Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (773 page)

By early summer, when azaleas and such are worth picking, motor- traffic had increased on all roads, and the high, commanding charabancs were much interested by the sight of Mr. Gravell’s dell. Their drivers pulled up by the broken wall, which the publican at the White Hart, a little further up the road, recommended as a good pitch between drinks. So people used it more and more for picnics and pleasure, and after a Southern Counties Private Tour had removed as a trophy the pitiful little ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted,’ which was Mr. Gravell’s one protest, the gaps in the wall widened by feet in a week; the rhododendron clumps shrank like water drops on a hot iron, and the dell became dotted with coloured streamers, burst balloons, tins, corks, food-bags, old paper, tyre-wrappers, bottles — intact or broken — rags of the foulest, cigarette-cartons, and copious filth. But Mr. Gravell’s traps were on the upper levels, and, as has been said, he attended to them before rush hours. He very rarely went down into what had now become a rubbish-heap; for he was a fastidious man.

About that time, two children at the White Hart, who sold little bunches of flowers to trippers, developed an eruption which puzzled Dr. Frole, the local practitioner. He had never before seen orange and greenish-copper blotches on the healthy young. But, as these faded entirely in a week or so, he wrote it down ‘errors of diet,’ and said there was no need to close the schools.

It was different when a private party of thirty-two gentlemen and ladies, mostly in the retail jewellery business, and all near enough neighbours in Shoreditch to use the same panel-doctor, poured into that man’s consulting-room, comparing blotches as far as they dared, and wailing before an offended Deity. They were asked where they had been and what they had eaten. They had, it seemed, been in ever so many places, and by the way had eaten everything in Leviticus and out of it. Then a practitioner in Bermondsey, where they also make up select tours to the Beauty Spots of England, wrote to a local paper about an interesting variety of summer rash. This — so bound together is the English world — let loose a ‘Welsh Mother,’ who had trusted four of her brood to a local pastor on a Beauties-of-England tour. She complained in a popular journal of unprecedented circulation that they had returned looking ‘like the Heathen.’

Some weeks of perfect touring weather followed, and, as the roads filled and stank with charabancs, Carlisle, Morecambe Bay, Frinton, Tavistock, the Isle of Man, Newquay, and Alnwick, among others, reported strange cases of ‘blotching’ in all ages and sexes.

Entered, duly, in the journals of the democracy, ‘specialists,’ who, after blood-curdling forecasts, ‘deprecated panic’ and variously ascribed the origin of the epidemic to different causes, but, supremely, to the laissez-faire attitude of the Government.

At the height of the discussion, Jemmy wrote that he was coming home on the Sunday boat, ready for anything.

Mr. Gravell, anxious to avoid an explosion à deux, had invited Sir Harry and Kit to help welcome and divert the prodigal, whose stitch and complexion had vastly improved. But Mrs. Saul waylaid Jem on the stairs with a summary of Major Kniveat’s doings in the past three months, and his open exultation over Jefferies’s work in the dell, which sent Jem down there before dinner. The trippers had gone, but he found Angelique busy among the remains of picnics. When he tried to chase her out, she lay down and refused to be moved. So he threw stones at her, sent word to the Enochs that she was loose again, and changed for dinner, not in the best temper, although he tried not to show it.

‘It don’t really matter,’ his father said. ‘Wait till you hear what your Uncle Harry tells us. Oh, but I’m glad you’re back, Jemmy! I’ve wanted you desperate.’

‘Me, too, Dad.’ The hug was returned. ‘You’re quite right. We won’t have a shindy about the wall.. It ain’t worth it.’

‘Then, run along and get up the champagne. Your tie’s crooked, my dear.’ He put up his hand tenderly, as a widower may who has had to wash and dress a year-old baby.

‘Oh, Dad, I am sorry! You must have had a hellish time of it.’ Jem hugged his parent again.

‘Not a bit!’ said Mr. Gravell, glad that the boy was taking it so well. ‘It hasn’t interfered with my experiments. I always finish before the trippers come. I’m on the track of a mixture now that really gingers up the bacteria. I’ll tell you about it, dear. Didn’t you notice how rich the grass was?’

‘I didn’t notice anything much except Angelique. I landed her one or two for herself with a rock, though.’

Dinner went delightfully. Sir Harry Birtle was full of tales of ‘bad neighbours elsewhere, and the wisdom of leaving them alone, which, he said, annoyed them most. The present business was to rebuild the wall, and Jem was sketching it on a tablecloth for Kit, when the Sunday paper came in. Sir Harry picked it up.

‘One thousand and thirty-seven cases up to date,’ he read aloud.

‘What of? ‘asked Mr. Gravell. ‘I don’t read the papers.’

‘They call it Bloody Measles, Uncle Wally,’ said Kit, the doctor. ‘It’s all over the place. It’s a sort of ten-days’ rash-greenish- copper blotches on the face and body. Not catching. No temperature; but no end of scratchin’. The papers have made rather a stunt of it.’

In time the young men went off to the billiard room, while the elders sat over the wine, each disparaging his own offspring that he might better draw the other’s rebuke and tribute.

Billiards ended with an inquiry into Jem’s treatment, and L’Espinasse’s views on gassing in general. ‘I was right about the gas that knocked me out,’ said Jem., ‘L’Espinasse admitted that, on my symptoms, it must have been Adler’s Mixture. That’s one up for me and the Works.’

‘But the Hun was only using straight mustardgas round Arras then,’ said Kit.

‘Not altogether. ‘Remember that purple-and-white-band big stuff that used to crack and whiflie? I got a dose in the cutting behind Fampoux waiting for the train. That was Adler’s...But — never mind that. I’ve got to knock Hell’s Bells out of the Major. He might have upset Dad a good deal. But he took that outrage on the dell like a lamb.’

‘There’s a reason for that, too,’ said Kit, and explained how Mr. Gravell’s blood-pressures had dropped satisfactorily.

‘‘Glad to hear it,’ said Jem. ‘But it won’t excuse Mister Field Officer when I’m abreast of my arrears.’

They talked till bed-time, went up to town together next morning, pursued their several businesses till Saturday, came down again, and that evening wandered round the home-made nine-hole course, and fetched up by Angelique’s sty near the barn. It was empty.

‘She’s broken out again,’ said Kit. ‘Give her a shout.’

Jem hailed, and was answered by the lady, in a muffled key, from the house.

They went to look. Mr. and Mrs. Enoch received them, and complimented Jem on his improved appearance.

‘Ah’m gradely,’ Jem went back to the speech of the Works, in which he and Kit had almost been born. ‘But what’s to doin’ wi’ t’owd la-ady in t’house, Liz?’

‘She’ve gotten Bloody Measles — like what’s in arl t’pa-apers. We’ve had her oop to t’washhouse,’ Enoch explained.

He led along a back passage, and in the brickfloored wash-house, well strawed, lay Angelique, patterned all over with greenish orange-brown blotches, which she wore coquettishly.

‘Good Lord!’ said Kit. ‘I didn’t know Bloody Measles attacked animals! She looks like a turtle with dropsy.’

‘‘Nowt to what she wor o’ Thursdaa. She wor like daffadillies an’ wall-flowers, Thursdaa.’ Enoch spoke with pride.

‘Ah, but she’s hearty — she’s rare an’ hearty. Tha’s none offen tha’ feed, is tha, ma luv?’ said Mrs. Enoch tenderly.

‘She’ll have to be killed,’ said Kit.

‘Kill nowt,’ said Mrs. Enoch. ‘She’ll lie oop here till t’spots gan off again. They showed oop a’ Tuesdaa neet, an’ to-morra’s Soondaa.’

‘What’s Sunday got to do with it?’ Kit cried.

‘T’ Major, blast him!’ said Enoch. Man and wife spoke together. Translated out of their dialect, which broadened as it flowed, the Major’s Sunday patrol of rights-of-way generally included the path round the barn beside Angelique’s sty. If he should notice her now — what his powers for making trouble might be they knew not, but feared the worst. But they did know that an Englishman’s house, even to his wash-house, is his castle. Thither, then, they had conveyed Angelique on Tuesday night, and there should she stay until her spots faded, as they had faded upon the publican’s brats at the White Hart.

‘She came out with ‘em on Tuesday — did she?’ said Jem thoughtfully. ‘Well, we don’t want the Major poking his nose into this just now.’

That released Mrs. Enoch again. Mrs. Saul had said much about Major Kniveat, but the gleanings of Mrs. Enoch’s threshing-floor were richer than all the housekeeper’s harvests. She said he was consumed with desire to take some step which the ‘manure-makers’ should be compelled to notice. She reminded Jem of foremen and fore-women in the Works, who had given trouble on the same lines. Psychologically it was interesting, but Jem’s concern was that neither she nor her husband should talk to his father about it.

‘If this epidemic is going to attack livestock, there’ll be trouble,’ said Kit, on the way home.

‘I don’t think it will,’ said Jem, who had been silent for some while.

‘What’s the idea?’ his all-but-brother asked suspiciously.

‘My idea is that it’s Dad, if you want to know. Dad — and his dell!’

‘The Devil! Why?’

‘I asked our London Office (they were rather worried about it, too) what sort of stuff he’d been drawing from the Lab. while I was away, to ginger up his bacteria. Well, what he actually got was fairly hectic, but he tells me he’s taken to mixin’ ‘em. So — Lord knows what they mayn’t throw up! Anyhow, the dell must be soaked with it. Wait a shake! Angelique was picnickin’ down there the Sunday night I got home. She came out with spots on Tuesday — call it forty-eight hours’ incubation.’

‘Stop! Let me take this in properly,’ said Kit. ‘You mean your dad — is responsible for — one thousand and thirty-seven cases of Bloody Picnickers — up to date?’

Jem nodded. ‘‘Looks like it. He’s transmitted his scientific twist of mind to me, but outside that he’s a rank amateur, you know.’

Here Kit sat down. ‘Amateur! You aren’t fit to have my own Uncle Wally for a father. An’ he doesn’t read the papers! An’ — an’ the British Medical Association recommends treating Bloody Measles with chawal- muggra oil. And Sir Herbert Buskitt says it’s due to atonic glands. The whole of my sacred profession’s involved! Don’t you realise what your dad’s done, you — you parricide?’

‘Dam-well I do. Here are the bases of the stuff he’s been working on.’ Jem passed over some chemical formula that sent Kit into fresh hysterics. ‘You see, he’s avoided lethal constituents so far, but he’s strong on the colour-fixation bases. ‘Spose he wants it for the gorze- blooms. — Get up, you idiot! — Well! I’ve short-circuited that. He’ll have everything he writes for in future, as far as labels go. The muck don’t show or smell or taste. He’ll be just as happy.’

‘But I shan’t,’ said Kit, as soon as he could stand and talk straight. ‘I want more. Let’s lure the Major into the dell, and — er — Angelique him! He’d look rather pretty, ma luv!’

‘Not now. We’d be acting with guilty knowledge. The main thing is to get Angelique right before he spots her. She’ll come round, won’t she? ‘

‘‘Question of temperament — and sex. After all, she’s a lady. Wait and see. Oh, my Uncle Wally! And my dad! How are we to keep our faces straight with ‘em?’

Since each of the Seven Ages of Man is separated from all the others by sound-and-X-ray-proof bulkheads, the parents only noticed that their young were in the spirits natural to their absurd thirty-odd years. Sunday passed, and the Major, too, on his rounds, in peace. They left Angelique in the wash-house Monday forenoon, visibly paling, but as interested and as interesting as ever. (Mrs. Enoch said she was company when one knitted.) On Saturday morning of that same week a wire from Enoch told Jem in town that she had cleared up. He showed it to Kit, who took him to lunch at a certain restaurant, before the drive down. There sat at the next table a globular female, with pendant mauve-washed cheeks, indigo eyelids, lips of orange vermilion, and locks of Titian red. She reminded Kit of Angelique in the height of her bloom, and...Here Jem and Kit together claimed the parentage of the Great Idea.

At any rate, in that hour, between them it was born. They went to a theatrical wigmaker and bought lavishly of grease-paints for Chinese, Red Indian, and Asiatic make-ups, as well as for clowns and corner- men.

They drove down, not a little to the public danger, and made a merry feast before their ancestors that summer evening. Next morning — Sunday at nine o’clock to be precise — Mrs. Enoch told them that her week in the wash-house had so filled Angelique with social aspirations, that ‘after setting with t’owd lady and readin’ t’pa-apers to her, ah hevn’t heart to give her t’ broomhead when she comes back again.’

‘Ask her oop,’ said Jem.

She came gratefully, and they told the Enochs what was in their minds.

‘He’ll say it’s t’Bloody Measles, an’ he’ll turn all his blasted committees on us,’ said Enoch. ‘He’s a tongue on ‘im like a vi-iper, yon barstard.’