British -- India -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction; Short stories, English
He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It
brought him happily through the Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely.
There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which
he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex
to him. Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He
kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while.
Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the
Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill,
one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down
in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the
girl who had made him so happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned against the
railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but
that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his
temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the
'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later,
the wife of a man from Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way
place, and she had come up to Simla early in the season for the good of
her health. She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the
end of the season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla
again, her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde,
raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with
himself for one measured hour. What he decided upon was this; and you
must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love,
and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself,
affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would never in all human
likelihood cross his path again. So whatever he did didn't much matter.
She was marvellously like the girl who “took a deep interest” and the
rest of the formula. All things considered, it would be pleasant to make
the acquaintance of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a
very little time--to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again.
Every one is more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular
monomania was his old love, Alice Chisane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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