Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Tell us why you have been so unbelievably kind to us gipsies,’ Mrs. Godfrey said to him one day on deck.

  He looked up from a diagram of some Thames-mouth shoals which he was explaining to me, and answered with his gentle smile:

  ‘I will. It’s because it makes me happy — it makes me more than happy — to be with you. It makes me comfortable. You know how selfish men are? If a man feels comfortable all over with certain people, he’ll bore them to death, just like a dog. You always make me feel as if pleasant things were going to happen to me.’

  ‘Haven’t any ever happened before?’ Milly asked.

  ‘This is the most pleasant thing that has happened to me in ever so many years,’ he replied. ‘I feel like the man in the Bible, “It’s good for me to be here.” Generally, I don’t feel that it’s good for me to be anywhere in particular.’ Then, as one begging a favour. ‘You’ll let me come home with you — in the same boat, I mean? I’d take you back in this thing of mine, and that would save you packing your trunks, but she’s too lively for spring work across the Bay.’

  We booked our berths, and when the time came, he wafted us and ours aboard the Southampton mail-boat with the pomp of plenipotentiaries and the precision of the Navy. Then he dismissed his yacht, and became an inconspicuous passenger in a cabin opposite to mine, on the port side.

  We ran at once into early British spring weather, followed by sou’west gales. Mrs. Godfrey, Milly, and the nurses disappeared. Attley stood it out, visibly yellowing, till the next meal, and followed suit, and Shend and I had the little table all to ourselves. I found him even more attractive when the women were away. The natural sweetness of the man, his voice, and bearing all fascinated me, and his knowledge of practical seamanship (he held an extra master’s certificate) was a real joy. We sat long in the empty saloon and longer in the smoking-room, making dashes downstairs over slippery decks at the eleventh hour.

  It was on Friday night, just as I was going to bed, that he came into my cabin, after cleaning his teeth, which he did half a dozen times a day.

  ‘I say,’ he began hurriedly, ‘do you mind if I come in here for a little? I’m a bit edgy.’ I must have shown surprise. ‘I’m ever so much better about liquor than I used to be, but — it’s the whisky in the suitcase that throws me. For God’s sake, old man, don’t go back on me to-night! Look at my hands!’

  They were fairly jumping at the wrists. He sat down on a trunk that had slid out with the roll. We had reduced speed, and were surging in confused seas that pounded on the black port-glasses. The night promised to be a pleasant one!

  ‘You understand, of course, don’t you?’ he chattered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said cheerily; ‘but how about — ’

  ‘No, no; on no account the doctor. ‘Tell a doctor, tell the whole ship. Besides, I’ve only got a touch of ‘em. You’d never have guessed it, would you? The tooth-wash does the trick. I’ll give you the prescription.’

  I’ll send a note to the doctor for a prescription, shall I?’ I suggested.

  ‘Right! I put myself unreservedly in your hands. ‘Fact is, I always did. I said to myself — ’sure I don’t bore you? — the minute I saw you, I said, “Thou art the man.”‘ He repeated the phrase as he picked at his knees. ‘All the same, you can take it from me that the ewe-lamb business is a rotten bad one. I don’t care how unfaithful the shepherd may be. Drunk or sober, ‘tisn’t cricket.’

  A surge of the trunk threw him across the cabin as the steward answered my bell. I wrote my requisition to the doctor while Shend was struggling to his feet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he began. ‘Oh, I know. We’re slowing for soundings off Ushant. It’s about time, too. You’d better ship the dead-lights when you come back, Matchem. It’ll save you waking us later. This sea’s going to get up when the tide turns. That’ll show you,’ he said as the man left, ‘that I am to be trusted. You — you’ll stop me if I say anything I shouldn’t, won’t you?’

  ‘Talk away,’ I replied, ‘if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘That’s it; you’ve hit it exactly. You always make me feel better. I can rely on you. It’s awkward soundings but you’ll see me through it. We’ll defeat him yet.... I may be an utterly worthless devil, but I’m not a brawler.... I told him so at breakfast. I said, “Doctor, I detest brawling, but if ever you allow that girl to be insulted again as Clements insulted her, I will break your neck with my own hands.” You think I was right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed.

  ‘Then we needn’t discuss the matter any further. That man was a murderer in intention — outside the law, you understand, as it was then. They’ve changed it since — but he never deceived me. I told him so. I said to him at the time, “I don’t know what price you’re going to put on my head, but if ever you allow Clements to insult her again, you’ll never live to claim it.”‘

  ‘And what did he do?’ I asked, to carry on the conversation, for Matchem entered with the bromide.

  ‘Oh, crumpled up at once. ‘Lead still going, Matchem?’

  ‘I ‘aven’t ‘eard,’ said that faithful servant of the Union-Castle Company.

  ‘Quite right. Never alarm the passengers. Ship the dead-light, will you?’ Matchem shipped it, for we were rolling very heavily. There were tramplings and gull-like cries from on deck. Shend looked at me with a mariner’s eye.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ he said protectingly.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ I said, jumping at the idea. ‘I haven’t an extra master’s certificate. I’m only a passenger. I confess it funks me.’

  Instantly his whole bearing changed to answer the appeal.

  ‘My dear fellow, it’s as simple as houses. We’re hunting for sixty-five fathom water. Anything short of sixty, with a sou’west wind means — but I’ll get my Channel Pilot out of my cabin and give you the general idea. I’m only too grateful to do anything to put your mind at ease.’

  And so, perhaps, for another hour — he declined the drink — Channel Pilot in hand, he navigated us round Ushant, and at my request up-channel to Southampton, light by light, with explanations and reminiscences. I professed myself soothed at last, and suggested bed.

  ‘In a second,’ said he. ‘Now, you wouldn’t think, would you’ — he glanced off the book toward my wildly swaying dressing-gown on the door — ’that I’ve been seeing things for the last half-hour? ‘Fact is, I’m just on the edge of ‘em, skating on thin ice round the corner — nor’east as near as nothing — where that dog’s looking at me.’

  ‘What’s the dog like?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, that is comforting of you! Most men walk through ‘em to show me they aren’t real. As if I didn’t know! But you’re different. Anybody could see that with half an eye.’ He stiffened and pointed. ‘Damn it all! The dog sees it too with half an — Why, he knows you! Knows you perfectly. D’you know him?’

  ‘How can I tell if he isn’t real?’ I insisted.

  ‘But you can! You’re all right. I saw that from the first. Don’t go back on me now or I shall go to pieces like the Drummond Castle. I beg your pardon, old man; but, you see, you do know the dog. I’ll prove it. What’s that dog doing? Come on! You know.’ A tremor shook him, and he put his hand on my knee, and whispered with great meaning: ‘I’ll letter or halve it with you. There! You begin.’

  ‘S,’ said I to humour him, for a dog would most likely be standing or sitting, or may be scratching or sniffling or staring.

  ‘Q,’ he went on, and I could feel the heat of his shaking hand.

  ‘U,’ said I. There was no other letter possible; but I was shaking too.

  ‘I.’

  ‘N.’

  ‘T-i-n-g,’ he ran out. ‘There! That proves it. I knew you knew him. You don’t know what a relief that is. Between ourselves, old man, he — he’s been turning up lately a — a damn sight more often than I cared for. And a squinting dog — a dog that squints! I mean that’s a bit too much. Eh? What?’ He gulped and ha
lf rose, and I thought that the full tide of delirium would be on him in another sentence.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ I said as a last chance, with my hand over the bellpush. ‘Why, you’ve just proved that I know him; so there are two of us in the game, anyhow.’

  ‘By Jove! that is an idea! Of course there are. I knew you’d see me through. We’ll defeat them yet. Hi, pup!... He’s gone. Absolutely disappeared!’ He sighed with relief, and I caught the lucky moment.

  ‘Good business! I expect he only came to have a look at me,’ I said. ‘Now, get this drink down and turn in to the lower bunk.’

  He obeyed, protesting that he could not inconvenience me, and in the midst of apologies sank into a dead sleep. I expected a wakeful night, having a certain amount to think over; but no sooner had I scrambled into the top bunk than sleep came on me like a wave from the other side of the world.

  In the morning there were apologies, which we got over at breakfast before our party were about.

  ‘I suppose — after this — well, I don’t blame you. I’m rather a lonely chap, though.’ His eyes lifted dog-like across the table.

  ‘Shend,’ I replied, ‘I’m not running a Sunday school. You’re coming home with me in my car as soon as we land.’

  ‘That is kind of you — kinder than you think.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a little jumpy still. Now, I don’t want to mix up in your private affairs — ’

  ‘But I’d like you to,’ he interrupted.

  ‘Then, would you mind telling me the Christian name of a girl who was insulted by a man called Clements?’

  ‘Moira,’ he whispered; and just then Mrs. Godfrey and Milly came to table with their shore-going hats on.

  We did not tie up till noon, but the faithful Leggatt had intrigued his way down to the dock-edge, and beside him sat Malachi, wearing his collar of gold, or Leggatt makes it look so, as eloquent as Demosthenes. Shend flinched a little when he saw him. We packed Mrs. Godfrey and Milly into Attley’s car — they were going with him to Mittleham, of course — and drew clear across the railway lines to find England all lit and perfumed for spring. Shend sighed with happiness.

  ‘D’you know,’ he said, ‘if — if you’d chucked me — I should have gone down to my cabin after breakfast and cut my throat. And now — it’s like a dream — a good dream, you know.’

  We lunched with the other three at Romsey. Then I sat in front for a little while to talk to my Malachi. When I looked back, Shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while Leggatt chased Attley’s fat Daimler along the green-speckled hedges. He woke up when we said good-bye at Mittleham, with promises to meet again very soon.

  ‘And I hope,’ said Mrs. Godfrey, ‘that everything pleasant will happen to you.’

  ‘Heaps and heaps — all at once,’ cried long, weak Milly, waving her wet handkerchief.

  ‘I’ve just got to look in at a house near here for a minute to inquire about a dog,’ I said, ‘and then we will go home.’

  ‘I used to know this part of the world,’ he replied, and said no more till Leggatt shot past the lodge at the Sichliffes’s gate. Then I heard him gasp.

  Miss Sichliffe, in a green waterproof, an orange jersey, and a pinkish leather hat, was working on a bulb-border. She straightened herself as the car stopped, and breathed hard. Shend got out and walked towards her. They shook hands, turned round together, and went into the house. Then the dog Harvey pranced out corkily from under the lee of a bench. Malachi, with one joyous swoop, fell on him as an enemy and an equal. Harvey, for his part, freed from all burden whatsoever except the obvious duty of a man-dog on his own ground, met Malachi without reserve or remorse, and with six months’ additional growth to come and go on.

  ‘Don’t check ‘em!’ cried Leggatt, dancing round the flurry. ‘They’ve both been saving up for each other all this time. It’ll do ‘em worlds of good.’

  ‘Leggatt,’ I said, ‘will you take Mr. Shend’s bag and suitcase up to the house and put them down just inside the door? Then we will go on.’

  So I enjoyed the finish alone. It was a dead heat, and they licked each other’s jaws in amity till Harvey, one imploring eye on me, leaped into the front seat, and Malachi backed his appeal. It was theft, but I took him, and we talked all the way home of r-rats and r-rabbits and bones and baths and the other basic facts of life. That evening after dinner they slept before the fire, with their warm chins across the hollows of my ankles — to each chin an ankle — till I kicked them upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  I was not at Mittleham when she came over to announce her engagement, but I heard of it when Mrs. Godfrey and Attley came, forty miles an hour, over to me, and Mrs. Godfrey called me names of the worst for suppression of information.

  ‘As long as it wasn’t me, I don’t care,’ said Attley.

  ‘I believe you knew it all along,’ Mrs. Godfrey repeated. ‘Else what made you drive that man literally into her arms?’

  ‘To ask after the dog Harvey,’ I replied.

  ‘Then, what’s the beast doing here?’ Attley demanded, for Malachi and the dog Harvey were deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who was being out-argued.

  ‘Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself de trop where he was,’ I said. ‘And she hasn’t sent after him. You’d better save Bettina before they kill her.’

  ‘There’s been enough lying about that dog,’ said Mrs. Godfrey to me. ‘If he wasn’t born in lies, he was baptized in ‘em. D’you know why she called him Harvey? It only occurred to me in those dreadful days when I was ill, and one can’t keep from thinking, and thinks everything. D’you know your Boswell? What did Johnson say about Hervey — with an e?’

  ‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ I cried incautiously. ‘That was why I ought to have verified my quotations. The spelling defeated me. Wait a moment, and it will come back. Johnson said: “He was a vicious man,”‘ I began.

  ‘“But very kind to me,”‘ Mrs. Godfrey prompted. Then, both together, ‘“If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him.”‘

  ‘So you were mixed up in it. At any rate, you had your suspicions from the first? Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Ella,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything rational or reasonable about any of it. It was all — all woman-work, and it scared me horribly.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  That was six years ago. I have written this tale to let her know — wherever she may be.

  * * *

  THE COMFORTERS

  Until thy feet have trod the Road

  Advise not wayside folk,

  Nor till thy back has borne the Load

  Break in upon the Broke.

  Chase not with undesired largesse

  Of sympathy the heart

  Which, knowing her own bitterness,

  Presumes to dwell apart.

  Employ not that glad hand to raise

  The God-forgotten head

  To Heaven, and all the neighbours’ gaze —

  Cover thy mouth instead.

  The quivering chin, the bitten lip,

  The cold and sweating brow,

  Later may yearn for fellowship —

  Not now, you ass, not now!

  Time, not thy ne’er so timely speech,

  Life, not thy views thereon,

  Shall furnish or deny to each

  His consolation.

  Or, if impelled to interfere,

  Exhort, uplift, advise,

  Lend not a base, betraying ear

  To all the victim’s cries.

  Only the Lord can understand

  When those first pangs begin,

  How much is reflex action and

  How much is really sin.

  E’en from good words thyself refrain,

  And tremblingly admit

  There is no anodyne for pain

  Except the shock of it.

  So, when thine own dark hour shall fall,

  Unchallenged canst thou say:

&
nbsp; ‘I never worried you at all,

  For God’s sake go away!’

  * * *

  The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat

  (1913)

  Our drive till then had been quite a success. The other men in the car were my friend Woodhouse, young Ollyett, a distant connection of his, and Pallant, the M.P. Woodhouse’s business was the treatment and cure of sick journals. He knew by instinct the precise moment in a newspaper’s life when the impetus of past good management is exhausted and it fetches up on the dead-centre between slow and expensive collapse and the new start which can be given by gold injections — and genius. He was wisely ignorant of journalism; but when he stooped on a carcase there was sure to be meat. He had that week added a half-dead, halfpenny evening paper to his collection, which consisted of a prosperous London daily, one provincial ditto, and a limp-bodied weekly of commercial leanings. He had also, that very hour, planted me with a large block of the evening paper’s common shares, and was explaining the whole art of editorship to Ollyett, a young man three years from Oxford, with coir-matting-coloured hair and a face harshly modelled by harsh experiences, who, I understood, was assisting in the new venture. Pallant, the long, wrinkled M.P., whose voice is more like a crane’s than a peacock’s, took no shares, but gave us all advice.

  ‘You’ll find it rather a knacker’s yard,’ Woodhouse was saying. ‘Yes, I know they call me The Knacker; but it will pay inside a year. All my papers do. I’ve only one motto: Back your luck and back your staff. It’ll come out all right.’

  Then the car stopped, and a policeman asked our names and addresses for exceeding the speed-limit. We pointed out that the road ran absolutely straight for half a mile ahead without even a side-lane. ‘That’s just what we depend on,’ said the policeman unpleasantly.