity for any further explanation. The man’s eyes were fixed, not upon Mrs Boulte, but her companion. Mrs Boulte saw the look.
    â€˜Speak to him!’ she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side. ‘Oh, speak to him! Tell him what you told me just now. Tell him you hate him! Tell him you hate him!’
    She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the
sais,
7 impassive, went forward to hold the horse. Mrs Vansuythen turned scarlet and dropped the reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy explanations.
    â€˜I’ve nothing to do with it,’ she began coldly; but Mrs Boulte’s sobs overcame her, and she addressed herself to the man. ‘I don’t know what I am to say, Captain Kurrell. I don’t know what I can call you. I think you’ve – you’ve behaved abominably, and she has cut her forehead terribly against the table.’
    â€˜It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t anything,’ said Mrs Boulte feebly. ‘
That
doesn’t matter. Tell him what you told me. Say you don’t care for him. Oh, Ted,
won’t
you believe her?’
    â€˜Mrs Boulte has made me understand that you were – that you were fond of her once upon a time,’ went on Mrs Vansuythen.
    â€˜Well!’ said Kurrell brutally. ‘It seems to me that Mrs Boulte had better be fond of her own husband first.’
    â€˜Stop!’ said Mrs Vansuythen. ‘Hear me first. I don’t care – I don’t want to know anything about you and Mrs Boulte; but I want
you
to know that I hate you, that I think you are a cur, and that I’ll never,
never
speak to you again. Oh, I don’t dare to say what I think of you, you – man!’
    â€˜I want to speak to Ted,’ moaned Mrs Boulte, but the dog-cart rattled on, and Kurrell was left on the road, shamed, and boiling with wrath against Mrs Boulte.
    He waited till Mrs Vansuythen was driving back to her own house, and, she being