1888
WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
by Rudyard Kipling
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
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What is in the Brahman's books that is in the Brahman's heart.
Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world.
-Hindu Proverb.
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THIS began in a practical joke; but it has gone far enough now,
and is getting serious.
Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain
leather guard.
The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and, for guard, the
lip-strap of a curb-chain. Lip-straps make the best watch guards. They
are strong and short. Between a lip-strap and an ordinary
leather-guard there is no great difference; between one Waterbury
watch and another none at all. Every one in the Station knew the
Colonel's lip-strap. He was not a horsey man, but he liked people to
believe he had been one once; and he wove fantastic stories of the
hunting-bridle to which this particular lip-strap had belonged.
Otherwise he was painfully religious.
Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the Club- both late for
their engagements, and both in a hurry. That was Kismet. The two
watches were on a shelf below the looking-glass- guards hanging
down. That was carelessness. Platte changed first, snatched a watch,
looked in the glass, settled his tie, and ran. Forty seconds later,
the Colonel did exactly the same thing; each man taking the other's
watch.
You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply
suspicious. They seem- for purely religious purposes, of course- to
know more about iniquity than the Unregenerate. Perhaps they were
specially bad before they became converted! At any rate, in the
imputation of things evil, and in putting the worst construction on
things innocent, a certain type of good people may be trusted to
surpass all others. The Colonel and his Wife were of that type. But
the Colonel's Wife was the worst. She manufactured the Station
scandal, and- talked to her ayah. Nothing more need be said. The
Colonel's Wife broke up the Laplaces' home. The Colonel's Wife stopped
the Ferris-Haughtrey engagement. The Colonel's Wife induced young
Buxton to keep his wife down in the Plains through the first year of
the marriage. Wherefore little Mrs. Buxton died, and the baby with
her. These things will be remembered against the Colonel's Wife so
long as there is a regiment in the country.
But to come back to the Colonel and Platte. They went their
several ways from the dressing-room. The Colonel dined with two
Chaplains, while Platte went to a bachelor-party, and whist to follow.
Mark how things happen! If Platte's groom had put the new saddle-pad
on the mare, the butts of the territs would not have worked through
the worn leather and the old pad into the mare's withers, when she was
coming home at two o'clock in the morning. She would not have
reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and set Platte
flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept lawn; and this
tale would never have been written. But the mare did all these things,
and while Platte was rolling over and over on the turf, like a shot
rabbit, the watch and guard flew from his waistcoat- as an Infantry
Major's sword hops out of the scabbard when they are firing a
feu-de-joie- and rolled and rolled in the moonlight, till it
stopped, under a window.
Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, put the cart
straight, and went home.
Mark again how Kismet works! This would not arrive once in a
hundred years. Towards the end of his dinner with the two Chaplains,
the Colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the table to look at
some Mission Reports. The bar of the watch-guard worked through the
buttonhole, and the watch- Platte's watch- slid quietly on to the
carpet. Where the bearer found it next morning, and kept it.
Then the Colonel went home to the wife of his bosom; but the
driver of the carriage was drunk and lost his way. So the Colonel
returned at an unseemly hour, and his excuses were not accepted. If
the Colonel's Wife had been an ordinary vessel of wrath appointed
for destruction, she would have known that when a man stays away on
purpose, his excuse is always sound and original. The very baldness of
the Colonel's explanation proved its truth.
See once more the workings of Kismet. The Colonel's watch, which
came with Platte hurriedly on to Mrs. Larkyn's lawn, chose to stop
just under Mrs. Larkyn's window, where she saw it early in the
morning, recognised it, and picked it up. She had heard the crash of
Platte's cart at two o'clock that morning, and his voice calling the
mare names. She knew Platte and liked him. That day she showed him the
watch and heard his story. He put his head on one side, winked and
said, 'How disgusting! Shocking old man! With his religious
training, too! I should send the watch to the Colonel's Wife and ask
for explanations.'
Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces- whom she had known
when Laplace and his wife believed in each other- and answered, 'I
will send it. I think it will do her good. But, remember, we must
never tell her the truth.'
Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel's possession,
and thought that the return of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a
soothing note from Mrs. Larkyn would merely create a small trouble for
a few minutes. Mrs. Larkyn knew better. She knew that any poison
dropped would find good holding-ground in the heart of the Colonel's
Wife.
The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on the Colonel's
calling-hours, were sent over to the Colonel's Wife, who wept in her
own room and took counsel with herself.
If there was one woman under Heaven whom the Colonel's Wife hated
with holy fervour, it was Mrs. Larkyn. Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous
lady, and called the Colonel's Wife 'old cat.' The Colonel's Wife said
that somebody in Revelation was remarkably like Mrs. Larkyn. She
mentioned other Scripture people as well. From the Old Testament.
But the Colonel's Wife was the only person who cared or dared to say
anything against Mrs. Larkyn. Every one else accepted her as an
amusing, honest little body. Wherefore, to believe that her husband
had been shedding watches under that 'Thing's' window at ungodly
hours, coupled with the fact of his late arrival on the previous
night, was...
At this point she rose up and sought her husband. He denied
everything except the ownership of the watch. She besought him, for
his Soul's sake, to speak the truth. He denied afresh, with two bad
words. Then a stony silence held the Colonel's Wife, while a man could
draw his breath five times.
The speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours. It was
made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age and
sunk cheeks; deep mistrust born of the text that says even little
babies' hearts are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of
Mrs. Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the Colonel's Wife's
upbringing.
Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped Waterbury,
ticking away in the palm of her shaking, withered hand. At that
hour, I think, the Colonel's Wife realised a little of the restless
suspicion she had injected into old Laplace's mind, a little of poor
Miss Haughtrey's misery, and some of the canker that ate into Buxton's
heart as he watched his wife dying before his eyes. The Colonel
stammered and tried to explain. Then he remembered that his watch
had disappeared; and the mystery grew greater. The Colonel's Wife
talked and prayed by turns till she was tired, and went away to devise
means for chastening the stubborn heart of her husband. Which,
translated, means, in our slang, 'tail-twisting.'
Being deeply impressed with the doctrine of Original Sin, she
could not believe in the face of appearances. She knew too much, and
jumped to the wildest conclusions.
But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as she had spoilt the
life of the Laplaces. She had lost her faith in the Colonel, and- here
the creed-suspicion came in- he might, she argued, have erred many
times, before a merciful Providence, at the hands of so unworthy an
instrument as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt. He was a bad,
wicked, gray-haired profligate. This may sound too sudden a
revulsion for a long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable fact that,
if a man or woman makes a practice of, and takes a delight in,
believing and spreading evil of people indifferent to him or her, he
or she will end in believing evil of folk very near and dear. You
may think, also, that the mere incident of the watch was too small and
trivial to raise this misunderstanding. It is another aged fact
that, in life as well as racing, all the worst accidents happen at
little ditches and cut-down fences. In the same way, you sometimes see
a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and
climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of
housekeeping. But that is another story.
Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it
insisted so strongly on the villainy of men. Remembering what she
had done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the
penny-farthing attempts she made to hide it from the Station. But
the Station knew and laughed heartlessly; for they had heard the story
of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. Larkyn's lips.
Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel
had not cleared himself, 'This thing has gone far enough. I move we
tell the Colonel's Wife how it happened.' Mrs. Larkyn shut her lips
and shook her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must bear her
punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous woman,
in whom none would have suspected deep hate. So Platte took no action,
and came to believe gradually, from the Colonel's silence, that the
Colonel must have run off the line somewhere that night, and,
therefore, preferred to stand sentence on the lesser count of rambling
into other people's compounds out of calling-hours. Platte forgot
about the watch business after a while, and moved down-country with
his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn went home when her husband's tour of
Indian service expired. She never forgot.
But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too
far. The mistrust and the tragedy of it- which we outsiders cannot see
and do not believe in- are killing the Colonel's Wife, and are
making the Colonel wretched. If either of them read this story, they
can depend upon its being a fairly true account of the case, and can
kiss and make friends.
Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watching an Engineer being
shelled by his own Battery. Now this shows that poets should not write
about what they do not understand. Any one could have told him that
Sappers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of the Service.
But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute Gunner for Sapper,
the moral comes just the same.
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THE END
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