Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (11 page)

‘Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there’s somebody else in the world besides himself.’

‘She’ll spoil his hand. She’ll waste his time, and she’ll marry him, and ruin his work for ever. He’ll be a respectable married man before we can stop him, and — he’ll ever go on the long trail again.’

‘All quite possible, but the earth won’t spin the other way when that happens.... No! ho! I’d give something to see Dick “go wooing with the boys.” Don’t worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we can only look on. Get the chessmen.’

The red-haired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the ceiling. The footsteps of people on the pavement sounded, as they grew indistinct in the distance, like a many-times-repeated kiss that was all one long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut savagely from time to time.

The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her door: ‘Beg y’ pardon, miss, but in cleanin’ of a floor there’s two, not to say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an’ mottled, an’ disinfectink.

Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would be pre’aps jest as well if I was to come up ‘ere an’ ask you what sort of soap you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap, miss —  — ’

There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of fury that drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost shouting — ’Do you suppose I care what you use? Any kind will do! — any kind!’

The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her own reflection in the glass for an instant and covered her face with her hands. It was as though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.

CHAPTER VII

Roses red and roses white

Plucked I for my love’s delight.

She would none of all my posies, —

Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,

Seeking where such flowers grew;

Half the world unto my quest

Answered but with laugh and jest.

It may be beyond the grave

She shall find what she would have.

Mine was but an idle quest, —

Roses white and red are best! — Blue Roses

THE SEA had not changed. Its waters were low on the mud-banks, and the Marazion Bell-buoy clanked and swung in the tide-way. On the white beach-sand dried stumps of sea-poppy shivered and chattered.

‘I don’t see the old breakwater,’ said Maisie, under her breath.

‘Let’s be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don’t believe they’ve mounted a single new gun on the fort since we were here. Come and look.’

They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook sheltered from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder cannon.

‘Now, if Ammoma were only here!’ said Maisie.

For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie’s hand and called her by her name.

She shook her head and looked out to sea.

‘Maisie, darling, doesn’t it make any difference?’

‘No!’ between clenched teeth. ‘I’d — I’d tell you if it did; but it doesn’t, Oh, Dick, please be sensible.’

‘Don’t you think that it ever will?’

‘No, I’m sure it won’t.’

‘Why?’

Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea, spoke hurriedly — ’I know what you want perfectly well, but I can’t give it to you, Dick. It isn’t my fault; indeed, it isn’t. If I felt that I could care for any one —  — But I don’t feel that I care. I simply don’t understand what the feeling means.’

‘Is that true, dear?’

‘You’ve been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay you back is by speaking the truth. I daren’t tell a fib. I despise myself quit enough as it is.’

‘What in the world for?’

‘Because — because I take everything that you give me and I give you nothing in return. It’s mean and selfish of me, and whenever I think of it it worries me.’

‘Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs, and if I choose to do anything you aren’t to blame. You haven’t a single thing to reproach yourself with, darling.’

‘Yes, I have, and talking only makes it worse.’

‘Then don’t talk about it.’

‘How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are always talking about it; and when you aren’t you look it. You don’t know how I despise myself sometimes.’

‘Great goodness!’ said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. ‘Speak the truth now, Maisie, if you never speak it again! Do I — does this worrying bore you?’

‘No. It does not.’

‘You’d tell me if it did?’

‘I should let you know, I think.’

‘Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive a man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance. You must have known that?’

Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and Dick was forced to repeat it.

‘There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I was in the middle of my work, and wanted me to listen to them.’

‘Did you listen?’

‘At first; and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t care. And they used to praise my pictures; and I thought they meant it. I used to be proud of the praise, and tell Kami, and — I shall never forget — once Kami laughed at me.’

‘You don’t like being laughed at, Maisie, do you?’

‘I hate it. I never laugh at other people unless — unless they do bad work.

Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally, — of everything of mine that you’ve seen.’

‘“Honest, honest, and honest over!”‘ quoted Dick from a catchword of long ago. ‘Tell me what Kami always says.’

Maisie hesitated. ‘He — he says that there is feeling in them.’

‘How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Kami for two years. I know exactly what he says.’

‘It isn’t a fib.’

‘It’s worse; it’s a half-truth. Kami says, when he puts his head on one side, — so, — ”Il y a du sentiment, mais il n’y a pas de parti pris.”‘ He rolled the r threateningly, as Kami used to do.

‘Yes, that is what he says; and I’m beginning to think that he is right.’

‘Certainly he is.’ Dick admitted that two people in the world could do and say no wrong. Kami was the man.

‘And now you say the same thing. It’s so disheartening.’

‘I’m sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you too much to pretend about your work. It’s strong, it’s patient sometimes, — not always, — and sometimes there’s power in it, but there’s no special reason why it should be done at all. At least, that’s how it strikes me.’

‘There’s no special reason why anything in the world should ever be done. You know that as well as I do. I only want success.’

‘You’re going the wrong way to get it, then. Hasn’t Kami ever told you so?’

‘Don’t quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My work’s bad, to begin with.’

‘I didn’t say that, and I don’t think it.’

‘It’s amateurish, then.’

‘That it most certainly is not. You’re a work-woman, darling, to your boot-heels, and I respect you for that.’

‘You don’t laugh at me behind my back?’

‘No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this cloak thing round you, or you’ll get chilled.’

Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray kangaroo fur to the outside.

‘This is delicious,’ she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully along the fur.

‘Well? Why am I wrong in trying to get a little success?’

‘Just because you try. Don’t you understand, darling? Good work has nothing to do with — doesn’t belong to — the person who does it. It’s put into him or her from outside.’

‘But how does that affect —  — ’

‘Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be masters of our materials instead of servants, and never to be afraid of anything.’

‘I understand that.’

‘Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we sit down quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not do something that isn’t bad. A great deal depends on being master of the bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about success and the effect of our work — to play with one eye on the gallery — we lose power and touch and everything else. At least that’s how I have found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every power you possess to your work, you’re fretting over something which you can neither help no hinder by a minute. See?’

‘It’s so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do. Don’t you ever think about the gallery?’

‘Much too often; but I’m always punished for it by loss of power. It’s as simple as the Rule of Three. If we make light of our work by using it for our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we’re the weaker, we shall suffer.’

‘I don’t treat my work lightly. You know that it’s everything to me.’

‘Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes for yourself to one for your work. It isn’t your fault, darling. I do exactly the same thing, and know that I’m doing it. Most of the French schools, and all the schools here, drive the students to work for their own credit, and for the sake of their pride. I was told that all the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami’s talked turpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that! When my little head was bursting with a notion that I couldn’t handle because I hadn’t sufficient knowledge of my craft, I used to run about wondering at my own magnificence and getting ready to astonish the world.’

‘But surely one can do that sometimes?’

‘Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it’s done it’s such a tiny thing, and the world’s so big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn’t care. Maisie, come with me and I’ll show you something of the size of the world. One can no more avoid working than eating, — that goes on by itself, — but try to see what you are working for. I know such little heavens that I could take you to, — islands tucked away under the Line.

You sight them after weeks of crashing through water as black as black marble because it’s so deep, and you sit in the fore-chains day after day and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea’s so lonely.’

‘Who is afraid? — you, or the sun?’

‘The sun, of course. And there are noises under the sea, and sounds overhead in a clear sky. Then you find your island alive with hot moist orchids that make mouths at you and can do everything except talk.

There’s a waterfall in it three hundred feet high, just like a sliver of green jade laced with silver; and millions of wild bees live up in the rocks; and you can hear the fat cocoanuts falling from the palms; and you order an ivory-white servant to sling you a long yellow hammock with tassels on it like ripe maize, and you put up your feet and hear the bees hum and the water fall till you go to sleep.’

‘Can one work there?’

‘Certainly. One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a palm tree and let the parrots criticise. When the scuffle you heave a ripe custard-apple at them, and it bursts in a lather of cream. There are hundreds of places. Come and see them.’

‘I don’t quite like that place. It sounds lazy. Tell me another.’

‘What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with raw green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on honey-coloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the market-place, and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a monkey — a little black monkey — walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water’s edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should fall in.’

‘Is that all true?’

‘I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights change till it’s just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a blind black stone god and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and everything is dark till the moon rises. Maisie, darling, come with me and see what the world is really like. It’s very lovely, and it’s very horrible, — but I won’t let you see anything horrid, — and it doesn’t care your life or mine for pictures or anything else except doing its own work and making love. Come, and I’ll show you how to brew sangaree, and sling a hammock, and — oh, thousands of things, and you’ll see for yourself what colour means, and we’ll find out together what love means, and then, maybe, we shall be allowed to do some good work. Come away!’

‘Why?’ said Maisie.

‘How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as you can? And besides, darling, I love you. Come along with me. You have no business here; you don’t belong to this place; you’re half a gipsy, — your face tells that; and I — even the smell of open water makes me restless. Come across the sea and be happy!’

He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun, looking down at the girl. The very short winter afternoon had worn away, and, before they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long ruled lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning over the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A faint beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the moon-haze.