Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (749 page)

One gathered these news in the course of stray visits as the days shortened. He insisted on Manallace keeping to the ‘sacred hours,’ and Manallace insisted on my accompanying him when possible. On these occasions he and Castorley would confer apart for half an hour or so, while I listened to an unendurable clock in the drawing-room. Then I would join them and help wear out the rest of the time, while Castorley rambled. His speech, now, was often clouded and uncertain — the result of the ‘liver-tonics’; and his face came to look like old vellum.

It was a few days after Christmas — the operation had been postponed till the following Friday — that we called together. She met us with word that Sir Alured had picked up an irritating little winter cough, due to a cold wave, but we were not, therefore, to abridge our visit. We found him in steam perfumed with Friar’s Balsam. He waved the old Sunnapia facsimile at us. We agreed that it ought to have been more worthy. He took a dose of his mixture, lay back and asked us to lock the door. There was, he whispered, something wrong somewhere. He could not lay his finger on it, but it was in the air. He felt he was being played with. He did not like it. There was something wrong all round him. Had we noticed it? Manallace and I severally and slowly denied that we had noticed anything of the sort.

With no longer break than a light fit of coughing, he fell into the hideous, helpless panic of the sick — those worse than captives who lie at the judgment and mercy of the hale for every office and hope. He wanted to go away. Would we help him to pack his Gladstone? Or, if that would attract too much attention in certain quarters, help him to dress and go out? There was an urgent matter to be set right, and now that he had The Title and knew his own mind it would all end happily and he would be well again. Please would we let him go out, just to speak to — he named her; he named her by her ‘little’ name out of the old Neminaka days? Manallace quite agreed, and recommended a pull at the ‘liver-tonic’ to brace him after so long in the house. He took it, and Manallace suggested that it would be better if, after his walk, he came down to the cottage for a week-end and brought the revise with him. They could then re-touch the last chapter. He answered to that drug and to some praise of his work, and presently simpered drowsily. Yes, it was good — though he said it who should not. He praised himself awhile till, with a puzzled forehead and shut eyes, he told us that she had been saying lately that it was too good — the whole thing, if we understood, was too good. He wished us to get the exact shade of her meaning. She had suggested, or rather implied, this doubt. She had said — he would let us draw our own inferences — that the Chaucer find had ‘anticipated the wants of humanity.’ Johnson, of course. No need to tell him that. But what the hell was her implication? Oh God! Life had always been one long innuendo! And she had said that a man could do anything with anyone if he saved him the trouble of thinking. What did she mean by that? He had never shirked thought. He had thought sustainedly all his life. It wasn’t too good, was it? Manallace didn’t think it was too good — did he? But this pick-pick-picking at a man’s brain and work was too bad, wasn’t it? What did she mean? Why did she always bring in Manallace, who was only a friend — no scholar, but a lover of the game — Eh? — Manallace could confirm this if he were here, instead of loafing on the Continent just when he was most needed.

‘I’ve come back,’ Manallace interrupted, unsteadily. ‘I can confirm every word you’ve said. You’ve nothing to worry about. It’s your find — your credit — your glory and — all the rest of it.’

‘Swear you’ll tell her so then,’ said Castorley. ‘She doesn’t believe a word I say. She told me she never has since before we were married. Promise!’

Manallace promised, and Castorley added that he had named him his literary executor, the proceeds of the book to go to his wife. ‘All profits without deduction,’ he gasped. ‘Big sales if it’s properly handled. You don’t need money...Graydon’ll trust you to any extent. It ‘ud be a long...’

He coughed, and, as he caught breath, his pain broke through all the drugs, and the outcry filled the room. Manallace rose to fetch Gleeag, when a full, high, affected voice, unheard for a generation, accompanied, as it seemed, the clamour of a beast in agony, saying: ‘I wish to God someone would stop that old swine howling down there! I can’t...I was going to tell you fellows that it would be a dam’ long time before Graydon advanced me two quid.’

We escaped together, and found Gleeag waiting, with Lady Castorley, on the landing. He telephoned me, next morning, that Castorley had died of bronchitis, which his weak state made it impossible for him to throw off. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ he added, in reply to the condolences I asked him to convey to the widow. ‘We might have come across something we couldn’t have coped with.’

Distance from that house made me bold.

‘You knew all along, I suppose? What was it, really?’

‘Malignant kidney-trouble — generalised at the end. ‘No use worrying him about it. We let him through as easily as possible. Yes! A happy release...What?...Oh! Cremation. Friday, at eleven.’

There, then, Manallace and I met. He told me that she had asked him whether the book need now be published; and he had told her this was more than ever necessary, in her interests as well as Castorley’s.

‘She is going to be known as his widow — for a while, at any rate. Did I perjure myself much with him?’

‘Not explicitly,’ I answered.

‘Well, I have now — with her — explicitly,’ said he, and took out his black gloves...

As, on the appointed words, the coffin crawled sideways through the noiselessly-closing doorflaps, I saw Lady Castorley’s eyes turn towards Gleeag.

Gertrude’s Prayer

(Modernised from the ‘Chaucer’ of Manallace.)

THAT which is marred at birth Time shall not mend.

    Nor water out of bitter well make clean;

A11 evil thing returneth at the end.

    Or elseway walketh in our blood unseen.

Whereby the more is sorrow in certaine —

Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe.

To-bruized be that slender, sterting spray

    Out of the oake’s rind that should betide

A branch of girt and goodliness, straightway

    Her spring is turned on herself, and wried

And knotted like some gall or veiney wen. —

Dayspring mishandled cometh not agen.

Noontide repayeth never morning-bliss —

    Sith noon to morn is incomparable;

And, so it be our dawning goth amiss.

    None other after-hour serveth well.

Ah! Jesu-Moder, pitie my oe paine —

Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe!

Dinah In Heaven

SHE did not know that she was dead. But, when the pang was o’er. Sat down to wait her Master’s tread Upon the Golden Floor With ears full-cock and anxious eyes. Impatiently resigned; But ignorant that Paradise Did not admit her kind. Persons with Haloes, Harps, and Wings Assembled and reproved; Or talked to her of Heavenly things. But Dinah never moved. There was one step along the Stair That led to Heaven’s Gate; And, till she heard it, her affair Was — she explained — to wait. And she explained with flattened ear. Bared lip and milky tooth — Storming against Ithuriel’s Spear That only proved her truth! Sudden — far down, the Bridge of Ghosts That anxious spirits clomb — She caught that step in all the hosts. And knew that he had come. She left them wondering what to do. But not a doubt had she. Swifter than her own squeals she flew Across the Glassy Sea; Flushing the Cherubs everywhere. And skidding as she ran. She refuged under Peter’s Chair And waited for her man.

There spoke a Spirit out of the press ‘Said: — ’Have you any here That saved a fool from drunkenness. And a coward from his fear? ‘That turned a soul from dark to day When other help was vain. That snatched it from wanhope and made A cur a man again?’ ‘Enter and look,’ said Peter then. And set The Gate ajar. ‘If I know aught of women and men I trow she is not far.’ ‘Neither by virtue, speech nor art Nor hope of grace to win; But godless innocence of heart That never heard of sin: ‘Neither by beauty nor belief Nor white example shown. Something a wanton — more a thief; But — most of allmine own.’ ‘Enter and look,’ said Peter then. ‘And send you well to speed; But, for all that I know of women and men Your riddle is hard to read.’ Then flew Dinah from under the Chair. Into his arms she flew — And licked his face from chin to hair And Peter passed them through!

The Woman in His Life

Fairest of darkie daughters

Was Dinah Doe!

— Negro Melody.

FROM his boyhood John Marden had a genius for improvising or improving small labour-saving gadgets about his father’s house and premises. So, when the War came, shortly after he had been apprenticed to a tool- making firm in the Midlands, he chose the Engineers, and eventually found himself at a place called Messines, where he worked underground, many months, among interesting devices. There he met a Cockney named Burnea, who diagnosed sick machinery by touch — with his eyes shut. Between them, and a few fellow-workers, Messines Ridge went up.

After the War, the two men joined forces on four thousand pounds capital; a dozen young veterans of Messines; a lease of some sheds in a London suburb, and a collection of second-hand lathes and stampers. They gave out that they were ready to make anything for anybody.

A South African mine-manager asked about a detachable arrangement on a drill-head, which he could not buy in open market for less than four shillings and sevenpence wholesale. Marden considered the drawings, cut down the moving parts a half. Burnea made an astonished machine undertake strange duties, and by the time he had racked it to bits, they were delivering the article at one shilling and tenpence. A newly opened mine on a crest of the Andes, where llamas were, for the moment, cheaper than lorries, needed metal stiffenings and clips for pack-saddles (drawing enclosed). The first model went back in a month. In another fortnight the order was filled, with improvements. At the end of their first year, an Orinoco dredging concern, worried over some barges which did not handle auriferous sludge as they ought; and a wild-cat proposition on a New Guinea beach where natives treated detonating capsules with contempt; were writing their friends that you could send Burnea and Marden the roughest sketches of what you wanted, because they understood them.

So the firm flourished. The young veterans drove the shifts ten hours a day; the versatile but demoralised machinery was displaced by sterner stuff; and their third year’s profits ran into five figures. Then Burnea, who had the financial head, died of pulmonary trouble, a by-product of gas-poison, and left Marden his share of the Works, plus thirty-six thousand pounds all on fixed deposit in a Bank, because the head of one of its branches had once been friendly with him in a trench. The Works were promptly enlarged, and Marden worked fourteen hours a day instead of twelve, and, to save time, followed Burnea’s habit of pushing money which he did not need into the same Bank at the same meek rate of interest. But, for the look of the thing, he hired a genuine financial secretary, who was violently affected when John explained the firm’s theory of investments, and recommended some alterations which Marden was too busy to attend to. Six months later, there fell on him three big contracts, which surpassed his dreams of avarice. At this point he took what sleep was forced on him in a cot in Burnea’s old office. At this point, too, Jerry Floyd, ex-Sergeant of Sappers at Messines, and drawing eighteen pounds a week with irregular bonuses, struck loudly.

‘What’s the matter with your job, Jerry?’ John asked.

‘‘Tain’t a job — that’s all. My machines do everything for me except strike. I’ve got to do that,’ said Jerry with reproach.

‘Soft job. Stick to it,’ John counselled.

‘Stick to bloomin’ what? Turnin’ two taps and fiddlin’ three levers? Get a girl to do it for you. Repetition-work! I’m fed up!’

‘Take ten days’ leave, you fool,’ said John; which Jerry did, and was arrested for exceeding the speed-limit through angry gipsies at Brough horse-fair. John Marden went to bed behind his office as usual, and — without warning — suffered a night so memorable that he looked up the nearest doctor in the Directory, and went to see him. Being inarticulate, except where the Works were concerned, he explained that he felt as though he had got the hump — was stale, fed-up, and so forth. He thought, perhaps, he might have been working a bit too hard; but he said not a word of the horror, the blackness, the loss of the meaning of things, the collapses at the end, the recovery and retraversing of the circle of that night’s Inferno; nor how it had waked up a certain secret dread which he had held off him since demobilisation.

‘Can’t you rest a bit?’ asked the doctor, whose real interests were renal calculi.

‘I’ve never tried.’

‘Haven’t you any hobbies or — friends, then?’

‘Except the Works, none.’

‘Nothing — more important in your life?’