Frost’s face worked, but his voice was the petty-officer’s with the defaulter.
‘No such names between us, Mrs. Berners, till this is settled.’
He crumpled his wet eyes, as though judging an immense range. Then observed deliberately
‘‘Ask me — I’d say you’re a common thief.’
She stared at him for as long as a shell might take to travel to an horizon. Then came the explosion of natural human wrath — she would not stoop to denial, she said — till, choking on words of abuse, she hit him weakly over the mouth, and dropped between his feet.
‘She’s come back!’ said Frost, his face transfigured. ‘What next?’
‘My room. Tell Cook to put her to bed. Fill every hot-water bottle we’ve got, and warm the blankets. I’ll telephone the Home. Then we’ll risk the injections.’
Frost slung her, limp as a towel, over his shoulder, and, turning, asked: ‘This — all these symptoms don’t need to be logged, sir — do they? We — we know something like ‘em?’
Loftie nodded assent.
She came up shuddering out of the seven days’ chill of the cheated grave, and Vaughan’s nurses told her what a dreadful thing was this ‘suppressed influenza’ which had knocked her out, but that she might report for duty in a few weeks. Ackerman, who loved Vaughan more than the others put together, testified on their next film-night that Taffy was almost worthy to be called a medical man for his handling of the case.
‘Tacks,’ said Vaughan kindly, ‘you are as big a dam’ fool about my job as I was about Frost. I injected what the Lofter gave me, at the times that Harries told me. The rest was old wives’ practice.’
‘She always looked like a wet hen,’ said Harries. ‘Now she goes about like a smiling sheep. I wish I’d seen her crises. Did you or Frost time ‘em, Lofter?’
‘It wasn’t worth it,’ was the light answer. ‘Just hysteria. But she’s covered her full year now. D’you suppose we’ve held her?’
‘I should say yes. I don’t know how you feel, but’ — Vaughan beamed — ‘the more I see of her scar, the more pleased I am. Ah! That was a lovely bit of work, even if I am only a carpenter, Tacks!’
‘But, speaking with some relation to ordinary life, what does all this lunacy of ours prove?’ Ackerman demanded.
‘Not a dam’ thing, except that it may give us some data and inferences which may serve as some sort of basis for some detail of someone else’s work in the future,’ Harries pronounced. ‘The main point, as I read it, is that it makes one — not so much think — Research is gummed up with thinking — as imagine a bit.’
‘That’ll be possible, too — by the time Frost and I have finished with this film,’ said Loftie.
It included a sequence of cultures, from mice who had overcome their suicidal fits, attenuated through a human being who, very obligingly, in the intervals of running the camera, described the effects of certain injections on his own rugged system. The earlier ones, he admitted, had ‘fair slung him round the deck.’
‘It was chuck it and chance it,’ Loftie apologised. ‘You see, we couldn’t tell, all this summer, when Mrs. Berners might play up for the grave. So I rather rushed the injections through Frost. I haven’t worked out my notes yet. You’ll get ‘em later.’
He stayed to help Frost put back some of the more delicate gear, while the others went to change.
‘Not to talk about that lady of ours,’ Frost said presently. ‘My first — though, of course, her mother never warned me — drank a bit. She disgraced me all round Fratton pretty much the whole of one commission. And she died in Lock ‘Ospital. So, I’ve had my knock.’
‘Some of us seem to catch it. I’ve had mine, too,’ Loftie answered.
‘I never heard that. But’ — the voice changed — ’I knew it — surer than if I’d been told.’
‘Yes. God help us!’ said Loftie, and shook his hand. Frost, not letting go of it, continued ‘One thing more, sir. I didn’t properly take it in at the time — not being then concerned — but — that first operation on that lady of mine, was it of a nature that’ll preclude — so to say — expectations of — of offspring?’
‘Absolutely, old man,’ Loftie’s free hand dropped on Frost’s shoulder.
‘Pity! There ought to be some way of pulling ‘em through it — somehow — oughtn’t there?’
The Threshold
IN THEIR deepest caverns of limestone
They pictured the Gods of Food —
The Horse, the Elk, and the Bison
That the hunting might be good;
With the Gods of Death and Terror —
The Mammoth, Tiger, and Bear.
And the pictures moved in the torchlight
To show that the Gods were there!
But that was before Ionia —
(Or the Seven Holy Islands of Ionia)
Any of the Mountains of Ionia.
Had bared their peaks to the air.
The close years packed behind them.
As the glaciers bite and grind
Filling the new gouged valleys.
With Gods of every kind.
Gods of all-reaching power —
Gods of all-searching eyes —
But each to be wooed by worship
And won by sacrifice.
Till, after many winters, rose Ionia —
(Strange men brooding in Ionia)
Crystal-eyed Sages of Ionia
Who said, ‘These tales are lies.
‘We dream one Breath in all things.
‘That blows all things between.
‘We dream one Matter in all things —
‘Eternal, changeless, unseen.
‘‘That the heart of the Matter is single
‘Till the Breath shall bid it bring forth —
‘By choosing or losing its neighbour
‘All things made upon Earth.’
But Earth was wiser than Ionia
(Babylon and Egypt than Ionia)
And they overlaid the teaching of Ionia
And the Truth was choked at birth.
It died at the Gate of Knowledge —
The Key to the Gate in its hand —
And the anxious priests and wizards
Re-blinded the wakening land;
For they showed, by answering echoes.
And chasing clouds as they rose.
How shadows could stand for bulwarks
Between mankind and its woes.
It was then that men bethought them of Ionia
(The few that had not allforgot Ionia)
Or the Word that was whispered in Ionia;
And they turned from the shadows and the shows.
They found one Breath in all things.
That blows all things between.
They proved one Matter in all things —
Eternal, changeless, unseen;
‘That the heart of the Matter was single
Till the Breath should bid it bring forth —
Even as men whispered in Ionia.
(Resolute unsatisfied Ionia)
When the Word was stifled in lonia —
All things known upon earth.
Neighbours
THE MAN that is open of heart to his neighbour.
And stops to consider his likes and dislikes.
His blood shall be wholesome whatever his labour.
His luck shall be with him whatever he strikes.
The Splendour of Morning shall duly possess him.
That he may not be sad at the falling of eve.
And, when he has done with mere living — God bless him!
A many shall sigh, and one Woman shall grieve! —
But he that is costive of soul toward his fellow.
Through the ways, and the works, and the woes of this life.
Him food shall not fatten, him drink shall not mellow;
And his innards shall brew him perpetual strife.
His eye shall be blind to God’s
Glory above him;
His ear shall be deaf to Earth’s Laughter around;
His Friends and his Club and his Dog shall not love him;
And his Widow shall skip when he goes under ground!
Beauty Spots
MR. WALTER GRAVELL was, after forty years, a director of the Jannockshire and Chemical Manure Works. Chemicals and dyes were always needed, and certain gases, derived from them, had been specially in demand of late. Besides his money, which did not interest him greatly, he had his adored son, James, a long, saddish person with a dusky, mottled complexion and a pleuritic stitch which he had got during the War through a leaky gas-mask. Jemmy was in charge of the firm’s research-work, for he had taken to the scientific side of things even more keenly than his father had to the administrative.
But Mr. Gravell, having made his fortune out of solid manures, now naturally wished to render them all unnecessary by breathing into the soil such gases as should wake its dormant powers. He believed that he had had successes with flowerpots on balconies, but he needed a larger field, and a nice country-house, where Jemmy could bring down friends for week-ends, and he could listen to them talking and watch how they deferred to his son.
On a spring day, then, Mr. Gravell drove sixty miles by appointment to a largish, comfortable house, with a hundred acres of land. These included a ravishing little dell, planted with azaleas, and screened from the tarred road by a belt of evergreens — a windless hollow, where gas could lie undisturbedly to benefit vegetation.
Thereupon he bought the place, told Jemmy what he had done, and, as usual, asked him to attend to the rest. Jemmy overhauled drains and roofs; imported the housekeeper and staff of their London house; reserved a couple of rooms for his own week-ends, and settled in beside his father. There had been some talk lately, behind the latter’s back, of increased blood-pressures, which would benefit by country life.
After a blissful honeymoon of months, Jemmy asked him whether he had met a Major Kniveat in the village, who expected his name to be pronounced ‘Kniveed,’ the t being soft in that very particular family.
‘Is there a village here? No-o, my dear. Who is he?’
‘One of the natives. You might have run across him.’
‘No. I didn’t come down here to run across people. I’m busy.’ Mr. Gravell went off to the dell as usual, to help the vegetation.
Jem had asked because Mrs. Saul, their housekeeper and a born gossip, had told him that a Major Kniveat, retired, of the Regular Army, had told everyone at the Golf Club that Mr. Gravell had bought the house for the purpose of thrusting himself into local society, and that the Major was eagerly awaiting any attempt in this direction, so that the village might show how outsiders should be treated. Jem had not dwelt on this till, at a tennis-party, he had been cross-examined by the Rector’s very direct wife as to whether his father meant to offer himself for the Bench of Justices of the Peace, or the County, District, or Parish Councils. She hinted that the Major was ambitious — in those directions. Putting two and two together, as scientific men should, Jem made the total four.
The house was burdened with a ‘home farm,’ which sent up milk, butter, and eggs, at more than London prices. That month they were making some hay. Jefferies, the working-foreman, was carrying the last field, and, though it was Saturday, when ‘work’ in England stops at noon, had cajoled his men to ‘work’ till five, promising he would pay them their wages and overtime in a field near a public-house, and remote from wives. While Mr. Gravell was busy in his dell, a woman came upon him, crying: ‘You ain’t paid your men!’
‘I don’t,’ said Mr. Gravell.
‘But I’ve got to get into town for my week-end shoppin’s. Why ain’t you paid ‘em off at noon, same as always?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t ye? Then I lay you don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. I’m goin’ right up to the Street (village), an’ I’m goin’ to tell ‘em there that this ‘ouse don’t pay its people. That’s what I’m goin’ to say, and I’ll lay they’ll believe it.’
Mr. Gravell was so sure that this was one of the things Jemmy attended to that he forgot to mention her to him. But Mrs. Jefferies’s tale ran, by way of tradesmen, gardeners, and errand-boys, through the village. After Major Kniveat had had his turn, it was common knowledge that ‘them Gravellses’ (in the higher circles, ‘those manure-dealers’) were undischarged bankrupts, who had made a practice of cheating their ‘labour’ elsewhere, but who could not hope to work that trick here. Mrs. Saul told Jem, who asked Jefferies what it meant. Jefferies apologised for the temper of his wife, who had nerves above her station, and took tonic wines to steady them, and was sorry if there had been any ‘misunderstanding.’ Jemmy, survivor of an unfeudal generation which had had all the trouble it wanted, telephoned the county town auctioneer to offer all live and dead stock on the home farm at the first autumn sales. Next, he let the fields as accommodation-land to local butchers; arranged for dairy produce to be delivered at the house by a real farm at much lower rates, and — for the North pays its debts — brought down from the main Jannockshire Works a retired foreman, who had married Jem’s nurse, to sit rent-free in the farmhouse. But angry Mr. Jefferies joined the Public Services of his country, and worked on the roads for one-and-threepence an hour at Government stroke — till he became an overseer.
In six weeks nothing remained of the Gravells’ agricultural past save one Angelique, an enormous white sow, for whom none would bid at the sales; she being stricken in years and a notorious gatecrasher. What did not yield to the judicial end of her carried away before the executive, and then she would wander far afield, where, though well- meaning as a hound-pup (for she had been the weakling of her litter and brought up in a Christian kitchen) her face and figure were against her with strangers. That was why she was indicted by a local body — on Major Kniveat’s clamour — for obstructing a right-of-way by terrifying foot-passengers — three summer London Lady lodgers, to wit. They blocked her most-used gaps with barb-wire, which tickled her pleasantly, and she broke out again and again, till the local body, harried by the Major, indicted Mr. Gravell once more as proprietor of a public nuisance.
After this, she was kept in a solid brick sty at the home farm, where Mr. and Mrs. Enoch, the childless couple from the Jannockshire Works, made much of her. At intervals she would be let out to test stock- proof fencing or gates; when, often, Jemmy and his young friends would be judges, and her prize a cabbage.
Father and son passed a pleasant autumn together, varied by visits to town, and visits from young men who never showed up at church. But the imported staff, headed by Mrs. Saul, went there regularly for the honour of the establishment and to catch neighbourly comments after divine service. They heard, for a fact, that Mr. Gravell had ‘cohabitated’ with a person of colour, which explained his son’s Asiatic complexion.
‘All right,’ said Jemmy to Mrs. Saul, who was full of it. ‘Don’t let it get round to Dad, that’s all.’
‘And that Major Kniveat at their nasty little cat-parties he calls you “The ‘Alf-Caste,”‘ Mrs. Saul insisted.
‘Nigger, if you like. Dad isn’t here for that sort of thing. He doesn’t know there is a village. Tell your wenches to keep their mouths shut, or I’ll sack ‘em.’
On Saturday of the next week-end, when Mr. Gravell had gone to bed, Jemmy told the tale to Kit Birtle — all but his own brother. Kit was the son of Jem’s godfather and brevet-uncle, Sir Harry Birtle, who was the Works’ leading lawyer — and he ranked therefore as brevet-nephew to Mr. Gravell, and kept changes of raiment at his house. He had done time as an Army doctor, and now specialised in post-war afflictions visible and invisible. Jem’s point was that his own dusky colour gave an interesting clue to the composition of some gas which he had inhaled near Arras a few years before. Said Kit: ‘You do look rather a half-caste. Get yourself overhauled again by that man in France.’
‘L’Espinasse, you mean? I will, but not just yet. It ‘ud wo
rry Dad. But talking about gas:’
Then they both talked, for they were interested in some new combinations which had produced interesting results.
‘And you might use Angelique as a control for some of it,’ Kit suggested. ‘She hasn’t any nerves.’
That brought out the tale of her doings, the footpaths that she was said to have blocked, and Major Kniveat’s public-spirited activities in general.
‘‘Can’t make him out,’ said Jem. ‘We came down here to be quiet, but this sword-merchant seems to take it as a personal insult. What’s the complex, Kit?’
‘We’ve something like it in our hamlet — a retired officer bung-full of public-spirit and simian malignity. Idleness explains a lot, but I’ve a theory it’s glands at bottom. ‘Rather noisome for you, though.’
‘Oh, Dad don’t notice anything. He hands it all over to me, and I haven’t time to fuss with the natives. What ‘ud you care for to- morrow? The golf course ain’t fit yet, but I’ve got another patent stock-gate if you like — ’
‘Angelique every time!’ said Kit, who knew her of old, and often compared her to one Harry Tate, an artist in the stage-handling of deckchairs and motor-cars.
Sunday forenoon, they loafed over to the farm, released the lady, and introduced her to the patent gate. Her preliminary search for weak points was side-splitting enough: but by the time she had tucked up, as it were, her skirts, had backed through the gate with the weight and amplitude of a docking liner, had reached her cabbage, and stood with the stalk of it, cigarette-wise, in her mouth, asking them what they thought of Auntie now, the two young men were beating on the grass with their hands. Getting her back to her sty was no small affair either, for she valued her Sunday outings, and they laughed too much to head her off quickly. As they rolled back across the fields, reviewing the show, Major Kniveat appeared on a footpath near by. It was, he had given out, part of his Sabbath works to see that public paths were not closed by newly-arrived parvenues. The two passed him, still guffawing over Angelique, and Monday morn brought by hand a letter, complaining that the Major had been publicly mocked and derided by his neighbours (there was some reference also to ‘gentlemen’) till he had been practically hooted off a right-of-way. The car was due for town in half an hour, and Jemmy spent that while in written disclaimer of any intent to offend, and apology if offence had been taken. He did not want the thing to bother his father in his absence. Major Kniveat accepted the apology, and ran about quoting it to all above the rank of road-mender, as a sample of the spirit of half-castes when frontally tackled.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 577