Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (709 page)

And the Head, not usually devout, echoed, ‘Thank Heaven!’

‘It was worth it,’ Dick Four pronounced on review of the profit-and- loss account with Number Five in his study.

‘Heap-plenty-bong-assez,’ Stalky assented.

‘But why didn’t King ra’ar up an’ cuss Tar Baby?’ Beetle asked.

‘You preter-pluperfect, fat-ended fool!’ Stalky began-

‘Keep your hair on! We all know the Idolaters wasn’t our Uncle Stalky’s idea. But why didn’t King — ’

‘Because Dick took care to paint Brer Terrapin King’s House-colours. You can always conciliate King by soothin’ his putrid esprit-de- maisong. Ain’t that true, Dick?’

Dick Four, with the smile of modest worth unmasked, said it was so.

‘An’ now,’ Turkey yawned. ‘King an’ Macrea’ll jaw for the rest of the term how he ran his house when Macrea was tryin’ to marry fat widows in Switzerland. Mountaineerin’! ‘Bet Macrea never went near a mountain.’

‘‘One good job, though. I go back to Macrea for Maths. He does know something,’ said Stalky.

‘Why? Didn’t “Mister” know anythin’?’ Beetle asked.

‘‘Bout as much as you,’ was Stalky’s reply.

‘I don’t go about pretending to. What was he like?’

‘“Mister”? Oh, rather like King-King and water.’

Only water was not precisely the fluid that Stalky thought fit to mention.

The Centaurs

UP came the young Centaur-colts from the plains they were fathered in —

  Curious, awkward, afraid.

Burrs on their hocks and their tails, they were branded and gathered in

  Mobs and run up to the yard to be made.

Starring and shying at straws, with sidlings and plungings.

  Buckings and whirlings and bolts;

Greener than grass, but full-ripe for their bridling and lungings.

  Up to the yards and to Chiron they bustled the colts...

First the light web and the cavesson; then the linked keys

  To jingle and turn on the tongue. Then, with cocked ears.

The hours of watching and envy, while comrades at ease

  Passaged and backed, making naught of these terrible gears.

Next, over-pride and its price at the low-seeming fence

  Too oft and too easily taken-the world-beheld fall!

And none in the yard except Chiron to doubt the immense.

  Irretrievable shame of it all!...

Last, the trained squadron, full-charge-the sound of a going

  Through dust and spun clods, and strong kicks, pelted in as they went.

And repaid at top-speed; till the order to halt without slowing

  Showed every colt on his haunches-and Chiron content!

‘Late Came the God’

LATE came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not regarded —

  Late, but in wrath;

Saying: ‘The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded

  On all that she hath.’

He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving

The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.

He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be fresh-

Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh —

Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her.

Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached for her.

So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.

  And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed.

And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision-

  Alone, without hope of regard or reward, but uncowed.

Resolute, selfless, divine.

  These things she did in Love’s honour...

The Wish House

THE new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (Ts softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ‘bus brought Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt- patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.

‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’

‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’

Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’

Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly-she never hurried-and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs. Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’

‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs. Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’

‘This ‘un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’

‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it...’ Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday’ shopping’ ‘bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs. Ashcroft observed.

‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny-three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller-ain’t it?’

‘‘Tis for Arthur-my Jane’s eldest.’

‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’

‘No. ‘Tis a picnic-basket.’

‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ‘im-pore fool me!’

‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

‘He do. ‘No odds ‘twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ‘Take all an’ give naught-an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’

‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs. Ashcroft said.

‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ‘im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’

‘I lay he charged her, then.’

‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’

‘Tck!’

Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.

‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs. Ashcroft explained.

‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ‘oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’

‘They must look arter theirselves-’same as we did.’ Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘What’s in your head now?’

‘Dunno...But it come over me, sudden-like-about dat woman from Rye — I’ve slipped the name-Barnsley, wadn’t it?’

‘Batten-Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’

‘That’s it-Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay- fork-’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene-for stealin’ her man.’

‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

‘I did — an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’

‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds-Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’

‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs. Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ‘twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ‘Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’

‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’

‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but-him! Why, ‘tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!...Eh?’

‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so-bein’ barren-like, themselves.’

‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!...An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this — ’

‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs. Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’

Mrs. Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs. Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’

‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.

‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs. Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs. Fettley spoke with real affection.

‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ‘eart left me still,’ Mrs. Ashcroft returned.

‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’

‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs. Ashcroft’s answer.

‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. ‘Takes two sticks to make a fire.’

Mrs. Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motortraffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

Mrs. Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ‘is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns-let be I ‘adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ‘is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ‘bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ‘ome past endurance. So I ‘aven’t even that to stay me.’

‘But you’ve ‘ad your satisfactions?’

‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ‘e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’

‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ‘Nother cup o’ tea?’

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs. Ashcroft, her elbows on the teatable, and her sick leg propped on a stool...