The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-06-13

NAN 10 lGA LlSpeIu bildb nc WIS COMING
back tomarry her. ''She is bat q child,
You know, and, I fear, at heart a heath
en-" said the chaplain's wife. So all
the twelve miles UP the hill the English
man, with his arm around Lispeth's
waist, was assuring the girl that he
would cone 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 Kotgarh again, and said t.. the chap.
lain's wife: "He will come sack and
marry me. He has gone to his own peo-
pie to tell them So" And the chaplains
wife soothed Lispeth and said: HE will
come back" At the end Of two months
Lispeth grew impatient, and was told
that the Engishman had gone oyer the
seas to England. She knew where Eng.
land 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 her
self, and tried to imagine where her Eng
lishman was. AS she had no ideas OF
distance or steamboats,, her notions
were somewhat erroneous. Itwould not
have made the least difference had she
been perfectly correct; for the English
man 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 easi
afterwards. Lispeth's name did not ap
pear.
at the end of three months Lispeth
made daily pilgrimages to Narkunda to
see if her Englishman was coming along
the road. It gave her comfort, and the
chaplain's wife, finding her happier,
thought that she was getting over hei
"barbarous and most indelicate folly
A little later the walks ceased to helr
Lispeth and her temper grew very bad.
The ~ehaplain's wife thought this a profit
able time to let her know the real state
Of affairs-that the Englishman had only
promised his love to keep her quiet; thai
he had never meant anything, and thai
it was wrong and improper Of Lispeth
to think of marriage with an English.
man, who was of a superior clay, besides
being promised in marriage to a girl OF
his own people. Lispeth said that all
this was clearly impossible, because he
had said he loved her, and the chaplain's
wife had, with her lips, asserted
that the E~nglishman was coming back.
How can what he and you said be
untrue?' asked Lispeth.
"We said it as an excuse to keep you
quiet, child" said the chaplain's wife.
"Then You have lied to me" said Lis
peth, 'you and he"
The chaplain's wife bowed her head
and said nothing. Lispeth was silent,
too, for o little time. Then she went Out
down the valley and returned in the
dress Of a ELL simultaneously dirty.
but without the nose and ear rings. She
had her hair braided into the long pig
tail, helped out with black thread, that
Hill women wear.
81 am going back to my own people,
said she. "You have killed Lispeth.
There is only left old Jadeh's daughter
the daughter Of a pahari and the ser
want of Tarka Devi. You are all liars,
you English"
By the time that the chaplain's wife
had recovered from the shock of the an.
nouncement that Lispeth had 'verted tt
her mothers gods, the girl had gone
and she never came back.
She took to her own unclean people
sayagely, as if to make up the arrears OF
the life she had stepped oar of, and, in
little time, she married a wood cutter
who beat her, after the manner of paha
MS, and her beauty faded soon.
'sThere is no law whereby yon can &C
count for the vagaries of the heathen,'
said the chaplain's wife, land l believe
that Lispeth was always at heart an in
fidel." Seeing she had been taken inte
the church of England at the mature age
of five weeks, this statement does not dc
credit to the chaplain's wife.
Lispeth was a very old woman when
she died. She always had a perfect com
mand Of English and when she was suf-
ficiently drunk, could sometimes be in.
duced to tell the story of her first love
affair.
It was hard then to realize that the
bleared, wrinkled creature, SO like a Wis.,
Of charred rag, could ever have beer
''Lispeth of the Hotgarh Mission