The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-01-25
THE PITS MOUTH.
WAEms1O0OT The MANS WIFE AND THE TERT|UM QuD
4 STORY by RUDyAnD KIPL1NG.

Men NY y VA = stolen lido
But In mine car will .ayg abide.
The message that the bells Let fall,
And awesoms bells they were. TO me-,
That In tho dark rang sEnderby."
Oncs upon . time there was q Man and
his Wife and Tsrtium Quid.
All thrse were unwise, but the Wife was
Tho unwissst. The Man should have looked
after his Wife, who should have avoided
tho Tertium Quid, who, again, should have
married a wife Of his own, after clean and
open limitations, TO which nobody could pos.
sibly object, round Jakko or Observatory
hill. When You see a young man, with his
pony in a white lather, and his hat o. the
back Of his head, flying down hill at fifteen
miles an hour to meet q girl, who will be
properly surprised to see him, you natur-
ally approve Of thAt young man, and wish
him star appointments, and take an inter-
est in his welfare, and, a. the proper time
comes, give them sugar-tonRs or ide-sad-
dies, according To your means or generos-
ity.
The Tertium Quid fed downhill on horse
ack, but 1t was to meet the Mans Wife;
and when he few uphill it was for the same
6uus LILO 0064 wan ~ ~ Al0s0DS V0bAAtAs8
money for his wife TO spend on dresses and
observation-disclosures bracelets, and mex
pensive Injuries Of that kind. He worked
very hard, and sent her a letter or postcard
daily. She also wrote to him daily, and
said that she was longing for him to come
up Il Simla. The Tertium Quid used to
lean over her shoulder and laugh as she
wrote the notes. Then the two would ride
10 the postofice together.
Now, Bimla 10 q strange place. and its
customs are peculiar; nor is any man who
has not spent at least ten seasons there
qualified TO pass judgment on circumstan-
tial evidence, which is the most untrust-
worthy in the courts. For these reasons,
and for others which need not appear, l de-
cline { o state positively whether there was
anything irretrievably wrong in the rela-
tions between the Mans Wife and the
Tertium Quid. If there was, and hsreon
you must form your own opinion. 1t was the
Mans Wife's fault. She was kittenish in
her manners, wearing generally an air OF
soft and fluffy innocence. But she was
deadliIy learned and evil-instructed; and.
now and again. when the mask dropped,
men saw this, shuddered nd-an lmost
drew back. Men are occasionally particu-
l6E. AUu tu0 l66DU V&IttCUA0S AAob . I.
ways the most exacting.
Simla is eccentric in its fashion OF treat
ing friendships. Certain attachments which
have set and crystallized through half a
dozen seasons acquire almost the sanctlty
of the marriage bond, and are revered as
such. Again, certain attachments equally
old, and, to all appearance, equally venera-
Bile, never seem to win any recognized Of
fetal status; while q chAnce-sprunR &C
uuaintance, not two months cid, steps into
the place which by right belongs to the
senior. There is no law reducible to print
which regulates these affairs.
them INFINITE federation, and others have
not. The Mans Wife had not. II she
looked over the garden wall, for instance,
women taxed her with stealing their hus-
bands. She complained patheticall5 that
friends. When she put up her big white
muffs to her lips and gazed over it and I'M
der her eyebrows at you as she said this
thing, you felt that she had been infamous-
ly ~misjudged, and that all the other wo-
mems instincts were all wrong; which was
absurd. She was not allowed to " the
Tertium Quid in peace; and was 30 strange
ly constructed that she would not nave en-
joyed peace had she been permitted. She
preferred some semblance OF intrigue to
CLOAK even her most commonplace actions.
After two months Of riding; first roqnd
Jakko, then Elysinm, then summer Hll,
and lastly mp and down the Cart road as
far As the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, she
said to the Tertium Quid: Frank, people
say we are too much together, and people
are so horrid."
The Tsrtium Quid pulled his mustache
and replied hat horrid people were un-
worthy Of the consideration Of nice peo-
: but they have done more than talk
they have written to my hubby-Pm sure
of it, said the Mans Wife, and she pulled
q letter from her husband ont Of her sad
d~ls-pocket and gave it to the Tertium Quid.
honest man, then stewing on the Plains on
200 rupees a month (for he allowed his wife
500, and in 4 silk banian and cotton trous.
ers. Il 10 said that, perhaps, she had not
Thought of the unwisdom of allowing her
name to be SO generally coupled with the
a child tx understand the dangers of that
sort of thing; that he. her husband, was the
last man in the world to interfere j~ealously
with her little amusements and interests,
but that it would be better were che to drop
the Tertium Quid quietly and for her hus-
with many pretty little pet names, and it
amused the Tertium Quid considerably.
He and she laughed over il, SO that you.
fifty yards away, could see their shoulders
shaking while the horses slouched along
side by side.
Their conversation was not worth re-
peating. The upshot of it was that, next
day, no one saw the Mans Wife and the
Tertium Guild together. They had both
gone down to the cemetery. which, as q
rule, is only visited officially by the inhab-
itants of Simla.
A Simla funeral, with the clergyman rid
ing, the mourners riding, and the coffin
creaking as it swings between the bearers,
Is one Of the most depressing things ON this
earth, particularly when the procession
passes under the wet. dank dip beneath the
kockcliffe hotel, where the sun is shut ont.
and all the hill streams are wailing and
weeping together as they go down tho val
leys.
Occasionally. folk tend the graves, but
we in India shift and are transferred 80
often that, at the end of the second year.
the dead have no friends-only acquaint-
ances who are too busy amusing themselves
up the hill to attend to old partners. The
idea OF using a cemetery as a rendezvous is
distinctly a feminine one. A man would
have said simply: Let people talk. Well
go down the Mall" A woman is made diff
ferently. especially if she be such a woman
as the Mans Wife. She and the Tertium
Quid enjoyed each others society among
the graves of men and women that they hgd