Freed from his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently when he failed at school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large contempt for Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. ‘She says I’m a little liar when I don’t tell lies, and now I do, she doesn’t know,’ thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam, or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put Harry into the background, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. He set his child’s wits against hers and was no more beaten. It grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the school-books, and even the pages of the open-print story-books danced and were dim. So Black Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for ‘dear Harry’, or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he wrapped round Aunty Rosa.
Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to foresee everything. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black Sheep’s progress and received information that startled her. Step by step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of Black Sheep’s delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in order to escape banishment from the book-shelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of Harry, of God, of all the world! Horrible, most horrible, and evidence of an utterly depraved mind.
Black Sheep counted the cost. ‘It will only be one big beating and then she’ll put a card with “Liar” on my back, same as she did before. Harry will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and tell me I’m a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to learn. But I’ve done all my reading and she never knew. She’ll say she knew all along. She’s an old liar too,’ said he.
For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bedroom – to prepare his heart. ‘That means two beatings. One at school and one here. That one will hurt most.’ And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at school before the Jews and the hubshi for the heinous crime of carrying home false reports of progress. He was thrashed at home by Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. Aunty Rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with it upon him.
‘If you make me do that,’ said Black Sheep very quietly, ‘I shall burn this house down, and perhaps I’ll kill you. I don’t know whether I can kill you – you’re so bony – but I’ll try.’
No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa’s withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, having reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new recklessness.
In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the seas to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and Mamma, and was commissioned to see Punch and Judy. Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged into a solid tea-table laden with china.
‘Gently, gently, little man,’ said the visitor, turning Black Sheep’s face to the light slowly. ‘What’s that big bird on the palings?’
‘What bird?’ asked Black Sheep.
The visitor looked deep down into Black Sheep’s eyes for half a minute, and then said suddenly: ‘Good God, the little chap’s nearly blind!’
It was a most businesslike visitor. He gave orders, on his own responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to school or open a book until Mamma came home. ‘She’ll be here in three weeks, as you know, of course,’ said he, ‘and I’m Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you into this wicked world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have made of your time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Punch in a dazed way. He had not known that Mamma was coming. There was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank Heaven, Papa wasn’t coming too. Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by a man.
For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly allowed to do nothing. He spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken toys, for all of which account must be rendered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa hit him over the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that sin was of small importance compared to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by Aunty Rosa. ‘When your Mother comes, and hears what I have to tell her, she may appreciate you properly,’ she said grimly, and mounted guard over Judy lest that small maiden should attempt to comfort her brother, to the peril of her soul.
And Mamma came – in a four-wheeler – fluttered with tender excitement. Such a Mamma! She was young, frivolously young, and beautiful, with delicately flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that needed no appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her heart. Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesitated. Could this wonder be ‘showing off’? She would not put out her arms when she knew of his crimes. Meantime was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get anything out of Black Sheep? Only all his love and all his confidence; but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty Rosa withdrew and left Mamma, kneeling between her children, half laughing, half crying, in the very hall where Punch and Judy had wept five years before.
‘Well, chicks, do you remember me?’
‘No,’ said Judy frankly, ‘but I said, “God bless Papa and Mamma” ev’vy night.’
‘A little,’ said Black Sheep. ‘Remember I wrote to you every week, anyhow. That isn’t to show off, but ‘cause of what comes afterwards.’
‘What comes after? What should come after, my darling boy?’ And she drew him to her again. He came awkwardly, with many angles. ‘Not used to petting,’ said the quick Mother-soul. ‘The girl is.’
‘She’s too little to hurt anyone,’ thought Black Sheep, ‘and if I said I’d kill her, she’d be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will tell.’
There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which Mamma picked up Judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. Faithless little Judy had shown her defection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room.
‘Come and say good-night,’ said Aunty Rosa offering a withered cheek.
‘Huh!’ said Black Sheep. ‘I never kiss you, and I’m not going to show off. Tell that woman what I’ve done, and see what she says.’
Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost Heaven after a glimpse through the gates. In half an hour ‘that woman’ was bending over him. Black Sheep flung up his right arm. It wasn’t fair to come and hit him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But no blow followed.
‘Are you showing off? I won’t tell you anything more than Aunty Rosa has, and she doesn’t know everything,’ said Black Sheep as clearly as he could for the arms round his neck.
‘Oh, my son – my little, little son! It was my fault – my fault, darling – and yet how could we help it? Forgive me, Punch.’ The voice died out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep’s forehead.
‘Has she been making you cry too?’ he asked. ‘You should see Jane cry. But you’re nice, and Jane is a Born Liar – Aunty Rosa says so.’
‘Hush, Punch, hush! My boy, don’t talk like that. Try to love me a little bit – a little bit. You don’t know how I want it. Punch-baba, come back to me! I am your Mother – your own Mother – and never mind the rest. I know – yes, I know, dear. It doesn’t matter now. Punch, won’t you care for me a little?’
It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. Black Sheep had never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman treating him – Black Sheep, the Chi
ld of the Devil and the inheritor of undying flame – as though he were a small God.
‘I care for you a great deal, Mother dear,’ he whispered at last, ‘and I’m glad you’ve come back; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told you everything?’
‘Everything. What does it matter? But –’ the voice broke with a sob that was also laughing – ‘Punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling, don’t you think it was a little foolish of you?’
‘No. It saved a lickin’.’
Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long letter to Papa. Here is an extract:
… Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions – only eight, Jack! – a venerable horse- hair atrocity which she calls her Bustle! I have just burnt it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write. She will come to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don’t you recollect our own upbringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so often the beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before long. I am taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and, on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy, and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last!
Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is also a sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector, and, when one can do anything without question, where is the use of deception?
‘Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch,’ says Judy, continuing a conversation.
‘Mother’s never angry,’ says Punch. ‘She’d just say, “you’re a little pagal [idiot]”; and that’s not nice, but I’ll show.’
Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. ‘Mother dear,’ he shouts, ‘I’m just as dirty as I can pos-sib-ly be!’
‘Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-sib-ly can!’ Mother’s clear voice rings out from the house. ‘And don’t be a little pagal!’
‘There! Told you so,’ says Punch. ‘It’s all different now, and we are just as much Mother’s as if she had never gone.’
Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith was.
The Head of the District1
There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
Behind the old mud wall;
There’s a lifter less on the Border trail,
And the Queen’s Peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen’s Peace over all.
For we must bear our leader’s blame,
On us the shame will fall,
If we lift our hand from a fettered land
And the Queen’s Peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen’s Peace over all!
The Running of Shindand.
I
The Indus had risen in flood without warning. Last night it was a fordable shallow; tonight five miles of raving muddy water parted bank and caving bank, and the river was still rising under the moon. A litter borne by six bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped in the white sand that bordered the whiter plain.
‘It’s God’s will,’ they said. ‘We dare not cross tonight, even in a boat. Let us light a fire and cook food. We be tired men.’
They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within, the Deputy Commissioner of the Kot-Kumharsen district lay dying of fever. They had brought him across country, six fighting-men of a frontier clan that he had won over to the paths of a moderate righteousness, when he had broken down at the foot of their inhospitable hills. And Tallantire, his assistant, rode with them, heavy-hearted as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He had served under the sick man for three years, and had learned to love him as men associated in toil of the hardest learn to love – or hate. Dropping from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter and peered inside.
‘Orde – Orde, old man, can you hear? We have to wait till the river goes down, worse luck.’
‘I hear,’ returned a dry whisper. ‘Wait till the river goes down. I thought we should reach camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She’ll meet me.’
One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, ‘There are his campfires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have better boats. Can he live so long?’
Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What need to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The river gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled the more hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste – dried camel-thorn and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their sword-belts clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight, and Tallantire’s horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
‘I’m cold too,’ said the voice from the litter. ‘I fancy this is the end. Poor Polly!’
Tallantire rearranged the blankets; Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this, stripped off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the pile. ‘I shall be warm by the fire presently,’ said he. Tallantire took the wasted body of his chief into his arms and held it against his breast. Perhaps if they kept him very warm Orde might live to see his wife once more. If only blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in the river!
‘That’s better,’ said Orde faintly. ‘Sorry to be a nuisance, but is – is there anything to drink?’
They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire felt a little warmth against his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
‘It isn’t that I mind dying,’ he said. ‘It’s leaving Polly and the district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I’m dipped – awfully dipped – debts in my first five years’ service. It isn’t much of a pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home. Getting there is the difficulty. And – and – you see, not being a soldier’s wife –’
‘We’ll arrange the passage home, of course,’ said Tallantire quietly.
‘It’s not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how many men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten’s dead – he was of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he used to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans is dead – Kot-Kumharsen killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead – and I’m going too. “Man that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in the hill.” 2 That reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our border want a one-third remittance this spring. That’s fair; their crops are bad. See that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I should like to have lived till that was finished; it means so much for the North-Indus villages – but Ferris is an idle beggar – wake him up. You’ll have charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they would appoint you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will be Bullows, though. Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he doesn’t understand the priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear watching. You’ll find it in my papers – in the uniform case, I think. Call the Khusru Kheyl men up; I’ll hold my last public audience. Khoda Dad Khan!’
The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions following.
‘Men, I’m dying,’ said Orde quickly, in the vernacular; ‘and soon there will be no more Orde Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from raiding cattle.’
‘God forbid this thing!’ broke out the deep bass chorus. ‘The Sahib is not going to die.’
‘Yes, he is; and then he will know whether Mahomed speaks truth, or Moses.
But you must be good men when I am not here. Such of you as live in our borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of the villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the hills must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and turn a deaf ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the strength of the Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein you will surely die and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must not sack any caravans, and must leave your arms at the police-post when you come in; as has been your custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib will be with you, but I do not know who takes my place. I speak now true talk, for I am as it were already dead, my children – for though ye be strong men, ye are children.’
‘And thou art our father and our mother,’ broke in Khoda Dad Khan with an oath. ‘What shall we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to teach us to go wisely!’
‘There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him; he knows your talk and your heart. Keep the young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey. Khoda Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and chain go to thy brother. Keep those things for my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may encounter and tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are good men. Ye have my leave to go.’
Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger, choked audibly as he caught the well-known formula that closed an interview. His brother turned to look across the river. The dawn was breaking, and a speck of white showed on the dull silver of the stream. ‘She comes,’ said the man under his breath. ‘Can he live for another two hours?’ And he pulled the newly-acquired watch out of his belt and looked uncomprehendingly at the dial, as he had seen Englishmen do.
For two hours the bellying sail tacked and blundered up and down the river, Tallantire still clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the district and his wife, but, as the end neared, more frequently of the latter. They hoped he did not know that she was even then risking her life in a crazy native boat to regain him. But the awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them. Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how near was the sail. ‘That’s Polly,’ he said simply, though his mouth was wried with agony. ‘Polly and – the grimmest practical joke ever played on a man. Dick – you’ll – have – to – explain.’
Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling Page 22