Short Stories Old and New Part 31

They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds which seemed to them exactly what they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs.[*] They could have it for thirty-six thousand.

[* A franc is equal to twenty cents of our money.]

So they begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they made an arrangement that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand francs if the other were found before the end of February.

Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, made ruinous engagements, dealt with usurers, with all the tribe of money-lenders. He compromised the rest of his life, risked his signature without knowing if he might not be involving his honor, and, terrified by the anguish yet to come, by the black misery about to fall upon him, by the prospect of every physical privation and every mental torture, he went to get the new necklace, and laid down on the dealer's counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took the necklace back to Madame Forestier, the latter said coldly:

"You should have returned it sooner, for I might have needed it."

She did not open the case, to the relief of her friend. If she had detected the subst.i.tution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she have taken her friend for a thief?

Madame Loisel now knew the horrible life of the needy. But she took her part heroically. They must pay this frightful debt. She would pay it.

They dismissed their maid; they gave up their room; they rented another, under the roof.

She came to know the drudgery of housework, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, staining her rosy nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the saucepans. She washed the dirty linen, the s.h.i.+rts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she carried the garbage down to the street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping at each landing to rest. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer's, the grocer's, the butcher's, her basket on her arm, bargaining, abusing, defending sou[*] by sou her miserable money.

[* A sou, or five-centime piece, is equal to one cent of our money.]

Each month they had to pay some notes, renew others, obtain more time.

The husband worked every evening, neatly footing up the account books of some tradesman, and often far into the night he sat copying ma.n.u.script at five sous a page.

And this life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything,--everything, with the exactions of usury and the acc.u.mulations of compound interest.

Madame Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the woman of impoverished households,--strong and hard and rough. With hair half combed, with skirts awry, and reddened hands, she talked loud as she washed the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and thought of that evening at the ball so long ago, when she had been so beautiful and so admired.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows, who knows? How strange life is, how changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!

But one Sunday, as she was going for a walk in the Champs elysees to refresh herself after the labors of the week, all at once she saw a woman walking with a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

Madame Loisel was agitated. Should she speak to her? Why, of course. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?

She drew near.

"Good morning, Jeanne."

The other, astonished to be addressed so familiarly by this woman of the people, did not recognize her. She stammered:

"But--madame--I do not know you. You must have made a mistake."

"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."

Her friend uttered a cry.

"Oh! my poor Mathilde, how changed you are!"

"Yes, I have had days hard enough since I saw you, days wretched enough--and all because of you!"

"Me? How so?"

"You remember that necklace of diamonds that you lent me to wear to the ministerial ball?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Well, I lost it."

"How can that be? You returned it to me."

"I returned to you another exactly like it. These ten years we've been paying for it. You know it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last it is over, and I am very glad."

Madame Forestier was stunned.

"You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"

"Yes; you did not notice it, then? They were just alike."

And she smiled with a proud and nave pleasure.

Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth five hundred francs at most."

XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING[*] (1888)

[* From "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."]

BY RUDYARD KIPLING (1865- )

[_Setting_. "They call it Kafiristan," said Dravot, the unfortunate hero of the story. "By my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar."

Determined to be Kings of Kafiristan, Carnehan and Dravot started probably from the capital of the Punjab, Lah.o.r.e, where the newspaper office seems to have been. Ten miles west of Peshawar they entered the famous Khaiber (or Khyber) Pa.s.s, a region which Kipling describes more at length in "The Man Who Was," "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," "The Lost Legion," "Love o' Women," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "With the Main Guard." No country in Asia is less known to civilization than Kafiristan. The Mohammedan traders say that it is the most attractive part of Afghanistan. The name means "country of unbelievers," the Kafirs having resisted all attempts to convert them to the Mohammedan faith.

They are pure Aryans, being thus brothers to the Greeks, Romans, Germans, English, and ourselves. They are noted for their beauty and strength. India or rather Anglo-India has been almost re-discovered by Kipling, but this is his only story of Kafiristan. It too, as Carnehan and Dravot learn to their sorrow, is a land of impenetrable mystery.

_Plot_. The real plot does not begin to unfold itself until Carnehan, wrecked in body and mind, returns to the newspaper office and tries to report his experiences. Thus nearly one half of the story may be called introductory or preliminary. This is unusual with Kipling and with all other modern story writers. The introduction justifies itself, however, in this case because, since a half-crazed man with weakening memory is to tell the real tale, his narrative would have to be supplemented by explanations on nearly every page unless the introductory part could be taken for granted. Notice how often in reading Carnehan's broken story you supply what he omits and interpret what he only fragmentarily says by reference to what has gone before.

Kipling has done more in this story than to present a character of limitless audacity. He has impressed again one of his favorite teachings. There is, he holds, a barrier between East and West that can never be crossed. The West can go so far with the East but no farther.