Plain Tales from the Hills | Page 4

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