Under the Deodars | Page 6

from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere
should be, for the first part of his service, one of the rank and file who
are ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing heart and soul,
and mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces manual
power in the working of the Empire, there must always be this
percentage must always be the men who are used up, expended, in the
mere mechanical routine. For these promotion is far off and the
mill-grind of every day very instant. The Secretariats know them only
by name; they are not the picked men of the Districts with Divisions
and Collectorates awaiting them. They are simply the rank and file the
food for fever sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock the honour
of being the plinth on which the State rests. The older ones have lost
their aspirations; the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both
learn to endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the
rank and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest and dull the
wits of the most keen.
Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months; drifting, in the
hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave was over
he would return to his swampy, sour-green, under-manned Bengal
district; to the native Assistant, the native Doctor, the native Magistrate,
the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-kempt City, and the
undisguised insolence of the Municipality that babbled away the lives
of men. Life was cheap, however. The soil spawned humanity, as it
bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was
filled to overflowing by the fecundity of the next. Otis was unfeignedly
thankful to lay down his work for a little while and escape from the
seething, whining, weakly hive, impotent to help itself, but strong in its

power to cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunkeneyed man who, by
official irony, was said to be 'in charge' of it.
'I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal. They come up here
sometimes. But I didn't know that there were men-dowds, too.'
Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere that his clothes wore
rather the mark of the ages. It will be seen that his friendship with Mrs.
Hauksbee had made great strides.
As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy as when he is
talking about himself. From Otis Yeere's lips Mrs. Hauksbee, before
long, learned everything that she wished to know about the subject of
her experiment: learned what manner of life he had led in what she
vaguely called 'those awful cholera districts'; learned, too, but this
knowledge came later, what manner of life he had purposed to lead and
what dreams he had dreamed in the year of grace '77, before the reality
had knocked the heart out of him. Very pleasant are the shady
bridle-paths round Prospect Hill for the telling of such confidences.
'Not yet,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to Mrs. Maliowe. 'Not yet. I must wait
until the man is properly dressed, at least. Great heavens, is it possible
that he doesn't know what an honour it is to be taken up by Me!'
Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of her failings.
'Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!' murmured Mrs. Mallowe, with her
sweetest smile, to Otis. 'Oh you men, you men! Here are our Punjabis
growling because you've monopolised the nicest woman in Simla.
They'll tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day, Mr. Yeere.'
Mrs. Mallowe rattled downhill, having satisfied herself, by a glance
through the fringe of her sunshade, of the effect of her words.
The shot went home. Of a surety Otis Yeere was somebody in this
bewildering whirl of Simla had monopolised the nicest woman in it,
and the Punjabis were growling. The notion justified a mild glow of
vanity. He had never looked upon his acquaintance with Mrs. Hauksbee

as a matter for general interest.
The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feeling to the man of no account.
It was intensified later in the day when a luncher at the Club said
spitefully, 'Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are going it.
Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most dangerous woman in
Simla?'
Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh, when would his new clothes
be ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee,
coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked down upon him
approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself as if he were a man, instead
of a piece of furniture, and,' she screwed up her eyes to see the better
through the sunlight 'he is