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PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS RUDYARD KIPLING CONTENTS
LESPETH
THREE AND AN EXTRA
THROWN AWAY
MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS
YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER
FALSE DAWN
THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES
CUPID'S ARROWS
HIS CHANCE IN LIFE
WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
THE OTHER MAN
CONSEQUENCES
THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN MCGOGGIN
A GERM DESTROYER
KIDNAPPED
THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY
THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
HIS WEDDED WIFE
THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
BEYOND THE PALE
IN ERROR
A BANK FRAUD
TOD'S AMENDMENT
IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH
PIG
THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS
THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE
VENUS ANNODOMINI
THE BISARA OF POORER
THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS
THE STORY OF MUHAMMID DIN
ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS
WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE
BY WORD OF MOUTH
TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
LISPETH.
Look you have cast out Love! What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One the One in Three? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
The Convert.
She was the daughter of Sonoo a Hill-man and Jadeh his wife. One
year their maize failed and two bears spent the night in their
only poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side;
so next season they turned Christian and brought their baby to
the Mission to be baptized. The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her
Elizabeth and "Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.
Later cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo
and Jadeh and Lispeth became half-servant half-companion to the
wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was after the reign of
the Moravian missionaries but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten
her title of "Mistress of the Northern Hills."
Whether Christianity improved Lispeth or whether the gods of her
own people would have done as much for her under any circumstances
I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows
lovely she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look
upon. Lispeth had a Greek face--one of those faces people paint so
often and see so seldom. She was of a pale ivory color and for
her race extremely tall. Also she possessed eyes that were
wonderful; and had she not been dressed in the abominable print-
cloths affected by Missions you would meeting her on the hill-
side unexpectedly have thought her the original Diana of the
Romans going out to slay.
Lispeth took to Christianity readily and did not abandon it when
she reached womanhood as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated
her because she had they said become a memsahib and washed
herself daily; and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with
her. Somehow one cannot ask a stately goddess five foot ten in
her shoes to clean plates and dishes. So she played with the
Chaplain's children and took classes in the Sunday School and read
all the books in the house and grew more and more beautiful like
the Princesses in fairy tales. The Chaplain's wife said that the
girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something
"genteel." But Lispeth did not want to take service. She was very
happy where she was.
When travellers--there were not many in those years--came to
Kotgarth Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear
they might take her away to Simla or somewhere out into the
unknown world.
One day a few months after she was seventeen years old Lispeth
went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English
ladies--a mile and a half out and a ride back again. She covered
between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals all
about and about between Kotgarth and Narkunda. This time she came
back at full dusk stepping down the breakneck descent into
Kotgarth with something heavy in her arms. The Chaplain's wife was
dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing hard and
very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa
and said simply:
"This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt
himself. We will nurse him and when he is well your husband
shall marry him to me."
This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial
views and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However the
man on the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman
and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth
said she had found him down the khud so she had brought him in.
He was breathing queerly and was unconscious.
He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain who knew something of
medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she
meant to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely
on the impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly and
repeated her first proposition. It takes a great deal of
Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts such as
falling in love at first sight. Lispeth having found the man she
worshipped did not see why she should keep silent as to her
choice. She had no intention of being sent away either. She was
going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough to marry
her. This was her little programme.
After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation the Englishman
recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife and
Lispeth--especially Lispeth--for their kindness. He was a
traveller in the East he said--they never talked about "globe-
trotters" in those days when the P. & O. fleet was young and
small--and had come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and
butterflies among the Simla hills. No one at Simla therefore
knew anything about him. He fancied he must have fallen over the
cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk and that his
coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled. He thought he would
go back to Simla when he was a little stronger. He desired no more
mountaineering.
He made small haste to go away and recovered his strength slowly.
Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his
wife; so the latter spoke to the Englishman and told him how
matters stood in Lispeth's heart. He laughed a good deal and said
it was very pretty and romantic a perfect idyl of the Himalayas;
but as he was engaged to a girl at Home he fancied that nothing
would happen. Certainly he would behave with discretion. He did
that. Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth and walk
with Lispeth and say nice things to her and call her pet names
while he was getting strong enough to go away. It meant nothing at
all to him and everything in the world to Lispeth. She was very
happy while the fortnight lasted because she had found a man to
love.
Being a savage by birth she took no trouble to hide her feelings
and the Englishman was amused. When he went away Lispeth walked
with him up the Hill as far as Narkunda very troubled and very
miserable. The Chaplain' s wife being a good Christian and
disliking anything in the shape of fuss or scandal--Lispeth was
beyond her management entirely--had told the Englishman to tell
Lispeth that he was coming back to marry her. "She is but a child
you know and I fear at heart a heathen" said the Chaplain's
wife. So all the twelve miles up the hill the Englishman with his
arm around Lispeth's waist was assuring the girl that he would
come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him promise over and over
again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed out of
sight along the Muttiani path.
Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarth again and said to
the Chaplain's wife: "He will come back and marry me. He has gone
to his own people to tell them so." And the Chaplain's wife
soothed Lispeth and said: "He will come back." At the end of two
months Lispeth grew impatient and was told that the Englishman
had gone over the seas to England. She knew where England was
because she had read little geography primers; but of course she
had no conception of the nature of the sea being a Hill girl.
There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the House. Lispeth had
played with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again and
put it together of evenings and cried to herself and tried to
imagine where her Englishman was. As she had no ideas of distance
or steamboats her notions were somewhat erroneous. It would not
have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct; for
the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill
girl. He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting
in Assam. He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth's name
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