Under the Deodars | Page 8

cheek, call it insolence, call
it anything you like, but ask! Men argue yes, I know what men say that
a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in
him. A weak man doesn't say: ''Give me this and that." He whines:

''Why haven't I been given this and that?" If you were in the Army, I
should say learn to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As
it is ask! You belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the
Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you
hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy green district where you
admit you are not master. Drop the Bengal Government altogether.
Even Darjiling is a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the
rents were extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India
to take you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a
grand chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something!
You have twice the wits and three times the presence of the men up
here, and, and' Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued 'and in
any way you look at it, you ought to. You who could go so far!'
'I don't know,' said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. 'I haven't such a good opinion of myself.'
It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid her
hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back
'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly,
almost too tenderly, 'I believe in you if you mistrust yourself. Is that
enough, my friend?'
'It is enough,' answered Otis very solemnly.
He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had
dreamed eight years ago, but through them all ran, as sheet-lightning
through golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's violet eyes.
Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life the only existence
in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among
men and women, in the pauses between dance, play, and Gymkhana,
that Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self-confidence in
his eyes, had 'done something decent' in the wilds whence he came. He
had brought an erring Municipality to reason, appropriated the funds on
his own responsibility, and saved the lives of hundreds. He knew more
about the Gullals than any living man. Had a vast knowledge of the
aboriginal tribes; was, in spite of his juniority, the greatest authority on

the aboriginal Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals
were till The Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs. Hauksbee, and
prided himself upon picking people's brains, explained they were a
tribe of ferocious hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship
even the Great Indian Empire would find it worth her while to secure.
Now we know that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS.
notes of six years' standing on these same Gullals. He had told her, too,
how, sick and shaken with the fever their negligence had bred, crippled
by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagely angry at the desolation in his
charge, he had once damned the collective eyes of his 'intelligent local
board' for a set of haramzadas. Which act of 'brutal and tyrannous
oppression' won him a Reprimand Royal from the Bengal Government;
but in the anecdote as amended for Northern consumption we find no
record of this. Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee
edited his reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she
well knew, to exaggerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as
befitted the hero of many tales.
'You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now,
and talk your brightest and best,' said Mrs. Hauksbee.
Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of
or above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his head, he can
meet both sexes on equal ground an advantage never intended by
Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and Woman on another, in
sign that neither should know more than a very little of the other's life.
Such a man goes far, or, the counsel being withdrawn, collapses
suddenly while his world seeks the reason.
Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee, who, again, had all Mrs. Mallowe's
wisdom at her disposal, proud of himself and, in the end, believing in
himself because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for any
fortune that might befall, certain that it would be good. He would fight
for his own hand, and intended that