Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (647 page)

He had tiptoed down the corridor, as rigid as ever, and was sitting outside one of the shut doors. ‘Look here!’ she said, and planted herself squarely in front of me. ‘I tell you this because you — you’ve patched up Harvey, too. Now, I want you to remember that my name is Moira. Mother calls me Marjorie because it’s more refined; but my real name is Moira, and I am in my thirty-fourth year.’

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember all that.’

‘Thank you.’ Then with a sudden swoop into the humility of an abashed boy — ’’Sorry if I haven’t said the proper things. You see — there’s Harvey looking at us again. Oh, I want to say — if ever you want anything in the way of orchids or goldfish or — or anything else that would be useful to you, you’ve only to come to me for it. Under the will I’m perfectly independent, and we’re a long-lived family, worse luck!’ She looked at me, and her face worked like glass behind driven flame. ‘I may reasonably expect to live another fifty years,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Miss Sichliffe,’ I replied. ‘If I want anything, you may be sure I’ll come to you for it.’ She nodded. ‘Now I must get over to Mittleham,’ I said.

‘Mr. Attley will ask you all about this.’ For the first time she laughed aloud. ‘I’m afraid I frightened him nearly out of the county. I didn’t think, of course. But I dare say he knows by this time he was wrong. Say good-bye to Harvey.’

‘Good-bye, old man,’ I said. ‘Give me a farewell stare, so we shall know each other when we meet again.’

The dog looked up, then moved slowly toward me, and stood, head bowed to the floor, shaking in every muscle as I patted him; and when I turned, I saw him crawl back to her feet.

That was not a good preparation for the rampant boy-and-girl-dominated lunch at Mittleham, which, as usual, I found in possession of everybody except the owner.

‘But what did the dromedary say when you brought her beast back?’ Attley demanded.

‘The usual polite things,’ I replied. ‘I’m posing as the nice doggy friend nowadays.’

‘I don’t envy you. She’s never darkened my doors, thank goodness, since I left Harvey at your place. I suppose she’ll run about the county now swearing you cured him. That’s a woman’s idea of gratitude.’ Attley seemed rather hurt, and Mrs. Godfrey laughed.

‘That proves you were right about Miss Sichliffe, Ella,’ I said. ‘She had no designs on anybody.’

‘I’m always right in these matters. But didn’t she even offer you a goldfish?’

‘Not a thing,’ said I. ‘You know what an old maid’s like where her precious dog’s concerned.’ And though I have tried vainly to lie to Ella Godfrey for many years, I believe that in this case I succeeded.

When I turned into our drive that evening, Leggatt observed half aloud:

‘I’m glad Zvengali’s back where he belongs. It’s time our Mike had a look in.’

Sure enough, there was Malachi back again in spirit as well as flesh, but still with that odd air of expectation he had picked up from Harvey.

It was in January that Attley wrote me that Mrs. Godfrey, wintering in Madeira with Milly, her unmarried daughter, had been attacked with something like enteric; that the hotel, anxious for its good name, had thrust them both out into a cottage annexe; that he was off with a nurse, and that I was not to leave England till I heard from him again. In a week he wired that Milly was down as well, and that I must bring out two more nurses, with suitable delicacies.

Within seventeen hours I had got them all aboard the Cape boat, and had seen the women safely collapsed into sea-sickness. The next few weeks were for me, as for the invalids, a low delirium, clouded with fantastic memories of Portuguese officials trying to tax calves’-foot jelly; voluble doctors insisting that true typhoid was unknown in the island; nurses who had to be exercised, taken out of themselves, and returned on the tick of change of guard; night slides down glassy, cobbled streets, smelling of sewage and flowers, between walls whose every stone and patch Attley and I knew; vigils in stucco verandahs, watching the curve and descent of great stars or drawing auguries from the break of dawn; insane interludes of gambling at the local Casino, where we won heaps of unconsoling silver; blasts of steamers arriving and departing in the roads; help offered by total strangers, grabbed at or thrust aside; the long nightmare crumbling back into sanity one forenoon under a vine-covered trellis, where Attley sat hugging a nurse, while the others danced a noiseless, neat-footed breakdown never learned at the Middlesex Hospital. At last, as the tension came out all over us in aches and tingles that we put down to the country wine, a vision of Mrs. Godfrey, her grey hair turned to spun-glass, but her eyes triumphant over the shadow of retreating death beneath them, with Milly, enormously grown, and clutching life back to her young breast, both stretched out on cane chairs, clamouring for food.

In this ungirt hour there imported himself into our life a youngish-looking middle-aged man of the name of Shend, with a blurred face and deprecating eyes. He said he had gambled with me at the Casino, which was no recommendation, and I remember that he twice gave me a basket of champagne and liqueur brandy for the invalids, which a sailor in a red-tasselled cap carried up to the cottage for me at 3 A.M. He turned out to be the son of some merchant prince in the oil and colour line, and the owner of a four-hundred-ton steam yacht, into which, at his gentle insistence, we later shifted our camp, staff, and equipage, Milly weeping with delight to escape from the horrible cottage. There we lay off Funchal for weeks, while Shend did miracles of luxury and attendance through deputies, and never once asked how his guests were enjoying themselves. Indeed, for several days at a time we would see nothing of him. He was, he said, subject to malaria. Giving as they do with both hands, I knew that Attley and Mrs. Godfrey could take nobly; but I never met a man who so nobly gave and so nobly received thanks as Shend did.

‘Tell us why you have been so unbelievably kind to us gipsies,’ Mrs. Godfrey said to him one day on deck.

He looked up from a diagram of some Thames-mouth shoals which he was explaining to me, and answered with his gentle smile:

‘I will. It’s because it makes me happy — it makes me more than happy — to be with you. It makes me comfortable. You know how selfish men are? If a man feels comfortable all over with certain people, he’ll bore them to death, just like a dog. You always make me feel as if pleasant things were going to happen to me.’

‘Haven’t any ever happened before?’ Milly asked.

‘This is the most pleasant thing that has happened to me in ever so many years,’ he replied. ‘I feel like the man in the Bible, “It’s good for me to be here.” Generally, I don’t feel that it’s good for me to be anywhere in particular.’ Then, as one begging a favour. ‘You’ll let me come home with you — in the same boat, I mean? I’d take you back in this thing of mine, and that would save you packing your trunks, but she’s too lively for spring work across the Bay.’

We booked our berths, and when the time came, he wafted us and ours aboard the Southampton mail-boat with the pomp of plenipotentiaries and the precision of the Navy. Then he dismissed his yacht, and became an inconspicuous passenger in a cabin opposite to mine, on the port side.

We ran at once into early British spring weather, followed by sou’west gales. Mrs. Godfrey, Milly, and the nurses disappeared. Attley stood it out, visibly yellowing, till the next meal, and followed suit, and Shend and I had the little table all to ourselves. I found him even more attractive when the women were away. The natural sweetness of the man, his voice, and bearing all fascinated me, and his knowledge of practical seamanship (he held an extra master’s certificate) was a real joy. We sat long in the empty saloon and longer in the smoking-room, making dashes downstairs over slippery decks at the eleventh hour.

It was on Friday night, just as I was going to bed, that he came into my cabin, after cleaning his teeth, which he did half a dozen times a day.

‘I say,’ he began hurriedly, ‘do you mind if I come in here for a little? I’m a bit edgy.’ I must have shown surprise. ‘I’m ever so much better about liquor than I used to be, but — it’s the whisky in the suitcase that throws me. For God’s sake, old man, don’t go back on me to-night! Look at my hands!’

They were fairly jumping at the wrists. He sat down on a trunk that had slid out with the roll. We had reduced speed, and were surging in confused seas that pounded on the black port-glasses. The night promised to be a pleasant one!

‘You understand, of course, don’t you?’ he chattered.

‘Oh yes,’ I said cheerily; ‘but how about — ’

‘No, no; on no account the doctor. ‘Tell a doctor, tell the whole ship. Besides, I’ve only got a touch of ‘em. You’d never have guessed it, would you? The tooth-wash does the trick. I’ll give you the prescription.’

I’ll send a note to the doctor for a prescription, shall I?’ I suggested.

‘Right! I put myself unreservedly in your hands. ‘Fact is, I always did. I said to myself — ’sure I don’t bore you? — the minute I saw you, I said, “Thou art the man.”‘ He repeated the phrase as he picked at his knees. ‘All the same, you can take it from me that the ewe-lamb business is a rotten bad one. I don’t care how unfaithful the shepherd may be. Drunk or sober, ‘tisn’t cricket.’

A surge of the trunk threw him across the cabin as the steward answered my bell. I wrote my requisition to the doctor while Shend was struggling to his feet.

‘What’s wrong?’ he began. ‘Oh, I know. We’re slowing for soundings off Ushant. It’s about time, too. You’d better ship the dead-lights when you come back, Matchem. It’ll save you waking us later. This sea’s going to get up when the tide turns. That’ll show you,’ he said as the man left, ‘that I am to be trusted. You — you’ll stop me if I say anything I shouldn’t, won’t you?’

‘Talk away,’ I replied, ‘if it makes you feel better.’

‘That’s it; you’ve hit it exactly. You always make me feel better. I can rely on you. It’s awkward soundings but you’ll see me through it. We’ll defeat him yet.... I may be an utterly worthless devil, but I’m not a brawler.... I told him so at breakfast. I said, “Doctor, I detest brawling, but if ever you allow that girl to be insulted again as Clements insulted her, I will break your neck with my own hands.” You think I was right?’

‘Absolutely,’ I agreed.

‘Then we needn’t discuss the matter any further. That man was a murderer in intention — outside the law, you understand, as it was then. They’ve changed it since — but he never deceived
me
. I told him so. I said to him at the time, “I don’t know what price you’re going to put on my head, but if ever you allow Clements to insult her again, you’ll never live to claim it.”‘

‘And what did he do?’ I asked, to carry on the conversation, for Matchem entered with the bromide.

‘Oh, crumpled up at once. ‘Lead still going, Matchem?’

‘I ‘aven’t ‘eard,’ said that faithful servant of the Union-Castle Company.

‘Quite right. Never alarm the passengers. Ship the dead-light, will you?’ Matchem shipped it, for we were rolling very heavily. There were tramplings and gull-like cries from on deck. Shend looked at me with a mariner’s eye.

‘That’s nothing,’ he said protectingly.

‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ I said, jumping at the idea. ‘
I
haven’t an extra master’s certificate. I’m only a passenger. I confess it funks me.’

Instantly his whole bearing changed to answer the appeal.

‘My dear fellow, it’s as simple as houses. We’re hunting for sixty-five fathom water. Anything short of sixty, with a sou’west wind means — but I’ll get my Channel Pilot out of my cabin and give you the general idea. I’m only too grateful to do anything to put your mind at ease.’

And so, perhaps, for another hour — he declined the drink — Channel Pilot in hand, he navigated us round Ushant, and at my request up-channel to Southampton, light by light, with explanations and reminiscences. I professed myself soothed at last, and suggested bed.

‘In a second,’ said he. ‘Now, you wouldn’t think, would you’ — he glanced off the book toward my wildly swaying dressing-gown on the door — ’that I’ve been seeing things for the last half-hour? ‘Fact is, I’m just on the edge of ‘em, skating on thin ice round the corner — nor’east as near as nothing — where that dog’s looking at me.’

‘What’s the dog like?’ I asked.

‘Ah, that
is
comforting of you! Most men walk through ‘em to show me they aren’t real. As if I didn’t know! But
you’re
different. Anybody could see that with half an eye.’ He stiffened and pointed. ‘Damn it all! The dog sees it too with half an — Why, he knows you! Knows you perfectly. D’you know
him
?’

‘How can I tell if he isn’t real?’ I insisted.

‘But you can!
You’re
all right. I saw that from the first. Don’t go back on me now or I shall go to pieces like the
Drummond Castle
. I beg your pardon, old man; but, you see, you
do
know the dog. I’ll prove it. What’s that dog doing? Come on!
You
know.’ A tremor shook him, and he put his hand on my knee, and whispered with great meaning: ‘I’ll letter or halve it with you. There! You begin.’