And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.
His dead are in the churchyard — thirty generations laid.
Their names went down in Domesday Book when Domesday Book was made.
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.
Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher — ’tain’t for me to interfere.
‘Hob, what about that River-bit?’ I turn to him again
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
‘Hev it jest as you’ve a mind to, but’ — and so he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus’ Hobden owns the land.
* * *
In the Same Boat
(1911)
‘A throbbing vein,’ said Dr. Gilbert soothingly, ‘is the mother of delusion.’
‘Then how do you account for my knowing when the thing is due?’ Conroy’s voice rose almost to a break.
‘Of course, but you should have consulted a doctor before using — palliatives.’
‘It was driving me mad. And now I can’t give them up.’
‘‘Not so bad as that! One doesn’t form fatal habits at twenty-five. Think again. Were you ever frightened as a child?’
‘I don’t remember. It began when I was a boy.’
‘With or without the spasm? By the way, do you mind describing the spasm again?’
‘Well,’ said Conroy, twisting in the chair, ‘I’m no musician, but suppose you were a violin-string — vibrating — and some one put his finger on you? As if a finger were put on the naked soul! Awful!’
‘So’s indigestion — so’s nightmare — while it lasts.’
‘But the horror afterwards knocks me out for days. And the waiting for it ... and then this drug habit! It can’t go on!’ He shook as he spoke, and the chair creaked.
‘My dear fellow,’ said the doctor, ‘when you’re older you’ll know what burdens the best of us carry. A fox to every Spartan.’
‘That doesn’t help me. I can’t! I can’t!’ cried Conroy, and burst into tears.
‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gilbert, when the paroxysm ended. ‘I’m used to people coming a little — unstuck in this room.’
‘It’s those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out. I used to be fit once. Oh, I’ve tried exercise and everything. But — if one sits down for a minute when it’s due — even at four in the morning — it runs up behind one.’
‘Ye-es. Many things come in the quiet of the morning. You always know when the visitation is due?’
‘What would I give not to be sure!’ he sobbed.
‘We’ll put that aside for the moment. I’m thinking of a case where what we’ll call anæmia of the brain was masked (I don’t say cured) by vibration. He couldn’t sleep, or thought he couldn’t, but a steamer voyage and the thump of the screw — ’
‘A steamer? After what I’ve told you!’ Conroy almost shrieked. ‘I’d sooner ...’
‘Of course not a steamer in your case, but a long railway journey the next time you think it will trouble you. It sounds absurd, but — ’
‘I’d try anything. I nearly have,’ Conroy sighed.
‘Nonsense! I’ve given you a tonic that will clear that notion from your head. Give the train a chance, and don’t begin the journey by bucking yourself up with tabloids. Take them along, but hold them in reserve — in reserve.’
‘D’you think I’ve self-control enough, after what you’ve heard?’ said Conroy.
Dr. Gilbert smiled. ‘Yes. After what I’ve seen,’ he glanced round the room, ‘I have no hesitation in saying you have quite as much self-control as many other people. I’ll write you later about your journey. Meantime, the tonic,’ and he gave some general directions before Conroy left.
An hour later Dr. Gilbert hurried to the links, where the others of his regular week-end game awaited him. It was a rigid round, played as usual at the trot, for the tension of the week lay as heavy on the two King’s Counsels and Sir John Chartres as on Gilbert. The lawyers were old enemies of the Admiralty Court, and Sir John of the frosty eyebrows and Abernethy manner was bracketed with, but before, Rutherford Gilbert among nerve-specialists.
At the Club-house afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally compared professional matters.
‘Lies — all lies,’ said Sir John, when Gilbert had told him Conroy’s trouble. ‘Post hoc, propter hoc. The man or woman who drugs is ipso facto a liar. You’ve no imagination.’
‘‘Pity you haven’t a little — occasionally.’
‘I have believed a certain type of patient in my time. It’s always the same. For reasons not given in the consulting-room they take to the drug. Certain symptoms follow. They will swear to you, and believe it, that they took the drug to mask the symptoms. What does your man use? Najdolene? I thought so. I had practically the duplicate of your case last Thursday. Same old Najdolene — same old lie.’
‘Tell me the symptoms, and I’ll draw my own inferences, Johnnie.’
‘Symptoms! The girl was rank poisoned with Najdolene. Ramping, stamping possession. Gad, I thought she’d have the chandelier down.’
‘Mine came unstuck too, and he has the physique of a bull,’ said Gilbert. ‘What delusions had yours?’
‘Faces — faces with mildew on them. In any other walk of life we’d call it the Horrors. She told me, of course, she took the drugs to mask the faces. Post hoc, propter hoc again. All liars!’
‘What’s that?’ said the senior K.C. quickly. ‘Sounds professional.’
‘Go away! Not for you, Sandy.’ Sir John turned a shoulder against him and walked with Gilbert in the chill evening.
To Conroy in his chambers came, one week later, this letter:
DEAR MR. CONROY — If your plan of a night’s trip on the 17th still holds good, and you have no particular destination in view, you could do me a kindness. A Miss Henschil, in whom I am interested, goes down to the West by the 10.8 from Waterloo (Number 3 platform) on that night. She is not exactly an invalid, but, like so many of us, a little shaken in her nerves. Her maid, of course, accompanies her, but if I knew you were in the same train it would be an additional source of strength. Will you please write and let me know whether the 10.8 from Waterloo, Number 3 platform, on the 17th, suits you, and I will meet you there? Don’t forget my caution, and keep up the tonic. — Yours sincerely,
L. RUTHERFORD GILBERT.
‘He knows I’m scarcely fit to look after myself,’ was Conroy’s thought. ‘And he wants me to look after a woman!’
Yet, at the end of half an hour’s irresolution, he accepted.
Now Conroy’s trouble, which had lasted for years, was this:
On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time — in due time — would bring it forth.
Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These guarantee, on the label, ‘Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.’ They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.
>
Three years of M. Najdol’s preparations do not fit a man for many careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.
When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr. Gilbert had but given him more drugs — a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway carnages — and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e’en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger ‘a little shaken in her nerves.’
He spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. At such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening Dr. Gilbert’s tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors.
Waterloo Station shook him into real life. The change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. The old 10.8 from Waterloo to the West was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station.
Dr. Gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor-coach; an older and stouter man behind him. ‘So glad you’re here!’ he cried. ‘Let me get your ticket.’
‘Certainly not,’ Conroy answered. ‘I got it myself — long ago. My bag’s in too,’ he added proudly.
‘I beg your pardon. Miss Henschil’s here. I’ll introduce you.’
‘But — but,’ he stammered — ’think of the state I’m in. If anything happens I shall collapse.’
‘Not you. You’d rise to the occasion like a bird. And as for the self-control you were talking of the other day’ — Gilbert swung him round — ’look!’
A young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly.
‘Oh, but that’s only drink,’ Conroy said. ‘I haven’t had one of my — my things since lunch.’
‘Excellent!’ said Gilbert. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Come along. Wait for a minute, Chartres.’
A tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. She bowed her head as the doctor murmured Conroy knew not what. Then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets.
‘My maid — next compartment,’ she said slowly.
Conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver Najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. He snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat.
‘How nice!’ said the woman. She leisurely lifted her veil, unbottoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a Najdolene-case.
‘Don’t!’ said Conroy, not realising he had spoken.
‘I beg your pardon.’ The deep voice was measured, even, and low. Conroy knew what made it so.
‘I said “don’t”! He wouldn’t like you to do it!’
‘No, he would not.’ She held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. ‘But aren’t you one of the — ah — ”soul-weary” too?’
‘That’s why. Oh, please don’t! Not at first. I — I haven’t had one since morning. You — you’ll set me off!’
‘You? Are you so far gone as that?’
He nodded, pressing his palms together. The train jolted through Vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the West.
After long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked Conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book.
Conroy shook his head. ‘No. Our sort can’t read. Don’t!’
‘Were you sent to watch me?’ The voice never changed.
‘Me? I need a keeper myself much more — this night of all!’
‘This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved me when I told them of mine.’ She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. ‘Aren’t doctors stu-upid? They don’t know.’
She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her — till his eyes were blurred with tears.
‘Have I been there, think you?’ she said.
‘Surely — surely,’ Conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the fine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth.
‘Then — suppose we have one — just one apiece? I’ve gone without since this afternoon.’
He put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke.
‘Don’t! Can’t you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? Don’t let’s both go down together.’
‘But I want one. It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Just one. It’s my night.’
‘It’s mine — too. My sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.’ He shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along.
‘Ah, it’s only my thirty-ninth.’ She paused as he had done. ‘I wonder if I shall last into the sixties.... Talk to me or I shall go crazy. You’re a man. You’re the stronger vessel. Tell me when you went to pieces.’
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven — eight — I beg your pardon.’
‘Not in the least. I always pretend I’ve dropped a stitch of my knitting. I count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. Do you?’
‘I don’t think I’ve done very much else for the last — ’ said Conroy, shivering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised.
‘Oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! It’s not always the same date, is it?’
‘What difference would that make?’ He unbuttoned his ulster with a jerk. ‘You’re a sane woman. Can’t you see the wicked — wicked — wicked’ (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) unfairness of it? What have I done?’
She laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly.
‘If you begin to think over that,’ she said, ‘you’ll go to pieces and be ashamed. Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. Only be quiet — be quiet, lad, or you’ll set me off!’ She made shift to soothe him, though her chin trembled.
‘Well,’ said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, ‘mine’s nothing much, of course.’
‘Don’t be a fool! That’s for doctors — and mothers.’
‘It’s Hell,’ Conroy muttered. ‘It begins on a steamer — on a stifling hot night. I come out of my cabin. I pass through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.’
‘I’ve travelled too,’ she said.
‘Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher’s meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.’
Again she nodded.
‘It’s a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea’s lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea — perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines — dull grey. All this time I know something’s going to happen.’
‘I know. Something going to happen,’ she whispered.
‘Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down — like fire-irons — and then two most awful yells. They’re more like hoots, and I know — I know while I listen — that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them — in most awful pain. Do you understand?’
‘I ought to. Go on.’
‘That’s
the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, “My friend! All is lost!” Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.’ He panted and wiped his forehead.
‘So that is your night?’ she said.
‘That is my night. It comes every few weeks — so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.’
‘Get sentence? D’you mean this?’ She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. ‘“Notice” I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.’
She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes.
‘Listen now!’ said she. ‘I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.’
‘Just men? Do they speak?’
‘They try to. Their faces are all mildewy — eaten away,’ and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. ‘It’s the Faces — the Faces!’
‘Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.’
‘Ah! But the place itself — the bareness — and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run.... I know what’s coming too. One of them touches me.’
‘Yes! What comes then? We’ve both shirked that.’
‘One awful shock — not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!’
‘As though your soul were being stopped — as you’d stop a finger-bowl humming?’ he said.
‘Just that,’ she answered. ‘One’s very soul — the soul that one lives by — stopped. So!’
She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. ‘And now,’ she whined to him, ‘now that we’ve stirred each other up this way, mightn’t we have just one?’
‘No,’ said Conroy, shaking. ‘Let’s hold on. We’re past’ — he peered out of the black windows — ’Woking. There’s the Necropolis. How long till dawn?’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 479