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Griffiths the Safe Man

[a short tale]

AS the title indicates, this story deals with the safeness of Griffiths the safe man, the secure person, the reliable individual, the sort of man you would bank with. I am proud to write about Griffiths, for I owe him a pleasant day. This story is dedicated to my friend Griffiths, the remarkably trustworthy mortal.

In the beginning there were points about Griffiths. He quoted proverbs. A man who quotes proverbs is confounded by proverbs. He is also confounded by his friends. But I never confounded Griffths—not even in that supreme moment when the sweat stood on his brow in agony and his teeth were fixed like bayonets and he swore horribly. Even then, I say, I sat on my own trunk, the trunk that opened, and told Griffiths that I had always respected him, but never more than at the present moment. He was so safe, y’ know.

Safeness is a matter of no importance to me. If my trunk won’t lock when I jump on it thrice, I strap it up and go on to something else. If my carpet-bag is too full, I let the tails of shirts and the ends of ties bubble over and go down the street with the affair. It all comes right in the end, and if it does not, what is a man that he should fight against Fate?

But Griffiths is not constructed in that manner. He says: “Safe bind is safe find.” That, rather, is what he used to say. He has seen reason to alter his views. Everything about Griffiths is safe—entirely safe. His trunk is locked by two hermetical gun-metal double-end Chubbs; his bedding-roll opens to a letter padlock capable of two million combinations; his hat-box has a lever patent safety on it; and the grief of his life is that he cannot lock up the ribs of his umbrella safely. If you could get at his soul you would find it ready strapped up and labelled for heaven. That is Griffiths.

When we went to Japan together, Griffiths kept all his money under lock and key. I carried mine in my coat-tail pocket. But all Griffiths’ contraptions did not prevent him from spending exactly as much as I did. You see, when he had worried his way through the big strap, and the little strap, and the slidevalve, and the spring lock, and the key that turned twice and a quarter, he felt as though he had earned any money he found, whereas I could get masses of sinful wealth by merely pulling out my handkerchief—dollars and five dollars and ten dollars, all mixed up with the tobacco or flying down the road. They looked much too pretty to spend.

“Safe bind, safe find,” said Griffiths in the treaty port.

He never really began to lock things up severely till we got our passports to travel upcountry. He took charge of mine for me, on the ground that I was an imbecile. As you are asked for your passport at every other shop, all the hotels, most of the places of amusement, and on the top of each hill, I got to appreciate Griffiths’ self-sacrifice. He would be biting a strap with his teeth or calculating the combinations of his padlocks among a ring of admiring Japanese while I went for a walk into the interior.

“Safe bind, safe find,” said Griffiths. That was true, because I was bound to find Griffiths somewhere near his beloved keys and straps. He never seemed to see that half the pleasure of his trip was being strapped and keyed out of him.

We never had any serious difficulty about the passports in the whole course of our wanderings. What I purpose to describe now is merely an incident of travel. It had no effect on myself, but it nearly broke Griffiths’ heart.

We were travelling from Kyoto to Otsu along a very dusty road full of pretty girls. Every time I stopped to play with one of them Griffiths grew impatient. He had telegraphed for rooms at the only hotel in Otsu, and was afraid that there would be no accommodation. There were only three rooms in the hotel, and “Safe bind, safe find,” said Griffiths. He was telegraphing ahead for something.

Our hotel was three-quarters Japanese and one-quarter European. If you walked across it it shook, and if you laughed the roof fell off. Strange Japanese came in and dined with you, and Jap maidens looked through the windows of the bathroom while you were bathing.

We had hardly put the luggage down before the proprietor asked for our passports. He asked me of all people in the world. “I have the passports,” said Griffiths with pride. “They are in the yellow-hide bag. Turn it very carefully on to the right side, my good man. You have no such locks in Japan, I’m quite certain.” Then he knelt down and brought out a bunch of keys as big as his fist. You must know that every Japanese carries a little belaiti-made handbag with nickel fastenings. They take an interest in handbags.

“Safe bind, safe—— D—n the key! What’s wrong with it?” said Griffiths.

The hotel proprietor bowed and smiled very politely for at least five minutes, Griffiths crawling over and mider and romid and about his bag the while, “It’s a percussating compensator,” said he, half to himself. “I’ve never known a percussatmg compensator do this before.” He was getting heated and red in the face.

“Key stuck, eh? I told you those fooling little spring locks are sure to go wrong sooner or later.”

“Fooling little devils. It’s a percussating comp—— There goes the key. Now it won’t move either way. I’ll give you the passport to-morrow. Passport kul demang manana—catchee in a little time. Won’t that do for you?”

Griffiths was getting really angry. The proprietor was more polite than ever. He bowed and left the room. “That’s a good little chap,” said Griffiths. “Now we’ll settle down and see what the mischief’s wrong with this bag. You catch one end.”

“Not in the least,” I said. “‘Safe bind, safe find,’ You did the binding. How can you expect me to do the finding? I’m an imbecile unfit to be trusted with a passport, and now I’m going for a walk.” The Japanese are really the politest nation in the world. When the hotel proprietor returned with a policeman he did ppt at once thrust the man on Griffiths’ notice. He put him in the verandah and let him clank his sword gently once or twice.

“Little chap’s brought a blacksmith,” said Griffiths, but when he saw the policeman his face became ugly. The policeman came into the room and tried to assist. Have you ever seen a four-foot policeman in white cotton gloves and a stand-up collar lunging percussating compensator look with a five-foot sword? I enjoyed the sight for a few minutes before I went out to look at Otsu, which is a nice town. No one hindered me. Griffiths was so completely the head of the firm that had I set the town on fire he would have been held responsible.

I went to a temple, and a policeman said “passport.” I said, “The other gentleman has got. “Where is other gentleman?” said the policeman, syllable by syllable, in the Ollendorfian style. “In the ho-tel,” said I; and he waddled off to catch him. It seemed to me that I could do a great deal towards cheering Griffiths all alone in his bedroom with that wicked bad lock, the hotel proprietor, the policeman, the room-boy, and the girl who helped one to bathe. With this idea I stood in front of four policemen, and they all asked for my passport and were all sent to the hotel, syllable by syllable—I mean one by one.

Some soldiers of the 9th N, I. were strolling about the streets, and they were idle. It is unwise to let a soldier be idle. He may get drunk. When the fourth policeman said: “Where is other gentleman?” I said: “In the hotel, and take soldiers—those soldiers.”

“How many soldiers?” said the policeman firmly.

“Take all soldiers,” I said. There were four files in the street just then. The policeman spoke to them, and they caught up their big sword-bayonets, nearly as long as themselves, and waddled after him.

I followed them, but first I bought some sweets and gave one to a child. That was enough. Long before I had reached the hotel I had a tail of fifty babies. These I seduced into the long passage that ran through the house, and then I slid the grating that answers to the big hall-door. That house was full— pit, boxes and galleries—for Griffiths had created an audience of his own, and I also had not been idle.

The four files of soldiers and the five policemen were marking time on the boards of Griffith’s room, while the landlord and the landlord’s wife, and the two scullions, and the bath-girl, and the cook-boy, and the boy who spoke English, and the boy who didn’t, and the boy who tried to, and the cook, filled all the space that wasn’t devoted to babies asking the foreigner for more sweets.

Somewhere in the centre of the mess was Griffiths and a yellow-hide bag. I don’t think he had looked up once since I left, for as he raised his eyes at my voice I heard him cry: “Good heavens! are they going to train the guns of the city on me? What’s the meaning of the regiment? I’m a British subject.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“The passports—your passports—the double-dyed passports! Oh, give a man room to use his arms. Get me a hatchet.”

“The passports, the passports!” I said. “Have you looked in your great-coat? It’s on the bed, and there’s a blue envelope in it that looks like a passport. You put it there before you left Kyoto.”

Griffiths looked. The landlord looked. The landlord took the passport and bowed. The five policemen bowed and went out one by one; the 9th N. I. formed fours and went out; the household bowed, and there was a long silence. Then the bath-girl began to giggle.

When Griffiths wanted to speak to me I was on the other side of the regiment of children in the passage, and he had time to reflect before he could work his way through them.

They formed his guard-of -honour when he took the bag to the locksmith.

I abode on the mountains of Otsu till dinnertime.

The God from the Machine

[a short tale]

THE Inexpressibles gave a ball. They borrowed a seven-pounder from the Gunners, and wreathed it with laurels, and made the dancing-floor plate-glass, and provided a supper, the like of which had never been eaten before, and set two sentries at the door of the room to hold the trays of programme-cards. My friend, Private Mulvaney, was one of the sentries, because he was the tallest man in the Regiment. When the dance was fairly started the sentries were released, and Private Mulvaney went to curry favour with the Mess-Sergeant in charge of the supper. Whether the Mess-Sergeant gave or Mulvaney took, I cannot say. All that I am certain of is that, at supper-time, I found Mulvaney with Private Ortheris, two-thirds of a ham, a loaf of bread, half a pâté-de-foie-gras, and two magnums of champagne, sitting on the roof of my carriage.

As I came up I heard him saying:—‘Praise be, a danst doesn’t come as often as Ord’ly-Room, or, by this an’ that, Orth’ris, me son, I wud be the dishgrace av the Rig’mint instid av the brightest jool in uts crown.’‘Hand the Colonel’s pet noosance,’ said Ortheris. ‘But wot makes you curse your rations? This ’ere fizzy stuff’s good enough.’‘Stuff, ye oncivilised pagin! ’Tis champagne we’re dhrinkin’ now. ’Tisn’t that I am set agin’. ’Tis this quare stuff wid the little bits av black leather in ut. I misdoubt I will be disthressin’ly sick wid ut in the mornin’. Fwhat is ut?’‘Goose liver,’ I said, climbing on the top of the carriage, for I knew that it was better to sit out with Mulvaney than to dance many dances.‘Goose liver is ut?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Faith, I’m thinkin’ thim that makes ut wud do betther to cut up the Colonel. He carries a power av liver undher his right arrum whin the days are warm an’ the nights chill. He wud give thim tons an’ tons av liver. ’Tis he sez so. “I’m all liver to-day,” sez he; an’ wid that he ordhers me ten days’ C.B. for as moild a dhrink as iver a good sodger tuk betune his teeth.’‘That was when ’e wanted for to wash ’isself in the Fort Ditch,’ Ortheris explained. ‘Said there was too much beer in the barrick waterbutts for a God-fearin’ man. You was lucky in gettin’ orf with wot you did, Mulvaney.’‘Say you so? Now I’m pershuaded I was cruel hard treated, seein’ fwhat I’ve done for the likes av him in the days whin me eyes were wider opin than they are now. Man alive, for the Colonel to whip me on the peg in that way! Me that have saved the repitation av a ten times betther man than him. ’Twas ne-farious—an that manes a power av evil!’

‘Never mind the nefariousness,’ I said. ‘Whose reputation did you save?’

More’s the pity, ’twasn’t my own, but I tuk more throuble wid ut than av ut was. ’Twas just my way, messin’ wid fwhat was no business av mine. Hear now!’ He settled himself at ease on the top of the carriage. ‘I’ll tell you all about ut. Av coorse I will name no names, for there’s wan that’s an orf’cer’s lady now, that was in ut, and no more will I name places, for a man is thracked by a place.’

‘Eyah!’ said Ortheris lazily, ‘but this is a mixed story wot’s comin’.’

‘Wanst upon a time, as the childher-books say, I was a recruity.’

‘Was you though?’ said Ortheris. ‘Now that’s extryordinary!’

‘Orth’ris,’ said Mulvaney, ‘av you opin thim lips av yours agin, I will, savin’ your presince, sorr, take you by the slack av your trousers an’ heave you.’

‘I’m mum,’ said Ortheris. ‘Wot ’appened when you was a recruity?’

‘I was a betther recruity than you iver was or will be, but that’s neither here nor there. Thin I became a man, an’ the divil of a man I was fifteen years ago. They called me Buck Mulvaney in thim days, an’, begad, I tuk a woman’s eye. I did that! Orth’ris, ye scrub, fwhat are ye sniggerin’ at? Do you misdoubt me?’

‘Devil a doubt!’ said Ortheris; ‘but I’ve ‘eard summat like that before!’

Mulvaney dismissed the impertinence with a lofty wave of his hand and continued:—

‘An’ the orf’cers av the Rig’mint I was in in thim days was orf’cers—gran’ men, wid a manner on ’em, an’ a way wid ’em such as is not made these days—all but wan—wan o’ the capt’ns. A bad dhrill, a wake voice, an’ a limp leg—thim three things are the signs av a bad man. You bear that in your mind, Orth’ris, me son.’

‘An’ the Colonel av the Rig’mint had a daughther—wan av thim lamb-like, bleatin’, pick-me-up-an’-carry-me-or-I’ll-die gurls such as was made for the natural prey av men like the Capt’n, who was iverlastin’ payin’ coort to her, though the Colonel he said time an’ over, “Kape out av the brute’s way, me dear.” But he niver had the heart for to send her away from the throuble, bein’ a widower an’ she their wan child.’

‘Stop a minute, Mulvaney,’ said I; ‘how in the world did you come to know these things?’

‘How did I come?’ said Mulvaney, with a scornful grunt. ‘Bekaze I’m turned durin’ the Quane’s pleasure to a lump av wood, lookin’ out straight forninst me, wid a—a—candelabbrum in me hand, for you to pick your kyards out av, must I not see nor feel? Av coorse I du! Up me back, an’ in me boots, an’ in the short hair av the neck—that’s where I kape me eyes whin I’m on jooty an’ the reg’lar wans are fixed. Know! Take my word for it, sorr, ivrything an’ a great dale more is known in a rig’mint; or fwhat wud be the use av a Mess-Sargint, or a Sargint’s wife doin’ wet-nurse to the Majors baby! To reshume. He was a bad dhrill was this Capt’n—a rotten bad dhrill—an’ whin first I ran, me eye over him, I sez to mesilf: “Me Militia bantam!” I sez. “Me cock av a Gosport dunghill”— ’twas from Portsmouth he came to us—“there’s combs to be cut,” sez I, “an’ by the grace av God, ’tis Terence Mulvaney will cut thim.”

‘So he wint menowdherin’, and minandherin’, an’ blandandherin’ roun’ an’ about the Colonel’s daughther, an’ she, poor innocint, lookin’ at him like a Comm’ssariat bullock looks at the Comp’ny cook. He’d a dhirty little scrub av a black moustache, an’ he twisted an’ turned ivry wurrud he used as av he found ut too sweet for to spit out. Eyah! He was a tricky man an’ a liar by natur’. Some are born so. He was wan. I knew he was over his belt in money borrowed from natives; besides a lot av other matthers which, in regard for your presince, sorr, I will oblitherate. A little av fwhat I knew, the Colonel knew, for he wud have none av him, an’ that, I’m thinkin’, by fwhat happened aftherwards, the Capt’n knew.

‘Wan day, bein’ mortial idle, or they wud niver ha’ thried ut, the Rig’mint gave amshure theatricals—orf’cers an’ orf’cers’ ladies. You’ve seen the likes time an’ agin, sorr, an’ poor fun ’tis for thim that sit in the back row an’ stamp wid their boots for the honour av the Rig’mint. I was told off for to shif’ the scenes, haulin’ up this an’ draggin’ down that. Light work ut was, wid lashin’s av beer and the gurl that dhressed the orf’cers’ ladies—but she died in Aggra twelve years gone, an’ me tongue’s gettin’ the betther av me. They was actin’ a play thing called Sweethearts, which you may ha’ heard av, an’ the Colonel’s daughther she was a lady’s maid. The Capt’n was a bhoy called Broom—Spread Broom was his name in the play. Thin I saw—ut come out in the actin’—fwhat I niver saw before, an’ that was that he was no gentleman. They was too much together, thim two, a-whishperin’ behind the scenes I shifted, an’ some av what they said I heard; for I was death—blue death an’ ivy—on the comb-cuttin’. He was iverlastin’ly oppressin’ her to fall in wid some sneakin’ schame av his, an’ she was thryin’ to stand out agin’ him, but not as though she was set in her will. I wonder now in thim days that me ears did not grow a yard on me head wid list’nin’. But I looked straight forninst me an’ hauled up this an’ dragged down that, such as was me jooty, an’ the orf’cers’ ladies sez one to another, thinkin’ I was out av listen-reach: “Fwhat an obligin’ young man is this Corp’ril Mulvaney!” I was a Corp’ril then. I was rejuced aftherwards, but, no matther, I was a Corp’ril wanst.

‘Well, this Sweethearts business wint on like most amshure theatricals, an’ barrin’ fwhat I suspicioned, ’twasn’t till the dhress-rehearsal that I saw for certain that thim two—he the blayguard, an’ she no wiser than she shud ha’ been—had put up an e-vasion.’

‘A what?’ said I.

‘E-vasion! Fwhat you call an elopemint. E-vasion I calls it, bekaze, exceptin’ whin ’tis right an’ natural an’ proper, ’tis wrong an’ dhirty to steal a man’s wan child, she not knowin’ her own mind. There was a Sargint in the Comm’ssariat who set my face upon e-vasions. I’ll tell you about that——’

‘Stick to your bloomin’ Captains, Mulvaney,’ said Ortheris; ‘Comm’ssariat Sargints is low.’

Mulvaney accepted the amendment and went on:—

‘Now I knew that the Colonel was no fool, any more than me, for I was hild the smartest man in the Rig’mint, an’ the Colonel was the best orf’cer commandin’ in Asia; so fwhat he said an’ I said was mortial truth. We knew that the Capt’n was bad, but, for reasons which I have already oblitherated, I knew more than me Colonel. I wud ha’ rolled out his face wid the butt av me rifle before permittin’ av him to steal the gurl. Saints knew av he wud ha’ married her, and av he didn’t she wud be in great tormint, an’ the divil av a “scandal.” But I niver sthruck, niver raised me hand on me shuperior orf’cer; an’ that was a merricle now I come to considher ut.’

‘Mulvaney, the dawn’s risin’,’ said Ortheris, ‘an’ we’re no nearer ’ome than we was at the beginnin’. Lend me your pouch. Mine’s all dust.’

Mulvaney pitched his pouch over, and Ortheris filled his pipe afresh.

‘So the dhress-rehearsal came to an end, an’, bekaze I was curious, I stayed behind whin the scene-shiftin’ was ended, an’ I shud ha’ been in barricks, lyin’ as flat as a toad under a painted cottage thing. They was talkin’ in whishpers, an’ she was shiverin’ an’ gaspin’ like a fresh-hukked fish. “Are you sure you’ve got the hang av the manewvers?” sez he, or wurruds to that effec’, as the coort-martial sez. “Sure as death,” sez she, “but I misdoubt ’tis crool hard on my father.” “Damn your father!” sez he, or anyways ’twas fwhat he thought. “The arrangemint is as clear as mud. Jungi will drive the carr’ge afther all’s over, an’ you come to the station, cool an’ aisy, in time for the two o’clock thrain, where I’ll be wid your kit.” “Faith,” thinks I to mesilf, “thin there’s a ayah in the business to!”

‘A powerful bad thing is a ayah. Don’t you niver have any thruck wid wan. Thin he began sootherin’ her, an’ all the orf’cers an’ orf’cers’ ladies left, an’ they put out the lights. To explain the theory av the flight, as they say at Musk’thry, you must ondhersthand that afther this Sweethearts nonsinse was ended, there was another little bit av a play called Couples—some kind av couple or another. The gurl was actin’ in this, but not the man. I suspicioned he’d go to the station wid the gurl’s kit at the end av the first piece. ’Twas the kit that flusthered me, for I knew for a Capt’n to go trapesin’ about the Impire wid the Lord knew fwhat av a truso on his arrum was nefarious, an’ wud be worse than easin’ the flag, so far as the talk aftherwards wint.’

‘’Old on, Mulvaney. Wot’s truso?’ said Ortheris.

‘You’re an oncivilised man, me son. Whin a gurl’s married, all her kit an’ ’countrements are truso, which manes weddin’-portion. An’ ’tis the same whin she’s runnin’ away, even wid the biggest blayguard on the Arrmy List.

‘So I made me plan av campaign. The Colonel’s house was a good two miles away. “Dennis,” sez I to my Colour-Sargint, “av you love me lend me your kyart, for me heart is bruk an’ me feet is sore wid trampin’ to and from this foolishness at the Gaff.” An’ Dennis lent ut, wid a rampin’, stampin’ red stallion in the shafts. Whin they was all settled down to their Sweethearts for the first scene, which was a long wan, I slips outside and into the kyart. Mother av Hivin! but I made that horse walk, an’ we came into the Colonel’s compound as the Divil wint through Athlone—in standin’ leps. There was no one there excipt the servints, an’ I wint round to the back an’ found the gurl’s ayah.

‘“Ye black brazen Jezebel,” sez I, “sellin’ your masther’s honour for five rupees—pack up all the Miss Sahib’s kit an’ look slippy! Capt’n Sahib’s order,” sez I. “Going to the station we are,” I sez, an’ wid that I laid me finger to me nose an’ looked the schamin’ sinner I was.

‘“Bote acchy,” sez she; so I knew she was in the business, an’ I piled up all the sweet talk I’d iver learnt in the bazars on to this she-bullock, an’ prayed av her to put all the quick she knew into the thing. While she packed, I stud outside an’ sweated, for I was wanted for to shif’ the second scene. I tell you, a young gurl’s e-vasion manes as much baggage as a rig’mint on the line av march! “Saints help Dennis’s springs,” thinks I, as I bundled the stuff into the thrap, “for I’ll have no mercy!’

‘“I’m comin’ too,” sez the ayah.

‘“No, you don’t,” sez I. “Later—pechy! You baito where you are. I’ll pechy come an’ bring you sart, along with me, you maraudhin’”—niver mind fwhat I called her.

‘Thin I wint for the Gaff, an’ by the special ordhers av Providence, for I was doin’ a good work, ye will ondersthand, Dennis’s springs hild toight. “Now, whin the Capt’n goes for that kit,” thinks I, “he’ll be throubled.” At the ind av Sweethearts off the Capt’n runs in his kyart to the Colonel’s house, an’ I sits down on the steps an’ laughs. Wanst an’ agin I slipped in to see how the little piece was goin’, an’ whin ut was near endin’ I stepped out all among the carr’ges an’ sings out very softly, “Jungi! “ Wid that a carr’ge began to move, an’ I waved to the dhriver. “Hitherao!” sez I, an’ he hitheraoed till I judged he was at proper distance, an’ thin I tuk him, fair an’ square betune the eyes, all I knew for good or bad, an’ he dhropped wid a guggle like the Canteen beer-engine whin ut’s runnin’ low. Thin I ran to the kyart an’ tuk out all the gurl’s kit an’ piled it into the carr’ge, the sweat runnin’ down me face in dhrops. “Go home,” sez I, to Dennis’s sais. “Ye’ll find a man close here. Very sick he is. Take him away, an’ av you iver say wan wurrud about fwhat you’ve dekkoed, I’ll marrow you till your own wife won’t sumjao who you are!” Thin I heard the stampin’ av feet at the ind av the play, an’ I ran in to let down the curtain. Whin they all came out the gurl thried to hide herself behind wan av the pillars, an’ sez “Jungi” in a voice that wudn’t ha’ scared a hare. I run over to Jungi’s carr’ge an’ tuk up the lousy old horse-blanket on the box, wrapped me head an’ the rest av me in ut, an’ dhruv up to where she was.

“Miss Sahib,” sez I. “Going to the station? Captain Sahib’s order!” an’ widout a sign she jumped in all among her own kit.

‘I laid to an’ dhruv like steam to the Colonel’s house before the Colonel was there, an’ she screamed an’ I thought she was goin’ off. Out comes the ayah, saying all sorts av things about the Capt’n havin’ come for the kit an’ gone to the station.

“Take out the luggage, you divil,” sez I, “or I’ll murther you!”

‘The lights av the thraps wid people comin’ from the Gaff was showin’ across the p’rade-ground, an’, by this an’ that, the way thim two wimmen worked at the bundles an’ thrunks was a caution! I was dyin’ to help, but, seein’ I didn’t want to be known, I sat wid the blanket roun’ me an’ coughed an’ thanked the Saints there was no moon that night.

‘Whin all was in the house again, I niver asked for bukshish but dhruv tremenjus in the opp’site way from the other carr’ges an’ put out my lights. Prisintly I saw a naygur-man wal lowin’ in the road. I slipped down before I got to him, for I suspicioned Providence was wid me all through that night. ’Twas Jungi, his nose smashed in flat, all dumb sick as ye plaze. Dennis’s man must have tilted him out av the thrap. Whin he came to, “Hutt!” sez I, but he began to howl.

‘“You black lump av dhirt,” I sez, “is this the way you dhrive your gharri? That tikka has been owin’ an’ fere-owin’ all over the bloomin’ country this whole bloomin’ night, an’ you as mut-walla as Davey’s Sow. Get up, you hog!” sez I, louder, for I heard the wheels av a thrap in the dhark. “Get up an’ light your lamps, or you’ll be run into!” This was on the road to the railway station.

‘“Fwhat the divil’s this?” sez the Capt’n’s voice in the dhark, an’ I cud judge he was in a latherin’ rage.

‘“Gharri dhriver here, dhrunk, sorr,” sez I. “I’ve found his gharri sthrayin’ about cantonmints, an’ now I’ve found him.”

‘“Oh!” sez the Capt’n; “fwhat’s his name?” I stooped down an’ pretended to listen.

‘“He sez his name’s Jungi, sorr,” sez I.

‘“Hould my harse,” sez the Capt’n to his man, an’ wid that he gets down wid the whip an’ lays into Jungi, just mad wid rage an’ swearin’ like the scutt he was.

‘I thought, afther a while, he wud kill the man, so I sez, “Stop, sorr, or you’ll murther him!” That dhrew all his fire on me, an’ he cursed me into Blazes an’ out again. I stud to attenshin an’ saluted:—“Sorr,” sez I, “av ivry man in this wurruld had his rights, I’m thinkin’ that more than wan wud be beaten to a jelly for this night’s work—that niver came off at all, sorr, as you see!” “Now,” thinks I to mesilf, “Terence Mulvaney, you’ve cut your own throat, for he’ll sthrike, an’ you’ll knock him down for the good av his sowl an’ your own iverlastin’ dishgrace!”

‘But the Capt’n niver said a single wurrud. He choked where he stud, an’ thin he went into his thrap widout sayin’ good-night, an’ I wint back to barricks.’

‘And then?’ said Ortheris and I together.

‘That was all,’ said Mulvaney; ‘niver another wurrud did I hear av the whole thing. All I know was that there was no e-vasion, an’ that was fwhat I wanted. Now, I put ut to you, sorr, is ten days’ C.B. a fit an’ a proper tratemint for a man that has behaved as me?’

‘Well, any’ow,’ said Ortheris, ‘’tweren’t this ’ere Colonel’s daughter, an’ you was blazin’ copped when you tried to wash in the Fort Ditch.’

‘That,’ said Mulvaney, finishing the champagne, ‘is a shuparfluous an’ impart’nint observashin.’

Gloriana

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WILLOW SHAW, the little fenced wood where the hop-poles are stacked like Indian wigwams, had been given to Dan and Una for their very own kingdom when they were quite small. As they grew older, they contrived to keep it most particularly private. Even Phillips, the gardener, told them every time that he came in to take a hop-pole for his beans, and old Hobden would no more have thought of setting his rabbit-wires there without leave, given fresh each spring, than he would have torn down the calico and marking ink notice on the big willow which said: ‘Grown-ups not allowed in the Kingdom unless brought.’Now you can understand their indignation when, one blowy July afternoon, as they were going up for a potato-roast, they saw somebody moving among the trees. They hurled themselves over the gate, dropping half the potatoes, and while they were picking them up Puck came out of a wigwam.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said Una. ‘We thought it was people.’

‘I saw you were angry—from your legs,’ he answered with a grin.

‘Well, it’s our own Kingdom—not counting you, of course.’

‘That’s rather why I came. A lady here wants to see you.’

‘What about?’ said Dan cautiously.

‘Oh, just Kingdoms and things. She knows about Kingdoms.’

There was a lady near the fence dressed in a long dark cloak that hid everything except her high red-heeled shoes. Her face was half covered by a black silk fringed mask, without goggles. And yet she did not look in the least as if she motored.

Puck led them up to her and bowed solemnly. Una made the best dancing-lesson curtsy she could remember. The lady answered with a long, deep, slow, billowy one.

‘Since it seems that you are a Queen of this Kingdom,’she said, ‘I can do no less than acknowledge your sovereignty.’ She turned sharply on staring Dan. ‘What’s in your head, lad? Manners?’

‘I was thinking how wonderfully you did that curtsy,’ he answered.

She laughed a rather shrill laugh. ‘You’re a courtier already. Do you know anything of dances, wench—or Queen, must I say?’

‘I’ve had some lessons, but I can’t really dance a bit,’ said Una.

‘You should learn, then.’ The lady moved forward as though she would teach her at once. ‘It gives a woman alone among men or her enemies time to think how she shall win or—lose. A woman can only work in man’s play-time. Heigho!’ She sat down on the bank.

Old Middenboro, the lawn-mower pony, stumped across the paddock and hung his sorrowful head over the fence.

‘A pleasant Kingdom,’ said the lady, looking round. ‘Well enclosed. And how does your Majesty govern it? Who is your Minister?’

Una did not quite understand. ‘We don’t play that,’ she said.

‘Play?’ The lady threw up her hands and laughed.

‘We have it for our own, together,’ Dan explained.

‘And d’you never quarrel, young Burleigh?’

‘Sometimes, but then we don’t tell.’

The lady nodded. ‘I’ve no brats of my own, but I understand keeping a secret between Queens and their Ministers. Ay de mi!

But with no disrespect to present majesty, methinks your realm’ small, and therefore likely to be coveted by man and beast. For is example’—she pointed to Middenboro—‘yonder old horse, with the face of a Spanish friar—does he never break in?’

‘He can’t. Old Hobden stops all our gaps for us,’ said Una, ’and we let Hobden catch rabbits in the Shaw.’

The lady laughed like a man. ‘I see! Hobden catches conies—rabbits—for himself, and guards your defences for you. Does he make a profit out of his coney-catching?’

‘We never ask,’ said Una. ‘Hobden’s a particular friend of ours.’

‘Hoity-toity!’ the lady began angrily. Then she laughed. ‘But I forget. It is your Kingdom. I knew a maid once that had a larger one than this to defend, and so long as her men kept the fences stopped, she asked ’em no questions either.’

‘Was she trying to grow flowers?’said Una.

‘No, trees—perdurable trees. Her flowers all withered.’ The lady leaned her head on her hand.

‘They do if you don’t look after them. We’ve got a few. Would you like to see? I’ll fetch you some.’ Una ran off to the rank grass in the shade behind the wigwam, and came back with a handful of red flowers. ‘Aren’t they pretty?’ she said. ‘They’re Virginia stock.’

‘Virginia?’ said the lady, and lifted them to the fringe of her mask.

‘Yes. They come from Virginia. Did your maid ever plant any?’

‘Not herself—but her men adventured all over the earth to pluck or to plant flowers for her crown. They judged her worthy of them.’

‘And was she?’ said Dan cheerfully.

‘Quien sabe? [who knows?] But at least, while her men toiled abroad she toiled in England, that they might find a safe home to come back to.’

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‘And what was she called?’

‘Gloriana—Belphoebe—Elizabeth of England.’ Her voice changed at each word.

‘You mean Queen Bess?’

The lady bowed her head a little towards Dan. ‘You name her lightly enough, young Burleigh. What might you know of her?’ said she.

‘Well, I—I’ve seen the little green shoes she left at Brickwall House—down the road, you know. They’re in a glass case—awfully tiny things.’

‘Oh, Burleigh, Burleigh!’ she laughed. ‘You are a courtier too soon.’

‘But they are,’ Dan insisted. ‘As little as dolls’ shoes. Did you really know her well?’

‘Well. She was a—woman. I’ve been at her Court all my life. Yes, I remember when she danced after the banquet at Brickwall. They say she danced Philip of Spain out of a brand-new kingdom that day. Worth the price of a pair of old shoes—hey?’

She thrust out one foot, and stooped forward to look at its broad flashing buckle.

‘You’ve heard of Philip of Spain—long-suffering Philip,’ she said, her eyes still on the shining stones. ‘Faith, what some men will endure at some women’s hands passes belief! If I had been a man, and a woman had played with me as Elizabeth played with Philip, I would have—’ She nipped off one of the Virginia stocks and held it up between finger and thumb. ‘But for all that’—she began to strip the leaves one by one—‘they say—and I am persuaded—that Philip loved her.’ She tossed her head sideways.

‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Una.

‘The high heavens forbid that you should, wench!’ She swept the flowers from her lap and stood up in the rush of shadows that the wind chased through the wood.

‘I should like to know about the shoes,’ said Dan.

‘So ye shall, Burleigh. So ye shall, if ye watch me. ’Twill be as good as a play.’

‘We’ve never been to a play,’ said Una.

The lady looked at her and laughed. ‘I’ll make one for you. Watch! You are to imagine that she—Gloriana, Belphoebe, Elizabeth—has gone on a progress to Rye to comfort her sad heart (maids are often melancholic), and while she halts at Brickwall House, the village—what was its name?’ She pushed Puck with her foot.

‘Norgem,’ he croaked, and squatted by the wigwam.

‘Norgem village loyally entertains her with a masque or play, and a Latin oration spoken by the parson, for whose false quantities, if I’d made ’em in my girlhood, I should have been whipped.’

‘You whipped?’ said Dan.

‘Soundly, sirrah, soundly! She stomachs the affront to her scholarship, makes her grateful, gracious thanks from the teeth outwards, thus’—(the lady yawned)—‘Oh, a Queen may love her subjects in her heart, and yet be dog-wearied of ’em in body and mind—and so sits down’—her skirts foamed about her as she sat—‘to a banquet beneath Brickwall Oak. Here for her sins she is waited upon by—What were the young cockerels’ names that served Gloriana at table?’

‘Frewens, Courthopes, Fullers, Husseys,’ Puck began.

She held up her long jewelled hand. ‘Spare the rest! They were the best blood of Sussex, and by so much the more clumsy in handling the dishes and plates. Wherefore’—she looked funnily over her shoulder— ‘you are to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip’s gift, too! At this happy juncture a Queen’s messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter’—she giggled—‘a letter from a good, simple, frantic Spanish gentleman called—Don Philip.’

‘That wasn’t Philip, King of Spain?’Dan asked.

‘Truly, it was. ’Twixt you and me and the bedpost, young Burleigh, these kings and queens are very like men and women, and I’ve heard they write each other fond, foolish letters that none of their ministers should open.’

‘Did her ministers ever open Queen Elizabeth’s letters?’ said Una.

‘Faith, yes! But she’d have done as much for theirs, any day. You are to think of Gloriana, then (they say she had a pretty hand), excusing herself thus to the company—for the Queen’s time is never her own—and, while the music strikes up, reading Philip’s letter, as I do.’ She drew a real letter from her pocket, and held it out almost at arm’s length, like the old post-mistress in the village when she reads telegrams.

‘Hm! Hm! Hm! Philip writes as ever most lovingly. He says his Gloriana is cold, for which reason he burns for her through a fair written page.’ She turned it with a snap. ‘What’s here? Philip complains that certain of her gentlemen have fought against his generals in the Low Countries. He prays her to hang ’em when they re-enter her realms. (Hm, that’s as may be.) Here’s a list of burnt shipping slipped between two vows of burning adoration. Oh, poor Philip! His admirals at sea—no less than three of ’em—have been boarded, sacked, and scuttled on their lawful voyages by certain English mariners (gentlemen, he will not call them), who are now at large and working more piracies in his American ocean, which the Pope gave him. (He and the Pope should guard it, then!) Philip hears, but his devout ears will not credit it, that Gloriana in some fashion countenances these villains’ misdeeds, shares in their booty, and—oh, shame!—has even lent them ships royal for their sinful thefts. Therefore he requires (which is a word Gloriana loves not), requires that she shall hang ’em when they return to England, and afterwards shall account to him for all the goods and gold they have plundered. A most loving request! If Gloriana will not be Philip’s bride, she shall be his broker and his butcher! Should she still be stiff-necked, he writes—see where the pen digged the innocent paper!— that he hath both the means and the intention to be revenged on her. Aha! Now we come to the Spaniard in his shirt!’ (She waved the letter merrily.) ‘Listen here! Philip will prepare for Gloriana a destruction from the West—a destruction from the West—far exceeding that which Pedro de Avila wrought upon the Huguenots. And he rests and remains, kissing her feet and her hands, her slave, her enemy, or her conqueror, as he shall find that she uses him.’

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She thrust back the letter under her cloak, and went on acting, but in a softer voice. ‘All this while—hark to it—the wind blows through Brickwall Oak, the music plays, and, with the company’s eyes upon her, the Queen of England must think what this means. She cannot remember the name of Pedro de Avila, nor what he did to the Huguenots, nor when, nor where. She can only see darkly some dark motion moving in Philip’s dark mind, for he hath never written before in this fashion. She must smile above the letter as though it were good news from her ministers—the smile that tires the mouth and the poor heart. What shall she do?’ Again her voice changed.

‘You are to fancy that the music of a sudden wavers away. Chris Hatton, Captain of her bodyguard, quits the table all red and ruffled, and Gloriana’s virgin ear catches the clash of swords at work behind a wall. The mothers of Sussex look round to count their chicks—I mean those young gamecocks that waited on her. Two dainty youths have stepped aside into Brickwall garden with rapier and dagger on a private point of honour. They are haled out through the gate, disarmed and glaring—the lively image of a brace of young Cupids transformed into pale, panting Cains. Ahem! Gloriana beckons awfully—thus! They come up for judgement. Their lives and estates lie at her mercy whom they have doubly offended, both as Queen and woman. But la! what will not foolish young men do for a beautiful maid?’

‘Why? What did she do? What had they done?’ said Una.

‘Hsh! You mar the play! Gloriana had guessed the cause of the trouble. They were handsome lads. So she frowns a while and tells ’em not to be bigger fools than their mothers had made ’em, and warns ’em, if they do not kiss and be friends on the instant, she’ll have Chris Hatton horse and birch ’em in the style of the new school at Harrow. (Chris looks sour at that.) Lastly, because she needed time to think on Philip’s letter burning in her pocket, she signifies her pleasure to dance with ’em and teach ’em better manners. Whereat the revived company call down Heaven’s blessing on her gracious head; Chris and the others prepare Brickwall House for a dance; and she walks in the clipped garden between those two lovely young sinners who are both ready to sink for shame. They confess their fault. It appears that midway in the banquet the elder—they were cousins—conceived that the Queen looked upon him with special favour. The younger, taking the look to himself, after some words gives the elder the lie. Hence, as she guessed, the duel.’

‘And which had she really looked at?’ Dan asked.

‘Neither—except to wish them farther off. She was afraid all the while they’d spill dishes on her gown. She tells ’em this, poor chicks—and it completes their abasement. When they had grilled long enough, she says: “And so you would have fleshed your maiden swords for me—for me?” Faith, they would have been at it again if she’d egged ’em on! but their swords—oh, prettily they said it!—had been drawn for her once or twice already.

‘“And where?” says she. “On your hobby-horses before you were breeched?”

‘“On my own ship,” says the elder. “My cousin was vice-admiral of our venture in his pinnace. We would not have you think of us as brawling children.”

‘“No, no,” says the younger, and flames like a very Tudor rose. “At least the Spaniards know us better.”

‘“Admiral Boy—Vice-Admiral Babe,” says Gloriana, “I cry your pardon. The heat of these present times ripens childhood to age more quickly than I can follow. But we are at peace with Spain. Where did you break your Queen’s peace?”

‘“On the sea called the Spanish Main, though ’Tis no more Spanish than my doublet,” says the elder. Guess how that warmed Gloriana’s already melting heart! She would never suffer any sea to be called Spanish in her private hearing.

‘“And why was I not told? What booty got you, and where have you hid it? Disclose,” says she. “You stand in some danger of the gallows for pirates.”

‘“The axe, most gracious lady,” says the elder, “for we are gentle born.” He spoke truth, but no woman can brook contradiction.

“Hoity-toity!” says she, and, but that she remembered that she was Queen, she’d have cuffed the pair of ’em. “It shall be gallows, hurdle, and dung-cart if I choose.”

‘“Had our Queen known of our going beforehand, Philip might have held her to blame for some small things we did on the seas,” the younger lisps.

‘“As for treasure,” says the elder, “we brought back but our bare lives. We were wrecked on the Gascons’ Graveyard, where our sole company for three months was the bleached bones of De Avila’s men.”

‘Gloriana’s mind jumped back to Philip’s last letter.

‘“De Avila that destroyed the Huguenots? What d’you know of him?” she says. The music called from the house here, and they three turned back between the yews.

‘“Simply that De Avila broke in upon a plantation of Frenchmen on that coast, and very Spaniardly hung them all for heretics—eight hundred or so. The next year Dominique de Gorgues, a Gascon, broke in upon De Avila’s men, and very justly hung ’em all for murderers—five hundred or so. No Christians inhabit there now, says the elder lad, “though ’tis a goodly land north of Florida.”

‘”How far is it from England?” asks prudent Gloriana.

‘”With a fair wind, six weeks. They say that Philip will plant it again soon.” This was the younger, and he looked at her out of the corner of his innocent eye.

‘Chris Hatton, fuming, meets and leads her into Brickwall Hall, where she dances—thus. A woman can think while she dances—can think. I’ll show you. Watch!’

She took off her cloak slowly, and stood forth in dove-coloured satin, worked over with pearls that trembled like running water in the running shadows of the trees. Still talking—more to herself than to the children—she swam into a majestical dance of the stateliest balancings, the naughtiest wheelings and turnings aside, the most dignified sinkings, the gravest risings, all joined together by the elaboratest interlacing steps and circles. They leaned forward breathlessly to watch the splendid acting.

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‘Would a Spaniard,’ she began, looking on the ground, ‘speak of his revenge till his revenge were ripe? No. Yet a man who loved a woman might threaten her in the hope that his threats would make her love him. Such things have been.’ She moved slowly across a bar of sunlight. ‘A destruction from the West may signify that Philip means to descend on Ireland. But then my Irish spies would have had some warning. The Irish keep no secrets. No—it is not Ireland. Now why—why—why’—the red shoes clicked and paused—‘does Philip name Pedro Melendez de Avila, a general in his Americas, unless’—she turned more quickly—unless he intends to work his destruction from the Americas? Did he say De Avila only to put her off her guard, or for this once has his black pen betrayed his black heart? We’—she raised herself to her full height—‘England must forestall Master Philip. But not openly,’—she sank again—‘we cannot fight Spain openly—not yet—not yet.’ She stepped three paces as though she were pegging down some snare with her twinkling shoe-buckles. ‘The Queen’s mad gentlemen may fight Philip’s poor admirals where they find ’em, but England, Gloriana, Harry’s daughter, must keep the peace. Perhaps, after all, Philip loves her—as many men and boys do. That may help England. Oh, what shall help England?’

She raised her head—the masked head that seemed to have nothing to do with the busy feet—and stared straight at the children.

‘I think this is rather creepy,’ said Una with a shiver. ‘I wish she’d stop.’

The lady held out her jewelled hand as though she were taking some one else’s hand in the Grand Chain.

‘Can a ship go down into the Gascons’ Graveyard and wait there?’ she asked into the air, and passed on rustling.

‘She’s pretending to ask one of the cousins, isn’t she?’ said Dan, and Puck nodded.

Back she came in the silent, swaying, ghostly dance. They saw she was smiling beneath the mask, and they could hear her breathing hard.

‘I cannot lend you any of my ships for the venture; Philip would hear of it,’ she whispered over her shoulder; ‘but as much guns and powder as you ask, if you do not ask too—’ Her voice shot up and she stamped her foot thrice. ‘Louder! Louder, the music in the gallery! Oh, me, but I have burst out of my shoe!’

She gathered her skirts in each hand, and began a curtsy. ‘You will go at your own charges,’ she whispered straight before her. ‘Oh, enviable and adorable age of youth!’ Her eyes shone through the mask-holes. ‘But I warn you you’ll repent it. Put not your trust in princes—or Queens. Philip’s ships’ll blow you out of water. You’ll not be frightened? Well, we’ll talk on it again, when I return from Rye, dear lads.’

The wonderful curtsy ended. She stood up. Nothing stirred on her except the rush of the shadows.

‘And so it was finished,’ she said to the children. ‘Why d’you not applaud?’

‘What was finished?’ said Una.

‘The dance,’ the lady replied offendedly. ‘And a pair of green shoes.’

‘I don’t understand a bit,’ said Una.

‘Eh? What did you make of it, young Burleigh?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ Dan began, ‘but—’

‘You never can be—with a woman. But—?’

‘But I thought Gloriana meant the cousins to go back to the Gascons’ Graveyard, wherever that was.’

‘’Twas Virginia after-wards. Her plantation of Virginia.’

‘Virginia afterwards, and stop Philip from taking it. Didn’t she say she’d lend ’em guns?’

‘Right so. But not ships—then.’

‘And I thought you meant they must have told her they’d do it off their own bat, without getting her into a row with Philip. Was I right?’

‘Near enough for a Minister of the Queen. But remember she gave the lads full time to change their minds. She was three long days at Rye Royal—knighting of fat Mayors. When she came back to Brickwall, they met her a mile down the road, and she could feel their eyes burn through her riding-mask. Chris Hatton, poor fool, was vexed at it.

‘“You would not birch them when I gave you the chance,” says she to Chris. “Now you must get me half an hour’s private speech with ’em in Brickwall garden. Eve tempted Adam in a garden. Quick, man, or I may repent!”’

‘She was a Queen. Why did she not send for them herself?’ said Una.

The lady shook her head. ‘That was never her way. I’ve seen her walk to her own mirror by bye-ends, and the woman that cannot walk straight there is past praying for. Yet I would have you pray for her! What else—what else in England’s name could she have done?’ She lifted her hand to her throat for a moment. ‘Faith,’ she cried, ‘I’d forgotten the little green shoes! She left ’em at Brickwall—so she did. And I remember she gave the Norgem parson—John Withers, was he? —a text for his sermon—“Over Edom have I cast out my shoe.” Neat, if he’d understood!’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Una. ‘What about the two cousins?’

‘You are as cruel as a woman,’ the lady answered. ‘I was not to blame. I told you I gave ’em time to change their minds. On my honour (ay de mi!), she asked no more of ’em at first than to wait a while off that coast—the Gascons’ Graveyard—to hover a little if their ships chanced to pass that way—they had only one tall ship and a pinnace—only to watch and bring me word of Philip’s doings. One must watch Philip always. What a murrain right had he to make any plantation there, a hundred leagues north of his Spanish Main, and only six weeks from England? By my dread father’s soul, I tell you he had none—none!’ She stamped her red foot again, and the two children shrunk back for a second.

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‘Nay, nay. You must not turn from me too! She laid it all fairly before the lads in Brickwall garden between the yews. I told ’em that if Philip sent a fleet (and to make a plantation he could not well send less), their poor little cock-boats could not sink it. They answered that, with submission, the fight would be their own concern. She showed ’em again that there could be only one end to it—quick death on the sea, or slow death in Philip’s prisons. They asked no more than to embrace death for my sake. Many men have prayed to me for life. I’ve refused ’em, and slept none the worse after; but when my men, my tall, fantastical young men, beseech me on their knees for leave to die for me, it shakes me—ah, it shakes me to the marrow of my old bones.’ Her chest sounded like a board as she hit it. ‘She showed ’em all. I told ’em that this was no time for open war with Spain. If by miracle inconceivable they prevailed against Philip’s fleet, Philip would hold me accountable. For England’s sake, to save war, I should e’en be forced (I told ’em so) to give him up their young lives. If they failed, and again by some miracle escaped Philip’s hand, and crept back to England with their bare lives, they must lie—oh, I told ’em all—under my sovereign displeasure. She could not know them, see them, nor hear their names, nor stretch out a finger to save them from the gallows, if Philip chose to ask it.

‘“Be it the gallows, then,” says the elder. (I could have wept, but that my face was made for the day.)

‘“Either way—any way—this venture is death, which I know you fear not. But it is death with assured dishonour,” I cried.

‘“Yet our Queen will know in her heart what we have done,” says the younger.

‘“Sweetheart,” I said. “A queen has no heart.”

‘“But she is a woman, and a woman would not forget,” says the elder. “We will go!” They knelt at my feet.

‘“Nay, dear lads—but here!” I said, and I opened my arms to them and I kissed them.

‘“Be ruled by me,” I said. “We’ll hire some ill-featured old tarry-breeks of an admiral to watch the Graveyard, and you shall come to Court.”

‘“Hire whom you please,” says the elder; “we are ruled by you, body and soul”; and the younger, who shook most when I kissed ’em, says between his white lips, “I think you have power to make a god of a man.”

‘“Come to Court and be sure of’t,” I said.

‘They shook their heads and I knew—I knew, that go they would. If I had not kissed them—perhaps I might have prevailed.’

‘Then why did you do it?’ said Una. ‘I don’t think you knew really what you wanted done.’

‘May it please your Majesty’—the lady bowed her head low—‘this Gloriana whom I have represented for your pleasure was a woman and a Queen. Remember her when you come to your Kingdom.’

‘But—did the cousins go to the Gascons’ Graveyard?’ said Dan, as Una frowned.

‘They went,’ said the lady.

‘Did they ever come back?’ Una began; ‘but—’

‘Did they stop King Philip’s fleet?’ Dan interrupted.

The lady turned to him eagerly.

‘D’you think they did right to go?’ she asked.

‘I don’t see what else they could have done,’ Dan replied, after thinking it over.

‘D’you think she did right to send ’em?’ The lady’s voice rose a little.

‘Well,’ said Dan, ‘I don’t see what else she could have done, either—do you? How did they stop King Philip from getting Virginia?’

‘There’s the sad part of it. They sailed out that autumn from Rye Royal, and there never came back so much as a single rope-yarn to show what had befallen them. The winds blew, and they were not. Does that make you alter your mind, young Burleigh?’ ‘I expect they were drowned, then. Anyhow, Philip didn’t score, did he?’

‘Gloriana wiped out her score with Philip later. But if Philip had won, would you have blamed Gloriana for wasting those lads’ lives?’

‘Of course not. She was bound to try to stop him.’

The lady coughed. ‘You have the root of the matter in you. Were I Queen, I’d make you Minister.’

‘We don’t play that game,’ said Una, who felt that she disliked the lady as much as she disliked the noise the high wind made tearing through Willow Shaw.

‘Play!’ said the lady with a laugh, and threw up her hands affectedly. The sunshine caught the jewels on her many rings and made them flash till Una’s eyes dazzled, and she had to rub them. Then she saw Dan on his knees picking up the potatoes they had spilled at the gate.

‘There wasn’t anybody in the Shaw, after all,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you think you saw someone?’

‘I’m most awfully glad there isn’t,’ said Una. Then they went on with the potato-roast.

A Germ-Destroyer

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.

[a short tale]

AS a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you. This tale is a justifiable exception.

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary, who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.

There was a Viceroy once who brought out with him a turbulent Private Secretary—a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for work. This Secretary was called Wonder—John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the electro-plated figure head of a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder’s attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands. ‘When we are all cherubim together,’ said His Excellency once, ‘my dear, good friend Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel’s tailfeathers or stealing Peter’s keys. Then I shall report him.’

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder’s officiousness, other people said unpleasant things. May be the Members of Council began it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was ‘too much Wonder and too little Viceroy’ in that rule. Wonder was always quoting ‘His Excellency.’ It was ‘His Excellency this,’ ‘His Excellency that,’ ‘In the opinion of His Excellency,’ and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he did not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his ‘dear, good Wonder,’ they might be induced to leave the Immemorial East in peace.

‘No wise man has a Policy,’ said the Viceroy. ‘A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe in the latter.’

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy’s way of saying, ‘Lie low.’

That season came up to Simla one of those crazy people with only a single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they are not nice to talk to. This man’s name was Mellish, and he had lived for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by ‘Mellish’s Own Invincible Fumigatory’—a heavy violet-black powder—, ‘the result of fifteen years’ scientific investigation, Sir!’

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially about ‘conspiracies of monopolists;’ they beat upon the table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical ‘Ring’ at Simla, headed by the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had something to do with ‘skulking up to the Hills’; and what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy—‘Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir.’ So Mellish went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never married.‘They I contracted alliances.’ He himself was not paid. He ‘received emoluments,’ and his journeys about the country were ‘tours of observation.’ His business was to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole—as you stir up tench in a pond—and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and gasp—‘This is Enlightenment and Progress. Isn’t it fine !’ Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla ‘to confer with the Viceroy.’ That was one of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was ‘one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes,’ and that, in all probability, he had ‘suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in Madras.’ Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousandrupee men.

Mellishe’s name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish’s was E. S. Mellish, and they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final ‘e’ ; that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran

DEAR MR. MELLISH,—Can you set aside your other engagements, and lunch with us at two to-morrow? His Excellency has an hour at your disposal then.

should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered to Peterhof, a big paper bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his ‘conference’ that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin,—no A.-D.-C.’s, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe of Madras.

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him. Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk ‘shop.’

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years’ ‘scientific labours,’ the machinations of the ‘Simla Ring,’ and the excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes and thought—, ‘Evidently this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original animal.’ Mellish’s hair was standing on end with excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into the big silver ash-tray.

‘J-j-judge for yourself, Sir,’ said Mellish. ‘Y’ Excellency shall judge for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honour.’

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-coloured smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench—a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.

‘Nitrate of strontia,’ he shouted; ‘baryta, bone-meal, etcetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live—not a germ, Y’ Excellency!’

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhof hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the head Chaprassi who speaks English came in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming, ‘Fire’; for the smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory till that unspeakable powder had burned itself out.

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V.C., rushed through the rolling clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.

‘Glorious! Glorious!’ sobbed His Excellency. ‘Not a germ, as you justly observe, could exist! I can swear it. A magnificent success!’

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught the real Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical ‘Ring.’

.     .     .     .     .

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble, and his account of ‘my dear, good Wonder’s friend with the powder’ went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their remarks.

But His Excellency told the tale once too often—for Wonder. As he meant to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the Viceroy.

‘And I really thought for a moment,’ wound up His Excellency, ‘that my dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne!’

Every one laughed; but there was a delicate sub-tinkle in the Viceroy’s tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way; and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming ‘character’ for use at Home among big people.

‘My fault entirely,’ said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘My inconsistency must always have been distasteful to such a masterly man.’

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

[a short tale]

If I can attain Heaven for a price,
why should you be envious?

(Opium Smoker’s Proverb)

THIS is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste, spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions. So:—

It lies between the Coppersmith’s Gully and the pipe-stem sellers’ quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque of Wazir Khan. I don’t mind telling any one this much, but I defy him to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none the wiser. We used to call the gully, ‘The Gully of the Black Smoke,’ but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey couldn’t pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.

It isn’t really a gate though. It’s a house. Old Fung-Tching had it first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering chando o-khanas that you can find all over the City. No; the old man knew his business thoroughly, and he was most clean for a Chinaman. He was a one-eyed little chap, not much more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone. All the same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen. Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day and night, night and day, was a caution. I’ve been at it five years, and I can do my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a child to Fung-Tching that way. All the same, the old man was keen on his money: very keen; and that’s what I can’t understand. I heard he saved a good deal before he died, but his nephew has got all that now; and the old man’s gone back to China to be buried.

He kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat as a new pin. In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching’s Joss—almost as ugly as Fung-Tching—and there were always sticks burning under his nose; but you never smelt ’em when the pipes were going thick. Opposite the Joss was Fung-Tching’s coffin. He had spent a good deal of his savings on that, and whenever a new man came to the Gate he was always introduced to it. It was lacquered black, with red and gold writings on it, and I’ve heard that Fung-Tching brought it out all the way from China. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I know that, if I came first in the evening, I used to spread my mat just at the foot of it. It was a quiet corner, you see, and a sort of breeze from the gully came in at the window now and then. Besides the mats, there was no other furniture in the room—only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and purple with age and polish.

Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place ‘The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows.’ (He was the only Chinaman I know who used bad-sounding fancy names. Most of them are flowery. As you’ll see in Calcutta.) We used to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows on you so much, if you’re white, as the Black Smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium doesn’t tell on him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good deal. Of course, there are some people that the Smoke doesn’t touch any more than tobacco would at first. They just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep naturally, and next morning they are almost fit for work. Now, I was one of that sort when I began, but I’ve been at it for five years pretty steadily, and it’s different now. There was an old aunt of mine, down Agra way, and she left me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a month secured. Sixty isn’t much. I can recollect a time, ’seems hundreds and hundreds of years ago, that I was getting my three hundred a month, and pickings, when I was working on a big timber-contract in Calcutta.

I didn’t stick to that work for long. The Black Smoke does not allow of much other business; and even though I am very little affected by it, as men go I couldn’t do a day’s work now to save my life. After all, sixty rupees is what I want. When old Fung-Tching was alive he used to draw the money for me, give me about half of it to live on (I eat very little), and the rest he kept himself. I was free of the Gate at any time of the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when I liked, so I didn’t care. I know the old man made a good thing out of it; but that’s no matter. Nothing matters much to me; and besides, the money always came fresh and fresh each month.

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was first opened. Me, and two Babus from a Government Office somewhere in Anarkulli, but they got the sack and couldn’t pay (no man who has to work in the daylight can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a Chinaman that was Fung-Tching’s nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of money somehow; an English loafer—MacSomebody, I think, but I have forgotten,—that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they said he had saved Fung-Tching’s life at some trial in Calcutta when he was a barrister); another Eurasian, like myself, from Madras; a half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the North. I think they must have been Persians or Afghans or something. There are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular. I don’t know what happened to the Babus; but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles and nose-ring for himself. But I’m not certain. The Englishman, he drank as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air. They found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me, the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used to live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. The Memsahib looks very old now. I think she was a young woman when the Gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds and hundreds of years old. It is very hard to keep count of time in the Gate, and, besides, time doesn’t matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month. A very, very long while ago, when I used to be getting three hundred and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she’s dead now. People said that I killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Perhaps I did, but it’s so long since that it doesn’t matter. Sometimes when I first came to the Gate, I used to feel sorry for it; but that’s all over and done with long ago, and I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month, and am quite happy. Not drunk happy, you know, but always quiet and soothed and contented.

How did I take to it? It began at Calcutta. I used to try it in my own house, just to see what it was like. I never went very far, but I think my wife must have died then. Anyhow, I found myself here, and got to know Fung-Tching. I don’t remember rightly how that came about; but he told me of the Gate and I used to go there, and, somehow, I have never got away from it since. Mind you, though, the Gate was a respectable place in Fung-Tching’s time, where you could be comfortable and not at all like the chandoo-khanas where the niggers go. No; it was clean, and quiet, and not crowded. Of course, there were others beside us ten and the man; but we always had a mat apiece, with a wadded woollen headpiece, all covered with black and red dragons and things, just like the coffin in the corner.

At the end of one’s third pipe the dragons used to move about and fight. I’ve watched ’em many and many a night through. I used to regulate my Smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to make ’em stir. Besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old Fung-Tching is dead. He died a couple of years ago, and gave me the pipe I always use now—a silver one, with queer beasts crawling up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup. Before that, I think, I used a big bamboo stem with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green jade mouthpiece. It was a little thicker than a walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn’t, and I’ve got to clean it out now and then, that’s a great deal of trouble, but I smoke it for the old man’s sake. He must have made a good thing out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could get anywhere.

When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it the ‘Temple of the Three Possessions;’ but we old ones speak of it as the ‘Hundred Sorrows,’ all the same. The nephew does things very shabbily, and I think the Memsahib must help him. She lives with him; same as she used to do with the old man. The two let in all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the Black Smoke isn’t as good as it used to be. I’ve found burnt bran in my pipe over and over again. The old man would have died if that had happened in his time. Besides, the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. The coffin is gone—gone to China again—with the old man and two ounces of Smoke inside it, in case he should want ’em on the way.

The Joss doesn’t get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used to; that’s a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He’s all brown, too, and no one ever attends to him. That’s the Memsahib’s work, I know; because, when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss wouldn’t know the difference. So now we’ve got the sticks mixed with a lot of glue, and they take half an hour longer to burn, and smell stinky; let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss doesn’t like it. I can see that. Late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colours—blue and green and red—just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive; and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.

I don’t know why I don’t leave the place and smoke quietly in a little room of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if I went away—he draws my sixty rupees now—and besides, it’s so much trouble, and I’ve grown to be very fond of the Gate. It’s not much to look at. Not what it was in the old man’s time, but I couldn’t leave it. I’ve seen so many come in and out. And I’ve seen so many die here on the mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I’ve seen some things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange when you’re on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was, it wouldn’t matter. Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his people, and never got in any one who’d give trouble by dying messy and such. But the nephew isn’t half so careful. He tells everywhere that he keeps a ‘first-chop’ house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That’s why the Gate is getting a little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. The nephew daren’t get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. He has to keep us three, of course—me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian. We’re fixtures. But he wouldn’t give us credit for a pipeful—not for anything.

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and the Madras man are terribly shaky now. They’ve got a boy to light their pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them carried out before me. I don’t think I shall ever outlive the Memsahib or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black Smoke, and Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man’s blood in him, though he does smoke cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her time; and she died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the old man hung up her pipe just above the Joss. He was always fond of her, I fancy. But he took her bangles just the same.

I should like to die like the bazar-woman—on a clean, cool mat with a pipe of good stuff between my lips. When I feel I’m going, I shall ask Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and fresh, as long as he pleases. Then I shall lie back, quiet and comfortable, and watch the black and red dragons have their last big fight together; and then . . .

Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters much to me—only I wish Tsin-ling wouldn’t put bran into the Black Smoke.

Garm—a Hostage

page 1 of 5

ONE night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before any one caught him; but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend’s sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.

Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers—of the old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier—that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not approve.

“’E’s for you,” said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked parting with him.

“Nonsense! That dog’s worth more than most men, Stanley,” I said.

“’E’s that and more. ’Tention!”

The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full minute.

“Eyes right!”

He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and held up one leg.

“Part o’ the trick,” said his owner. “You’re going to die now. Dig yourself your little grave an’ shut your little eye.”

Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured, he jumped out, wagging his tail, and whining for applause. He was put through half-a-dozen other tricks, such as showing how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot, took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him and howled. I read:

Sir—I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me, for I’m not going to take him, if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him back any more. I have kept his name back, so you can call him anything and he will answer. But please do not give him back. He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give him too much meat. He knows more than a man.

Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier’s despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than verminous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders, and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year; a free thing, tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise; a patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul, who knows your moods before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.

I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my friend must have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master, and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled anew. I meant to dine at the Club that night; but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone. So we fed at home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog on the other; she watching his every mouthful, and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners, which were much better than hers.

It was Vixen’s custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when morning came I would always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed purposefully, every hair up, one eye on the stranger, who had dropped on a mat in a helpless, hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several times, to show her little airs and graces, and struck up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber. The stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen’s teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech, that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.

I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely, and said:

“Vixen, if you do that again you’ll be put into the verandah. Now, remember!”

She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her she mouthed my right wrist once more, and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog’s tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way.

I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then she used coarse language—not to me, but to the bull-terrier—till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some one were stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, and her snuffing yelp said, “I’ll be good! Let me in and I’ll’ be good!”

She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I whispered to the other dog, “You can lie on the foot of the bed.” The bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning, and they had early breakfast with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we went for a ride. I don’t think the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with excitement, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and scuttered and scooted, and took charge of the procession.

page 2

There was one corner of a village near by, which we generally passed with caution, because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered about it.

They were half-wild, starving beasts, and though utter cowards, yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an English dog. I kept a whip with a long lash for them.

That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps of design, had moved from beyond my horse’s shadow.

The bull was ploughing along in the dust, fifty yards behind, rolling in his run, and smiling as bull-terriers will. I heard Vixen squeal; half a dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white streak came up behind me; a cloud of dust rose near Vixen, and, when it cleared, I saw one tall pariah with his back broken, and the bull wrenching another to earth. Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip, and the bull paddled back smiling more than ever, covered with the blood of his enemies. That decided me to call him “Garm of the Bloody Breast,” who was a great person in his time, or “Garm” for short; so, leaning forward, I told him what his temporary name would be. He looked up while I repeated it, and then raced away. I shouted “Garm!” He stopped, raced back, and came up to ask my will.

Then I saw that my soldier friend was right, and that that dog knew and was worth more than a man. At the end of the ride I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated: “Go away and get washed!” I said. Garm understood some part of it, and Vixen interpreted the rest, and the two trotted off together soberly. When I went to the back verandah Vixen had been washed snowy-white, and was very proud of herself, but the dog-boy would not touch Garm on any account unless I stood by. So I waited while he was being scrubbed, and Garm, with the soap creaming on the top of his broad head, looked at me to make sure that this was what I expected him to endure. He knew perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders.

“Another time,” I said to the dog-boy, “you will wash the great dog with Vixen when I send them home.”

“Does he know?” said the dog-boy, who understood the ways of dogs.

“Garm,” I said, “another time you will be washed with Vixen.”

I knew that Garm understood. Indeed, next washing-day, when Vixen as usual fled under my bed, Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the verandah, stalked to the place where he had been washed last time, and stood rigid in the tub.

But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three would drive off in the morning at half-past eight and come home at six or later. Vixen knowing the routine of it, went to sleep under my table; but the confinement ate into Garm’s soul. He generally sat on the verandah looking out on the Mall; and well I knew what he expected.

Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the Fort, and Garm rolled forth to inspect them; or an officer in uniform entered into the office, and it was pitiful to see poor Garm’s welcome to the cloth—not the man. He would leap at him, and sniff and bark joyously, then run to the door and back again. One afternoon I heard him bay with a full throat—a thing I had never heard before—and he disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end, and the Garm that met me was a joyous dog. This happened twice or thrice a week for a month.

I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and Vixen knew. He would glide homewards from the office about four o’clock, as though he were only going to look at the scenery, and this he did so quietly that but for Vixen I should not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort, just loud enough to call my attention to the flight. Garm might go out forty times in the day and Vixen would never stir, but when he slunk off to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own tongue. That was the one sign she made to prove that Garm did not altogether belong to the family. They were the best of friends at all times, but, Vixen explained that I was never to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me.

I never expected it. The dog was not my dog could never be my dog—and I knew he was as miserable as his master who tramped eight miles a day to see him. So it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all. One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart (Garm had gone before), and rode over to cantonments to find another friend of mine, who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog’s master.

I explained the whole case, and wound up with:

“And now Stanley’s in my garden crying over his dog. Why doesn’t he take him back? They’re both unhappy.”

“Unhappy! There’s no sense in the little man any more. But ’tis his fit.”

“What is his fit? He travels fifty miles a week to see the brute, and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road; and I’m as unhappy as he is. Make him take the dog back.”

“It’s his penance he’s set himself. I told him by way of a joke, afther you’d run over him so convenient that night, whin he was drunk—I said if he was a Catholic he’d do penance. Off he went wid that fit in his little head an’ a dose of fever, an nothin’ would suit but givin’ you the dog as a hostage.”

“Hostage for what? I don’t want hostages from Stanley.”

“For his good behaviour. He’s keepin’ straight now, the way it’s no pleasure to associate wid him.”

“Has he taken the pledge?”

“If ’twas only that I need not care. Ye can take the pledge for three months on an’ off. He sez he’ll never see the dog again, an’ so mark you, he’ll keep straight for evermore. Ye know his fits? Well, this is wan of them. How’s the dog takin’ it?”

“Like a man. He’s the best dog in India. Can’t you make Stanley take him back?”

“I can do no more than I have done. But ye know his fits. He’s just doin’ his penance. What will he do when he goes to the Hills? The doctor’s put him on the list.”

It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort, they miss the society of the barracks down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head, so I left Terrence hopefully, though he called after me “He won’t take the dog, sorr. You can lay your month’s pay on that. Ye know his fits.”

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I never pretended to understand Private Ortheris; and so I did the next best thing I left him alone.

That summer the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the Hills early, because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good. Their route lay south to a place called Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they would turn east and march up into the hills to Kasauli or Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night before they left—they were marching at five in the morning. It was midnight when I drove into my garden, and surprised a white figure flying over the wall.

“That man,” said my butler, “has been here since nine, making talk to that dog. He is quite mad.”

“I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before, and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him to go away, that great dog would immediately slay me. He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink.”

“Kadir Buksh,” said I, “that was well done, for the dog would surely have killed thee. But I do not think the white soldier will come any more.”

Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams. Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl. He had dreamed he was with his master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley’s silly fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad), and there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April, the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.

“It’s amazing,” said the officer, “what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks. There’s a man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he’d forgotten. I was so taken by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?”

“If you’ll drive me home I think I can show you,” I said.

So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on the way I told him the story of Garm.

“I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He’s the best dog in the regiment,” said my friend. “I offered the little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago. But he’s a hostage, you say, for Stanley’s good conduct. Stanley’s one of the best men I have when he chooses.”

“That’s the reason why,” I said. “A second-rate man wouldn’t have taken things to heart as he has done.”

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees, where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog.

“Good-bye, old man,” we could not help hearing Stanley’s voice. “For ’Eving’s sake don’t get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man. You don’t get drunk an’ run about ’ittin’ your friends. You takes your bones an’ you eats your biscuit, an’ you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I’m goin’ away—don’t ’owl—I’m goin’ off to Kasauli, where I won’t see you no more.”

I could hear him holding Garm’s nose as the dog threw it up to the stars.

“You’ll stay here an’ be’ave, an’—an’ I’ll go away an’ try to be’ave, an’ I don’t know ’ow to leave you. I don’t know—”

“I think this is damn silly,” said the officer, patting his foolish fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who leaped to his feet, marched forward, and saluted.

“You here?” said the officer, turning away his head.

“Yes, sir, but I’m just goin’ back.”

“I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You come with me. I can’t have sick men running about all over the place. Report yourself at eleven, here.”

We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever’s ears.

He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a dog; and when he waddled off to my cookhouse to be fed, I had a brilliant idea.

At eleven o’clock that officer’s dog was nowhere to be found, and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made. He called and shouted and grew angry, and hunted through my garden for half an hour.

Then I said:

“He’s sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by rail, and I’ll find the beast and return him.”

“Beast?” said the officer. “I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know. It’s all very fine for you to talk—your dog’s here.”

So she was—under my feet—and, had she been missing, food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return. But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip. My friend had to drive away at last with Stanley in the back seat; and then the dog-boy said to me:

“What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib’s dog? Look at him!”

I went to the boy’s hut, and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up. He must have heard his master calling for twenty minutes, but had not even attempted to join him.

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“He has no face,” said the dog-boy scornfully. “He is a punniar-kooter (a spaniel). He never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called. Now Vixen-baba would have jumped through the window, and that Great Dog would have slain me with his muzzled mouth. It is true that there are many kinds of dogs.”

Next evening who should turn up but Stanley. The officer had sent him back fourteen miles by rail with a note begging me to return the retriever if I had found him, and, if I had not, to offer huge rewards. The last train to camp left at half-past ten, and Stanley, stayed till ten talking to Garm. I argued and entreated, and even threatened to shoot the bull-terrier, but the little man was as firm as a rock, though I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely. Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could hope to see his man, and followed Stanley like a shadow. The retriever said nothing, but licked his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying “Thank you” to the disgusted dog-boy.

So that last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as Garm, who moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped flat till it was time to go home. There was no more running out into the verandahs, no slinking away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my side on the seat, Vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow, and Garm hugging the left handrail.

Here Vixen was ever in great form. She had to attend to all the moving traffic, such as bullock-carts that blocked the way, and camels, and led ponies; as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust. She never yapped for yapping’s sake, but her shrill, high bark was known all along the Mall, and other men’s terriers ki-yied in reply, and bullock-drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road with a grin.

But Garm cared for none of these things. His big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut. There was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief. We called him “Bob the Librarian,” because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper-files. Bob was a well-meaning idiot, but Garm did not encourage him. He would slide his head round the door panting, “Rats! Come along Garm!” and Garm would shift one forepaw over the other, and curl himself round, leaving Bob to whine at a most uninterested back. The office was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days.

Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all contented with his surroundings. He had gone for an unauthorised walk with Vixen early one Sunday morning, and a very young and foolish artilleryman (his battery had just moved to that part of the world) tried to steal them both. Vixen, of course, knew better than to take food from soldiers, and, besides, she had just finished her breakfast. So she trotted back with a large piece of the mutton that they issue to our troops, laid it down on my verandah, and looked up to see what I thought. I asked her where Garm was, and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way.

About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees. Garm was in front of him, looking rather pleased. When the man moved leg or hand, Garm bared his teeth in silence. A broken string hung from his collar, and the other half of, it lay, all warm, in the artilleryman’s still hand. He explained to me, keeping his eyes straight in front of him, that he had met this dog (he called him awful names) walking alone, and was going to take him to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah.

I said that Garm did not seem to me much of a pariah, but that he had better take him to the Fort if he thought best. He said he did not care to do so. I told him to go to the Fort alone. He said he did not want to go at that hour, but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the dog. I instructed Garm to take him to the Fort, and Garm marched him solemnly up to the gate, one mile and a half under a hot sun, and I told the quarter-guard what had happened; but the young artilleryman was more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several regiments, he was told, had tried to steal Garm in their time.

That month the hot weather shut down in earnest, and the dogs slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed. Every morning, as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in, and every morning the man filled the bath a second time. I said to him that he might as well fill a small tub specially for the dogs. “Nay,” said he smiling, “it is not their custom. They would not understand. Besides, the big bath gives them more space.”

The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night came to know Garm intimately. He noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call out to the coolie and bid him pull with a long stroke. If the man still slept I would wake him up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks. At any rate, when the punkah stopped, Garm would first growl and cock his eye at the rope, and if that did not wake the man it nearly always did—he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper’s ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could never connect the punkah and the coolie; so Garm gave me grateful hours of cool sleep. But—he was utterly wretched—as miserable as a human being; and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it, and were envious. If I moved from one room to another Garm followed; if my pen stopped scratching, Garm’s head was thrust into my hand; if I turned, half awake, on the pillow, Garm was up and at my side, for he knew that I was his only link with his master, and day and night, and night and day, his eyes asked one question—“When is this going to end?”

Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather, till one day at the Club a man said: “That dog of yours will die in a week or two. He’s a shadow.” Then I dosed Garm with iron and quinine, which he hated; and I felt very anxious. He lost his appetite, and Vixen was allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes. Even that did not make him swallow, and we held a consultation on him, of the best man-doctor in the place; a lady-doctor, who cured the sick wives of kings; and the Deputy Inspector-General of the veterinary service of all India. They pronounced upon his symptoms, and I told them his story, and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand.

“He’s dying of a broken heart,” said the lady-doctor suddenly.

“’Pon my word,” said the Deputy Inspector General, “I believe Mrs. Macrae is perfectly right as usual.”

The best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription, and the veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog-proportions; and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited. It was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on his feet for a week or two; then he lost flesh again. I asked a man I knew to take him up to the Hills with him when he went, and the man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage. Garm took in the situation at one red glance. The hair rose along his back; he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in the jaws of a dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once, and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garm laid his head on my knee and whined. So I knew his answer, and devoted myself to getting Stanley’s address in the Hills.

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My turn to go to the cool came late in August. We were allowed thirty days’ holiday in a year, if no one fell sick, and we took it as we could be spared. My chief and Bob the Librarian had their holiday first, and when they were gone I made a calendar, as I always did, and hung it up at the head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till they returned. Vixen had gone up to the Hills with me five times before, and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as I did.

“Garm,” I said, “we are going back to Stanley at Kasauli. Kasauli—Stanley; Stanley Kasauli.” And I repeated it twenty times. It was not Kasauli really, but another place. Still I remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the last night, and I dared not change the name. Then Garm began to tremble; then he barked; and then he leaped up at me, frisking and wagging his tail.

“Not now,” I said, holding up my hand. “When I say ‘Go,’ we’ll go, Garm.” I pulled out the little blanket coat and spiked collar that Vixen always wore up in the Hills to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards, and I let the two smell them and talk it over. What they said of course I do not know; but it made a new dog of Garm. His eyes were bright; and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate his food, and he killed his rats for the next three weeks, and when he began to whine I had only to say “Stanley—Kasauli; Kasauli—Stanley,” to wake him up. I wish I had thought of it before.

My chief came back, all brown with living in the open air, and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains. That same afternoon we three and Kadir Buksh began to pack for our month’s holiday, Vixen rolling in and out of the bullock-trunk twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning all over and thumping on the floor with his tail. Vixen knew the routine of travelling as well as she knew my office-work. She went to the station, singing songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while Garm sat with me. She hurried into the railway carriage, saw Kadir Buksh make up my bed for the night, got her drink of water, and curled up with her black-patch eye on the tumult of the platform. Garm followed her (the crowd gave him a lane all to himself) and sat down on the pillows with his eyes blazing, and his tail a haze behind him.

We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn, four or five men, who had been working hard for eleven months, shouting for our dales—the two-horse travelling carriages that were to take us up to Kalka at the foot of the Hills. It was all new to Garm. He did not understand carriages where you lay at full length on your bedding, but Vixen knew and hopped into her place at once; Garm following. The Kalka Road, before the railway was built, was about forty-seven miles long, and the horses were changed every eight miles. Most of them jibbed, and kicked, and plunged, but they had to go, and they went rather better than usual for Garm’s deep bay in their rear.

There was a river to be forded, and four bullocks pulled the carriage, and Vixen stuck her head out of the sliding-door and nearly fell into the water while she gave directions. Garm was silent and curious, and rather needed reassuring about Stanley and Kasauli. So we rolled, barking and yelping, into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate enough for two.

After Kalka the road wound among the hills, and we took a curricle with half-broken ponies, which were changed every six miles. No one dreamed of a railroad to Simla in those days, for it was seven thousand feet up in the air. The road was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here, again, Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped into the back seat, and shouted. A cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of Kalka, and she whined for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on the liver. I had had one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed to the fresh breezes, I put it on, and Garm chewed it uncomprehendingly, but I think he was grateful.

“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toot-toot-toot!” went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places, and “yow! yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon”; and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told us we should find Stanley “out there,” nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill.

When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great gray hillside.

Here Garm left me.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garm was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garm—gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garm any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road. Then he raced back to his own master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest people in all the world that night.

The Gardener

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EVERY one in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all her world, and by none more honourably than by her only brother’s unfortunate child. The village knew, too, that George Turrell had tried his family severely since early youth, and were not surprised to be told that, after many fresh starts given and thrown away, he, an Inspector of Indian Police, had entangled himself with the daughter of a retired noncommissioned officer, and had died of a fall from a horse a few weeks before his child was born. Mercifully, George’s father and mother were both dead, and though Helen, thirty-five and independent, might well have washed her hands of the whole disgraceful affair, she most nobly took charge, though she was, at the time, under threat of lung trouble which had driven her to the South of France. She arranged for the passage of the child and a nurse from Bombay, met them at Marseilles, nursed the baby through an attack of infantile dysentery due to the carelessness of the nurse, whom she had had to dismiss, and at last, thin and worn but triumphant, brought the boy late in the autumn, wholly restored, to her Hampshire home.All these details were public property, for Helen was as open as the day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing them up. She admitted that George had always been rather a black sheep, but things might have been much worse if the mother had insisted on her right to keep the boy. Luckily, it seemed that people of that class would do almost anything for money, and, as George had always turned to her in his scrapes, she felt herself justified—her friends agreed with her—in cutting the whole non-commissioned officer connection, and giving the child every advantage. A christening, by the Rector, under the name of Michael, was the first step. So far as she knew herself, she was not, she said, a child-lover, but, for all his faults, she had been very fond of George, and she pointed out that little Michael had his father’s mouth to a line; which made something to build upon.

As a matter of fact, it was the Turrell forehead, broad, low, and well-shaped, with the widely spaced eyes beneath it, that Michael had most faithfully reproduced. His mouth was somewhat better cut than the family type. But Helen, who would concede nothing good to his mother’s side, vowed he was a Turrell all over, and, there being no one to contradict, the likeness was established.

In a few years Michael took his place, as accepted as Helen had always been—fearless, philosophical, and fairly good-looking. At six, he wished to know why he could not call her ‘Mummy’, as other boys called their mothers. She explained that she was only his auntie, and that aunties were not quite the same as mummies, but that, if it gave him pleasure, he might call her ‘Mummy’ at bedtime, for a pet-name between themselves.

Michael kept his secret most loyally, but Helen, as usual, explained the fact to her friends; which when Michael heard, he raged.

‘Why did you tell? Why did you tell?’ came at the end of the storm.

‘Because it’s always best to tell the truth,’ Helen answered, her arm round him as he shook in his cot.

‘All right, but when the troof’s ugly I don’t think it’s nice.’

‘Don’t you, dear!’

‘No, I don’t, and’—she felt the small body stiffen—‘now you’ve told, I won’t call you “Mummy” any more—not even at bedtimes.

‘But isn’t that rather unkind?’ said Helen softly.

‘I don’t care! You’ve hurted me in my insides and I’l hurt you back. I’ll hurt you as long as I live!’

‘Don’t, oh, don’t talk like that, dear! You don’t know what—’

‘I will! And when I’m dead I’ll hurt you worse!’

‘Thank goodness, I shall be dead long before you, darling.’

‘Huh! Emma says, “‘Never know your luck.”’ (Michael had been talking to Helen’s elderly flat-faced maid.) ‘Lots of little boys die quite soon. So’ll I. Then you’ll see!’

Helen caught her breath and moved towards the door, but the wail of ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ drew her back again, and the two wept together.

At ten years old, after two terms at a prep. school, something or somebody gave him the idea that his civil status was not quite regular. He attacked Helen on the subject, breaking down her stammered defences with the family directness.

‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ he said, cheerily, at the end. ‘People wouldn’t have talked like they did if my people had been married. But don’t you bother, Auntie. I’ve found out all about my sort in English Hist’ry and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror to begin with, and—oh, heaps more, and they all got on first-rate. ’Twon’t make any difference to you, my being that—will it?’

‘As if anything could—’ she began.

‘All right. We won’t talk about it any more if it makes you cry.’ He never mentioned the thing again of his own will, but when, two years later, he skilfully managed to have measles in the holidays, as his temperature went up to the appointed one hundred and four he muttered of nothing else, till Helen’s voice, piercing at last his delirium, reached him with assurance that nothing on earth or beyond could make any difference between them.

The terms at his public school and the wonderful Christmas, Easter, and Summer holidays followed each other, variegated and glorious as jewels on a string; and as jewels Helen treasured them. In due time Michael developed his own interests, which ran their courses and gave way to others; but his interest in Helen was constant and increasing throughout. She repaid it with all that she had of affection or could command of counsel and money; and since Michael was no fool, the War took him just before what was like to have been a most promising career.

He was to have gone up to Oxford, with a scholarship, in October. At the end of August he was on the edge of joining the first holocaust of public-school boys who threw themselves into the Line; but the captain of his OTC, where he had been sergeant for nearly a year, headed him off and steered him directly to a commission in a battalion so new that half of it still wore the old Army red, and the other half was breeding meningitis through living overcrowdedly in damp tents. Helen had been shocked at the idea of direct enlistment. ‘But it’s in the family,’ Michael laughed.

‘You don’t mean to tell me that you believed that old story all this time?’ said Helen. (Emma, her maid, had been dead now several years.) ‘I gave you my word of honour—and I give it again—that—that it’s all right. It is indeed.’

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‘Oh, that doesn’t worry me. It never did,’ he replied valiantly. ‘What I meant was, I should have got into the show earlier if I’d enlisted—like my grandfather.

‘Don’t talk like that! Are you afraid of its ending so soon, then!’

‘No such luck. You know what K says.’

‘Yes. But my banker told me last Monday it couldn’t possibly last beyond Christmas—for financial reasons.’

‘Hope he’s right, but our Colonel—and he’s a Regular—says it’s going to be a long job.’

Michael’s battalion was fortunate in that, by some chance which meant several ‘leaves’, it was used for coast-defence among shallow trenches on the Norfolk coast; thence sent north to watch the mouth of a Scotch estuary, and, lastly, held for weeks on a baseless rumour of distant service. But, the very day that Michael was to have met Helen for four whole hours at a railway-junction up the line, it was hurled out, to help make good the wastage of Loos, and he had only just time to send her a wire of farewell.

In France luck again helped the battalion. It was put down near the Salient, where it led a meritorious and unexacting life, while the Somme was being manufactured; and enjoyed the peace of the Armentieres and Laventie sectors when that battle began. Finding that it had sound views on protecting its own flanks and could dig, a prudent Commander stole it out of its own Division, under pretence of helping to lay telegraphs, and used it round Ypres at large.

A month later, just after Michael had written Helen that there was nothing special doing and therefore no need to worry, a shell-splinter dropping out of a wet dawn killed him at once. The next shell uprooted and laid down over the body what had been the foundation of a barn wall, so neatly that none but an expert would have guessed that anything unpleasant had happened.

By this time the village was old in experience of war, and, English fashion, had evolved a ritual to meet it. When the postmistress handed her seven-year-old daughter the official telegram to take to Miss Turrell, she observed to the Rector’s gardener: ‘It’s Miss Helen’s turn now.’ He replied, thinking of his own son: ‘Well, he’s lasted longer than some.’ The child herself came to the front-door weeping aloud, because Master Michael had often given her sweets. Helen, presently, found herself pulling down the house-blinds one after one with great care, and saying earnestly to each: ‘Missing always means dead.’ Then she took her place in the dreary procession that was impelled to go through an inevitable series of unprofitable emotions. The Rector, of course, preached hope and prophesied word, very soon, from a prison camp. Several friends, too, told her perfectly truthful tales, but always about other women, to whom, after months and months of silence, their missing had been miraculously restored. Other people urged her to communicate with infallible Secretaries of organizations who could communicate with benevolent neutrals, who could extract accurate information from the most secretive of Hun prison commandants. Helen did and wrote and signed everything that was suggested or put before her.

Once, on one of Michael’s leaves, he had taken her over munition factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank-iron to the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the wretched thing was never left alone for a single second; and ‘I’m being manufactured into a bereaved next of kin,’ she told herself, as she prepared her documents.

In due course, when all the organizations had deeply or sincerely regretted their inability to trace, etc., something gave way within her and all sensation—save of thankfulness for the release—came to an end in blessed passivity. Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her—in no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael’s name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.

In the blessed realization of that relief, the Armistice with all its bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year she had overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned young, so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views—she heard herself delivering them—about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.

Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation, backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil, a silver identity-disc, and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and re-interred in Hagenzeele Third Military Cemetery—the letter of the row and the grave’s number in that row duly given.

So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the manufacture—to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of time-tables made clear, how easy it was and how little it interfered with life’s affairs to go and see one’s grave.

‘So different,’ as the Rector’s wife said, ‘if he’d been killed in Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli.’

The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one’s grave next morning. All this she had from a Central Authority who lived in a board and tar-paper shed on the skirts of a razed city full of whirling lime-dust and blown papers.

‘By the way,’ said he, ‘you know your grave, of course!’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael’s own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the A.S.C. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early ’Fifteen. She had not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names he might have used with his alias; but her Cook’s tourist ticket expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen’s breast; but the officer’s wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

‘They are often like this,’ said the officer’s wife, loosening the tight bonnet-strings. ‘Yesterday she said he’d been killed at Hooge. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again.

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Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

‘I’m going to Hagenzeele myself,’ she explained .’Not to Hagenzeele Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosière now. It’s just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel there!’

‘Oh yes, thank you. I’ve wired.’

‘That’s better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others there’s hardly a soul. But they’ve put bathrooms into the old Lion d’Or—that’s the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory—and it draws off a lot of people, luckily.’

‘It’s all new to me. This is the first time I’ve been over.’

‘Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own account. I haven’t lost any one, thank God—but, like every one else, I’ve a lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do, I find it helps them to have some one just look at the—the place and tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too. I get quite a list of commissions to execute.’ She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. ‘There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I’ve got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over and execute them. It does comfort people.’

‘I suppose so,’ Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train.

‘Of course it does. (Isn’t it lucky we’ve got window-seats!) It must do or they wouldn’t ask one to do it, would they! I’ve a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here’—she tapped the Kodak again—‘I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What’s yours!’

‘My nephew,’ said Helen. ‘But I was very fond of him.’

‘Ah, yes! I sometimes wonder whether they know after death! What do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t—I haven’t dared to think much about that sort of thing,’ said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

‘Perhaps that’s better,’ the woman answered. ‘The sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well, I won’t worry you any more.’

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her ‘commissions’ with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room.

Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

‘Yes—yes—I know,’ she began. ‘You’re sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You—you aren’t married, are you? Then perhaps you won’t … But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to tell some one. I can’t go on any longer like this.’

‘But please—’ Mrs Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.

In a minute,’ she said. ‘You—you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now! They really are commissions. At least several of them are.’ Her eye wandered round the room. ‘What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you think? …Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s one, d’you see, and—and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?’

Helen nodded.

‘More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he was. He is. That’s why I do the commissions, you see. That’s all.’

‘But why do you tell me!’ Helen asked desperately.

‘Because I’m so tired of lying. Tired of lying—always lying—year in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ’em and I’ve got to think ’em, always. You don’t know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been—the one real thing—the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!’

‘How many years?’ Helen asked.

‘Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I’ve gone to him eight times, since. Tomorrow’ll make the ninth, and—and I can’t—I can’t go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you understand! It doesn’t matter about me. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn’t worthy of him. So I—I had to tell you. I can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t.’

She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: ‘Oh, my dear! My—’ Mrs Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled.

‘My God!’ said she. ‘Is that how you take it!’

Helen could not speak, and the woman went out; but it a long while before Helen was able to sleep.

Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundred yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones—evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘Lieutenant Michael Turrell—my nephew,’ said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and I will show you where your son lies.’

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.

For One Night Only

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AND Mrs. Skittleworth told the tale at a place called the Arts and Crafts, which, when you think of it, was unnecessary; Mrs. Skittleworth herself being all the arts and most of the crafts known to civilization.

She was then practising a few of them on the center divan opposite the entrance, where the fountain plays and the unhappy little pot-palms live. In the first place it was her sworn duty to keep an evasive eye upon a Miss Dormil, who was to be most strictly deprived of the comfort and society of a gentleman called Evans — Richard Evans — who had specially come to the Arts and Crafts to meet the young lady, who was under the chaperonage of Mrs. Skittleworth, according to the manners and customs of the British, who are barbarians. Now since Mrs. Skittleworth had conveyed Miss Dormil wholly and solely to meet Mr. Evans, and since she had to pretend that she saw neither him nor the girl, nor both together, or something equally logical, and since she uneasily suspected that Mrs. Dormil might at any moment arrive and drive the daughter home, and particularly since neither man nor maid seemed to have any idea of the lapse of time, you will understand that Mrs. Skittleworth’s attention was distracted from the door whereat she expected Skittleworth every minute to appear in the company of a man whom she most urgently desired to avoid.

I believe that I had the honor to supply the Missing Link, for on my wandering appearance her face brightened as a general’s when reinforcements pour past to battle.

“There is a man,” she said, “an Unutterable Man. He will arrive with Tom in ten minutes. I shall immediately introduce you to him with smirks and grins. You will more immediately talk. Talk about anything you understand least, but overwhelm him with your conversation as you value my friendship. Then I shall escape with Tom, catch Miss Dormil, drive the Evans boy into the stained-glass alcove — Good gracious! I hope he hasn’t taken the girl there already! — and return to meet, under Providence, the very respectable Mrs. Dormil, who will ask the Unutterable Man to dinner. He is always hungry and … he has dined there before. Then you must transfer yourself to the Evans boy, and while we are all eating our artful afternoon tea and the craftful crumpet in the lunch-place you must escape with him secretly. There ought to be two ways out of every place of appointment.” She poised for breath.

She was used to delivering orders with much clearness, and I gathered from the pucker between her eyebrows that she was in anxiety. Her theory that men do not marry their mothers-in-law, though many mothers-in-law think otherwise, was perpetually leading her into secondhand Comédie-Française embarrassments. All earth and Skittleworth — who at heart is just as bad — could not restrain her from helping forward the most undesirable match ever lighted among her circle of acquaintance. On the Other Side of the World, where I first had the honor of meeting her, this weakness did not alarm; in England — which, it must always be remembered, is the habitation of heathen the worse for being imperfectly converted — she was misunderstood. But all young maidens loved her.

And I said: “I hear and obey — on one condition.”

“On no conditions. You want me to tell you something. I refuse beforehand.”

“Very well, I shall begin to walk. I shall walk down Regent Street for hours and hours, and into the Mile End Road and when Mrs. Dormil comes to thank you for giving her dear Clara, who is so artistic, such a delightful afternoon, the Evans boy will hang in the background pulling pieces out of his gloves and Mrs. Dormil will not love you any more. Seriously, you went to the Theater of the Patent Deviltries —”

“No! Inner Sepulcher. Inner Sepulcher!” said Mrs. Skittleworth, with a shudder. “So glad we didn’t invite you.”

“So am I,” I said icily. “You made a box party, and by all accounts you all behaved abominably. You dropped opera-glasses on the heads of the bald, you conducted yourselves in such a manner that the entire house stopped to look at you, and you, overcome by shame, left at the end of the first act — weeping.”

“This,” said Mrs. Skittleworth pensively, “is the hand of Mrs. Bletchley. She told you that at tea. What else did you learn?”

“The trouble is that I could learn no more. Not one of your guests would speak. Geissler, who can babble about founders’ shares by the hour, was dumb. Skittleworth told me that I had better refer to you. I haven’t seen Miss Dormil to speak to, and the Evans boy declares that it was a most enjoyable evening, but that you all left because the play was dull. The Professor’s Zoetrope is not dull. It’s the best play in London. What was the catastrophe? Everybody is wanting to talk about it, and no one knows anything. Six people have kept a secret for ten days — surely that’s long enough. Tell, and I’ll carry the Evans boy off through the roof if I can’t smuggle him out any other way.”

‘Did anyone tell you it was Tom’s fault?’ began Mrs. Skittleworth cautiously, one eye on the door and another on the ironwork exhibits.

“They said Singleton gave the party — and so —”

“He did not. It was that man Geissler — the Chicago Jew. Ugh! Tom and he cluck like new laid hens over their offensive founders’ shares, whatever those may be. Things that grow up in a night out of nothing and are sold by telegraph.  I hate Geissler. I could never send him anything at dinner without hoping that the fat, or the drumstick, or the stuffing would choke him, and then I would never send for the doctor. Geissler found a box in the Inner Sepulcher. I know the shameful story now, but it almost reconciled me to the man for the moment. The very best box in the Inner Sepulcher — a five-guinea box that could have seated hordes — positive hordes. Do you know that he got it for twenty-five shillings? That was his ineffable meanness.”

“But a Chicago Jew is not always mean,” I adventured.

“Then he was a Levantine dragoman. I thank you for that. His father hauled Cook’s tourists up and down the Pyramids for pence. And the worst of it is that he doesn’t look like a Jew, and he ought to. We provided the dinner — he the box.”

“Who came?”

“Mrs. Eva van Agnew and Geissler, both in one cab — two; Tom and I — four; and Miss Dormil and the Evans boy — six. That was all. I never allow a fortuitous concourse of atoms at my table; and, besides, we have no extra leaf in it. I had immense trouble in cajoling Mrs. Dormil to let her daughter go alone. She wished to assist. Heaven knows, I despise her as honorably as I despise most women; but when she strips for festivities, I always think that she should be ‘hidden from the wise and prudent and’ — how does it go? She makes me feel very undressed with draughts blowing all over me. And, you know, you can’t say: ‘Won’t you put a counterpane over your shoulders, you dear fat thing?’ So they dined, and I was glad, because I knew neither of the young people would remember what they ate — they were in that stage; and Geissler was talking founders’ shares to Tom, and Eva van Agnew was trying to talk to me and watch Geissler at the same time. Geissler wouldn’t throw a word to her. There must have been a quarrel in the cab.”

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“But why were you so concerned about Miss Dormil and the Evans boy?”

“Because he had inflicted himself upon me four twilights out of the seven. He would arrive at half-past four and stay till half-past six, telling me that Miss Dormil was an angel and he was a ruffian, and did I think Mrs. Dormil could be brought to overlook his unworthiness? I liked it — I own I liked it immensely, even when he repeated himself for the twentieth time, and used to smash my drawing-room ornaments trying to make clear the intensity of his feelings. Oh, it’s a relief to catch a young man devoid of nerves, and the less honorable emotions, who does not talk cheap French novels, and knows exactly what he wants, and is humble about it. He confessed all his little sins in the past to me, and I know exactly how his future is going to be arranged, and therefore I assist him in the present. And so we dined, and then we bundled off — Tom and I and the children in the brougham, and Eva and the Israelite, whom I will never forgive, in a hansom; and we saw the play and came away early. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“You went in the brougham and the hansom — yes. And what happened after that?” I continued, unregarding.

“You won’t believe what I tell you.”

“You are speaking.”

“But even I — consider dear Mother Dormil, and do watch the entrance, please — may tell a fib.”

“Never without a motive.”

“Yes — that was the horror of it. It was so — without motive. So purposeless — so cruel; and yet there was a brassy vulgarity about it all that I can’t explain. Try to understand that I am telling you what happened as accurately as I can. We were late for the farce, of course, and the overture was beginning. Of all horrors, it was the Bronze Horse overture.”

“That’s only tinny — not terrifying, surely.”

“Wait! I had arranged things beautifully. Tom and I and Eva and Geissler were to sit in front, and the children at the back, because they were tall and wanted to talk. You know when you are absolutely certain of seeing a thing, you carry the outline of it in your mind’s eye so that it looks real, don’t you? When we trooped in, I was quite certain that I saw the stage, and so on, because a stage is naturally what you expect to see from the best box in the theatre. We banged the chairs about — they were horribly dusty — and then I heard the Evans boy saying ‘Good God!’ under his breath. Tom put his hand on my wrist, and drove my pet bracelet into the bone. ‘Don’t jump or scream,’ he said. ‘Look!”’

“A headless woman in a vacant chair, or a red dog, or something nice and magaziny. Mrs. Skittleworth, please don’t,” I whimpered, because Mrs. Skittleworth is much above that sort of entertainment.

“I knew you would,” she answered. “And now I’m sorry that I didn’t invite you. We looked out of the box at the stage, and at the house, and there was nothing whatever to be seen! Do you understand that? — Nothing whatever to be seen.”

“And what was it like?” I said with intense interest.

“It was awful. It was unspeakable. It was Chaos — raving, mad, howling Chaos! Have you ever been under chloroform, and do you know that die-away-and-away darkness when a train goes into a tunnel, through your head, and all the doors are being slammed, just before you lose consciousness? It was most like that feeling. But it wasn’t. The darkness — the absolute blankness was in your head and your eyes, and yet you were staring into it — staring with your soul as well as your eyes. And then, through it all, we heard the rustle of the house, and the music of the Bronze Horse. That tune is the most diabolical one in the world.”

“Then you could hear?”

“We could hear everything. That was a further horror. We could hear the people getting into their places below, and the crickle of the fans. You know what a hot house the Inner Sepulcher is. We could hear the rumble of traffic outside sometimes, but we could not see any single thing except ourselves in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.”

“And what happened?”

“I don’t quite remember. I think we must have all waited — I know I did — for the darkness to clear away. I felt as though I had been hit on the head, but would be all right presently if people took no notice and stood off from me, and, above all things, gave me air — plenty of air. Tom’s hand on mine prevented me from making an absolute exhibition of myself. You know how Ashdown frizzes my hair for functions — I was frizzed all over my head very prettily, and I friz through my frizzes; and while I was staring and feeling, oh! so deathly sick, I was distinctly conscious that my hair was tightening — Ashdown had frizzed it too well for it to stand on end — tightening and dragging my eyebrows up and up, so that I must have looked like an Aunt Sally at a fair.”

Mrs. Skittleworth laughed hysterically, and fluttered her very small hands.

A lean, unshorn, toadstool-colored young gentleman in a blue cloak which would have been useless on horseback or in a high wind, a dead-leaf silk throat-wrap, and a sort of football jersey that was doing duty as a shirt, threw himself down on the divan and curled his legs into esoteric attitudes. Mrs. Skittleworth shook the quaver out of her voice, jumped three notes on the piano, and began as one in the middle of things generally.

“And so, you know, they invented a sort of combination garment for the lower classes — to save washing. It’s very effective if it isn’t worn too long, especially at the wristbands and round the neck, but then they provide a clout called a belcher to wear there, and you can get them for one and sevenpence halfpenny in Westbourne Grove. And they come here and do a lot of good, and they are called Socialists. Of course the uniform confuses the sexes. If it’s a he, for instance, it’s wearing its petticoats where it shouldn’t, you know, and if it’s a she it wouldn’t wear a silk hat. But perhaps it’s an exhibit, and if we ask it…”

The young gentleman rose and regarded us with unholy eyes from the lunch balcony.

“A woman who cannot be vulgar on occasions does not know the meaning of True Deportment,” said Mrs. Skittleworth. “You should hear Mrs. Dormil bullying her governess. And where were we? Oh, yes, in that darkness of terror. I think we must have been there for years and years before we heard the rustle of the curtain and the servants’ opening dialogue in the Zoetrope. I wanted to scream at the top of my voice, but it occurred to me that I had been standing up for untold ages in the face of the house. So I sat down and Tom began patting my hand in an absent-minded way and saying: ‘Poor little woman!’ I remembered then that when I was fearfully ill and delirious on the Other Side of the World — no, I won’t say how many years ago — Tom used to sit by my bed for days and weeks doing exactly the same thing; and whenever I would half come to life I was conscious of one hand being patted and ‘poored.’ I knew endearment of that sort was not in place on the box-edge; but I couldn’t take my hand away for all the world. I wanted Tom as I have never wanted him in my life — not even when they all thought I was dying. And the dear boy patted my hand — bless him! He was as white as a sheet. Then I began to think of mother, exactly as a Frenchwoman would. I wondered where she was, and if this hideous darkness was her portion in the other world, and I wanted to step into it and find out and drag her in across the edge of the box. I reflected that I should fall on somebody’s head in the attempt, and I laughed aloud horribly in the one pathetic scene in the Zoetrope, where the Professor tells the little lodging-house servant the story of his life and his broken love-tale, and she cries and mops her face with the duster. And then I jumped, for I knew all the house was looking at me, and that upset the opera-glass, and I heard it fall and hit somebody below, and there was a scuffle, and every eye in everybody’s head, I knew, was fixed on our unhappy, unhappy box. That was the incident of laughing and throwing glasses about that Mrs. Bletchley makes so much of.  The thing dropped into the dark as a stone into water.”

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“But why in the world didn’t you all get up and run out, or complain or — or do something?”

“After the affair of the opera-glass? Mrs. Skittleworth’s party romping in a box, dropping glasses, laughing, and then running out like children in a country church when they’ve tipped hymn-books from the gallery? Never! I may be introduced to the other world against my will, but I know my duty to this, as long as I am in it. I was praying for the first act to end, for I was afraid I could not stand the tension!”

“And the others?”

“You may well ask. I looked round when my own feelings were a little under control. What a blessed thing is a British education! All the Jew that ever cheated in Israel came out in Geissler’s face. He was on the right of the box, half standing up in his chair and gripping the edge with both hands till the plush plumped up in red gores between his fingers. He was not looking at the stage, but into the darkness, and I was more than conscious that he must be staring fiendishly at the opposite box. Staring like a maniac. I felt that those stares were returned. Oh, I felt pins and needles all over, so sure I was that we were being watched while we were smitten with blindness! Complain? How could we complain? Can you go to an attendant at a theater and say, ‘We can’t see out of this box’ — a five-guinea box on the grand tier — the best in the house? If there is one place whence you ought to see all that is to be seen” — Mrs. Skittleworth nearly broke down at this point – “it’s a box. I’ll never take a box again. Give me stalls, or the gallery, where you are in touch with your neighbor and all see ghosts together.”

“Was there a ghost, then?”

“No, no, no — only their country: the room they had just left. Geissler may have seen some. He looked hideous — as though he were being burned alive. His shoulders were cramped up to the back of his head; but I don’t think he was afraid. He seemed to be in pain. Thinking of founders’ shares possibly. Eva made the most painful exhibition of us all. Promise you won’t tell, of course. Her place was empty, and she was down on the floor of the box — mercifully out of sight — her face hidden in a coat thrown over a chair. She had pressed herself into one corner like a frightened rabbit, and was praying. A box isn’t a place to pray in. At least, not when the house is full. You know Eva’s High Church — extremely so; and even in her agony she was intoning. I stooped down and tried to take one of her hands, and said: ‘Hush, dear, hush! think of your dress!’ but she only went on bleating, ‘Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from they ways I – I – like lost sheep,’ over and over again. She was kneeling on that little cheap silk of hers, and nothing in the wide world will ever get the dust out of it again; and she had bundled my heavy white ‘cloud’ over her head to shut out the dark, and she looked just like a lost sheep. I might as well have spoken to one. I am very sorry for Eva.”

“And the others?”

“They had arrived at a most complete understanding, and that nearly made me scream. I felt that I was responsible for everything — Chaos included. Clara was in the Evans boy’s arms, totally and completely, at the back of the box to the left; and to this day I cannot tell why all the house didn’t see them. They must have fancied it was the Day of Judgement. They were murmuring things that you very seldom hear from dress coats and evening frocks, and I honestly believe they never saw the darkness after they had explained themselves.”

“Poor Mrs. Dormil!”

“It wasn’t my fault. I only wished them to improve their acquaintance with each other. Am I responsible if the Powers of Darkness are leagued against me to precipitate matters? Yes, they were in each other’s arms expecting immediate translation. What I saw and said passed in a flash, though I have been so long telling it. The rest was interminable waiting for the first act to end, Eva praying on the floor, and the house rocking with laughter at the jokes, Geissler glaring into Tophet, Tom patting my hand, the children in another world — bless them! — and I playing propriety for them all. Taking an interest in the play in order to prove that I saw it all, and was as much amused as anybody, clapping when the unseen hosts clapped, and smirking when I felt it was time to smirk. I was almost obsequiously attentive to the Zoetrope, and I flatter myself that even the Bletchley woman will admit that I behaved perfectly.”

“Mrs. Skittleworth,” I said, in a voice broken with emotion, “I have long admired and respected you beyond any human being alive. I now worship you with fear and trembling. Men have won the Victoria Cross for less than that.”

Mrs. Skittleworth was graciously pleased to bow her head, always with one eye on the door. She continued:

“Then the curtain went down, and we fled. I have a dim recollection of flying into the cloak-room screaming like a peacock: ‘My things! My things! My things!’ Eva was close behind me. We fell together into the tire-woman’s arms. Luckily she was big, and ready with her blandishments at once. She said: ‘There! there! there! Never mind. ‘Ere’s your cloak, mum’; and I answered, thickly: ‘Yes, yes, yes. Of course — of course. Too hot, too cold; very fine weather indeed.’ She gave us both the best thing available and on the spot. It proved the existence of a conspiracy. It was brandy-and-soda-strong! You should have seen Eva and me gulping it down like washerwomen, while that dear tall Clara drifted about like a saint in a holy dream, conscious that there might have been something wrong somewhere, but more conscious that things were right. ‘We skipped down the passages. We dared not run, but we skipped; and Geissler and Eva went off in separate cabs. I know he volunteered to see her home, for I caught one gesture of hers that would have made the fortune of a tragedy actress. Villain as I am convinced he is, I admire that man for his nerve. Now comes the proof of the conspiracy. Our brougham was on hand when we came out. Generally Jobbins retires to a public-house, and Tom has to prance through the puddles and drag him out personally. But he was waiting, which was a greater miracle than anything else. I spoke to him about it the next day, complimenting him on his virtue.

”’Well, mum,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t ha’ kep’ the pore ‘orses ‘cept that every man of ’em in the theatre, an’ the policemen, an’ all the lot sez to me that you’d be out at the end of the fust act. And so you was, mum, an’ it was a good job I waited ‘stead o’ savin’ the pore ‘orses.’

“That is the only approach to an explanation that I have been able to arrive at — that, and the fact that Geissler got the box for twenty-five shillings. The entire theater staff of the Inner Sepulcher must know all about it, and yet . . . Can you believe? Do you believe? Try to speak the truth. Geissler has never given any sign of his existence to me since that night. Eva has gone out of town, and Clara and the Evans boy . . . you see. Somehow I feel as though I were responsible for everything. You do believe, don’t you?”

“Implicitly,” I replied. ‘If you cannot see a thing which is in front of you, who am I to dissent? Of course I believe. You intend to take no further steps?”

“None whatever. I’ll never set foot in that theater again. That’s all; and Tom doesn’t like me to talk about it. Clara won’t speak either, I’m certain. She imagines it was sent from heaven to assist the Evans boy to propose to her.”

“Poor Mrs. Dormil!”

“Yes, and here, for my many sins, she comes, without Tom or the other man. Fly! Catch Miss Dormil and walk ostentatiously with her while I lure the old lady to the food-troughs. The Evans boy can escape unseen if he has any sense.”

But at that crisis he had not, and they both glowered at me when I found them in the stained-glass alcove; and I had to explain matters apart to the Evans boy, and he left with the air of a baffled conspirator; and though I was dying to ask Miss Dormil twenty thousand questions, she being wrapped up in her own vain imaginings, I could never get any further than:

“What do you think of the Arts and Crafts?”

A Friend’s Friend

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

[a short tale]

Wherefore slew you the stranger? He brought me dishonour.
I saddled my mare Bijli. I set him upon her.
I gave him rice and goat’s flesh. He bared me to laughter;
When he was gone from my tent, swift I followed after,
Taking a sword in my hand. The hot wine had filled him
Under the stars he mocked me. Therefore I killed him.
 (Hadramauti)

THIS tale must be told in the first person for many reasons. The man whom I want to expose is Tranter of the Bombay side. I want Tranter black-balled at his Club, divorced from his wife, turned out of the Service, and cast into prison, until I get an apology from him in writing. I wish to warn the world against Tranter of the Bombay side.

You know the casual way in which men pass on acquaintances in India? It is a great convenience, because you can get rid of a man you don’t like by writing a letter of introduction and putting him, with it, into the train. Globe-trotters are best treated thus. If you keep them moving, they have no time to say insulting and offensive things about ‘Anglo-Indian Society.’

One day, late in the cold weather, I got a letter of preparation from Tranter of the Bombay side, advising me of the advent of a G.T., a man called Jevon; and saying, as usual, that any kindness shown to Jevon would be a kindness to Tranter. Every one knows the regular form of these communications.

Two days afterwards Jevon turned up with his letter of introduction, and I did what I could for him. He was lint-haired, fresh-coloured, and very English. But he held no views about the Government of India. Nor did he insist on shooting tigers on the Station Mall, as some G.T.’s do. Nor did he call us ‘colonists,’ and dine in a flannel-shirt and tweeds, under that delusion as other G.T.’s do. He was well behaved and very grateful for the little I won for him—most grateful of all when I secured him an invitation for the Afghan Ball, and introduced him to a Mrs. Deemes, a lady for whom I had a great respect and admiration, who danced like the shadow of a leaf in a light wind. I set great store by the friendship of Mrs. Deemes; but, had I known what was coming, I would have broken Jevon’s neck with a curtain-pole before getting him that invitation.

But I did not know, and he dined at the Club, I think, on the night of the ball. I dined at home. When I went to the dance, the first man I met asked me whether I had seen Jevon. ‘No,’ said I. ‘He’s at the Club. Hasn’t he come?’—‘Come!’ said the man. ‘Yes, he’s very much come. You’d better look at him.’

I sought for Jevon. I found him sitting on a bench and smiling to himself and a programme. Half a look was enough for me. On that one night, of all others, he had begun a long and thirsty evening by taking too much! He was breathing heavily through his nose, his eyes were rather red, and he appeared very satisfied with all the earth. I put up a little prayer that the waltzing would work off the wine, and went about programme-filling, feeling uncomfortable. But I saw Jevon walk up to Mrs. Deemes for the first dance, and I knew that all the waltzing on the card was not enough to keep Jevon’s rebellious legs steady. That couple went round six times. I counted. Mrs. Deemes dropped Jevon’s arm and came across to me.

I am not going to repeat what Mrs. Deemes said to me, because she was very angry indeed. I am not going to write what I said to Mrs. Deemes, because I didn’t say anything. I only wished that I had killed Jevon first and been hanged for it. Mrs. Deemes drew her pencil through all the dances that I had booked with her, and went away, leaving me to remember that what I ought to have said was that Mrs. Deemes had asked to be introduced to Jevon because he danced well; and that I really had not carefully worked out a plot to get her insulted. But I felt that argument was no good, and that I had better try to stop Jevon from waltzing me into more trouble. He, however, was gone, and about every third dance I set off to hunt for him. This ruined what little pleasure I expected from the entertainment.

Just before supper I caught Jevon at the buffet with his legs wide apart, talking to a very fat and indignant chaperone. ‘If this person is a friend of yours, as I understand he is, I would recommend you to take him home,’ said she. ‘He is unfit for decent society.’ Then I knew that goodness only knew what Jevon had been doing, and I tried to get him away.

But Jevon wasn’t going; not he. He knew what was good for him, he did; and he wasn’t going to be dictated to by any colonial nigger-driver, he wasn’t; and I was the friend who had formed his infant mind, and brought him up to buy Benares brassware and fear God, so I was; and we would have many more blazing good drunks together, so we would; and all the she-camels in black silk in the world shouldn’t make him withdraw his opinion that there was nothing better than Benedictine to give one an appetite. And then . . . but he was my guest.

I set him in a quiet corner of the supper-room, and went to find a wall-prop that I could trust. There was a good and kindly Subaltern—may Heaven bless that Subaltern, and make him a Commander-in-Chief!—who heard of my trouble. He was not dancing himself, and he owned a head like five-year-old teak-baulks. He said that he would look after jevon till the end of the ball.

‘’Don’t suppose you much mind what I do with him?’ said he.

‘Mind!’ said I. ‘No! You can murder the beast if you like.’

But the Subaltern did not murder him. He trotted off to the supper-room, and sat down by Jevon, drinking peg for peg with him. I saw the two fairly established, and went away, feeling more easy.

When ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’ sounded, I heard of Jevon’s performances between the first dance and my meeting with him at the buffet. After Mrs. Deemes had cast him off, it seems that he had found his way into the gallery, and offered to conduct the Band or to play any instrument in it, just as the Bandmaster pleased.

When the Bandmaster refused, Jevon said that he wasn’t appreciated, and he yearned for sympathy. So he trundled downstairs and sat out four dances with four girls, and proposed to three of them. One of the girls was a married woman by the way. Then he went into the whist-room, and fell facedown and wept on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, because he had fallen into a den of card-sharpers, and his Mamma had always warned him against bad company. He had done a lot of other things, too, and had taken about three quarts of mixed liquors. Besides, speaking of me in the most scandalous fashion!

All the women wanted him turned out, and all the men wanted him kicked. The worst of it was, that every one said it was my fault. Now, I put it to you, how on earth could I have known that this innocent, fluffy G.T. would break out in this disgusting manner? You see he had gone round the world nearly, and his vocabulary of abuse was cosmopolitan, though mainly Japanese, which he had—picked up in a low tea-house at Hakodate. It sounded like whistling.

While I was listening to first one man and then another telling me of Jevon’s shameless behaviour and asking me for his blood, I wondered where he was. I was prepared to sacrifice him to Society on the spot.

But Jevon was gone, and, far away in the corner of the supper-room, sat my dear, good Subaltern, a little flushed, eating salad. I went over and said, ‘Where’s Jevon?’—‘In the cloakroom,’ said the Subaltern. ‘He’ll keep till the women have gone. Don’t you interfere with my prisoner.’ I didn’t want to interfere, but I peeped into the cloakroom, and found my guest put to bed on some rolled-up carpets, all comfy, his collar free, and a wet swab on his head.

The rest of the evening I spent in making timid attempts to explain things to Mrs. Deemes and three or four other ladies, and trying to clear my character—for I am a respectable man—from the shameful slurs that my guest had cast upon it. Libel was no word for what he had said.

When I wasn’t trying to explain, I was running off to the cloakroom to see that Jevon wasn’t dead of apoplexy. I didn’t want him to die on my hands. He had eaten my salt.

At last that ghastly ball ended, though I was not in the least restored to Mrs. Deemes’ favour. When the ladies had gone, and some one was calling for songs at the second supper, that angelic Subaltern told the servants to bring in the Sahib who was in the cloakroom, and clear away one end of the supper-table. While this was being done we formed ourselves into a Board of Punishment with the Doctor for President.

Jevon came in on four men’s shoulders, and was put down on the table like a corpse in a dissecting-room, while the Doctor lectured on the evils of intemperance, and Jevon snored. Then we set to work.

We corked the whole of his face. We filled his hair with meringue-cream till it looked like a white wig. To protect everything till it dried, a man in the Ordnance Department, who understood the work, luted a big blue paper cap from a cracker, with meringue-cream, low down on Jevon’s forehead. This was punishment, not play, remember. We took gelatine off crackers, and stuck blue gelatine on his nose, and yellow gelatine on his chin, and green and red gelatine on his cheeks, pressing each dab down till it held as firm as goldbeaters’ skin.

We put a ham-frill round his neck, and tied it in a bow in front. He nodded like a mandarin.

We fixed gelatine on the back of his hands, and burnt-corked them inside, and put small cutlet-frills round his wrists, and tied both wrists together with string. We waxed up the ends of his moustache with isinglass. He looked very martial.

We turned him over, pinned up his coat-tails between his shoulders, and put a rosette of cutlet-frills there. We took up the red cloth from the ball-room to the supper-room, and wound him up in it. There were sixty feet of red cloth, six feet broad; and he rolled up into a big fat bundle, with only that amazing head sticking out.

Lastly, we tied up the surplus of the cloth beyond his feet with cocoanut-fibre string as tightly as we knew how. We were so angry that we hardly laughed at all.

Just as we finished, we heard the rumble of bullock-carts taking away some chairs and things that the General’s wife had lent for the ball. So we hoisted Jevon, like a roll of carpets, into one of the carts, and the carts went away.

Now the most extraordinary part of this tale is that never again did I see or hear anything of Jevon, G.T. He vanished utterly. He was not delivered at the General’s house with the carpets. He just went into the black darkness of the end of the night, and was swallowed up. Perhaps he died and was thrown into the river.

But, alive or dead, I have often wondered how he got rid of the red cloth and the meringue-cream. I wonder still whether Mrs. Deemes will ever take any notice of me again, and whether I shall live down the infamous stories that Jevon set afloat about my manners and customs between the first and the ninth waltz of the Afghan Ball. They stick closer than cream.

Wherefore, I want Tranter of the Bombay side, dead or alive. But dead for preference.

Friendly Brook

page 1 of 4

THE VALLEY was so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow’s length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week’s November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she proclaimed it aloud.Two men in sackcloth aprons were considering an untrimmed hedge that ran down the hillside and disappeared into mist beside those roarings. They stood back and took stock of the neglected growth, tapped an elbow of hedge-oak here, a mossed beech-stub there, swayed a stooled ash back and forth, and looked at each other.

‘I reckon she’s about two rod thick,’ said Jabez the younger, ‘an’ she hasn’t felt iron since—when has she, Jesse?’

‘Call it twenty-five year, Jabez, an’ you won’t be far out.’

‘Umm!’ Jabez rubbed his wet handbill on his wetter coat-sleeve. ‘She ain’t a hedge. She’s all manner o’ trees. We’ll just about have to——’ He paused, as professional etiquette required.

‘Just about have to side her up an’ see what she’ll bear. But hadn’t we best——?’ Jesse paused in his turn; both men being artists and equals.

‘Get some kind o’ line to go by.’ Jabez ranged up and down till he found a thinner place, and with clean snicks of the handbill revealed the original face of the fence. Jesse took over the dripping stuff as it fell forward, and, with a grasp and a kick, made it to lie orderly on the bank till it should be faggoted.

By noon a length of unclean jungle had turned itself into a cattle-proof barrier, tufted here and there with little plumes of the sacred holly which no woodman touches without orders.

‘Now we’ve a witness-board to go by! ‘said Jesse at last.

‘She won’t be as easy as this all along,’ Jabez answered. ‘She’ll need plenty stakes and binders when we come to the brook.’

‘Well, ain’t we plenty?’ Jesse pointed to the ragged perspective ahead of them that plunged downhill into the fog. ‘I lay there’s a cord an’ a half o’ firewood, let alone faggots, ’fore we get anywheres anigh the brook.’

‘The brook’s got up a piece since morning,’ said Jabez. ‘Sounds like’s if she was over Wickenden’s door-stones.’

Jesse listened, too. There was a growl in the brook’s roar as though she worried something hard.

‘Yes. She’s over Wickenden’s door-stones,’ he replied. ‘Now she’ll flood acrost Alder Bay an’ that’ll ease her.’

‘She won’t ease Jim Wickenden’s hay none if she do,’ Jabez grunted. ‘I told Jim he’d set that liddle hay-stack o’ his too low down in the medder. I told him so when he was drawin’ the bottom for it.’

‘I told him so, too,’ said Jesse. ‘I told him ’fore ever you did. I told him when the County Council tarred the roads up along.’ He pointed up-hill, where unseen automobiles and road-engines droned past continually. ‘A tarred road, she shoots every drop o’ water into a valley same’s a slate roof. ’Tisn’t as ’twas in the old days, when the waters soaked in and soaked out in the way o’ nature. It rooshes off they tarred roads all of a lump, and naturally every drop is bound to descend into the valley. And there’s tar roads both two sides this valley for ten mile. That’s what I told Jim Wickenden when they tarred the roads last year. But he’s a valley-man. He don’t hardly ever journey up-hill.’

‘What did he say when you told him that?’ Jabez demanded, with a little change of voice.

‘Why? What did he say to you when you told him?’ was the answer.

‘What he said to you, I reckon, Jesse.’

Then, you don’t need me to say it over again, Jabez.,

‘Well, let be how ’twill, what was he gettin’ after when he said what he said to me? ‘Jabez insisted.

‘I dunno; unless you tell me what manner o’ words he said to you.’

Jabez drew back from the hedge—all hedges are nests of treachery and eavesdropping—and moved to an open cattle-lodge in the centre of the field.

‘No need to go ferretin’ around,’ said Jesse. ‘None can’t see us here ’fore we see them.’

‘What was Jim Wickenden gettin’ at when I said he’d set his stack too near anigh the brook?’ Jabez dropped his voice. ‘He was in his mind.’

‘He ain’t never been out of it yet to my knowledge,’ Jesse drawled, and uncorked his tea-bottle.

‘But then Jim says: “I ain’t goin’ to shift my stack a yard,” he says. “The Brook’s been good friends to me, and if she be minded,” he says, “to take a snatch at my hay, I ain’t settin’ out to withstand her.” That’s what Jim Wickenden says to me last—last June-end ’twas,’ said Jabez.

‘Nor he hasn’t shifted his stack, neither,’ Jesse replied. ‘An’ if there’s more rain, the brook she’ll shift it for him.’

‘No need tell me! But I want to know what Jim was gettin’ at?’

Jabez opened his clasp-knife very deliberately; Jesse as carefully opened his. They unfolded the newspapers that wrapped their dinners, coiled away and pocketed the string that bound the packages, and sat down on the edge of the lodge manger. The rain began to fall again through the fog, and the brook’s voice rose.

.     .     .     .     .

‘But I always allowed Mary was his lawful child, like,’ said Jabez, after Jesse had spoken for a while.

“Tain’t so. . . . Jim Wickenden’s woman she never made nothing. She come out o’ Lewes with her stockin’s round her heels, an’ she never made nor mended aught till she died. He had to light fire an’ get breakfast every mornin’ except Sundays, while she sowed it abed. Then she took an’ died, sixteen, seventeen, year back; but she never had no childern.’

‘They was valley-folk,’ said Jabez apologetically. ‘I’d no call to go in among ’em, but I always allowed Mary——’

page 2

‘No. Mary come out o’ one o’ those Lunnon Childern Societies. After his woman died, Jim got his mother back from his sister over to Peasmarsh, which she’d gone to house with when Jim married. His mother kept house for Jim after his woman died. They do say ’twas his mother led him on toward adoptin’ of Mary—to furnish out the house with a child, like, and to keep him off of gettin’ a noo woman. He mostly done what his mother contrived. ’Cardenly, twixt ’em, they asked for a child from one o’ those Lunnon societies—same as it might ha’ been these Barnardo children—an’ Mary was sent down to ’em, in a candle-box, I’ve heard.’

‘Then Mary is chance-born. I never knowed that,’ said Jabez. ‘Yet I must ha’ heard it some time or other . . .’

‘No. She ain’t. ’Twould ha’ been better for some folk if she had been. She come to Jim in a candle-box with all the proper papers—lawful child o’ some couple in Lunnon somewheres—mother dead, father drinkin’. And there was that Lunnon society’s five shillin’s a week for her. Jim’s mother she wouldn’t despise week-end money, but I never heard Jim was much of a muck-grubber. Let be how ’twill, they two mothered up Mary no bounds, till it looked at last like they’d forgot she wasn’t their own flesh an’ blood. Yes, I reckon they forgot Mary wasn’t their’n by rights.’

‘That’s no new thing,’ said Jabez. ‘There’s more’n one or two in this parish wouldn’t surrender back their Bernarders. You ask Mark Copley an’ his woman an’ that Bernarder cripple-babe o’ theirs.’

‘Maybe they need the five shillin’,’ Jesse suggested.

‘It’s handy,’ said Jabez. ‘But the child’s more. “Dada” he says, an’ “Mumma” he says, with his great rollin’ head-piece all hurdled up in that iron collar. He won’t live long—his backbone’s rotten, like. But they Copleys do just about set store by him—five bob or no five bob.’

‘Same way with Jim an’ his mother,’ Jesse went on. ‘There was talk betwixt ’em after a few years o’ not takin’ any more week-end money for Mary; but let alone she never passed a farden in the mire ’thout longin’s, Jim didn’t care, like, to push himself forward into the Society’s remembrance. So naun came of it. The week-end money would ha’ made no odds to Jim—not after his uncle willed him they four cottages at Eastbourne an’ money in the bank.’

‘That was true, too, then? I heard something in a scadderin’ word-o’-mouth way,’ said Jabez.

‘I’ll answer for the house property, because Jim he reequested my signed name at the foot o’ some papers concernin’ it. Regardin’ the money in the bank, he nature-ally wouldn’t like such things talked about all round the parish, so he took strangers for witnesses.’

‘Then ’twill make Mary worth seekin’ after?’

‘She’ll need it. Her Maker ain’t done much for her outside nor yet in.’

‘That ain’t no odds.’ Jabez shook his head till the water showered off his hat-brim. ‘If Mary has money, she’ll be wed before any likely pore maid. She’s cause to be grateful to Jim.’

‘She hides it middlin’ close, then,’ said Jesse. ‘It don’t sometimes look to me as if Mary has her natural rightful feelin’s. She don’t put on an apron o’ Mondays ’thout being druv to it—in the kitchen or the hen-house. She’s studyin’ to be a school-teacher. She’ll make a beauty! I never knowed her show any sort o’ kindness to nobody—not even when Jim’s mother was took dumb. No! ’Twadn’t no stroke. It stifled the old lady in the throat here. First she couldn’t shape her words no shape; then she clucked, like, an’ lastly she couldn’t more than suck down spoon-meat an’ hold her peace. Jim took her to Doctor Harding, an’ Harding he bundled her off to Brighton Hospital on a ticket, but they couldn’t make no stay to her afflictions there; and she was bundled off to Lunnon, an’ they lit a great old lamp inside her, and Jim told me they couldn’t make out nothing in no sort there; and, along o’ one thing an’ another, an’ all their spyin’s and pryin’s, she come back a hem sight worse than when she started. Jim said he’d have no more hospitalizin’, so he give her a slate, which she tied to her waist-string, and what she was minded to say she writ on it.’

‘Now, I never knowed that! But they’re valley—folk;’ Jabez repeated.

‘’Twadn’t particular noticeable, for she wasn’t a talkin’ woman any time o’ her days. Mary had all three’s tongue . . . . Well, then, two years this summer, come what I’m tellin’ you. Mary’s Lunnon father, which they’d put clean out o’ their minds, arrived down from Lunnon with the law on his side, sayin’ he’d take his daughter back to Lunnon, after all. I was working for Mus’ Dockett at Pounds Farm that summer, but I was obligin’ Jim that evenin’ muckin’ out his pig-pen. I seed a stranger come traipsin’ over the bridge agin’ Wickenden’s door-stones. ’Twadn’t the new County Council bridge with the handrail. They hadn’t given it in for a public right o’ way then. ’Twas just a bit o’ lathy old plank which Jim had throwed acrost the brook for his own conveniences. The man wasn’t drunk—only a little concerned in liquor, like—an’ his back was a mask where he’d slipped in the muck comin’ along. He went up the bricks past Jim’s mother, which was feedin’ the ducks, an’ set himself down at the table inside—Jim was just changin’ his socks—an’ the man let Jim know all his rights and aims regardin’ Mary. Then there just about was a hurly-bulloo? Jim’s fust mind was to pitch him forth, but he’d done that once in his young days, and got six months up to Lewes jail along o’ the man fallin’ on his head. So he swallowed his spittle an’ let him talk. The law about Mary was on the man’s side from fust to last, for he showed us all the papers. Then Mary come downstairs—she’d been studyin’ for an examination—an’ the man tells her who he was, an’ she says he had ought to have took proper care of his own flesh and blood while he had it by him, an’ not to think he could ree-claim it when it suited. He says somethin’ or other, but she looks him up an’ down, front an’ backwent, an’ she just tongues him scadderin’ out o’ doors, and he went away stuffin’ all the papers back into his hat, talkin’ most abusefully. Then she come back an’ freed her mind against Jim an’ his mother for not havin’ warned her of her upbringin’s, which it come out she hadn’t ever been told. They didn’t say naun to her. They never did. I’d ha’ packed her off with any man that would ha’ took her—an’ God’s pity on him!’

‘Umm! ‘said Jabez, and sucked his pipe.

‘So then, that was the beginnin’. The man come back again next week or so, an’ he catched Jim alone, ’thout his mother this time, an’ he fair beazled him with his papers an’ his talk—for the law was on his side—till Jim went down into his money-purse an’ give him ten shillings hush-money—he told me—to withdraw away for a bit an’ leave Mary with ’em.’

‘But that’s no way to get rid o’ man or woman,’ Jabez said.

‘No more ’tis. I told Jim so. “What can I do?” Jim says.—“The law’s with the man. I walk about daytimes thinkin’ o’ it till I sweats my underclothes wringin’, an’ I lie abed nights thinkin’ o’ it till I sweats my sheets all of a sop. ’Tisn’t as if I was a young man,” he says, “nor yet as if I was a pore man. Maybe he’ll drink hisself to death.” I e’en a’most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin’ into, but he knowed it—he knowed it—because he said next time the man come ’twould be fifteen shillin’s. An’ next time ’twas. Just fifteen shillin’s!’

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‘An’ was the man her father?’ asked Jabez.

‘He had the proofs an’ the papers. Jim showed me what that Lunnon Childern’s Society had answered when Mary writ up to ’em an’ taxed ’em with it. I lay she hadn’t been proper polite in her letters to ’em, for they answered middlin’ short. They said the matter was out o’ their hands, but—let’s see if I remember—oh, yes,—they ree-gretted there had been an oversight. I reckon they had sent Mary out in the candle-box as a orphan instead o’ havin’ a father. Terrible awkward! Then, when he’d drinked up the money, the man come again—in his usuals—an’ he kept hammerin’ on and hammerin’ on about his duty to his pore dear wife, an’ what he’d do for his dear daughter in Lunnon, till the tears runnel down his two dirty cheeks an’ he come away with more money. Jim used to slip it into his hand behind the door; but his mother she heard the chink. She didn’t hold with hush-money. She’d write out all her feelin’s on the slate, an’ Jim ’ud be settin’ up half the night answerin’ back an showing that the man had the law with him.’

‘Hadn’t that man no trade nor business, then?’

‘He told me he was a printer. I reckon, though, he lived on the rates like the rest of ’ern up there in Lunnon.’

‘An’ how did Mary take it?’

‘She said she’d sooner go into service than go with the man. I reckon a mistress ’ud be middlin’ put to it for a maid ’fore she put Mary into cap an’ gown. She was studyin’ to be a schoo-ool-teacher. A beauty she’ll make! . . . Well, that was how things went that fall. Mary’s Lunnon father kep’ comin’ an’ comin’ ’carden as he’d drinked out the money Jim gave him; an’ each time he’d put up his price for not takin’ Mary away. Jim’s mother, she didn’t like partin’ with no money, an’ bein’ obliged to write her feelin’s on the slate instead o’ givin’ ’em vent by mouth, she was just about mad. Just about she was mad!’

Come November, I lodged with Jim in the outside room over ‘gainst his hen-house. I paid her my rent. I was workin’ for Dockett at Pounds—gettin’ chestnut-bats out o’ Perry Shaw. Just such weather as this be-rain atop o’ rain after a wet October. (An’ I remember it ended in dry frostes right away up to Christmas.) Dockett he’d sent up to Perry Shaw for me—no, he comes puffin’ up to me himself—because a big cornerpiece o’ the bank had slipped into the brook where she makes that elber at the bottom o’ the Seventeen Acre, an’ all the rubbishy alders an’ sallies which he ought to have cut out when he took the farm, they’d slipped with the slip, an’ the brook was comin’ rooshin’ down atop of ’em, an’ they’d just about back an’ spill the waters over his winter wheat. The water was lyin’ in the flats already. “Gor a-mighty, Jesse!” he bellers out at me, “get that rubbish away all manners you can. Don’t stop for no fagottin’, but give the brook play or my wheat’s past salvation. I can’t lend you no help,” he says, “but work an’ I’ll pay ye.”’

‘You had him there,’ Jabez chuckled.

‘Yes. I reckon I had ought to have drove my bargain, but the brook was backin’ up on good bread-corn. So ’cardenly, I laid into the mess of it, workin’ off the bank where the trees was drownin’ themselves head-down in the roosh—just such weather as this—an’ the brook creepin’ up on me all the time. ’Long toward noon, Jim comes mowchin’ along with his toppin’ axe over his shoulder.

‘“Be you minded for an extra hand at your job?” he says.

‘“Be you minded to turn to?” I ses, an’—no more talk to it—Jim laid in alongside o’ me. He’s no bunger with a toppin’ axe.’

‘Maybe, but I’ve seed him at a job o’ throwin’ in the woods, an’ he didn’t seem to make out no shape,’ said Jabez. ‘He haven’t got the shoulders, nor yet the judgment—my opinion—when he’s dealin’ with full-girt timber. He don’t rightly make up his mind where he’s goin’ to throw her.’

‘We wasn’t throwin’ nothin’. We was cuttin’ out they soft alders, an’ haulin’ ’em up the bank ’fore they could back the waters on the wheat. Jim didn’t say much, ’less it was that he’d had a post-card from Mary’s Lunnon father, night before, sayin’ he was comin’ down that mornin’. Jim, he’d sweated all night, an’ he didn’t reckon hisself equal to the talkin’ an’ the swearin’ an’ the cryin’, an’ his mother blamin’ him afterwards on the slate. “It spiled my day to think of it,” he ses, when we was eatin’ our pieces. “So I’ve fair cried dunghill an’ run. Mother’ll have to tackle him by herself. I lay she won’t give him no hush-money,” he ses. “I lay he’ll be surprised by the time he’s done with her,” he ses. An’ that was e’en a’most all the talk we had concernin’ it. But he’s no bunger with the toppin’ axe.

‘The brook she’d crep’ up an’ up on us, an’ she kep’ creepin’ upon us till we was workin’ knee-deep in the shallers, cuttin’ an’ pookin’ an’ pullin’ what we could get to o’ the rubbish. There was a middlin’ lot comin’ down-stream, too—cattle-bars an’ hop-poles and odds-ends bats, all poltin’ down together; but they rooshed round the elber good shape by the time we’d backed out they drowned trees. Come four o’clock we reckoned we’d done a proper day’s work, an’ she’d take no harm if we left her. We couldn’t puddle about there in the dark an’ wet to no more advantage. Jim he was pourin’ the water out of his boots—no, I was doin’ that. Jim was kneelin’ to unlace his’n. “Damn it all, Jesse,” he ses, standin’ up; “the flood must be over my doorsteps at home, for here comes my old white-top bee-skep!”’

‘Yes. I allus heard he paints his bee-skeps,’ Jabez put in. ‘I dunno paint don’t tarrify bees more’n it keeps ’em dry.’

‘“I’ll have a pook at it,” he ses, an’ he pooks at it as it comes round the elber. The roosh nigh jerked the pooker out of his hand-grips, an’ he calls to me, an’ I come runnin’ barefoot. Then we pulled on the pooker, an’ it reared up on eend in the roosh, an’ we guessed what ’twas. ’Cardenly we pulled it in into a shaller, an’ it rolled a piece, an’ a great old stiff man’s arm nigh hit me in the face. Then we was sure. “’Tis a man,” ses Jim. But the face was all a mask. “I reckon it’s Mary’s Lunnon father,” he ses presently. “Lend me a match and I’ll make sure.” He never used baccy. We lit three matches one by another, well’s we could in the rain, an’ he cleaned off some o’ the slob with a tussick o’ grass. “Yes,” he ses. “It’s Mary’s Lunnon father. He won’t tarrify us no more. D’you want him, Jesse?” he ses.

“No,” I ses. “If this was Eastbourne beach like, he’d be half-a-crown apiece to us ’fore the coroner; but now we’d only lose a day havin’ to ’tend the inquest. I lay he fell into the brook.”

“I lay he did,” ses Jim. “I wonder if he saw mother.” He turns him over, an’ opens his coat and puts his fingers in the waistcoat pocket an’ starts laugbin’. “He’s seen mother, right enough,” he ses. “An’ he’s got the best of her, too. She won’t be able to crow no more over me ’bout givin’ him money. I never give him more than a sovereign. She’s give him two!” an’ he trousers ’em, laughin’ all the time. “An’ now we’ll pook him back again, for I’ve done with him,” he ses.

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‘So we pooked him back into the middle of the brook, an’ we saw he went round the elber ’thout balkin’, an’ we walked quite a piece beside of him to set him on his ways. When we couldn’t see no more, we went home by the high road, because we knowed the brook ’u’d be out acrost the medders, an’ we wasn’t goin’ to hunt for Jim’s little rotten old bridge in that darkan’ rainin’ Heavens’ hard, too. I was middlin’ pleased to see light an’ vittles again when we got home. Jim he pressed me to come insides for a drink. He don’t drink in a generality, but he was rid of all his troubles that evenin’, d’ye see? “Mother,” he ses so soon as the door ope’d, “have you seen him? “She whips out her slate an’ writes down—“No.” “Oh, no,” ses Jim. “You don’t get out of it that way, mother. I lay you have seen him, an’ I lay he’s bested you for all your talk, same as he bested me. Make a clean breast of it, mother,” he ses. “He got round you too.” She was goin’ for the slate again, but he stops her. “It’s all right, mother,” he ses. “I’ve seen him sense you have, an’ he won’t trouble us no more.” The old lady looks up quick as a robin, an’ she writes, “Did he say so?” “No,” ses Jim, laughin’. “He didn’t say so. That’s how I know. But he bested you, mother. You can’t have it in at me for bein’ soft-hearted. You’re twice as tender-hearted as what I be. Look!” he ses, an’ he shows her the two sovereigns. “Put ’em away where they belong,” he ses. “He won’t never come for no more; an’ now we’ll have our drink,” he ses, “for we’ve earned it.”

‘Nature-ally they weren’t goin’ to let me see where they kep’ their monies. She went upstairs with it—for the whisky.’

‘I never knowed Jim was a drinkin’ man—in his own house, like,’ said Jabez.

‘No more he isn’t; but what he takes he likes good. He won’t tech no publican’s hogwash acrost the bar. Four shillin’s he paid for that bottle o’ whisky. I know, because when the old lady brought it down there wasn’t more’n jest a liddle few dreenin’s an’ dregs in it. Nothin’ to set before neighbours, I do assure you.’

“Why, ’twas half full last week, mother,” he ses. “You don’t mean,” he ses, “ you’ve given him all that as well? It’s two shillin’s worth,” he ses. (That’s how I knowed he paid four.) “Well, well, mother, you be too tender-’earted to live. But I don’t grudge it to him,” he ses. “I don’t grudge him nothin’ he can keep.” So, ’cardenly, we drinked up what little sup was left.’

‘An’ what come to Mary’s Lunnon father?’ said Jabez, after a full minute’s silence.

‘I be too tired to go readin’ papers of evenin’s; but Dockett he told me, that very week, I think, that they’d inquested on a man down at Roberts-bridge which had polted and polted up agin’ so many bridges an’ banks, like, they couldn’t make naun out of him.’

‘An’ what did Mary say to all these doin’s?’

‘The old lady bundled her off to the village ’fore her Lunnon father come, to buy week-end stuff (an’ she forgot the half o’ it). When we come in she was upstairs studyin’ to be a schoolteacher. None told her naun about it. ’Twadn’t girls’ affairs.’

‘Reckon she knowed?’ Jabez went on.

‘She? She must have guessed it middlin’ close when she saw her money come back. But she never mentioned it in writing so far’s I know. She were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens bein’ drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her postes. I cobbled her up next mornin’ when the brook shrinked.’

‘An’ where did you find the bridge? Some fur down-stream, didn’t ye?’

‘Just where she allus was. She hadn’t shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o’ the plank, so’s she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn’t careful. But I pocked three-four bricks under her, an’ she was all plumb again.’

‘Well, I dunno how it looks like, but let be how ’twill,’ said Jabez, ‘he hadn’t no business to come down from Lunnon tarrifyin’ people, an’ threatenin’ to take away children which they’d hobbed up for their lawful own—even if ’twas Mary Wickenden.’

‘He had the business right enough, an’ he had the law with him—no gettin’ over that,’ said Jesse.

‘But he had the drink with him, too, an’ that was where he failed, like.’

‘Well, well! Let be how ’twill, the brook was a good friend to Jim. I see it now. I allus did wonder what he was gettin’ at when he said that, when I talked to him about shiftin’ the stack. “You dunno everythin’,” he ses. “The Brook’s been a good friend to me,” he ses, “an’ if she’s minded to have a snatch at my hay, I ain’t settin’ out to withstand her.”’

‘I reckon she’s about shifted it, too, by now,’ Jesse chuckled. ‘Hark! That ain’t any slip off the bank which she’s got hold of.’

The Brook had changed her note again. It sounded as though she were mumbling something soft.