Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (388 page)

“My strength is not altogether gone,” he said. “It may be that the poison is not to the bone. There is a star sitting low yonder.” He looked at it between his half-shut hands. “By the Bull that bought me, it is the Red Flower — the Red Flower that I lay beside before — before I came even to the first Seeonee Pack! Now that I have seen, I will finish the running.”

The marsh ended in a broad plain where a light twinkled. It was a long time since Mowgli had concerned himself with the doings of men, but this night the glimmer of the Red Flower drew him forward.

“I will look,” said he, “as I did in the old days, and I will see how far the Man-Pack has changed.”

Forgetting that he was no longer in his own Jungle, where he could do what he pleased, he trod carelessly through the dew-loaded grasses till he came to the hut where the light stood. Three or four yelping dogs gave tongue, for he was on the outskirts of a village.

“Ho!” said Mowgli, sitting down noiselessly, after sending back a deep wolf-growl that silenced the curs. “What comes will come. Mowgli, what hast thou to do any more with the lairs of the Man-Pack?” He rubbed his mouth, remembering where a stone had struck it years ago when the other Man-Pack had cast him out.

The door of the hut opened, and a woman stood peering out into the darkness. A child cried, and the woman said over her shoulder, “Sleep. It was but a jackal that waked the dogs. In a little time morning comes.”

Mowgli in the grass began to shake as though he had fever. He knew that voice well, but to make sure he cried softly, surprised to find how man’s talk came back, “Messua! O Messua!”

“Who calls?” said the woman, a quiver in her voice.

“Hast thou forgotten?” said Mowgli. His throat was dry as he spoke.

“If it be THOU, what name did I give thee? Say!” She had half shut the door, and her hand was clutching at her breast.

“Nathoo! Ohe, Nathoo!” said Mowgli, for, as you remember, that was the name Messua gave him when he first came to the Man-Pack.

“Come, my son,” she called, and Mowgli stepped into the light, and looked full at Messua, the woman who had been good to him, and whose life he had saved from the Man-Pack so long before. She was older, and her hair was gray, but her eyes and her voice had not changed. Woman-like, she expected to find Mowgli where she had left him, and her eyes travelled upward in a puzzled way from his chest to his head, that touched the top of the door.

“My son,” she stammered; and then, sinking to his feet: “But it is no longer my son. It is a Godling of the Woods! Ahai!”

As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. The child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked aloud with terror. Messua turned to soothe him, while Mowgli stood still, looking in at the water-jars and the cooking-pots, the grain-bin, and all the other human belongings that he found himself remembering so well.

“What wilt thou eat or drink?” Messua murmured. “This is all thine. We owe our lives to thee. But art thou him I called Nathoo, or a Godling, indeed?”

“I am Nathoo,” said Mowgli, “I am very far from my own place. I saw this light, and came hither. I did not know thou wast here.”

“After we came to Khanhiwara,” Messua said timidly, “the English would have helped us against those villagers that sought to burn us. Rememberest thou?”

“Indeed, I have not forgotten.”

“But when the English Law was made ready, we went to the village of those evil people, and it was no more to be found.”

“That also I remember,” said Mowgli, with a quiver of his nostril.

“My man, therefore, took service in the fields, and at last — for, indeed, he was a strong man — we held a little land here. It is not so rich as the old village, but we do not need much — we two.”

“Where is he the man that dug in the dirt when he was afraid on that night?”

“He is dead — a year.”

“And he?” Mowgli pointed to the child.

“My son that was born two Rains ago. If thou art a Godling, give him the Favour of the Jungle, that he may be safe among thy — thy people, as we were safe on that night.”

She lifted up the child, who, forgetting his fright, reached out to play with the knife that hung on Mowgli’s chest, and Mowgli put the little fingers aside very carefully.

“And if thou art Nathoo whom the tiger carried away,” Messua went on, choking, “he is then thy younger brother. Give him an elder brother’s blessing.”

“Hai-mai! What do I know of the thing called a blessing? I am neither a Godling nor his brother, and — O mother, mother, my heart is heavy in me.” He shivered as he set down the child.

“Like enough,” said Messua, bustling among the cooking-pots. “This comes of running about the marshes by night. Beyond question, the fever had soaked thee to the marrow.” Mowgli smiled a little at the idea of anything in the Jungle hurting him. “I will make a fire, and thou shalt drink warm milk. Put away the jasmine wreath: the smell is heavy in so small a place.”

Mowgli sat down, muttering, with his face in his hands. All manner of strange feelings that he had never felt before were running over him, exactly as though he had been poisoned, and he felt dizzy and a little sick. He drank the warm milk in long gulps, Messua patting him on the shoulder from time to time, not quite sure whether he were her son Nathoo of the long ago days, or some wonderful Jungle being, but glad to feel that he was at least flesh and blood.

“Son,” she said at last, — her eyes were full of pride, — ”have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?”

“Hah?” said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind. Messua laughed softly and happily. The look in his face was enough for her.

“I am the first, then? It is right, though it comes seldom, that a mother should tell her son these good things. Thou art very beautiful. Never have I looked upon such a man.”

Mowgli twisted his head and tried to see over his own hard shoulder, and Messua laughed again so long that Mowgli, not knowing why, was forced to laugh with her, and the child ran from one to the other, laughing too.

“Nay, thou must not mock thy brother,” said Messua, catching him to her breast. “When thou art one-half as fair we will marry thee to the youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt ride great elephants.”

Mowgli could not understand one word in three of the talk here; the warm milk was taking effect on him after his long run, so he curled up and in a minute was deep asleep, and Messua put the hair back from his eyes, threw a cloth over him, and was happy. Jungle-fashion, he slept out the rest of that night and all the next day; for his instincts, which never wholly slept, warned him there was nothing to fear. He waked at last with a bound that shook the hut, for the cloth over his face made him dream of traps; and there he stood, his hand on his knife, the sleep all heavy in his rolling eyes, ready for any fight.

Messua laughed, and set the evening meal before him. There were only a few coarse cakes baked over the smoky fire, some rice, and a lump of sour preserved tamarinds — just enough to go on with till he could get to his evening kill. The smell of the dew in the marshes made him hungry and restless. He wanted to finish his spring running, but the child insisted on sitting in his arms, and Messua would have it that his long, blue-black hair must be combed out. So she sang, as she combed, foolish little baby-songs, now calling Mowgli her son, and now begging him to give some of his jungle power to the child. The hut door was closed, but Mowgli heard a sound he knew well, and saw Messua’s jaw drop with horror as a great gray paw came under the bottom of the door, and Gray Brother outside whined a muffled and penitent whine of anxiety and fear.

“Out and wait! Ye would not come when I called,” said Mowgli in Jungle-talk, without turning his head, and the great gray paw disappeared.

“Do not — do not bring thy — thy servants with thee,” said Messua. “I — we have always lived at peace with the Jungle.”

“It is peace,” said Mowgli, rising. “Think of that night on the road to Khanhiwara. There were scores of such folk before thee and behind thee. But I see that even in springtime the Jungle People do not always forget. Mother, I go.”

Messua drew aside humbly — he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but as his hand was on the door the mother in her made her throw her arms round Mowgli’s neck again and again.

“Come back!” she whispered. “Son or no son, come back, for I love thee — Look, he too grieves.”

The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going away.

“Come back again,” Messua repeated. “By night or by day this door is never shut to thee.”

Mowgli’s throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled, and his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he answered, “I will surely come back.”

“And now,” he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the threshold, “I have a little cry against thee, Gray Brother. Why came ye not all four when I called so long ago?”

“So long ago? It was but last night. I — we — were singing in the Jungle the new songs, for this is the Time of New Talk. Rememberest thou?”

“Truly, truly.”

“And as soon as the songs were sung,” Gray Brother went on earnestly, “I followed thy trail. I ran from all the others and followed hot-foot. But, O Little Brother, what hast THOU done, eating and sleeping with the Man-Pack?”

“If ye had come when I called, this had never been,” said Mowgli, running much faster.

“And now what is to be?” said Gray Brother. Mowgli was going to answer when a girl in a white cloth came down some path that led from the outskirts of the village. Gray Brother dropped out of sight at once, and Mowgli backed noiselessly into a field of high-springing crops. He could almost have touched her with his hand when the warm, green stalks closed before his face and he disappeared like a ghost. The girl screamed, for she thought she had seen a spirit, and then she gave a deep sigh. Mowgli parted the stalks with his hands and watched her till she was out of sight.

“And now I do not know,” he said, sighing in his turn. “WHY did ye not come when I called?”

“We follow thee — we follow thee,” Gray Brother mumbled, licking at Mowgli’s heel. “We follow thee always, except in the Time of the New Talk.”

“And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack?” Mowgli whispered.

“Did I not follow thee on the night our old Pack cast thee out? Who waked thee lying among the crops?”

“Ay, but again?”

“Have I not followed thee to-night?”

“Ay, but again and again, and it may be again, Gray Brother?”

Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he growled to himself, “The Black One spoke truth.”

“And he said?”

“Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our mother, said —  — ”

“So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog,” Mowgli muttered.

“So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all.”

“What dost thou say, Gray Brother?”

“They cast thee out once, with bad talk. They cut thy mouth with stones. They sent Buldeo to slay thee. They would have thrown thee into the Red Flower. Thou, and not I, hast said that they are evil and senseless. Thou, and not I — I follow my own people — didst let in the Jungle upon them. Thou, and not I, didst make song against them more bitter even than our song against Red Dog.”

“I ask thee what THOU sayest?”

They were talking as they ran. Gray Brother cantered on a while without replying, and then he said, — between bound and bound as it were, — ”Man-cub — Master of the Jungle — Son of Raksha, Lair-brother to me — though I forget for a little while in the spring, thy trail is my trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and thy death-fight is my death-fight. I speak for the Three. But what wilt thou say to the Jungle?”

“That is well thought. Between the sight and the kill it is not good to wait. Go before and cry them all to the Council Rock, and I will tell them what is in my stomach. But they may not come — in the Time of New Talk they may forget me.”

“Hast thou, then, forgotten nothing?” snapped Gray Brother over his shoulder, as he laid himself down to gallop, and Mowgli followed, thinking.

At any other season the news would have called all the Jungle together with bristling necks, but now they were busy hunting and fighting and killing and singing. From one to another Gray Brother ran, crying, “The Master of the Jungle goes back to Man! Come to the Council Rock.” And the happy, eager People only answered, “He will return in the summer heats. The Rains will drive him to lair. Run and sing with us, Gray Brother.”

“But the Master of the Jungle goes back to Man,” Gray Brother would repeat.

“Eee — Yoawa? Is the Time of New Talk any less sweet for that?” they would reply. So when Mowgli, heavy-hearted, came up through the well-remembered rocks to the place where he had been brought into the Council, he found only the Four, Baloo, who was nearly blind with age, and the heavy, cold-blooded Kaa coiled around Akela’s empty seat.