Creatures of the Night (Boxed Set Edition). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

parents were deceived, they are mostly a purblind race; and Hemgupt, showing great favour to his worthless son-in-law, exclaimed, “Remain with us, my son, and be happy!”

      For two or three months the hunchback lived quietly with his wife, treating her kindly and even affectionately. But this did not last long. He made acquaintance with a band of thieves, and arranged his plans with them.

      After a time, his wife one night came to sleep by his side, having put on all her jewels. At midnight, when he saw that she was fast asleep, he struck her with a knife so that she died. Then he admitted his accomplices, who savagely murdered Hemgupt and his wife; and with their assistance he carried off any valuable article upon which he could lay his hands. The ferocious wretch! As he passed my cage he looked at it, and thought whether he had time to wring my neck. The barking of a dog saved my life; but my mistress, my poor Ratnawati-ah, me! ah, me!—

      “Queen,” said the jay, in deepest grief, “all this have I seen with mine own eyes, and have heard with mine own ears. It affected me in early life, and gave me a dislike for the society of the other sex. With due respect to you, I have resolved to remain an old maid. Let your majesty reflect, what crime had my poor mistress committed? A male is of the same disposition as a highway robber; and she who forms friendship with such an one, cradles upon her bosom a black and venomous snake.”

      “Sir Parrot,” said the jay, turning to her wooer, “I have spoken. I have nothing more to say, but that you he-things are all a treacherous, selfish, wicked race, created for the express purpose of working our worldly woe, and—”

      “When a female, O my king, asserts that she has nothing more to say, but,” broke in Churaman, the parrot with a loud dogmatical voice, “I know that what she has said merely whets her tongue for what she is about to say. This person has surely spoken long enough and drearily enough.”

      “Tell me, then, O parrot,” said the king, “what faults there may be in the other sex.”

      “I will relate,” quoth Churaman, “an occurrence which in my early youth determined me to live and to die an old bachelor.”

      When quite a young bird, and before my schooling began, I was caught in the land of Malaya, and was sold to a very rich merchant called Sagardati, a widower with one daughter, the lady Jayashri. As her father spent all his days and half his nights in his counting-house, conning his ledgers and scolding his writers, that young woman had more liberty than is generally allowed to those of her age, and a mighty bad use she made of it.

      O king! men commit two capital mistakes in rearing the “domestic calamity,” and these are over-vigilance and under-vigilance. Some parents never lose sight of their daughters, suspect them of all evil intentions, and are silly enough to show their suspicions, which is an incentive to evil-doing. For the weak-minded things do naturally say, “I will be wicked at once. What do I now but suffer all the pains and penalties of badness, without enjoying its pleasures?” And so they are guilty of many evil actions; for, however vigilant fathers and mothers may be, the daughter can always blind their eyes.

      On the other hand, many parents take no trouble whatever with their charges: they allow them to sit in idleness, the origin of badness; they permit them to communicate with the wicked, and they give them liberty which breeds opportunity. Thus they also, falling into the snares of the unrighteous, who are ever a more painstaking race than the righteous, are guilty of many evil actions.

      What, then, must wise parents do? The wise will study the characters of their children, and modify their treatment accordingly. If a daughter be naturally good, she will be treated with a prudent confidence. If she be vicious, an apparent trust will be reposed in her; but her father and mother will secretly ever be upon their guard. The one-idea’d—

      “All this parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me,” cried the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very naturally, a person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in the thoughts and minds of others. “If thou must tell a tale, then tell one, Vampire! or else be silent, as I am sick to the death of thy psychics.”

      “It is well, O warrior king,” resumed the Baital.

      After that Churaman the parrot had given the young Raja Ram a golden mine full of good advice about the management of daughters, he proceeded to describe Jayashri.

She was tall, stout, and well made, of lymphatic temperament, and yet strong passions. Her fine large eyes had heavy and rather full eyelids, which are to be avoided. Her hands were symmetrical without being small, and the palms were ever warm and damp. Though her lips were good, her mouth was somewhat underhung; and her voice was so deep, that at times it sounded like that of a man. Her hair was smooth as the kokila’s plume, and her complexion was that of the young jasmine; and these were the points at which most persons looked. Altogether, she was neither handsome nor ugly, which is an excellent thing in woman. Sita the goddess[77] was lovely to excess; therefore she was carried away by a demon. Raja Bali was exceedingly generous, and he emptied his treasury. In this way, exaggeration, even of good, is exceedingly bad.

      Yet must I confess, continued the parrot, that, as a rule, the beautiful woman is more virtuous than the ugly. The former is often tempted, but her vanity and conceit enable her to resist, by the self-promise that she shall be tempted again and again. On the other hand, the ugly woman must tempt instead of being tempted, and she must yield, because her vanity and conceit are gratified by yielding, not by resisting.

      “Ho, there!” broke in the jay contemptuously. “What woman cannot win the hearts of the silly things called men? Is it not said that a pig-faced female who dwells in Landanpur has a lover?”

      I was about to remark, my king! said the parrot, somewhat nettled, if the aged virgin had not interrupted me, that as ugly women are more vicious than handsome women, so they are most successful. “We love the pretty, we adore the plain,” is a true saying amongst the worldly wise. And why do we adore the plain? Because they seem to think less of themselves than of us-a vital condition of adoration.

      Jayashri made some conquests by the portion of good looks which she possessed, more by her impudence, and most by her father’s reputation for riches. She was truly shameless, and never allowed herself fewer than half a dozen admirers at the time. Her chief amusement was to appoint interviews with them successively, at intervals so short that she was obliged to hurry away one in order to make room for another. And when a lover happened to be jealous, or ventured in any way to criticize her arrangements, she replied at once by showing him the door. Answer unanswerable!

      When Jayashri had reached the ripe age of thirteen, the son of a merchant, who was her father’s gossip and neighbour, returned home after a long sojourn in far lands, whither he had travelled in the search of wealth. The poor wretch, whose name, by-the-bye, was Shridat (Gift of Fortune), had loved her in her childhood; and he came back, as men are apt to do after absence from familiar scenes, painfully full of affection for house and home and all belonging to it. From his cross, stingy old uncle to the snarling superannuated beast of a watchdog, he viewed all with eyes of love and melting heart. He could not see that his idol was greatly changed, and nowise for the better; that her nose was broader and more club-like, her eyelids fatter and thicker, her under lip more prominent, her voice harsher, and her manner coarser. He did not notice that she was an adept in judging of men’s dress, and that she looked with admiration upon all swordsmen, especially upon those who fought upon horses and elephants. The charm of memory, the curious faculty of making past time present caused all he viewed to be enchanting to him.

      Having obtained her father’s permission, Shridat applied for betrothal to Jayashri, who with peculiar boldness, had resolved that no suitor should come to her through her parent. And she, after leading him on by all the coquetries of which she was a mistress, refused to marry him, saying that she liked him as a friend, but would hate him as a husband.

      You see, my king! there are three several states of feeling with which women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and indifference. Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient, because the essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as readily as