Mr. Wontner looked at them severely, Ipps within easy reach, his hands quite ready. ‘Childish,’ said Mr. Wontner at last. ‘Childish but necessary. Er — have you such a thing as a rope on the premises, and a sack — two sacks and two ropes? I’m afraid I can’t resist the temptation. That man understands, doesn’t he, that this is a private matter?’
‘That man,’ who was me, was off to the basement like one of Infant’s own fallow-deer. The stables gave me what I wanted, and coming back with it through a dark passage, I ran squarely into Ipps. ‘Go on!’ he grunted. ‘The minute he lays hands on Master Bobby, Master Bobby’s saved. But that person ought to be told how near he came to being assaulted. It was touch-and-go with me all the time from the soup down, I assure you.’
I arrived breathless with the sacks and the ropes. ‘They were two to one with me,’ said Mr. Wontner, as he took them. ‘If they wake — ’
‘We’ll stand by,’ Stalky replied. ‘Two to one is quite fair.’
But the boys hardly grunted as Mr. Wontner roped first one and then the other. Even when they were slid into the sacks they only mumbled, with rolling heads, through sticky lips, and snored on.
‘Port?’ said Mr. Wontner virtuously.
‘Nervous exhaustion. They aren’t much more than kids, after all. What’s next?’ said Stalky.
‘I want to take ‘em away with me, please.’
Stalky looked at him with respect.
‘I’ll have my car round in five minutes,’ said The Infant. ‘Ipps’ll help carry ‘em downstairs,’ and he shook Mr. Wontner by the hand.
We were all perfectly serious till the two bundles were dumped on a divan in the hall, and the boys waked and began to realise what had happened.
‘Yah!’ said Mr. Wontner, with the simplicity of twelve years old. ‘Who’s scored now?’ And he sat upon them. The tension broke in a storm of laughter, led, I think, by Ipps.
‘Asinine — absolutely asinine!’ said Mr. Wontner, with folded arms from his lively chair. But he drank in the flattery and the fellowship of it all with quite a brainless grin, as we rolled and stamped round him, and wiped the tears from our cheeks.
‘Hang it!’ said Bobby Trivett. ‘We’re defeated!’
‘By tactics, too,’ said Eames. ‘I didn’t think you knew ‘em, Clausewitz. It’s a fair score. What are you going to do with us?’
‘Take you back to Mess,’ said Mr. Wontner.
‘Not like this?’
‘Oh no. Worse — much worse! I haven’t begun with you yet. And you thought you’d scored! Yah!’
They had scored beyond their wildest dream. The man in whose hands it lay to shame them, their Colonel, their Adjutant, their Regiment, and their Service, had cast away all shadow of his legal rights for the sake of a common or bear-garden rag — such a rag as if it came to the ears of the authorities, would cost him his commission. They were saved, and their saviour was their equal and their brother. So they chaffed and reviled him as such till he again squashed the breath out of them, and we others laughed louder than they.
‘Fall in!’ said Stalky when the limousine came round. ‘This is the score of the century. I wouldn’t miss it for a brigade! We shan’t be long, Infant!’
I hurried into a coat.
‘Is there any necessity for that reporter-chap to come too?’ said Mr. Wontner in an unguarded whisper. ‘He isn’t dressed for one thing.’
Bobby and Eames wriggled round to look at the reporter, began a joyous bellow, and suddenly stopped.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Wontner with suspicion.
‘Nothing,’ said Bobby. ‘I die happy, Clausewitz. Take me up tenderly.’
We packed into the car, bearing our sheaves with us, and for half an hour, as the cool night-air fanned his thoughtful brow, Mr. Wontner was quite abreast of himself. Though he said nothing unworthy, he triumphed and trumpeted a little loudly over the sacks. I sat between them on the back seat, and applauded him servilely till he reminded me that what I had seen and what he had said was not for publication. I hinted, while the boys plunged with joy inside their trappings, that this might be a matter for arrangement. ‘Then a sovereign shan’t part us,’ said Mr. Wontner cheerily, and both boys fell into lively hysterics. ‘I don’t see where the joke comes in for you,’ said Mr. Wontner. ‘I thought it was my little jokelet to-night.’
‘No, Clausewitz,’ gasped Bobby. ‘Some is, but not all. I’ll be good now. I’ll give you my parole till we get to Mess. I wouldn’t be out of this for a fiver.’
‘Nor me,’ said Eames, and he gave his parole to attempt no escape or evasion.
‘Now, I suppose,’ said Mr. Wontner largely to Stalky, as we neared the suburbs of Ash, ‘you have a good deal of practical joking on the Stock Exchange, haven’t you?’
‘And when were you on the Stock Exchange, Uncle Leonard?’ piped Bobby, while Eames laid his sobbing head on my shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Stalky, ‘but the fact is, I command a regiment myself when I’m at home. Your Colonel knows me, I think.’ He gave his name. Mr. Wontner seemed to have heard of it. We had to pick Eames off the floor, where he had cast himself from excess of delight.
‘Oh, Heavens!’ said Mr. Wontner after a long pause. ‘What have I done? What haven’t I done?’ We felt the temperature in the car rise as he blushed.
‘You didn’t talk tactics, Clausewitz?’ said Bobby. ‘Oh, say it wasn’t tactics, darling!’
‘It was,’ said Wontner.
Eames was all among our feet again, crying, ‘If you don’t let me get my arms up, I’ll be sick. Let’s hear what you said. Tell us.’
But Mr. Wontner turned to Stalky. ‘It’s no good my begging your pardon, sir, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Don’t you notice ‘em,’ said Stalky. ‘It was a fair rag all round, and anyhow, you two youngsters haven’t any right to talk tactics. You’ve been rolled up, horse, foot, and guns.’
‘I’ll make a treaty. If you’ll let us go and change presently,’ said Bobby, ‘I’ll promise we won’t tell about you, Clausewitz. You talked tactics to Uncle Len? Old Dhurrah-bags will like that. He don’t love you, Claus.’
‘If I’ve made one ass of myself, I shall take extra care to make asses of you!’ said Wontner. ‘I want to stop, please, at the next milliner’s shop on the right. It ought to be close here.’
He evidently knew the country even in the dark, for the car stopped at a brilliantly-lighted millinery establishment, where — it was Saturday evening — a young lady was clearing up the counter. I followed him, as a good reporter should.
‘Have you got — ’ he began. ‘Ah, those’ll do!’ He pointed to two hairy plush beehive bonnets, one magenta, the other a conscientious electric blue. ‘How much, please? I’ll take them both, and that bunch of peacock feathers, and that red feather thing.’ It was a brilliant crimson-dyed pigeon’s wing.
‘Now I want some yards of muslin with a nice, fierce pattern, please.’ He got it — yellow with black tulips — and returned heavily laden.
‘Sorry to have kept you,’ said he. ‘Now we’ll go to my quarters to change and beautify.’
We came to them — opposite a dun waste of parade-ground that might have been Mian Mir — and bugles as they blew and drums as they rolled set heart-strings echoing.
We hoisted the boys out and arranged them on chairs, while Wontner changed into uniform, but stopped when he saw me taking off my jacket.
‘What on earth’s that for?’ said he.
‘Because you’ve been wearing my evening things,’ I said. ‘I want to get into ‘em again, if you don’t mind.’
‘Then you aren’t a reporter?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but that shan’t part us.’
‘Oh, hurry!’ cried Eames in desperate convulsions. ‘We can’t stand this much longer. ‘Tisn’t fair on the young.’
‘I’ll attend to you in good time,’ said Wontner; and when he had made careful toilet, he unwrapped the bonnets, put t
he peacock’s feather into the magenta one, pinned the crimson wing on the blue one, set them daintily on the boys’ heads, and bade them admire the effect in his shaving-glass while he ripped the muslin into lengths, bound it first, and draped it artistically afterwards a little below their knees. He finished off with a gigantic sash-bow, obi fashion. ‘Hobble skirts,’ he explained to Stalky, who nodded approval.
Next he split open the bottom of each sack so that they could walk, but with very short steps. ‘I ought to have got you white satin slippers,’ he murmured, ‘and I’m sorry there’s no rouge.’
‘Don’t worry on our account, old man — you’re doing us proud,’ said Bobby from under his hat. ‘This beats milk-punch and mayonnaise.’
‘Oh, why didn’t we think of these things when we had him at our mercy?’ Eames wailed. ‘Never mind — we’ll try it on the next chap. You’ve a mind, Claus.’
‘Now we’ll call on ‘em at Mess,’ said Wontner, as they minced towards the door.
‘I think I’ll call on your Colonel,’ said Stalky. ‘He oughtn’t to miss this. Your first attempt? I assure you I couldn’t have done it better myself. Thank you!’ He held out his hand.
‘Thank you, sir!’ said Wontner, shaking it. ‘I’m more grateful to you than I can say, and — and I’d like you to believe some time that I’m not quite as big a — ’
‘Not in the least,’ Stalky interrupted. ‘If I were writing a confidential report on you, I should put you down as rather adequate. Look after your geishas, or they’ll fall!’
We watched the three cross the road and disappear into the shadow of the Mess verandah. There was a noise. Then telephone bells rang, a sergeant and a Mess waiter charged out, and the noise grew, till at last the Mess was a little noisy.
We came back, ten minutes later, with Colonel Dalziell, who had been taking his sorrows to bed with him. The ante-room was quite full and visitors were still arriving, but it was possible to hear oneself speak occasionally. Trivett and Eames, in sack and sash, sat side by side on a table, their hats at a ravishing angle, coquettishly twiddling their tied feet. In the intervals of singing ‘Put Me Among the Girls,’ they sipped whisky-and-soda held to their lips by, I regret to say, a Major. Public opinion seemed to be against allowing them to change their costume till they should have danced in it. Wontner, lying more or less gracefully at the level of the chandelier in the arms of six subalterns, was lecturing on tactics and imploring to be let down, which he was with a run when they realised that the Colonel was there. Then he picked himself up from the sofa and said: ‘I want to apologise, sir, to you and the Mess for having been such an ass ever since I joined!’
This was when the noise began.
Seeing the night promised to be wet, Stalky and I went home again in The Infant’s car. It was some time since we had tasted the hot air that lies between the cornice and the ceiling of crowded rooms.
After half an hour’s silence, Stalky said to me: ‘I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but I believe I’ve been weepin’. Would you put that down to Burgundy or senile decay?’
* * *
THE CHILDREN
These were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight.
We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter.
The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another’s hereafter.
Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it. That is our right. But who shall return us the children?
At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,
And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us,
The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us —
Their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences.
They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,
Those hours which we had not made good when the Judgment o’ercame us.
They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning.
Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour.
Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.
Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption:
Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.
That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven —
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires —
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes — to be cindered by fires —
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us our children?
* * *
The Dog Hervey
(April 1914)
My friend Attley, who would give away his own head if you told him you had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of Bettina’s pups, and half-a-dozen women were in raptures at the show on Mittleham lawn.
We picked by lot. Mrs. Godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter, second. I was third, but waived my right because I was already owned by Malachi, Bettina’s full brother, whom I had brought over in the car to visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if I had taken home one. Milly, Mrs. Godfrey’s younger daughter, pounced on my rejection with squeals of delight, and Attley turned to a dark, sallow-skinned, slack-mouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and invited her to pick. She put on a pince-nez that made her look like a camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee, breathed hard, and considered the last couple.
‘I think I’d like that sandy-pied one,’ she said.
‘Oh, not him, Miss Sichliffe!’ Attley cried. ‘He was overlaid or had sunstroke or something. They call him The Looney in the kennels. Besides, he squints.’
‘I think that’s rather fetching,’ she answered. Neither Malachi nor I had ever seen a squinting dog before.
‘That’s chorea — St. Vitus’s dance,’ Mrs. Godfrey put in. ‘He ought to have been drowned.’
‘But I like his cast of countenance,’ the girl persisted.
‘He doesn’t look a good life,’ I said, ‘but perhaps he can be patched up.’ Miss Sichliffe turned crimson; I saw Mrs. Godfrey exchange a glance with her married daughter, and knew I had said something which would have to be lived down.
‘Yes,’ Miss Sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, ‘he isn’t a good life, but perhaps I can — patch him up. Come here, sir.’ The misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick’s hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to separate them, and Mrs. Godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it out in silence.
‘D’you know what that girl’s father was?’ Mrs. Godfrey asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I loathe her for her own sake. She breathes through her mouth.’
‘He was a retired doctor,’ she explained. ‘He used to pick up stormy young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till they were sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again — with an appetite. Of course, no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.’
‘Strictly legitimate — highly respectable,’ I said. ‘But what a life for the daughter!’
‘Mustn’t it have been! Now d’you realise what you said just now?’
‘Perfectly; and now you’ve made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?’
‘What shall you call yours?’ I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.
‘Harvey,’ she replied — ’Harvey’s Sauce, you know. He’s going to be quite saucy when I’ve’ — she saw Mrs. Godfrey and me coming through the French window — ’when he’s stronger.’
Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I thought of the name.
‘Oh, splendid,’ I said at random. ‘H with an A, A with an R, R with a — ’
‘But that’s Little Bingo,’ some one said, and they all laughed.
Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, ‘You ought always to verify your quotations.’
It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word ‘quotation’ set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory’s reach as a cat sits just beyond a dog’s jump. When I was going home, Miss Sichliffe came up to me in the twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her tennis-racket.
‘‘Sorry,’ she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice. ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you about verifying quotations. I didn’t know you well enough and — anyhow, I oughtn’t to have.’
‘But you were quite right about Little Bingo,’ I answered. ‘The spelling ought to have reminded me.’
‘Yes, of course. It’s the spelling,’ she said, and slouched off with the pup sliding after her. Once again my brain began to worry after something that would have meant something if it had been properly spelled. I confided my trouble to Malachi on the way home, but Bettina had bitten him in four places, and he was busy.
Weeks later, Attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped Malachi let me know that Bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur. He greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and I greeted Mrs. Godfrey, Attley, and a big basket.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 483