: Rudyard Kipling
: Plain Tales from the Hills
: Seltzer Books
: 9781455354009
: 1
: CHF 0.10
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 826
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

Classic Kipling short stories, including LESPETH, THREE AND AN EXTRA, THROWN AWAY, MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS, YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER, FALSE DAWN, THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES, CUPID'S ARROWS, HIS CHANCE IN LIFE, WATCHES OF THE NIGHT, THE OTHER MAN, CONSEQUENCES, THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN MCGOGGIN, A GERM DESTROYER, KIDNAPPED, THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY, THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. HIS WEDDED WIFE, THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED, BEYOND THE PALE,
IN ERROR, A BANK FRAUD, TOD'S AMENDMENT, IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH, PIG, THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS, THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE,VENUS ANNODOMINI, THE BISARA OF POORER, THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS,THE STORY OF MUHAMMID DIN, ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS, WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE, BY WORD OF MOUTH, and TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.

BEYOND THE PALE.


 

 "Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed.  I went in search of love and lost myself."

 

      Hindu Proverb.

 

 A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.  Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things-- neither sudden, alien, nor unexpected.

 

This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.

 

He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the second.  He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never do so again.

 

Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee, lies Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated window.  At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on either side of the Gully are without windows.  Neither Suchet Singh nor Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world.  If Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man to-day, and little Biessa would have been able to knead her own bread.  Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime.  She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve of living alone.

 

One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big heap of cattle food.

 

Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from behind the grated window.  It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of"The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:

 

   Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;       or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?   If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,       being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?

 

 There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:

 

&nbs