"The Other Man" is a short story by the British writer

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)'' The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

, first published in the '' Civil and Military Gazette'' on 13 November 1886, in the first Indian edition of ''

Plain Tales from the Hills ''Plain Tales from the Hills'' (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's ''Preface'', were initially published in the ''Civil and Military Gaz ...

'' in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. The story, which is set in

Simla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, th ...

, the

Hill Station A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia (particularly in India), but also in Africa (albeit rarely), for towns founded by European colonialists as refuges ...

where the British used to spend their leaves during the hot weather, tells of Miss Gaurey, whom "her parents made ... marry Colonel Schreiderling ... not much more than 35 years her senior", who is a good match, if not particularly well off, and has

lung The lungs are the primary organs of the respiratory system in humans and most other animals, including some snails and a small number of fish. In mammals and most other vertebrates, two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of ...

-complaints which she nurses "seventeen days in each month". She had been secretly engaged to "the Other Man" ("I have forgotten his name"), who gets himself transferred away to an unhealthy Station. He also has bad health: intermittent

fever Fever, also referred to as pyrexia, is defined as having a temperature above the normal range due to an increase in the body's temperature set point. There is not a single agreed-upon upper limit for normal temperature with sources using val ...

, and a bad

heart valve A heart valve is a one-way valve that allows blood to flow in one direction through the chambers of the heart. Four valves are usually present in a mammalian heart and together they determine the pathway of blood flow through the heart. A heart ...

. Mrs Schreiderling, as she now is, never weeps, but begins to contract every infection on the Station. She becomes ugly - Schreiderling says so, and returns to bachelor habits. One August, he leaves her at Simla to return to his regiment. The narrator hears that the Other Man is coming to Simla, being very sick. Mrs Schreiderling is waiting for him at dusk on the Mall as his

Tonga (carriage) A tonga or tanga is a light carriage or curricle drawn by one horse (compare ekka) used for transportation in the Indian subcontinent. They have a canopy over the carriage with a single pair of large wheels. The passengers reach the seats from t ...

draws up as the narrator is passing - and then she screams. The long journey has killed the Other Man. The narrator sorts out the details, ensuring the confidentiality of the Tonga driver, and takes Mrs Schreiderling home. "She did not die - men of Schreiderling's stamp marry women who don't die easily. They live and grow ugly." Two years later, she goes Home; and dies. :All quotations in this article have been taken from the ''Uniform Edition'' of ''

'' published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in London in 1899. The text is that of the third edition (1890), and the author of the article has used his own copy of the 1923 reprint.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Other Man Short stories by Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling stories about India 1886 short stories Works originally published in the Civil and Military Gazette