Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-01-03
NAN, WIFE AND TERTIUM oUID.
A Queer story-Reiations of the sexes.
Rudyara kiplins in Knnsan CITY Tina

Ine messsTe that the bells let ts1.
Ami a~e<onle bells they % me-
That in the dark rams ''Enderby."
jean Tncelo~.
Once upon q time there was Man and his
Wife and Tertium Quid.
All three were unwise. but the Wife was Che
unwisest. The Man should have looked after
his Wife, who should have avoided Tertium
Quid. who, again, should have married a wife
OF his own, after clean and open firtations. TO
which nobody can possibly object round Jakko
or Observatory hill. When you see a Young
man with his pony in a white lather and his
hat on the back of his head flying down hill at
fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who will be
properly surprised to meet him. YOU naturally
approve Of that young man and wish him staff
appointments and take an interest in his well
fare, and as the proper time comes give them
sugar tongs or side saddles, according 70 your
means and generosity.
The Tertium Quid few downhill on horseback
bnt II was to meet the Mans Wife; aud when he
new uphill II was for the same end. The Man
was IN the plains earning money for his wife 20
spend on dresses and 400 rupee bracelets and
inexpensive luxuries of that kind He worked
very hard and sent her a letter or a post card
daily. She also wrote To him daily and said
that she was longing for him 10 come up to
Simla- The Tertium Quid used to lean over
her shoulder and laugh she wrote the notes
Then the two would ride to the post Office to-
gether.
Now, Simla is a strange place. and its customs
are peculiar; nor Is any man who has not spent
at least ten seasons there qualified to pass udg-
ment on circumstantial evidence which is the
most Enthusiastically in the courts. For these
reasons and for Others which need not appear
L decline to state positively whether there WIS
anything irretrievably wrong in the relations
between the Mans Wife and the Tertium Quid
II there was. and hereon voa must form YOUR
own opinion. II was the Mans Wife's fault She
was kittenish in her manners. wearing generally
air of soft and fluffy innocence But she
was deadly learned and eyil-instructed; and
now and again. when the mask dropped men
saw this, shuddeIed and almost drew back
Men are occasionally particular and the least
particular men are always the most exacting
Slmla Is eccentric in its fashion of treating
friendships. Certain attachments which have
set and crystaliZed through half dozen sea
sons acquire almost the sanctity of the marriage
-sond and are reyered as such. Again. certain
attachments equally old and to all appearances
equally venerable. never seem to win anv recog-
nlzed official status. while a chance-sprung ac-
quaintance, not two months old. steps into the
place which by right belongs TO the senior
lhere is no law redubcle to print which regu-
lates these affairs.
Some people have a gift which secures them
INFINITE liberation and others have not. The
Man = Wife had not. If she looked over the
garden wall, for instance. women taxed her
with stealing their husbands She complained
pathetcally that she was not allowed 70 choose
her own friends. When she put up her big
white muff to her lips and gazed over Il under
her eyebrows tyou as she said this thing YOU
felt that she .-ad been UNANIMOUSLY misiudged
and that all the other women's instincts were
all wrong, which was absurd. She was not al
lowed to own the Tertium Quid in peace and
was so strangely constructed that she would
not have enjoyed peace had she been so per-
mitted. She preferred some semblance of in
trigue TO cloak even her most commonplace
actions.
After two months of riding. first around
Jakko then Elysium, then Summer hill. then
Observatory hill. then under Jutogh. and lastly
up and down the Cart road as far as the Tara
Dew gap in the dusk, she said 10 the Tertium
Quid: Frank. people say are too much to-
gether. and people are SO horrid.'
The Iertium Quid pulled his mustache and
replied that horric people were unworthy OF
the consideration of nice people.
But they have done more than talk-they
have written-Written to my hubby-I an sure
of it, said the Mans Wife, and she pulled a
letter from her husband out of her saddle
pocket and gave it TO the Tertium Quid.
1t was an honest letter, written by an honest
man, then stewing in the plains on 200 rupees
month (for he allowed his wife 500, and in a
silk tanian and cotton trousers. 1t is said that
perhaps she had not thought Of the unwisdom
of allowing her name to be 60 generally
coupled with that of the Tertium Quid's: that
she was too much Of q child to understand the
dangers of that sort of thing: that he her hus-
band. was the last man in the world TO inter-
fere jealousy with her little amusements and
interests, but that il would be better were she
to drop the Tertium Qrid quietly and for her
husbands sake. The letter was sweetened
with many pretty little pet names. and it
amused the Tertiuu Quid considerably. lie
and she laughed ever 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 reporting.
The upshot of it was that the next day no one
saw the Mans Wife and the Tertium Quid to-
gether. They had both gone down to the
cemetery, which, as a rule, is only visited Off
cially by the inhabitants of Simla.
Simla funeral, with the clergyman riding
the mourners riding and the coffin creaking as
it swings between the bearers is enc of the
most depressing things On this earth. particu-
larry when the procession passes under the
wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe Hotel.
where the sun is shut out. and all the hill
streams are wailing and weeping together as
they go down the valley.
Occasionally folk tend the graves but we in
India shift and are transferred so often that at
the end Of the second year, the dead have no
friends, only acquaintances who are far too
busy amusing themselves up the hill to attend
to old partners. The idea of using a cemetery
as the rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one
man would have had said simply: LET peo-
pie talk. Wen go down the MALL A woman
is made differently, especially if she be such
woman as the Mans Wife. She and the Ter
the graves of men and women that they had
known and danced with aforetime.
They used TO take big horse blanket and sit
on the grass little TO the left of the lower end
where there is a dip in the ground. and where
the occupied graves die out aud the ready-made
ones are not ready. ANY self-respecting Indian
cemetery keeps half dozen graves perma-
nently open for contingencies and Incidental