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diff --git a/old/2381.txt b/old/2381.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7948aec --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2381.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8678 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Actions and Reactions, by Rudyard Kipling + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Actions and Reactions + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Posting Date: March 11, 2009 [EBook #2381] +Release Date: November, 2000 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACTIONS AND REACTIONS *** + + + + +Produced by P. Stratton. The Google Print Project is +gratefully acknowledged for the illustrations added to the +html file. + + + + + + +ACTIONS AND REACTIONS + +By Rudyard Kipling + + + +CONTENTS + + An Habitation Enforced + The Recall + + Garm--a Hostage + The Power of the Dog + + The Mother Hive + The Bees and the Flies + + With the Night Mail + The Four Angels + + A Deal in Cotton + The New Knighthood + + The Puzzler + The Puzzler Little Foxes + Gallio's Song + + The House Surgeon + The Rabbi's Song + + + + +ACTIONS AND REACTIONS + + + + +AN HABITATION ENFORCED + + My friend, if cause doth wrest thee, + Ere folly hath much oppressed thee, + Far from acquaintance kest thee + Where country may digest thee... + Thank God that so hath blessed thee, + And sit down, Robin, and rest thee. + --THOMAS TUSSER. + +It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to +crumple the Holz and Gunsberg Combine. The New York doctors called it +overwork, and he lay in a darkened room, one ankle crossed above +the other, tongue pressed into palate, wondering whether the next +brain-surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages. +At last they gave judgment. With care he might in two years return to +the arena, but for the present he must go across the water and do no +work whatever. He accepted the terms. It was capitulation; but the +Combine that had shivered beneath his knife gave him all the honours +of war: Gunsberg himself, full of condolences, came to the steamer and +filled the Chapins' suite of cabins with overwhelming flower-works. + +"Smilax," said George Chapin when he saw them. "Fitz is right. I'm dead; +only I don't see why he left out the 'In Memoriam' on the ribbons!" + +"Nonsense!" his wife answered, and poured him his tincture. "You'll be +back before you can think." + +He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised that his face had not been +branded by the hells of the past three months. The noise of the decks +worried him, and he lay down, his tongue only a little pressed against +his palate. + +An hour later he said: "Sophie, I feel sorry about taking you away from +everything like this. I--I suppose we're the two loneliest people on +God's earth to-night." + +Said Sophie his wife, and kissed him: "Isn't it something to you that +we're going together?" + +They drifted about Europe for months--sometimes alone, sometimes with +chance met gipsies of their own land. From the North Cape to the Blue +Grotto at Capri they wandered, because the next steamer headed that way, +or because some one had set them on the road. The doctors had warned +Sophie that Chapin was not to take interest even in other men's +interests; but a familiar sensation at the back of the neck after one +hour's keen talk with a Nauheimed railway magnate saved her any trouble. +He nearly wept. + +"And I'm over thirty," he cried. "With all I meant to do!" + +"Let's call it a honeymoon," said Sophie. "D' you know, in all the six +years we've been married, you've never told me what you meant to do with +your life?" + +"With my life? What's the use? It's finished now." Sophie looked up +quickly from the Bay of Naples. "As far as my business goes, I shall +have to live on my rents like that architect at San Moritz." + +"You'll get better if you don't worry; and even if it rakes time, there +are worse things than--How much have you?" + +"Between four and five million. But it isn't the money. You know it +isn't. It's the principle. How could you respect me? You never did, the +first year after we married, till I went to work like the others. Our +tradition and upbringing are against it. We can't accept those ideals." + +"Well, I suppose I married you for some sort of ideal," she answered, +and they returned to their forty-third hotel. + +In England they missed the alien tongues of Continental streets that +reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In England all men spoke one +tongue, speciously like American to the ear, but on cross-examination +unintelligible. + +"Ah, but you have not seen England," said a lady with iron-grey hair. +They had met her in Vienna, Bayreuth, and Florence, and were grateful +to find her again at Claridge's, for she commanded situations, and knew +where prescriptions are most carefully made up. "You ought to take an +interest in the home of our ancestors as I do." + +"I've tried for a week, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, "but I never get any +further than tipping German waiters." + +"These men are not the true type," Mrs. Shouts went on. "I know where +you should go." + +Chapin pricked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from the streets +on which quick men, something of his kidney, did the business denied to +him. + +"We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, feeling his unrest as +he drank the loathed British tea. + +Mrs. Shonts smiled, and took them in hand. She wrote widely and +telegraphed far on their behalf till, armed with her letter of +introduction, she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from +an ash-barrel of a station called Charing Cross. They were to go to +Rockett's--the farm of one Cloke, in the southern counties--where, she +assured them, they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song. + +Rocketts they found after some hours, four miles from a station, and, +so far as they could, judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from a +road. Trees, kine, and the outlines of barns showed shadowy about them +when they alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloke, at the open door of a deep +stone-floored kitchen, made them slowly welcome. They lay in an attic +beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling, and, because it rained, a wood fire +was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to +the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames. + +When they woke it was a fair day, full of the noises, of birds, the +smell of box lavender, and fried bacon, mixed with an elemental smell +they had never met before. + +"This," said Sophie, nearly pushing out the thin casement in an attempt +to see round the corner, "is--what did the hack-cabman say to the +railway porter about my trunk--'quite on the top?'" + +"No; 'a little bit of all right.' I feel farther away from anywhere than +I've ever felt in my life. We must find out where the telegraph office +is." + +"Who cares?" said Sophie, wandering about, hairbrush in hand, to admire +the illustrated weekly pictures pasted on door and cupboard. + +But there was no rest for the alien soul till he had made sure of the +telegraph office. He asked the Clokes' daughter, laying breakfast, while +Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window. + +"Go to the stile a-top o' the Barn field," said Mary, "and look across +Pardons to the next spire. It's directly under. You can't miss it--not +if you keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist there. +But you're in the three-mile radius, sir. The boy delivers telegrams +directly to this door from Pardons village." + +"One has to take a good deal on trust in this country," he murmured. + +Sophie looked at the close turf, scarred only with last night's wheels, +at two ruts which wound round a rickyard, and at the circle of still +orchard about the half-timbered house. + +"What's the matter with it?" she said. "Telegrams delivered to the Vale +of Avalon, of course," and she beckoned in an earnest-eyed hound of +engaging manners and no engagements, who answered, at times, to the name +of Rambler. He led them, after breakfast, to the rise behind the house +where the stile stood against the skyline, and, "I wonder what we shall +find now," said Sophie, frankly prancing with joy on the grass. + +It was a slope of gap-hedged fields possessed to their centres by clumps +of brambles. Gates were not, and the rabbit-mined, cattle-rubbed posts +leaned out and in. A narrow path doubled among the bushes, scores of +white tails twinkled before the racing hound, and a hawk rose, whistling +shrilly. + +"No roads, no nothing!" said Sophie, her short skirt hooked by briers. +"I thought all England was a garden. There's your spire, George, across +the valley. How curious!" + +They walked toward it through an all abandoned land. Here they found +the ghost of a patch of lucerne that had refused to die: there a harsh +fallow surrendered to yard-high thistles; and here a breadth of rampant +kelk feigning to be lawful crop. In the ungrazed pastures swaths of dead +stuff caught their feet, and the ground beneath glistened with sweat. At +the bottom of the valley a little brook had undermined its footbridge, +and frothed in the wreckage. But there stood great woods on the slopes +beyond--old, tall, and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the +walls of a ruined house. + +"All this within a hundred miles of London," he said. "Looks as if it +had had nervous prostration, too." The footpath turned the shoulder of +a slope, through a thicket of rank rhododendrons, and crossed what had +once been a carriage drive, which ended in the shadow of two gigantic +holm-oaks. + +"A house!" said Sophie, in a whisper. "A Colonial house!" + +Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-bluish brick +Georgian pile, with a shell-shaped fan-light over its pillared door. The +hound had gone off on his own foolish quests. Except for some stir it +the branches and the flight of four startled magpies; there was neither +life nor sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long +windows most friendlily. + +"Cha-armed to meet you, I'm sure," said Sophie, and curtsied to the +ground. "George, this is history I can understand. We began here." She +curtsied again. + +The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights. It was as though an old +lady, wise in three generations' experience, but for the present sitting +out, bent to listen to her flushed and eager grandchild. + +"I must look!" Sophie tiptoed to a window, and shaded her eyes with her +hand. "Oh, this room's half-full of cotton-bales--wool, I suppose! But I +can see a bit of the mantelpiece. George, do come! Isn't that some one?" + +She fell back behind her husband. The front door opened slowly, to show +the hound, his nose white with milk, in charge of an ancient of days +clad in a blue linen ephod curiously gathered on breast and shoulders. + +"Certainly," said George, half aloud. "Father Time himself. This is +where he lives, Sophie." + +"We came," said Sophie weakly. "Can we see the house? I'm afraid that's +our dog." + +"No, 'tis Rambler," said the old man. "He's been, at my swill-pail +again. Staying at Rocketts, be ye? Come in. Ah! you runagate!" + +The hound broke from him, and he tottered after him down the drive. They +entered the hall--just such a high light hall as such a house +should own. A slim-balustered staircase, wide and shallow and once +creamy-white, climbed out of it under a long oval window. On either side +delicately moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose sea-green +mantelpieces were adorned with nymphs, scrolls, and Cupids in low +relief. + +"What's the firm that makes these things?" cried Sophie, enraptured. +"Oh, I forgot! These must be the originals. Adams, is it? I never +dreamed of anything like that steel-cut fender. Does he mean us to go +everywhere?" + +"He's catching the dog," said George, looking out. "We don't count." + +They explored the first or ground floor, delighted as children playing +burglars. + +"This is like all England," she said at last. "Wonderful, but no +explanation. You're expected to know it beforehand. Now, let's try +upstairs." + +The stairs never creaked beneath their feet. From the broad landing +they entered a long, green-panelled room lighted by three full-length +windows, which overlooked the forlorn wreck of a terraced garden, and +wooded slopes beyond. + +"The drawing-room, of course." Sophie swam up and down it. "That +mantelpiece--Orpheus and Eurydice--is the best of them all. Isn't it +marvellous? Why, the room seems furnished with nothing in it! How's +that, George?" + +"It's the proportions. I've noticed it." + +"I saw a Heppelwhite couch once"--Sophie laid her finger to her flushed +cheek and considered. "With, two of them--one on each side--you wouldn't +need anything else. Except--there must be one perfect mirror over that +mantelpiece." + +"Look at that view. It's a framed Constable," her husband cried. + +"No; it's a Morland--a parody of a Morland. But about that couch, +George. Don't you think Empire might be better than Heppelwhite? Dull +gold against that pale green? It's a pity they don't make spinets +nowadays." + +"I believe you can get them. Look at that oak wood behind the pines." + +"'While you sat and played toccatas stately, at the clavichord,"' Sophie +hummed, and, head on one; side, nodded to where the perfect mirror +should hang: + +Then they found bedrooms with dressing-rooms and powdering-closets, and +steps leading up and down--boxes of rooms, round, square, and octagonal, +with enriched ceilings and chased door-locks. + +"Now about servants. Oh!" She had darted up the last stairs to the +chequered darkness of the top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken +laths, and the walls were scrawled with names, sentiments, and hop +records. "They've been keeping pigeons here," she cried. + +"And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere," said George. + +"That's what I say," the old man cried below them on the stairs. "Not a +dry place for my pigeons at all." + +"But why was it allowed to get like this?" said Sophie. + +"Tis with housen as teeth," he replied. "Let 'em go too far, and there's +nothing to be done. Time was they was minded to sell her, but none would +buy. She was too far away along from any place. Time was they'd ha' +lived here theyselves, but they took and died." + +"Here?" Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof. + +"Nah--none dies here excep' falling off ricks and such. In London they +died." He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. "They was no +staple--neither the Elphicks nor the Moones. Shart and brittle all +of 'em. Dead they be seventeen year, for I've been here caretakin' +twenty-five." + +"Who does all the wool belong to downstairs?" George asked. + +"To the estate. I'll show you the back parts if ye like. You're from +America, ain't ye? I've had a son there once myself." They followed him +down the main stairway. He paused at the turn and swept one hand toward +the wall. "Plenty room, here for your coffin to come down. Seven foot +and three men at each end wouldn't brish the paint. If I die in my bed +they'll 'ave to up-end me like a milk-can. 'Tis all luck, dye see?" + +He led them on and on, through a maze of back kitchens, dairies, +larders, and sculleries, that melted along covered ways into a +farm-house, visibly older than the main building, which again rambled +out among barns, byres, pig-pens, stalls and stables to the dead fields +behind. + +"Somehow," said Sophie, sitting exhausted on an ancient +well-curb--"somehow one wouldn't insult these lovely old things by +filling them with hay." + +George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of silvery-oak +weather-boarding; buttresses of mixed flint and bricks; outside stairs, +stone upon arched stone; curves of thatch where grass sprouted; roundels +of house-leeked tiles, and a huge paved yard populated by two cows and +the repentant Rambler. He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph +office for two and a half hours. + +"But why," said Sophie, as they went back through the crater of stricken +fields,--"why is one expected to know everything in England? Why do +they never tell?" + +"You mean about the Elphicks and the Moones?" he answered. + +"Yes--and the lawyers and the estate. Who are they? I wonder whether +those painted floors in the green room were real oak. Don't you like us +exploring things together--better than Pompeii?" + +George turned once more to look at the view. "Eight hundred acres go +with the house--the old man told me. Five farms altogether. Rocketts is +one of 'em." + +"I like Mrs. Cloke. But what is the old house called?" + +George laughed. "That's one of the things you're expected to know. He +never told me." + +The Clokes were more communicative. That evening and thereafter for +a week they gave the Chapins the official history, as one gives it to +lodgers, of Friars Pardon the house and its five farms. But Sophie +asked so many questions, and George was so humanly interested, that, +as confidence in the strangers grew, they launched, with observed and +acquired detail, into the lives and deaths and doings of the Elphicks +and the Moones and their collaterals, the Haylings and the Torrells. It +was a tale told serially by Cloke in the barn, or his wife in the dairy, +the last chapters reserved for the kitchen o' nights by the big fire, +when the two had been half the day exploring about the house, where +old Iggulden, of the blue smock, cackled and chuckled to see them. The +motives that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension; the +fates that shifted them were gods they had never met; the sidelights +Mrs. Cloke threw on act and incident were more amazing than anything in +the record. Therefore the Chapins listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs. +Shonts. + +"But why--why--why--did So-and-so do so-and-so?" Sophie would demand +from her seat by the pothook; and Mrs. Cloke would answer, smoothing her +knees, "For the sake of the place." + +"I give it up," said George one night in their own room. "People don't +seem to matter in this country compared to the places they live in. The +way she tells it, Friars Pardon was a sort of Moloch." + +"Poor old thing!" They had been walking round the farms as usual before +tea. "No wonder they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made for it. +Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell to keep it in the family. The +octagonal room with the moulded ceiling next to the big bedroom was +hers. Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs?" said +Sophie. + +"About the Torrell cousins and the uncle who died in Java. They lived at +Burnt House--behind High Pardons, where that brook is all blocked up." + +"No; Burnt House is under High Pardons Wood, before you come to Gale +Anstey," Sophie corrected. + +"Well, old man Cloke said--" + +Sophie threw open the door and called down into the kitchen, where the +Clokes were covering the fire "Mrs. Cloke, isn't Burnt House under High +Pardons?" + +"Yes, my dear, of course," the soft voice answered absently. A cough. +"I beg your pardon, Madam. What was it you said?" + +"Never mind. I prefer it the other way," Sophie laughed, and George +re-told the missing chapter as she sat on the bed. + +"Here to-day an' gone to-morrow," said Cloke warningly. "They've +paid their first month, but we've only that Mrs. Shonts's letter for +guarantee." + +"None she sent never cheated us yet. It slipped out before I thought. +She's a most humane young lady. They'll be going away in a little. An' +you've talked a lot too, Alfred." + +"Yes, but the Elphicks are all dead. No one can bring my loose talking +home to me. But why do they stay on and stay on so?" + +In due time George and Sophie asked each other that question, and put it +aside. They argued that the climate--a pearly blend, unlike the hot +and cold ferocities of their native land--suited them, as the thick +stillness of the nights certainly suited George. He was saved even the +sight of a metalled road, which, as presumably leading to business, +wakes desire in a man; and the telegraph office at the village of Friars +Pardon, where they sold picture post-cards and pegtops, was two walking +miles across the fields and woods. + +For all that touched his past among his fellows, or their remembrance +of him, he might have been in another planet; and Sophie, whose life had +been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals, had +no wish to leave this present of God. The unhurried meals, the +foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths of soft +sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by their +hunger or thirst; the good grass beneath their feet that cheated the +miles; their discoveries, always together, amid the farms--Griffons, +Rocketts, Burnt House, Gale Anstey, and the Home Farm, where Iggulden of +the blue smock-frock would waylay them, and they would ransack the old +house once more; the long wet afternoons when, they tucked up their +feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against the apple-trees, and +talked together as never till then had they found time to talk--these +things contented her soul, and her body throve. + +"Have you realized," she asked one morning, "that we've been here +absolutely alone for the last thirty-four days?" + +"Have you counted them?" he asked. + +"Did you like them?" she replied. + +"I must have. I didn't think about them. Yes, I have. Six months ago I +should have fretted myself sick. Remember at Cairo? I've only had two or +three bad times. Am I getting better, or is it senile decay?" + +"Climate, all climate." Sophie swung her new-bought English boots, as +she sat on the stile overlooking Friars Pardon, behind the Clokes's +barn. + +"One must take hold of things though," he said, "if it's only to keep +one's hand in." His eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty +fields. "Mustn't one?" + +"Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey. I dare say you could hire +it." + +"No, I'm not as English as that--nor as Morristown. Cloke says all the +farms here could be made to pay." + +"Well, I'm Anastasia in the 'Treasure of Franchard.' I'm content to be +alive and purr. There's no hurry." + +"No." He smiled. "All the same, I'm going to see after my mail." + +"You promised you wouldn't have any." + +"There's some business coming through that's amusing me. Honest. It +doesn't get on my nerves at all." + +"Want a secretary?" + +"No, thanks, old thing! Isn't that quite English?" + +"Too English! Go away." But none the less in broad daylight she returned +the kiss. "I'm off to Pardons. I haven't been to the house for nearly a +week." + +"How've you decided to furnish Jane Elphick's bedroom?" he laughed, for +it had come to be a permanent Castle in Spain between them. + +"Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade," she answered, and +ran downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of a +ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she +passed under the holmoaks, sought the farm-house at the back of +Friars Pardon. The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at +his half-opened door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A +blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler's old enemy, crawled out +and besought her to enter. + +Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between his knees, +his head drooped. Though she had never seen death before, her heart, +that missed a beat, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, +but stood outside the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw +up his nose, she heard herself saying: "Don't howl! Please don't begin +to howl, Scottie, or I shall run away!" + +She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon; +sat after a while on the steps by the door, her arms round the dog's +neck, waiting till some one should come. She watched the smokeless +chimneys of Friars Pardon slash its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of +Iggulden's last lighted fire gradually thin and cease. Against her will +she fell to wondering how many Moones, Elphicks, and Torrells had been +swung round the turn of the broad Mall stairs. Then she remembered the +old man's talk of being "up-ended like a milk-can," and buried her face +on Scottie's neck. At last a horse's feet clinked upon flags, rustled +in the old grey straw of the rickyard, and she found herself facing +the vicar--a figure she had seen at church declaiming impossibilities +(Sophie was a Unitarian) in an unnatural voice. + +"He's dead," she said, without preface. + +"Old Iggulden? I was coming for a talk with him." The vicar passed in +uncovered. "Ah!" she heard him say. "Heart-failure! How long have you +been here?" + +"Since a quarter to eleven." She looked at her watch earnestly and saw +that her hand did not shake. + +"I'll sit with him now till the doctor comes. D'you think you could +tell him, and--yes, Mrs. Betts in the cottage with the wistaria next the +blacksmith's? I'm afraid this has been rather a shock to you." + +Sophie nodded, and fled toward the village. Her body failed her for a +moment; she dropped beneath a hedge, and looked back at the great house. +In some fashion its silence and stolidity steadied her for her errand. + +Mrs. Betts, small, black-eyed, and dark, was almost as unconcerned as +Friars Pardon. + +"Yiss, yiss, of course. Dear me! Well, Iggulden he had had his day in my +father's time. Muriel, get me my little blue bag, please. Yiss, ma'am. +They come down like ellum-branches in still weather. No warnin' at all. +Muriel, my bicycle's be'ind the fowlhouse. I'll tell Dr. Dallas, ma'am." + +She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee, while Sophie--heaven +above and earth beneath changed--walked stiffly home, to fall over +George at his letters, in a muddle of laughter and tears. + +"It's all quite natural for them," she gasped. "They come down like +ellum-branches in still weather. Yiss, ma'am.' No, there wasn't anything +in the least horrible, only--only--Oh, George, that poor shiny stick of +his between his poor, thin knees! I couldn't have borne it if Scottie +had howled. I didn't know the vicar was so--so sensitive. He said he was +afraid it was ra--rather a shock. Mrs. Betts told me to go home, and +I wanted to collapse on her floor. But I didn't disgrace myself. I--I +couldn't have left him--could I?" + +"You're sure you've took no 'arm?" cried Mrs. Cloke, who had heard the +news by farm-telegraphy, which is older but swifter than Marconi's. + +"No. I'm perfectly well," Sophie protested. + +"You lay down till tea-time." Mrs. Cloke patted her shoulder. "THEY'll +be very pleased, though she 'as 'ad no proper understandin' for twenty +years." + +"They" came before twilight--a black-bearded man in moleskins, and a +little palsied old woman, who chirruped like a wren. + +"I'm his son," said the man to Sophie, among the lavender bushes. "We +'ad a difference--twenty year back, and didn't speak since. But I'm his +son all the 'same, and we thank you for the watching." + +"I'm only glad I happened to be there," she answered, and from the +bottom of her heart she meant it. + +"We heard he spoke a lot o' you--one time an' another since you came. We +thank you kindly," the man added. + +"Are you the son that was in America?" she asked. + +"Yes, ma'am. On my uncle's farm, in Connecticut. He was what they call +rood-master there." + +"Whereabouts in Connecticut?" asked George over her shoulder. + +"Veering Holler was the name. I was there six year with my uncle." + +"How small the world is!" Sophie cried. "Why, all my mother's people +come from Veering Hollow. There must be some there still--the Lashmars. +Did you ever hear of them?" + +"I remember hearing that name, seems to me," he answered, but his face +was blank as the back of a spade. + +A little before dusk a woman in grey, striding like a foot-soldier, and +bearing on her arm a long pole, crashed through the orchard calling for +food. George, upon whom the unannounced English worked mysteriously, +fled to the parlour; but Mrs. Cloke came forward beaming. Sophie could +not escape. + +"We've only just heard of it;" said the stranger, turning on her. "I've +been out with the otter-hounds all day. It was a splendidly sportin' +thing--" + +"Did you--er--kill?" said Sophie. She knew from books she could not go +far wrong here. + +"Yes, a dry bitch--seventeen pounds," was the answer. "A splendidly +sportin' thing of you to do. Poor old Iggulden--" + +"Oh--that!" said Sophie, enlightened. + +"If there had been any people at Pardons it would never have happened. +He'd have been looked after. But what can you expect from a parcel of +London solicitors?" + +Mrs. Cloke murmured something. + +"No. I'm soaked from the knees down. If I hang about I shall get +chilled. A cup of tea, Mrs. Cloke, and I can eat one of your sandwiches +as I go." She wiped her weather-worn face with a green and yellow silk +handkerchief. + +"Yes, my lady!" Mrs. Cloke ran and returned swiftly. + +"Our land marches with Pardons for a mile on the south," she explained, +waving the full cup, "but one has quite enough to do with one's own +people without poachin'. Still, if I'd known, I'd have sent Dora, of +course. Have you seen her this afternoon, Mrs. Cloke? No? I wonder +whether that girl did sprain her ankle. Thank you." It was a formidable +hunk of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloke presented. "As I was sayin', +Pardons is a scandal! Lettin' people die like dogs. There ought to be +people there who do their duty. You've done yours, though there wasn't +the faintest call upon you. Good night. Tell Dora, if she comes, I've +gone on." + +She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie reeled breathless into +the parlour, to shake the shaking George. + +"Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind? Why didn't you come +out and do your duty?" + +"Because I should have burst. Did you see the mud on its cheek?" he +said. + +"Once. I daren't look again. Who is she?" + +"God--a local deity then. Anyway, she's another of the things you're +expected to know by instinct." + +Mrs. Cloke, shocked at their levity, told them that it was Lady +Conant, wife of Sir Walter Conant, Baronet, a large landholder in the +neighbourhood; and if not God; at least His visible Providence. George +made her talk of that family for an hour. + +"Laughter," said Sophie afterward in their own room, "is the mark of the +savage. Why couldn't you control your emotions? It's all real to her." + +"It's all real to me. That's my trouble," he answered in an altered +tone. "Anyway, it's real enough to mark time with. Don't you think so?" + +"What d'you mean?" she asked quickly, though she knew his voice. + +"That I'm better. I'm well enough to kick." + +"What at?" + +"This!" He waved his hand round the one room. "I must have something to +play with till I'm fit for work again." + +"Ah!" She sat on the bed and leaned forward, her hands clasped. "I +wonder if it's good for you." + +"We've been better here than anywhere," he went on slowly. "One could +always sell it again." + +She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled. + +"The only thing that worries me is what happened this morning. I want to +know how you feel about it. If it's on your nerves in the least we can +have the old farm at the back of the house pulled down, or perhaps it +has spoiled the notion for you?" + +"Pull it down?" she cried. "You've no business faculty. Why, that's +where we could live while we're putting the big house in order. It's +almost under the same roof. No! What happened this morning seemed to be +more of a--of a leading than anything else. There ought to be people at +Pardons. Lady Conant's quite right." + +"I was thinking more of the woods and the roads. I could double the +value of the place in six months." + +"What do they want for it?" She shook her head, and her loosened hair +fell glowingly about her cheeks. + +"Seventy-five thousand dollars. They'll take sixty-eight." + +"Less than half what we paid for our old yacht when we married. And we +didn't have a good time in her. You were--" + +"Well, I discovered I was too much of an American to be content to be a +rich man's son. You aren't blaming me for that?" + +"Oh, no. Only it was a very businesslike honeymoon. How far are you +along with the deal, George?" + +"I can mail the deposit on the purchase money to-morrow morning, and we +can have the thing completed in a fortnight or three weeks--if you say +so." + +"Friars Pardon--Friars Pardon!" Sophie chanted rapturously, her dark +gray eyes big with delight. "All the farms? Gale Anstey, Burnt House, +Rocketts, the Home Farm, and Griffons? Sure you've got 'em all?" + +"Sure." He smiled. + +"And the woods? High Pardons Wood, Lower Pardons, Suttons, Dutton's +Shaw, Reuben's Ghyll, Maxey's Ghyll, and both the Oak Hangers? Sure +you've got 'em all?" + +"Every last stick. Why, you know them as well as I do." He laughed. +"They say there's five thousand--a thousand pounds' worth of +lumber--timber they call it--in the Hangers alone." + +"Mrs. Cloke's oven must be mended first thing, and the kitchen roof. I +think I'll have all this whitewashed," Sophie broke in, pointing to +the ceiling. "The whole place is a scandal. Lady Conant is quite right. +George, when did you begin to fall in love with the house? In the +greenroom that first day? I did." + +"I'm not in love with it. One must do something to mark time till one's +fit for work." + +"Or when we stood under the oaks, and the door opened? Oh! Ought I to go +to poor Iggulden's funeral?" She sighed with utter happiness. + +"Wouldn't they call it a liberty now?" said he. + +"But I liked him." + +"But you didn't own him at the date of his death." + +"That wouldn't keep me away. Only, they made such a fuss about the +watching"--she caught her breath--"it might be ostentatious from that +point of view, too. Oh, George"--she reached for his hand--"we're two +little orphans moving in worlds not realized, and we shall make some bad +breaks. But we're going to have the time of our lives." + +"We'll run up to London to-morrow, and see if we can hurry those English +law solicitors. I want to get to work." + +They went. They suffered many things ere they returned across the fields +in a fly one Saturday night, nursing a two by two-and-a-half box of +deeds and maps--lawful owners of Friars Pardon and the five decayed +farms therewith. + +"I do most sincerely 'ope and trust you'll be 'appy, Madam," Mrs. Cloke +gasped, when she was told the news by the kitchen fire. + +"Goodness! It isn't a marriage!" Sophie exclaimed, a little awed; for to +them the joke, which to an American means work, was only just beginning. + +"If it's took in a proper spirit"--Mrs. Cloke's eye turned toward her +oven. + +"Send and have that mended to-morrow," Sophie whispered. + +"We couldn't 'elp noticing," said Cloke slowly, "from the times you +walked there, that you an' your lady was drawn to it, but--but I don't +know as we ever precisely thought--" His wife's glance checked him. + +"That we were that sort of people," said George. "We aren't sure of it +ourselves yet." + +"Perhaps," said Cloke, rubbing his knees, "just for the sake of saying +something, perhaps you'll park it?" + +"What's that?" said George. + +"Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill"--he jerked a thumb to +westward--"that Mr. Sangres bought. It was four farms, and Mr. Sangres +made a fine park of them, with a herd of faller deer." + +"Then it wouldn't be Friars Pardon," said Sophie. "Would it?" + +"I don't know as I've ever heard Pardons was ever anything but wheat an' +wool. Only some gentlemen say that parks are less trouble than tenants." +He laughed nervously. "But the gentry, o' course, they keep on pretty +much as they was used to." + +"I see," said Sophie. "How did Mr. Sangres make his money?" + +"I never rightly heard. It was pepper an' spices, or it may ha' been +gloves. No. Gloves was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley End. Spices was Mr. +Sangres. He's a Brazilian gentleman--very sunburnt like." + +"Be sure o' one thing. You won't 'ave any trouble," said Mrs. Cloke, +just before they went to bed. + +Now the news of the purchase was told to Mr. and Mrs. Cloke alone at 8 +P.M. of a Saturday. None left the farm till they set out for church next +morning. Yet when they reached the church and were about to slip aside +into their usual seats, a little beyond the font, where they could see +the red-furred tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time, +they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet +they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a +black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head +of the left aisle, under the pulpit. + +"This," he sighed reproachfully, "is the Pardons' Pew," and shut them +in. + +They could see little more than the choir boys in the chancel, but to +the roots of the hair of their necks they felt the congregation behind +mercilessly devouring them by look. + +"When the wicked man turneth away." The strong, alien voice of the +priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof, and a loneliness unfelt +before swamped their hearts, as they searched for places in the +unfamiliar Church of England service. The Lord's Prayer "Our Father, +which art"--set the seal on that desolation. Sophie found herself +thinking how in other lands their purchase would long ere this have been +discussed from every point of view in a dozen prints, forgetting that +George for months had not been allowed to glance at those black and +bellowing head-lines. Here was nothing but silence--not even hostility! +The game was up to them; the other players hid their cards and waited. +Suspense, she felt, was in the air, and when her sight cleared, saw, +indeed, a mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven +motto, "Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle." + +At the Litany George had trouble with an unstable hassock, and drew the +slip of carpet under the pewseat. Sophie pushed her end back also, and +shut her eyes against a burning that felt like tears. When she opened +them she was looking at her mother's maiden name, fairly carved on a +blue flagstone on the pew floor: Ellen Lashmar. ob. 1796. aetat 27. + +She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered, as they kneeled, they looked +for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab was blank. + +"Ever hear of her?" he whispered. + +"Never knew any of us came from here." + +"Coincidence?" + +"Perhaps. But it makes me feel better," and she smiled and winked away +a tear on her lashes, and took his hand while they prayed for "all women +labouring of child"--not "in the perils of childbirth"; and the sparrows +who had found their way through the guards behind the glass windows +chirped above the faded gilt and alabaster family tree of the Conants. + +The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle. After service its +inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so as to block effectively a +dusky person with a large family who champed in their rear. + +"Spices, I think," said Sophie, deeply delighted as the Sangres closed +up after the Conants. "Let 'em get away, George." + +But when they came out many folk whose eyes were one still lingered by +the lychgate. + +"I want to see if any more Lashmars are buried here," said Sophie. + +"Not now. This seems to be show day. Come home quickly," he replied. + +A group of families, the Clokes a little apart, opened to let them +through. The men saluted with jerky nods, the women with remnants of a +curtsey. Only Iggulden's son, his mother on his arm, lifted his hat as +Sophie passed. + +"Your people," said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her ear. + +"I suppose so," said Sophie, blushing, for they were within two yards of +her; but it was not a question. + +"Then that child looks as if it were coming down with mumps. You ought +to tell the mother she shouldn't have brought it to church." + +"I can't leave 'er behind, my lady," the woman said. "She'd set the +'ouse afire in a minute, she's that forward with the matches. Ain't you, +Maudie dear?" + +"Has Dr. Dallas seen her?" + +"Not yet, my lady." + +"He must. You can't get away, of course. M-m! My idiotic maid is coming +in for her teeth to-morrow at twelve. She shall pick her up--at Gale +Anstey, isn't it?--at eleven." + +"Yes. Thank you very much, my lady." + +"I oughtn't to have done it," said Lady Conant apologetically, "but +there has been no one at Pardons for so long that you'll forgive my +poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us? The vicar usually comes too. +I don't use the horses on a Sunday"--she glanced at the Brazilian's +silver-plated chariot. "It's only a mile across the fields." + +"You--you're very kind," said Sophie, hating herself because her lip +trembled. + +"My dear," the compelling tone dropped to a soothing gurgle, "d'you +suppose I don't know how it feels to come to a strange county--country +I should say--away from one's own people? When I first left the +Shires--I'm Shropshire, you know--I cried for a day and a night. But +fretting doesn't make loneliness any better. Oh, here's Dora. She did +sprain her leg that day." + +"I'm as lame as a tree still," said the tall maiden frankly. "You ought +to go out with the otter-hounds, Mrs. Chapin. I believe they're drawing +your water next week." + +Sir Walter had already led off George, and the vicar came up on the +other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the swift procession or the +leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in low-voiced eddies that +had the village for their centre. Sophie heard the vicar and Sir Walter +address her husband lightly as Chapin! (She also remembered many women +known in a previous life who habitually addressed their husbands as +Mr. Such-an-one.) After lunch Lady Conant talked to her explicitly of +maternity as that is achieved in cottages and farm-houses remote from +aid, and of the duty thereto of the mistress of Pardons. + +A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple lawns, let them out +before tea-time into the unkempt south side of their land. + +"I want your hand, please," said Sophie as soon as they were safe among +the beech boles and the lawless hollies. "D'you remember the old maid in +'Providence and the Guitar' who heard the Commissary swear, and hardly +reckoned herself a maiden lady afterward? Because I'm a relative of +hers. Lady Conant is--" + +"Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?" he interrupted. + +"I didn't ask. I'm going to write to Aunt Sydney about it first. Oh, +Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought some land +from some Lashmars a few years ago. I found it was at the beginning of +last century." + +"What did you say?" + +"I said, 'Really, how interesting!' Like that. I'm not going to push +myself forward. I've been hearing about Mr. Sangres's efforts in that +direction. And you? I couldn't see you behind the flowers. Was it very +deep water, dear?" + +George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures. + +"Oh no--dead easy," he answered. "I've bought Friars Pardon to prevent +Sir Walter's birds straying." + +A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded almost +under their feet. Sophie jumped. + +"That's one of 'em," said George calmly. + +"Well, your nerves are better, at any rate," said she. "Did you tell 'em +you'd bought the thing to play with?" + +"No. That was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad break--I +think. I said I couldn't see why hiring land to men to farm wasn't as +much a business proposition as anything else." + +"And what did they say?" + +"They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They don't +waste their smiles. D'you see that track by Gale Anstey?" + +They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like hollow. +People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed slowly along the +paths that connected farm to farm. + +"I've never seen so many on our land before," said Sophie. "Why is it?" + +"To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way." + +"Those cow-tracks we've been using cross lots?" said Sophie forcibly. + +"Yes. Any one of 'em would cost us two thousand pounds each in legal +expenses to close." + +"But we don't want to," she said. + +"The whole community would fight if we did." + +"But it's our land. We can do what we like." + +"It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to it, and it +belongs to the people--our people they call 'em. I've been to lunch with +the English too." + +They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the next--flushed +with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and restorations at each +turn; halting in their tracks to argue, spreading apart to embrace two +views at once, or closing in to consider one. Couples moved out of their +way, but smiling covertly. + +"We shall make some bad breaks," he said at last. + +"Together, though. You won't let anyone else in, will you?" + +"Except the contractors. This syndicate handles, this proposition by its +little lone." + +"But you might feel the want of some one," she insisted. + +"I shall--but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's going to +be good fun." + +"Please God," she answered flushing, and cried to herself as they went +back to tea. "It's worth it. Oh, it's worth it." + +The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the most +varied and searching, but all done English fashion, without friction. +Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent +advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and +Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the centre stood George and +Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching out on every side. + +"I ain't sayin' anything against Londoners," said Cloke, self-appointed +clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer, head of the immigration +bureau, and superintendent of woods and forests; "but your own people +won't go about to make more than a fair profit out of you." + +"How is one to know?" said George. + +"Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you'll be lookin' over your first +year's accounts, and, knowin' what you'll know then, you'll say: 'Well, +Billy Beartup'--or Old Cloke as it might be--'did me proper when I was +new.' No man likes to have that sort of thing laid up against him." + +"I think I see," said George. "But five years is a long time to look +ahead." + +"I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will be fit +for her drawin-room floor in less than seven," Cloke drawled. + +"Yes, that's my work," said Sophie. (Billy Beartup of Griffons, +a woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of +marriage, had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.) "Sorry if +I've committed you to another eternity." + +"And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong with your new carriage +drive before that time either," said Cloke, ever anxious to keep the +balance true with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour. The past four +months had taught George better than to reply. The carriage road winding +up the hill was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, +and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none too sunny +soul of "Skim" Winsh, the carter. + +But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and +Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains. + +"You lif' her like that, an' you tip her like that," he explained to the +gang. "My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut." + +"Are they roads yonder?" said Skim, sitting under the laurels. + +"No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call 'em. They'd suit +you, Skim." + +"Why?" said the incautious Skim. + +"Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a +Saturday," was the answer. + +"I didn't last time neither," Skim roared. + +After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly, "Well, +dirt or no dirt, there's no denyin' Chapin knows a good job when he +sees it. 'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the next, like that nigger +Sangres." + +"SHE's the one that knows her own mind," said Pinky, brother to Skim +Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring the grand +piano across the fields in the autumn rains. + +"She had ought to," said Iggulden. "Whoa, Buller! She's a Lashmar. They +never was double-thinking." + +"Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?" said Skim, +doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts. + +The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the +fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. "She's a Lashmar right enough. +I started up to write to my uncle--at once--the month after she said her +folks came from Veering Holler." + +"Where there ain't any roads?" Skim interrupted, but none laughed. + +"My uncle he married an American woman for his second, and she took +it up like a like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar +place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot Hill Lashmar, nor +any o' the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of the ground here, neither +chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to America--I've got +it all writ down by my uncle's woman--in eighteen hundred an' nothing. +My uncle says they're all slow begetters like." + +"Would they be gentry yonder now?" Skim asked. + +"Nah--there's no gentry in America, no matter how long you're there. +It's against their law. There's only rich and poor allowed. They've +been lawyers and such like over yonder for a hundred years but she's a +Lashmar for all that." + +"Lord! What's a hundred years?" said Whybarne, who had seen +seventy-eight of them. + +"An' they write too, from yonder--my uncle's woman writes--that you can +still tell 'em by headmark. Their hair's foxy-red still--an' they throw +out when they walk. He's in-toed-treads like a gipsy; but you watch, an' +you'll see 'er throw, out--like a colt." + +"Your trace wants taking up." Pinky's large ears had caught the sound +of voices, and as the two broke through the laurels the men were hard at +work, their eyes on Sophie's feet. + +She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Iggulden, for her Aunt +Sydney of Meriden (a badged and certificated Daughter of the Revolution +to boot) answered her inquiries with a two-paged discourse on +patriotism, the leaflets of a Village Improvement Society, of which she +was president, and a demand for an overdue subscription to a Factory +Girls' Reading Circle. Sophie burned it all in the Orpheus and Eurydice +grate, and kept her own counsel. + +"What I want to know," said George, when Spring was coming, and the +gardens needed thought, "is who will ever pay me for my labour? I've put +in at least half a million dollars' worth already." + +"Sure you're not taking too much out of yourself?" his wife asked. + +"Oh, no; I haven't been conscious of myself all winter." He looked at +his brown English gaiters and smiled. "It's all behind me now. I believe +I could sit down and think of all that--those months before we sailed." + +"Don't--ah, don't!" she cried. + +"But I must go back one day. You don't want to keep me out of business +always--or do you?" He ended with a nervous laugh. + +Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash (of old Iggulden's cutting) +from the hall rack. + +"Aren't you overdoing it too? You look a little tired," he said. + +"You make me tired. I'm going to Rocketts to see Mrs. Cloke about Mary." +(This was the sister of the telegraphist, promoted to be sewing-maid at +Pardons.) "Coming?" + +"I'm due at Burnt House to see about the new well. By the way, there's a +sore throat at Gale Anstey--" + +"That's my province. Don't interfere. The Whybarne children always have +sore throats. They do it for jujubes." + +"Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloke ought to have +told me." + +"These people don't tell. Haven't you learnt that yet? But I'll obey, me +lord. See you later!" + +She set off afoot, for within the three main roads that bounded the +blunt triangle of the estate (even by night one could scarcely hear the +carts on them), wheels were not used except for farm work. The footpaths +served all other purposes. And though at first they had planned +improvements, they had soon fallen in with the customs of their hidden +kingdom, and moved about the soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and +shaw as freely as the rabbits. Indeed, for the most part Sophie walked +bareheaded beneath her helmet of chestnut hair; but she had been plagued +of late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloke, who +asked some questions. How it came about Sophie never knew, but after a +while behold Mrs. Cloke's arm was about her waist, and her head was on +that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door. + +"My dear! My dear!" the elder woman almost sobbed. "An' d'you mean +to tell me you never suspicioned? Why--why--where was you ever taught +anything at all? Of course it is. It's what we've been only waitin' for, +all of us. Time and again I've said to Lady--" she checked herself. "An' +now we shall be as we should be." + +"But--but--but--" Sophie whimpered. + +"An' to see you buildin' your nest so busy--pianos and books--an' never +thinkin' of a nursery!" + +"No more I did." Sophie sat bolt upright, and began to laugh. + +"Time enough yet." The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad knee. +"But--they must be strange-minded folk over yonder with you! Have you +thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear, my dear! Never +mind! She'll be happy where she knows. 'Tis God's work. An' we was only +waitin' for it, for you've never failed in your duty yet. It ain't +your way. What did you say about my Mary's doings?" Mrs. Cloke's face +hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie's forehead. "If any of your +girls thinks to be'ave arbitrary now, I'll--But they won't, my dear. +I'll see they do their duty too. Be sure you'll 'ave no trouble." + +When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and earth changed about +her as on the day of old Iggulden's death. For an instant she thought +of the wide turn of the staircase, and the new ivory-white paint that +no coffin corner could scar, but presently, the shadow passed in a pure +wonder and bewilderment that made her reel. She leaned against one of +their new gates and looked over their lands for some other stay. + +"Well," she said resignedly, half aloud, "we must try to make him feel +that he isn't a third in our party," and turned the corner that looked +over Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint. + +Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she had +never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged, ample, prepared by +course of generations for all such things. As it had steadied her when +it lay desolate, so now that it had meaning from their few months of +life within, it soothed and promised good. She went alone and quickly +into the hall, and kissed either door-post, whispering: "Be good to me. +You know! You've never failed in your duty yet." + +When the matter was explained to George, he would have sailed at once to +their own land, but this Sophie forbade. + +"I don't want science," she said. "I just want to be loved, and there +isn't time for that at home. Besides," she added, looking out of the +window, "it would be desertion." + +George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friars Pardon to the +telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone--three-quarters of a +mile of poles, put in by Whybarne and a few friends. One of these was +a foreigner from the next parish. Said he when the line was being run: +"There's an old ellum right in our road. Shall us throw her?" + +"Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good luck, God help 'em." Old +Whybarne shouted the local proverb from three poles down the line. "We +ain't goin' to lay any axe-iron to coffin-wood here not till we know +where we are yet awhile. Swing round 'er, swing round!" + +To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line across the +upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Nor can they tell +why Skim Winsh, who came to his cottage under Dutton Shaw most musically +drunk at 10.45 P.M of every Saturday night, as his father had done +before him, sang no more at the bottom of the garden steps, where Sophie +always feared he would break his neck. The path was undoubtedly an +ancient right of way, and at 10.45 P.M. on Saturdays Skim remembered it +was his duty to posterity to keep it open--till Mrs. Cloke spoke to him +once. She spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sewing maid at Pardons, +and to Mary's best new friend, the five-foot-seven imported London +house-maid, who taught Mary to trim hats, and found the country dullish. + +But there was no noise--at no time was there any noise--and when Sophie +walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had signified a wish +that way. Then they appeared to protest that all was well with them and +their children, their chickens, their roofs, their water-supply, and +their sons in the police or the railway service. + +"But don't you find it dull, dear?" said George, loyally doing his best +not to worry as the months went by. + +"I've been so busy putting my house in order I haven't had time to +think," said she. "Do you?" + +"No--no. If I could only be sure of you." + +She turned on the green drawing-room's couch (it was Empire, not +Heppelwhite after all), and laid aside a list of linen and blankets. + +"It has changed everything, hasn't it?" she whispered. + +"Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore--" + +"And missed our first real summer together. No thank you, me lord." + +"But we're absolutely alone." + +"Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy? Don't you worry. I like +it--like it to the marrow of my little bones. You don't realize what her +house means to a woman. We thought we were living in it last year, but +we hadn't begun to. Don't you rejoice in your study, George?" + +"I prefer being here with you." He sat down on the floor by the couch +and took her hand. + +"Seven," she said, as the French clock struck. "Year before last you'd +just be coming back from business." + +He winced at the recollection, then laughed. "Business! I've been at +work ten solid hours to-day." + +"Where did you lunch? With the Conants?" + +"No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with my feet in a swamp. But +we've found out where the old spring is, and we're going to pipe it down +to Gale Anstey next year." + +"I'll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open the door, dear. I want to +look down the passage. Isn't that corner by the stair-head lovely where +the sun strikes in?" She looked through half-closed eyes at the vista of +ivory-white and pale green all steeped in liquid gold. + +"There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom," she went on--"and his +first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn't wonder if those +people hadn't put it there on purpose. George, will it make any odds to +you if he's a girl?" + +He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was his +wife, not the child. + +"Then you're the only person who thinks so." She laughed. "Don't be +silly, dear. It's expected. I know. It's my duty. I shan't be able to +look our people in the face if I fail." + +"What concern is it of theirs, confound 'em!" + +"You'll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs. Cloke +says, so I'm provided for. Shall you ever begin to understand these +people? I shan't." + +"And we bought it for fun--for fun!" he groaned. "And here we are held +up for goodness knows how long!" + +"Why? Were you thinking of selling it?" He did not answer. "Do you +remember the second Mrs. Chapin?" she demanded. + +This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman--a widow for +choice--who on Sophie's death was guilefully to marry George for his +wealth and ruin him in a year. George being busy, Sophie had invented +her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among +wives in so doing. + +"You aren't going to bring her up again?" he asked anxiously. + +"I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons ten +times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we've +put into it of our two selves." + +"At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have made--" He +broke off. + +"The beasts!" she went on. "They'd be sure to build a red-brick lodge +at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave +instructions in your will that he's never to do that, George, won't +you?" + +He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time to +dress. Then he muttered "What the devil use is a man's country to him +when he can't do business in it?" + +Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed time was +born, not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, +but a godling; in beauty, it was manifest, excelling Eros, as in wisdom +Confucius; an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companionships and an +interpreter of Destiny. This last George did not realise till he met +Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event. + +"My dear fellow," she cried, and slapped him heartily on the back, "I +can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all right. (There's +never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.) Now where +the dooce is it?" She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew +out a small silver mug. "I sent a note to your wife about it, but my +silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give +her my love." She marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales. + +The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was the +crest of a footless bird and the motto: "Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle." + +"That's the other end of the riddle," Sophie whispered, when he saw her +that evening. "Read her note. The English write beautiful notes." + +The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate +his native land now he has come to it. Though you have said nothing we +cannot, of course, look on him as a little stranger, and so I am sending +him the old Lashmar christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory +Lashmar, your great-grandmother's brother-- + + +George stared at his wife. + +"Go on," she twinkled, from the pillows. + +--mother's brother, sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to have +acquired some of your household gods at that time, but nothing survives +except the mug and the old cradle, which I found in the potting-shed and +am having put in order for you. I hope little George--Lashmar, he will +be too, won't he?--will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on +his mug. + + Affectionately yours, + ALICE CONANT. + +P.S.--How quiet you've kept about it all! + +"Well, I'm--" + +"Don't swear," said Sophie. "Bad for the infant mind." + +"But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about +the Lashmars?" + +"You know the only time--to young Iggulden at Rocketts--when Iggulden +died." + +"Your great-grandmother's brother! She's traced the whole +connection--more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean +about our keeping quiet?" + +Sophie's eyes sparkled. "I've thought that out too. We've got back at +the English at last. Can't you see that she thought that we thought my +mother's being a Lashmar was one of those things we'd expect the English +to find out for themselves, and that's impressed her?" She turned +the mug in her white hands, and sighed happily. "'Wayte awhyle--wayte +awhyle.' That's not a bad motto, George. It's been worth it." + +"But still I don't quite see--" + +"I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part of a +deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They'd understand that. And +look how they've accepted us, all of them." + +"Are we so undesirable in ourselves?" George grunted. + +"Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice our money. Can +you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jugful! +The poor beast doesn't exist!" + +"Do you think it's that then?" He looked toward the cot by the fire +where the godling snorted. + +"The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every +Lashmar gives in doles (that's nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is +born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much expected of me." + +Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed +her the mug and her face shone. "Oh, now Lady Conant's sent it, it'll +be all proper, ma'am, won't it? 'George' of course he'd have to be, but +seein' what he is we was hopin'--all your people was hopin'--it 'ud be +'Lashmar' too, and that'ud just round it out. A very 'andsome mug quite +unique, I should imagine. 'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's true with +the Lashmars, I've heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most +like Master George won't open 'is nursery till he's thirty." + +"Poor lamb!" cried Sophie. "But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?" + +Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. "I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I've +a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young +Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an +inkling. An' so it came out, one thing in the way o' talk leading to +another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin' +with news, I'm told, ma'am." + +"Great Scott!" said George, under his breath. "And this is the simple +peasant!" + +"Yiss," Mrs. Cloke went on. "An' Cloke was only wonderin' this +afternoon--your pillow's slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that +a-way--just for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you wouldn't think +well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir. They don't rightly +round off Sir Walter's estate. They come caterin' across us more. Cloke, +'e 'ud be glad to show you over any day." + +"But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he?" + +"We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but"--with cold contempt--"I +think that trained nurse is just comin' up from her dinner, so 'm afraid +we'll 'ave to ask you, sir... Now, Master George--Ai-ie! Wake a litty +minute, lammie!" + +A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale +Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by +spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God's +earth that day to eat, and--Sophie adored him in a voice like to the +cooing of a dove; so business was delayed. + +"Here's the place," said his father at last among the water +forget-me-nots. "But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told +you to have them down here ready." + +"We'll get 'em down if f you say so," Cloke answered, with a thrust of +the underlip they both knew. + +"But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here +for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen +two-by-four bits would be ample." + +"I don't know nothin' about that," said Cloke. + +"An' I've nothin' to say against larch--IF you want to make a temp'ry +job of it. I ain't 'ere to tell you what isn't so, sir; an' you can't +say I ever come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to lead you further in +than you set out--" + +A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a +little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited. + +"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; +and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. +Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers +as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' +all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what +I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it +all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get +out of that." + +"No," said George after a pause; "I've been realising that for some +time. Make it oak then; we can't get out of it." + + + + +THE RECALL + + I am the land of their fathers, + In me the virtue stays; + I will bring back my children, + After certain days. + Under their feet in the grasses + My clinging magic runs. + They shall return as strangers, + They shall remain as sons. + Over their heads in the branches + Of their new-bought, ancient trees, + I weave an incantation, + And draw them to my knees. + Scent of smoke in the evening, + Smell of rain in the night, + The hours, the days and the seasons + Order their souls aright; + Till I make plain the meaning + Of all my thousand years + Till I fill their hearts with knowledge, + While I fill their eyes with tears. + + + + +GARM--A HOSTAGE + +One night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military +cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of +the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front +of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a +matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before +any one caught him; but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a +military guard in search of some one. + +The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, +undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with +a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and +dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back +to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I +had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my +friend's sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his +lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well. + +Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and +fawned one of the finest bull-terriers--of the old-fashioned breed, two +parts bull and one terrier--that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure +white, with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn +diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly +for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but +did not approve. + +"'E's for you," said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked +parting with him. + +"Nonsense! That dog's worth more than most men, Stanley," I said. + +"'E's that and more. 'Tention!" + +The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full minute. + +"Eyes right!" + +He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign +he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and +bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made himself into a necktie, +limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to +pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and held up +one leg. + +"Part o' the trick," said his owner. "You're going to die now. Dig +yourself your little grave an' shut your little eye." + +Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a hole and lay +down in it. When told that he was cured, he jumped out, wagging his +tail, and whining for applause. He was put through half-a-dozen other +tricks, such as showing how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, +and he sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how +he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished +praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as +though he had been shot, took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from +his helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him +and howled. I read: + +SIR--I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the +best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good as a man. Please +do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me, +for I'm not going to take him, if you will keep him. So please do not +try to give him back any more. I have kept his name back, so you can +call him anything and he will answer, but please do not give him back. +He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give him too +much meat. He knows more than a man. + +Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier's +despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for +dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs +are at the best no more than verminous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul +feeders, and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with +whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year; a free thing, +tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or +exercise; a patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul, who knows your +moods before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling. + +I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my friend must +have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in +my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his +master, and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made +much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been +of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only +looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides, laid his heavy +head on my knee, and howled anew. I meant to dine at the Club that +night; but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty +house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that +I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone. So we fed at +home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog on the other; she watching +his every mouthful, and saying explicitly what she thought of his table +manners, which were much better than hers. + +It was Vixen's custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my bed, +her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when morning came I would +always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall +and pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed +purposefully, every hair up, one eye on the stranger, who had dropped +on a mat in a helpless, hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, +sighing heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several times, +to show her little airs and graces, and struck up her usual whiney +sing-song before slumber. The stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I +put out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen's +teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech, that if I took +any further notice of the stranger she would bite. + +I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely, +and said: + +"Vixen, if you do that again you'll be put into the verandah. Now, +remember!" + +She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her she mouthed my +right wrist once more, and waited with her ears back and all her body +flattened, ready to bite. The big dog's tail thumped the floor in a +humble and peace-making way. + +I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit +(she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the +verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then +she used coarse language--not to me, but to the bullterrier--till she +coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house trying every door. +Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some one were +stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, +and her snuffing yelp said, "I'll be good! Let me in and I'll' be good!" + +She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I +whispered to the other dog, "You can lie on the foot of the bed." The +bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage, she +knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning, and they had +early breakfast with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and +we went for a ride. I don't think the bull had ever followed a horse +before. He was wild with excitement, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and +scuttered and scooted, and took charge of the procession. + +There was one corner of a village near by, which we generally passed +with caution, because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered +about it. + +They were half-wild, starving beasts, and though utter cowards, yet +where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an +English dog. I kept a whip with a long lash for them. + +That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps of design, had moved from +beyond my horse's shadow. + +The bull was ploughing along in the dust, fifty yards behind, rolling in +his run, and smiling as bull-terriers will. I heard Vixen squeal; half a +dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white streak came up behind me; +a cloud of dust rose near Vixen, and, when it cleared, I saw one tall +pariah with his back broken, and the bull wrenching another to earth. +Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip, and the bull paddled back +smiling more than ever, covered with the blood of his enemies. That +decided me to call him "Garm of the Bloody Breast," who was a great +person in his time, or "Garm" for short; so, leaning forward, I told him +what his temporary name would be. He looked up while I repeated it, and +then raced away. I shouted "Garm!" He stopped, raced back, and came up +to ask my will. + +Then I saw that my soldier friend was right, and that that dog knew and +was worth more than a man. At the end of the ride I gave an order which +Vixen knew and hated: "Go away and get washed!" I said. Garm understood +some part of it, and Vixen interpreted the rest, and the two trotted off +together soberly. When I went to the back verandah Vixen had been washed +snowy-white, and was very proud of herself, but the dog-boy would not +touch Garm on any account unless I stood by. So I waited while he was +being scrubbed, and Garm, with the soap creaming on the top of his broad +head, looked at me to make sure that this was what I expected him to +endure. He knew perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders. + +"Another time," I said to the dog-boy, "you will wash the great dog with +Vixen when I send them home." + +"Does he know?" said the dog-boy, who understood the ways of dogs. + +"Garm," I said, "another time you will be washed with Vixen." + +I knew that Garm understood. Indeed, next washing-day, when Vixen as +usual fled under my bed, Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the +verandah, stalked to the place where he had been washed last time, and +stood rigid in the tub. + +But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three would drive +off in the morning at half-past eight and come home at six or later. +Vixen knowing the routine of it, went to sleep under my table; but +the confinement ate into Garm's soul. He generally sat on the verandah +looking out on the Mall; and well I knew what he expected. + +Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the +Fort, and Garm rolled forth to inspect them; or an officer in uniform +entered into the office, and it was pitiful to see poor Garm's welcome +to the cloth--not the man. He would leap at him, and sniff and bark +joyously, then run to the door and back again. One afternoon I heard +him bay with a full throat--a thing I had never heard before--and he +disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier +in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end, and the Garm +that met me was a joyous dog. This happened twice or thrice a week for a +month. + +I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and Vixen knew. He would glide +homewards from the office about four o'clock, as though he were only +going to look at the scenery, and this he did so quietly that but for +Vixen I should not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under +the table would give a sniff and a snort, just loud enough to call my +attention to the flight. Garm might go out forty times in the day and +Vixen would never stir, but when he slunk off to see his true master in +my garden she told me in her own tongue. That was the one sign she made +to prove that Garm did not altogether belong to the family. They were +the best of friends at all times, but, Vixen explained that I was never +to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me. + +I never expected it. The dog was not my dog could never be my dog--and I +knew he was as miserable as his master who tramped eight miles a day to +see him. So it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the +better for all. One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart +(Garm had gone before), and rode over to cantonments to find another +friend of mine, who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog's +master. + +I explained the whole case, and wound up with: + +"And now Stanley's in my garden crying over his dog. Why doesn't he take +him back? They're both unhappy." + +"Unhappy! There's no sense in the little man any more. But 'tis his +fit." + +"What is his fit? He travels fifty miles a week to see the brute, and +he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road; and I'm as +unhappy as he is. Make him take the dog back." + +"It's his penance he's set himself. I told him by way of a joke, afther +you'd run over him so convenient that night, whin he was drunk--I said +if he was a Catholic he'd do penance. Off he went wid that fit in his +little head an' a dose of fever, an nothin' would suit but givin' you +the dog as a hostage." + +"Hostage for what? I don't want hostages from Stanley." + +"For his good behaviour. He's keepin' straight now, the way it's no +pleasure to associate wid him." + +"Has he taken the pledge?" + +"If 'twas only that I need not care. Ye can take the pledge for three +months on an' off. He sez he'll never see the dog again, an' so mark +you, he'll keep straight for evermore. Ye know his fits? Well, this is +wan of them. How's the dog takin' it?" + +"Like a man. He's the best dog in India. Can't you make Stanley take him +back?" + +"I can do no more than I have done. But ye know his fits. He's just +doin' his penance. What will he do when he goes to the Hills? The +doctor's put him on the list." + +It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each +regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though +the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort, they miss the society +of the barracks down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid +going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head, so I left +Terrence hopefully, though he called after me "He won't take the dog, +sorr. You can lay your month's pay on that. Ye know his fits." + +I never pretended to understand Private Ortheris; and so I did the next +best thing I left him alone. + +That summer the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged +were ordered off to the Hills early, because the doctors thought +marching in the cool of the day would do them good. Their route lay +south to a place called Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. +Then they would turn east and march up into the hills to Kasauli or +Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night before they +left--they were marching at five in the morning. It was midnight when I +drove into my garden, and surprised a white figure flying over the wall. + +"That man," said my butler, "has been here since nine, making talk to +that dog. He is quite mad." + +"I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times +before, and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him to go away, +that great dog would immediately slay me. He did not wish to speak to +the Protector of the Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or +drink." + +"Kadir Buksh," said I, "that was well done, for the dog would surely +have killed thee. But I do not think the white soldier will come any +more." + +Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams. Once he sprang up +with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked +him and the bark died out in a howl. He had dreamed he was with his +master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley's silly fault. + +The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles +from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my +house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good +dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad), and +there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he +knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was +going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April, +the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though +he would burst. + +"It's amazing," said the officer, "what excuses these invalids of mine +make to get back to barracks. There's a man in my company now asked me +for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he'd forgotten. I +was so taken by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as +pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?" + +"If you'll drive me home I think I can show you," I said. + +So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on +the way I told him the story of Garm. + +"I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He's the best dog in the +regiment," said my friend. "I offered the little fellow twenty rupees +for him a month ago. But he's a hostage, you say, for Stanley's good +conduct. Stanley's one of the best men I have when he chooses." + +"That's the reason why," I said. "A second-rate man wouldn't have taken +things to heart as he has done." + +We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the +house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk +trees, where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to +sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform +bending over the dog. + +"Good-bye, old man," we could not help hearing Stanley's voice. "For +'Eving's sake don't get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can +look after yourself, old man. You don't get drunk an' run about 'ittin' +your friends. You takes your bones an' you eats your biscuit, an' you +kills your enemy like a gentleman. I'm goin' away--don't 'owl--I'm goin' +off to Kasauli, where I won't see you no more." + +I could hear him holding Garm's nose as the dog threw it up to the +stars. + +"You'll stay here an' be'ave, an'--an' I'll go away an' try to be'ave, +an' I don't know 'ow to leave you. I don't know--" + +"I think this is damn silly," said the officer, patting his foolish +fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who leaped to his feet, +marched forward, and saluted. + +"You here?" said the officer, turning away his head. + +"Yes, sir, but I'm just goin' back." + +"I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You come with me. I can't +have sick men running about fall over the place. Report yourself at +eleven, here." + +We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer muttered and +pulled his retriever's ears. + +He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a dog; and when he waddled off +to my cookhouse to be fed, I had a brilliant idea. + +At eleven o'clock that officer's dog was nowhere to be found, and you +never heard such a fuss as his owner made. He called and shouted and +grew angry, and hunted through my garden for half an hour. + +Then I said: + +"He's sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by rail, and I'll +find the beast and return him." + +"Beast?" said the officer. "I value that dog considerably more than I +value any man I know. It's all very fine for you to talk--your dog's +here." + +So she was--under my feet--and, had she been missing, food and wages +would have stopped in my house till her return. But some people grow +fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip. My friend had to drive away at +last with Stanley in the back seat; and then the dog-boy said to me: + +"What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib's dog? Look at him!" + +I went to the boy's hut, and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat +carefully chained up. He must have heard his master calling for twenty +minutes, but had not even attempted to join him. + +"He has no face," said the dog-boy scornfully. "He is a punniar-kooter +(a spaniel). He never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when his +master called. Now Vixen-baba would have jumped through the window, and +that Great Dog would have slain me with his muzzled mouth. It is true +that there are many kinds of dogs." + +Next evening who should turn up but Stanley. The officer had sent +him back fourteen miles by rail with a note begging me to return the +retriever if I had found him, and, if I had not, to offer huge rewards. +The last train to camp left at half-past ten, and Stanley, stayed till +ten talking to Garm. I argued and entreated, and even threatened to +shoot the bull-terrier, but the little man was as firm as a rock, though +I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely. Garm knew as +well as I that this was the last time he could hope to see his man, and +followed Stanley like a shadow. The retriever said nothing, but licked +his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying "Thank +you" to the disgusted dog-boy. + +So that last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as Garm, who +moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to the office he found a +place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped flat till it was +time to go home. There was no more running out into the verandahs, no +slinking away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer +the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my side on +the seat, Vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow, and Garm +hugging the left handrail. + +Here Vixen was ever in great form. She had to attend to all the moving +traffic, such as bullock-carts that blocked the way, and camels, and led +ponies; as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends +running in the dust. She never yapped for yapping's sake, but her +shrill, high bark was known all along the Mall, and other men's terriers +ki-yied in reply, and bullock-drivers looked over their shoulders and +gave us the road with a grin. + +But Garm cared for none of these things. His big eyes were on the +horizon and his terrible mouth was shut. There was another dog in the +office who belonged to my chief. We called him "Bob the Librarian," +because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in +hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper-files. Bob was a +well-meaning idiot, but Garm did not encourage him. He would slide his +head round the door panting, "Rats! Come along Garm!" and Garm would +shift one forepaw over the other, and curl himself round, leaving Bob to +whine at a most uninterested back. The office was nearly as cheerful as +a tomb in those days. + +Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all contented with his +surroundings. He had gone for an unauthorised walk with Vixen early one +Sunday morning, and a very young and foolish artilleryman (his battery +had just moved to that part of the world) tried to steal them both. +Vixen, of course, knew better than to take food from soldiers, and, +besides, she had just finished her breakfast. So she trotted back with a +large piece of the mutton that they issue to our troops, laid it down +on my verandah, and looked up to see what I thought. I asked her where +Garm was, and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way. + +About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman sitting very +stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his +knees. Garm was in front of him, looking rather pleased. When the man +moved leg or hand, Garm bared his teeth in silence. A broken string +hung from his collar, and the other half of, it lay, all warm, in the +artilleryman's still hand. He explained to me, keeping his eyes straight +in front of him, that he had met this dog (he called him awful names) +walking alone, and was going to take him to the Fort to be killed for a +masterless pariah. + +I said that Garm did not seem to me much of a pariah, but that he had +better take him to the Fort if he thought best. He said he did not care +to do so. I told him to go to the Fort alone. He said he did not want to +go at that hour, but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off +the dog. I instructed Garm to take him to the Fort, and Garm marched +him solemnly up to the gate, one mile and a half under a hot sun, and I +told the quarter-guard what had happened; but the young artilleryman was +more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several +regiments, he was told, had tried to steal Garm in their time. + +That month the hot weather shut down in earnest, and the dogs slept +in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed. Every +morning, as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in, and every +morning the man filled the bath a second time. I said to him that he +might as well fill a small tub specially for the dogs. "Nay," said he +smiling, "it is not their custom. They would not understand. Besides, +the big bath gives them more space." + +The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night came to know Garm +intimately. He noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call +out to the coolie and bid him pull with a long stroke. If the man still +slept I would wake him up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing +to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe Stanley had taught him +all about this in barracks. At any rate, when the punkah stopped, Garm +would first growl and cock his eye at the rope, and if that did not +wake the man it nearly always did--he would tiptoe forth and talk in +the sleeper's ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could never +connect the punkah and the coolie; so Garm gave me grateful hours of +cool sleep. But--he was utterly wretched--as miserable as a human being; +and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it, +and were envious. If I moved from one room to another Garm followed; +if my pen stopped scratching, Garm's head was thrust into my hand; if +I turned, half awake, on the pillow, Garm was up and at my side, for he +knew that I was his only link with his master, and day and night, and +night and day, his eyes asked one question--"When is this going to end?" + +Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed that he was more than +ordinarily upset by the hot weather, till one day at the Club a man +said: "That dog of yours will die in a week or two. He's a shadow." Then +I dosed Garm with iron and quinine, which he hated; and I felt very +anxious. He lost his appetite, and Vixen was allowed to eat his dinner +under his eyes. Even that did not make him swallow, and we held a +consultation on him, of the best man-doctor in the place; a lady-doctor, +who cured the sick wives of kings; and the Deputy Inspector-General of +the veterinary service of all India. They pronounced upon his symptoms, +and I told them his story, and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand. + +"He's dying of a broken heart," said the lady-doctor suddenly. + +"'Pon my word," said the Deputy Inspector General, "I believe Mrs. +Macrae is perfectly right as usual." + +The best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription, and the +veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it afterwards to be sure +that the drugs were in the proper dog-proportions; and that was the +first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions +to be edited. It was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on his feet +for a week or two; then he lost flesh again. I asked a man I knew to +take him up to the Hills with him when he went, and the man came to the +door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage. Garm took in the +situation at one red glance. The hair rose along his back; he sat down +in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in +the jaws of a dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once, and as +soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garm laid his head on my +knee and whined. So I knew his answer, and devoted myself to getting +Stanley's address in the Hills. + +My turn to go to the cool came late in August. We were allowed thirty +days' holiday in a year, if no one fell sick, and we took it as we could +be spared. My chief and Bob the Librarian had their holiday first, and +when they were gone I made a calendar, as I always did, and hung it up +at the head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till they returned. +Vixen had gone up to the Hills with me five times before; and she +appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as +much as I did. + +"Garm," I said, "we are going back to Stanley at Kasauli. +Kasauli--Stanley; Stanley Kasauli." And I repeated it twenty times. +It was not Kasauli really, but another place. Still I remembered what +Stanley had said in my garden on the last night, and I dared not change +the name. Then Garm began to tremble; then he barked; and then he leaped +up at me, frisking and wagging his tail. + +"Not now," I said, holding up my hand. "When I say 'Go,' we'll go, +Garm." I pulled out the little blanket coat and spiked collar that Vixen +always wore up in the Hills to protect her against sudden chills and +thieving leopards, and I let the two smell them and talk it over. What +they said of course I do not know; but it made a new dog of Garm. His +eyes were bright; and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate his +food, and he killed his rats for the next three weeks, and when he began +to whine I had only to say "Stanley--Kasauli; Kasauli--Stanley," to wake +him up. I wish I had thought of it before. + +My chief came back, all brown with living in the open air, and very +angry at finding it so hot in the plains. That same afternoon we three +and Kadir Buksh began to pack for our month's holiday, Vixen rolling in +and out of the bullock-trunk twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning +all over and thumping on the floor with his tail. Vixen knew the routine +of travelling as well as she knew my office-work. She went to the +station, singing songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while Garm +sat with me. She hurried into the railway carriage, saw Kadir Buksh make +up my bed for the night, got her drink of water, and curled up with her +black-patch eye on the tumult of the platform. Garm followed her (the +crowd gave him a lane all to himself) and sat down on the pillows with +his eyes blazing, and his tail a haze behind him. + +We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn, four or five men, who had been +working hard fox eleven months, shouting for our dales--the two-horse +travelling carriages that were to take us up to Kalka at the foot of the +Hills. It was all new to Garm. He did not understand carriages where you +lay at full length on your bedding, but Vixen knew and hopped into her +place at once; Garm following. The Kalka Road, before the railway was +built, was about forty-seven miles long, and the horses were changed +every eight miles. Most of them jibbed, and kicked, and plunged, but +they had to go, and they went rather better than usual for Garm's deep +bay in their rear. + +There was a river to be forded, and four bullocks pulled the carriage, +and Vixen stuck her head out of the sliding-door and nearly fell into +the water while she gave directions. Garm was silent and curious, +and rather needed reassuring about Stanley and Kasauli. So we rolled, +barking and yelping, into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate enough for two. + +After Kalka the road wound among the hills, and we took a curricle with +half-broken ponies, which were changed every six miles. No one dreamed +of a railroad to Simla in those days, for it was seven thousand feet up +in the air. The road was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation +pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here, again, Vixen led +Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped into the back seat, and +shouted. A cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of +Kalka, and she whined for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on the +liver. I had had one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed to the fresh +breezes, I put it on, and arm chewed it uncomprehendingly, but I think +he was grateful. + +"Hi-yi-yi-yi!" sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; "Toot-toot-toot!" +went the driver's bugle at the dangerous places, and "yow! yow!" bayed +Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to +get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. +Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again, +and he would say: "What's it like below?" and I would shout: "Hotter +than cinders. What's it like up above?" and he would shout back: "Just +perfect!" and away we would go. + +Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: "Here is Solon"; and Garm +snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant +little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. +It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby +for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir +Buksh made tea. A soldier told, us we should find Stanley "out there," +nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill. + +When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me +all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his +overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and +dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on +the great gray hillside. + +Here Garm left me. + +He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving +his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him +as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They +rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I +could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and +whimpered. + +He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was +very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and +dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell +in water. Garm was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the +same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garm--gulping, +sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could +understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now +he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garm any more +to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub. + +Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy. + +We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself +with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, +when Garm wasn't climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on. + +Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving +me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He +further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile +down the road. Then he raced back to his own master. + +Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came, and we +could see the lights of Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her +nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. +Then she gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head +on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest +people in all the world that night. + + + + +THE POWER OF THE DOG + + There is sorrow enough in the natural way + From men and women to fill our day; + But when we are certain of sorrow in store, + Why do we always arrange for more? + Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware + Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. + + Buy a pup and your money will buy + Love unflinching that cannot lie-- + Perfect passion and worship fed + By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. + Nevertheless it is hardly fair + To risk your heart for a dog to tear. + + When the fourteen years which Nature permits + Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, + And the vet's unspoken prescription runs + To lethal chambers or loaded guns, + Then you will find--it's your own affair + But... you've given your heart to a dog to tear. + + When the body that lived at your single will + When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!) + When the spirit that answered your every mood + Is gone wherever it goes--for good, + You will discover how much you care, + And will give your heart to a dog to tear! + + We've sorrow enough in the natural way, + When it comes to burying Christian clay. + Our loves are not given, but only lent, + At compound interest of cent per cent. + Though it is not always the case, I believe, + That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve: + For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, + A short-time loan is as bad as a long + So why in Heaven (before we are there!) + Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear? + + + + +THE MOTHER HIVE + +If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never +have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be +sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June +honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to +keep people cool, everybody suffered. + +A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting-board. "Excuse me," +she began, "but it's my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if +this is my--" + +"--own hive?" the Guard snapped. "Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to +you! Next!" + +"Shame!" cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and +there was a scuffle and a hum. + +The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the +alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a +ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged +into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow +or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees +will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been +slanged by the Guard. + +"What is the world like, Melissa?" said a companion. "Cruel! I brought +in a full load of first-class stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be +foul-brooded!" She sat down in the cool draught across the combs. + +"If you'd only heard," said the Wax-moth silkily, "the insolence of +the Guard's tone when she cursed our sister. It aroused the Entire +Community." She laid an egg. She had stolen in for that purpose. + +"There was a bit of a fuss on the Gate," Melissa chuckled. "You were +there, Miss?" She did not know how to address the slim stranger. + +"Don't call me 'Miss.' I'm a sister to all in affliction--just a +working-sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden." The Wax-moth +caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid another egg. + +"You mustn't lay here," cried Melissa. "You aren't a Queen." + +"My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour those aren't +eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to die for them." She +raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp round her. "If +you'd like to kill me, pray do." + +"Don't be unkind, Melissa," said a young bee, impressed by the chaste +folds of the Wax-moth's wing, which hid her ceaseless egg-dropping. + +"I haven't done anything," Melissa answered. "She's doing it all." + +"Ah, don't let your conscience reproach you later, but when you've +killed me, write me, at least, as one that loved her fellow-worker." + +Laying at every sob, the Wax-moth backed into a crowd of young bees, and +left Melissa bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her little voice +in the darkness and cried, "Stores!" till a gang of cell-fillers hailed +her, and she left her load with them. + +"I'm afraid I foul-brooded you just now," said a voice over her +shoulder. "I'd been on the Gate for three hours, and one would +foul-brood the Queen herself after that. No offence meant." + +"None taken," Melissa answered cheerily. "I shall be on Guard myself, +some day. What's next to do?" + +"There's a rumour of Death's Head Moths about. Send a gang of youngsters +to the Gate, and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of stout +scrap-wax pillars. It'll make the Hive hot, but we can't have Death's +Headers in the middle of our honey-flow." + +"My Only Wings! I should think not!" Melissa had all a sound bee's +hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking, feathery Thief of the +Hives. "Tumble out!" she called across the youngsters' quarters. "All +you who aren't feeding babies, show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the +Ga-ate!" She chanted the order at length. + +"That's nonsense," a downy, day-old bee answered. "In the first place, I +never heard of a Death's Header coming into a hive. People don't do +such things. In the second, building pillars to keep 'em out is purely +a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British bees. In the third, if you trust +a Death's Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of +confidence. Our dear sister in grey says so." + +"Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax that +is needed for higher and more practical ends," said the Wax-moth from an +empty store-cell. + +"The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I've ever heard of. You +mustn't teach us to refuse work," Melissa began. + +"You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work's the essence of life; +but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour against +imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd! If I can only teach +a--a little toleration--a little ordinary kindness here toward that +absurd old bogey you call the Death's Header, I shan't have lived in +vain." + +"She hasn't lived in vain, the darling!" cried twenty bees together. +"You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to +spreading her principles, and--and--she looks lovely!" + +An old, baldish bee came up the comb. + +"Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!" she +said. The Wax-moth slipped aside. + +The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering. "What's the matter +with 'em?" said the oldster. "Why do they call each other 'ducky' and +'darling'? Must be the weather." She sniffed suspiciously. "Horrid +stuffy smell here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?" + +"Not to my knowledge," said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the +Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never thought to report +her presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths to be like blood-red +dragon-flies. + +"You had better fan out this corner for a little," said the old bee and +passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her +fore-feet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke three hundred +beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee's temper, because she must +always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any +good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a bee +cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows it. The Wax-moth crept +forth, and caressed Melissa again. + +"I see," she murmured, "that at heart you are one of Us." + +"I work with the Hive," Melissa answered briefly. + +"It's the same thing. We and the Hive are one." + +"Then why are your feelers different from ours? Don't cuddle so." + +"Don't be provincial, Carissima. You can't have all the world +alike--yet." + +"But why do you lay eggs?" Melissa insisted. "You lay 'em like a +Queen--only you drop them in patches all over the place. I've watched +you." + +"Ah, Brighteyes, so you've pierced my little subterfuge? Yes, they are +eggs. By and by they'll spread our principles. Aren't you glad?" + +"You gave me your most solemn word of honour that they were not eggs." + +"That was my little subterfuge, dearest--for the sake of the Cause. +Now I must reach the young." The Wax-moth tripped towards the fourth +brood-frame where the young bees were busy feeding the babies. + +It takes some time for a sound bee to realize a malignant and continuous +lie. "She's very sweet and feathery," was all that Melissa thought, "but +her talk sounds like ivy honey tastes. I'd better get to my field-work +again." + +She found the Gate in a sulky uproar. The youngsters told off to the +pillars had refused to chew scrap-wax because it made their jaws ache, +and were clamouring for virgin stuff. + +"Anything to finish the job!" said the badgered Guards. "Hang up, some +of you, and make wax for these slack-jawed sisters." + +Before a bee can make wax she must fill herself with honey. Then she +climbs to safe foothold and hangs, while other gorged bees hang on to +her in a cluster. There they wait in silence till the wax comes. The +scales are either taken out of the maker's pockets by the workers, or +tinkle down on the workers while they wait. The workers chew them (they +are useless unchewed) into the all-supporting, all-embracing Wax of the +Hive. + +But now, no sooner was the wax-cluster in position than the workers +below broke out again. + +"Come down!" they cried. "Come down and work! Come on, you Levantine +parasites! Don't think to enjoy yourselves up there while we're sweating +down here!" + +The cluster shivered, as from hooked fore-foot to hooked hind-foot it +telegraphed uneasiness. At last a worker sprang up, grabbed the lowest +waxmaker, and swung, kicking above her companions. + +"I can make wax too!" she bawled. "Give me a full gorge and I'll make +tons of it." + +"Make it, then," said the bee she had grappled. The spoken word snapped +the current through the cluster. It shook and glistened like a cat's fur +in the dark. "Unhook!" it murmured. "No wax for any one to-day." + +"You lazy thieves! Hang up at once and produce our wax," said the bees +below. + +"Impossible! The sweat's gone. To make your wax we must have stillness, +warmth, and food. Unhook! Unhook!" + +They broke up as they murmured, and disappeared among the other bees, +from whom, of course, they were undistinguishable. + +"Seems as if we'd have to chew scrap-wax for these pillars, after all," +said a worker. + +"Not by a whole comb," cried the young bee who had broken the cluster. +"Listen here! I've studied the question more than twenty minutes. It's +as simple as falling off a daisy. You've heard of Cheshire, Root and +Langstroth?" + +They had not, but they shouted "Good old Langstroth!" just the same. + +"Those three know all that there is to be known about making hives. One +or t'other of 'em must have made ours, and if they've made it, they're +bound to look after it. Ours is a 'Guaranteed Patent Hive.' You can see +it on the label behind." + +"Good old guarantee! Hurrah for the label behind!" roared the bees. + +"Well, such being the case, I say that when we find they've betrayed us, +we can exact from them a terrible vengeance." + +"Good old vengeance! Good old Root! 'Nuff said! Chuck it!" The crowd +cheered and broke away as Melissa dived through. + +"D'you know where Langstroth, Root and Cheshire, live if you happen to +want em? she asked of the proud panting orator. + +"Gum me if I know they ever lived at all! But aren't they beautiful +names to buzz about? Did you see how it worked up the sisterhood?" + +"Yes; but it didn't defend the Gate," she replied. + +"Ah, perhaps that's true, but think how delicate my position is, sister. +I've a magnificent appetite, and I don't like working. It's bad for the +mind. My instinct tells me that I can act as a restraining influence on +others. They would have been worse, but for me." + +But Melissa had already risen clear, and was heading for a breadth of +virgin white clover, which to an overtired bee is as soothing as plain +knitting to a woman. + +"I think I'll take this load to the nurseries," she said, when she had +finished. "It was always quiet there in my day," and she topped off with +two little pats of pollen for the babies. + +She was met on the fourth brood-comb by a rush of excited sisters all +buzzing together. + +"One at a time! Let me put down my load. Now, what is it Sacharissa?" +she said. + +"Grey Sister--that fluffy one, I mean--she came and said we ought to be +out in the sunshine gathering honey, because life was short. She said +any old bee could attend to our babies, and some day old bees would. +That isn't true, Melissa, is it? No old bees can take us away from our +babies, can they?" + +"Of course not. You feed the babies while your heads are soft. When your +heads harden, you go on to field-work. Any one knows that." + +"We told her so! We told her so; but she only waved her feelers, and +said we could all lay eggs like Queens if we chose. And I'm afraid +lots of the weaker sisters believe her, and are trying to do it. So +unsettling!" + +Sacharissa sped to a sealed worker-cell whose lid pulsated, as the bee +within began to cut its way out. + +"Come along, precious!" she murmured, and thinned the frail top from the +other side. A pale, damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly on to the +comb. Sacharissa's note changed at once. "No time to waste! Go up the +frame and preen yourself!" she said. "Report for nursing-duty in my ward +to-morrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What's the matter with your +third right leg?" + +The young bee held it out in silence--unmistakably a drone leg incapable +of packing pollen. + +"Thank you. You needn't report till the day after to-morrow." Sacharissa +turned to her companion. "That's the fifth oddity hatched in my ward +since noon. I don't like it." + +"There's always a certain number of 'em," said Melissa. "You can't stop +a few working sisters from laying, now and then, when they overfeed +themselves. They only raise dwarf drones." + +"But we're hatching out drones with workers' stomachs; workers with +drones' stomachs; and albinoes and mixed-leggers who can't pack +pollen--like that poor little beast yonder. I don't mind dwarf drones +any more than you do (they all die in July), but this steady hatch of +oddities frightens me, Melissa!" + +"How narrow of you! They are all so delightfully clever and unusual and +interesting," piped the Wax-moth from a crack above them. "Come here, +you dear, downy duck, and tell us all about your feelings." + +"I wish she'd go!" Sacharissa lowered her voice. "She meets +these--er--oddities as they dry out, and cuddles 'em in corners." + +"I suppose the truth is that we're over-stocked and too well fed to +swarm," said Melissa. + +"That is the truth," said the Queen's voice behind them. They had +not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating. +Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body +forward. "Can you suggest a remedy?" she said. + +"New principles!" cried the Wax-moth from her crevice. "We'll apply them +quietly later." + +"Suppose we sent out a swarm?" Melissa suggested. "It's a little late, +but it might ease us off." + +"It would save us, but--I know the Hive! You shall see for yourself." +The old Queen cried the Swarming Cry, which to a bee of good blood +should be what the trumpet was to Job's war-horse. In spite of her +immense age (three, years), it rang between the canon-like frames as a +pibroch rings in a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and +repeated it up in every gallery; and the broad-winged drones, burly and +eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: "La Reine le +veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!" + +But the roar which should follow the Call was wanting. They heard a +broken grumble like the murmur of a falling tide. + +"Swarm? What for? Catch me leaving a good bar-frame Hive, with fixed +foundations, for a rotten, old oak out in the open where it may rain any +minute! We're all right! It's a 'Patent Guaranteed Hive.' Why do they +want to turn us out? Swarming be gummed! Swarming was invented to cheat +a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed!" + +The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for the night. + +"You hear?" said the Queen. "I know the Hive!" + +"Quite between ourselves, I taught them that," cried the Wax-moth. +"Wait till my principles develop, and you'll see the light from a new +quarter." + +"You speak truth for once," the Queen said suddenly, for she recognized +the Wax-moth. "That Light will break into the top of the Hive. A Hot +Smoke will follow it, and your children will not be able to hide in any +crevice." + +"Is it possible?" Melissa whispered. "I-we have sometimes heard a legend +like it." + +"It is no legend," the old Queen answered. "I had it from my mother, and +she had it from hers. After the Wax-moth has grown strong, a Shadow will +fall across the gate; a Voice will speak from behind a Veil; there will +be Light, and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see +everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in +one great fire." The old Queen was trying to tell what she had been told +of the Bee Master's dealings with an infected hive in the apiary, two or +three seasons ago; and, of course, from her point of view the affair was +as important as the Day of Judgment. + +"And then?" asked horrified Sacharissa. + +"Then, I have heard that a little light will burn in a great darkness, +and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I think not." + +"Tut! Tut!" the Wax-moth cried. "You good, fat people always prophesy +ruin if things don't go exactly your way. But I grant you there will be +changes." + +There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with little +tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars. Flannelly +lines ran through the honey-stores, the pollen-larders, the foundations, +and, worst of all, through the babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper +Guards spent half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The +lines ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb. The +caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked +everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. Even where it did not +hamper the bees' feet, the stale, sour smell of the stuff put them off +their work; though some of the bees who had taken to egg laying said it +encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital interest in life. + +When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the +ever-increasing Oddities--albinoes, mixed-leggers, single-eyed +composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying sisters; and +the ever-dwindling band of the old stock worked themselves bald and +fray-winged to feed their queer charges. Most of the Oddities would not, +and many, on account of their malformations, could not, go through +a day's field-work; but the Wax-moths, who were always busy on the +brood-comb, found pleasant home occupations for them. One albino, for +instance, divided the number of pounds of honey in stock by the number +of bees in the Hive, and proved that if every bee only gathered honey +for seven and three quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of +the time to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating +flights. The drones were not at all pleased. + +Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all brood-cells +should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere with the grub or the +workers. He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely due to the +workers building against each other on opposite sides of the wall, and +that if there were no interference, there would be no angles. Some bees +tried the new plan for a while, and found it cost eight times more +wax than the old six sided specification; and, as they never allowed a +cluster to hang up and make wax in peace, real wax was scarce. However, +they eked out their task with varnish stolen from new coffins at +funerals, and it made them rather sick. Then they took to cadging round +sugar-factories and breweries, because it was easiest to get their +material from those places, and the mixture of glucose and beer +naturally fermented in store and blew the store-cells out of shape, +besides smelling abominably. Some of the sound bees warned them that +ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities at once surrounded them +and balled them to death. That was a punishment they were almost as +fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound bees to +feed them. Curiously enough the age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion +towards the Hive made the sound bees do this, though their reason told +them they ought to slip away and unite with some other healthy stock in +the apiary. + +"What, about seven and three-quarter minutes' work now?" said Melissa +one day as she came in. "I've been at it for five hours, and I've only +half a load." + +"Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey which the Hive produces," said +a blind Oddity squatting in a store-cell. + +"But honey is gathered from flowers outside two miles away sometimes," +cried Melissa. + +"Pardon me," said the blind thing, sucking hard. "But this is the Hive, +is it not?" + +"It was. Worse luck, it is." + +"And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?" It opened a fresh store-cell +to prove it. + +"Ye-es, but it won't be long at this rate," said Melissa. + +"The rates have nothing to do with it. This Hive produces the Hival +Honey. You people never seem to grasp the economic simplicity that +underlies all life." + +"Oh, me!" said poor Melissa, "haven't you ever been beyond the Gate?" + +"Certainly not. A fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth. Mine are in +my head." It gorged till it bloated. + +Melissa took refuge in her poorly paid field-work and told Sacharissa +the story. + +"Hut!" said that wise bee, fretting with an old maid of a thistle. "Tell +us something new. The Hive's full of such as him--it, I mean." + +"What's the end to be? All the honey going out and none coming in. +Things can't last this way!" said Melissa. + +"Who cares?" said Sacharissa. "I know now how drones feel the day before +they're killed. A short life and a merry one for me." + +"If it only were merry! But think of those awful, solemn, lop-sided +Oddities waiting for us at home crawling and clambering and +preaching--and dirtying things in the dark." + +"I don't mind that so much as their silly songs, after we've fed 'em, +all about 'work among the merry, merry blossoms," said Sacharissa from +the deeps of a stale Canterbury bell. + +"I do. How's our Queen?" said Melissa. + +"Cheerfully hopeless, as usual. But she lays an egg now and then." + +"Does she so?" Melissa backed out of the next bell with a jerk. "Suppose +now, we sound workers tried to raise a Princess in some clean corner?" + +"You'd be put to it to find one. The Hive's all Wax-moth and muckings. +But--well?" + +"A Princess might help us in the time of the Voice behind the Veil that +the Queen talks of. And anything is better than working for Oddities +that chirrup about work that they can't do, and waste what we bring +home." + +"Who cares?" said Sacharissa. "I'm with you, for the fun of it. The +Oddities would ball us to death, if they knew. Come home, and we'll +begin." + +There is no room to tell how the experienced Melissa found a far-off +frame so messed and mishandled by abandoned cell-building experiments +that, for very shame, the bees never went there. How in that ruin she +blocked out a Royal Cell of sound wax, but disguised by rubbish till it +looked like a kopje among deserted kopjes. How she prevailed upon the +hopeless Queen to make one last effort and lay a worthy egg. How the +Queen obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was flung out on the +rubbish heap, and how a multitude of laying sisters went about dropping +drone-eggs where they listed, and said there was no more need of Queens. +How, covered by this confusion, Sacharissa educated certain young bees +to educate certain new-born bees in the almost lost art of making Royal +Jelly. How the nectar for it was won out of hours in the teeth of chill +winds. How the hidden egg hatched true--no drone, but Blood Royal. How +it was capped, and how desperately they worked to feed and double-feed +the now swarming Oddities, lest any break in the food-supplies should +set them to instituting inquiries, which, with songs about work, was +their favourite amusement. How in an auspicious hour, on a moonless +night, the Princess came forth a Princess indeed, and how Melissa +smuggled her into a dark empty honey-magazine, to bide her time; and +how the drones, knowing she was there, went about singing the deep +disreputable love-songs of the old days--to the scandal of the laying +sisters, who do not think well of drones. These things are, written +in the Book of Queens, which is laid up in the hollow of the Great Ash +Ygdrasil. + +After a few days the weather changed again and became glorious. Even the +Oddities would now join the crowd that hung out on the alighting-board, +and would sing of work among the merry, merry blossoms till an untrained +ear might have received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet, in truth, +their store-honey had been eaten long ago. They lived from day to day +on the efforts of the few sound bees, while the Wax-moth fretted and +consumed again their already ruined wax. But the sound bees never +mentioned these matters. They knew, if they did, the Oddities would hold +a meeting and ball them to death. + +"Now you see what we have done," said the Wax-moths. "We have created +New Material, a New Convention, a New Type, as we said we would." + +"And new possibilities for us," said the laying sisters gratefully. "You +have given us a new life's work, vital and paramount." + +"More than that," chanted the Oddities in the sunshine; "you have +created a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven, cloudless and accessible" +(it was a perfect August evening) "and Earth teeming with the merry, +merry blossoms, waiting only our honest toil to turn them all to good. +The--er--Aster, and the Crocus, and the--er--Ladies' Smock in her +season, the Chrysanthemum after her kind, and the Guelder Rose bringing +forth abundantly withal." + +"Oh, Holy Hymettus!" said Melissa, awestruck. "I knew they didn't know +how honey was made, but they've forgotten the Order of the Flowers! What +will become of them?" + +A Shadow fell across the alighting-board as the Bee Master and his son +came by. The Oddities crawled in and a Voice behind a Veil said: "I've +neglected the old Hive too long. Give me the smoker." + +Melissa heard and darted through the gate. "Come, oh come!" she cried. +"It is the destruction the Old Queen foretold. Princess, come!" + +"Really, you are too archaic for words," said an Oddity in an alley-way. +"A cloud, I admit, may have crossed the sun; but why hysterics? Above +all, why Princesses so late in the day? Are you aware it's the Hival +Tea-time? Let's sing grace." + +Melissa clawed past him with all six legs. Sacharissa had run to what +was left of the fertile brood-comb. "Down and out!" she called across +the brown breadth of it. "Nurses, guards, fanners, sweepers--out!" + +"Never mind the babies. They're better dead.--Out, before the Light and +the Hot Smoke!" + +The Princess's first clear fearless call (Melissa had found her) rose +and drummed through all the frames. "La Reine le veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! +Swar-r-rm!" + +The Hive shook beneath the shattering thunder of a stuck-down quilt +being torn back. + +"Don't be alarmed, dears," said the Wax-moths. "That's our work. Look +up, and you'll see the dawn of the New Day." + +Light broke in the top of the hive as the Queen had, prophesied--naked +light on the boiling, bewildered bees. + +Sacharissa rounded up her rearguard, which dropped headlong off the +frame, and joined the Princess's detachment thrusting toward the Gate. +Now panic was in full blast, and each sound bee found herself embraced +by at least three Oddities. The first instinct of a frightened bee is +to break into the stores and gorge herself with honey; but there were no +stores left, so the Oddities fought the sound bees. + +"You must feed us, or we shall die!" they cried, holding and clutching +and slipping, while the silent scared earwigs and little spiders twisted +between their legs. "Think of the Hive, traitors! The Holy Hive!" + +"You should have thought before!" cried the sound bees., "Stay and see +the dawn of your New Day." + +They reached the Gate at last over the soft bodies of many to whom they +had ministered. + +"On! Out! Up!" roared Melissa in the Princess's ear. "For the Hive's +sake! To the Old Oak!" + +The Princess left the alighting-board, circled once, flung herself at +the lowest branch of the Old Oak, and her little loyal swarm--you could +have covered it with a pint mug--followed, hooked, and hung. + +"Hold close!" Melissa gasped. "The old legends have come true! Look!" + +The Hive was half hidden by smoke, and Figures moved through the smoke. +They heard a frame crack stickily, saw it heaved high and twirled round +between enormous hands--a blotched, bulged, and perished horror of grey +wax, corrupt brood, and small drone-cells, all covered with crawling +Oddities, strange to the sun. + +"Why, this isn't a hive! This is a museum of curiosities," said the +Voice behind the Veil. It was only the Bee Master talking to his son. + +"Can you blame 'em, father?" said a second voice. "It's rotten with +Wax-moth. See here!" + +Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke away in +rustling flakes of ashy rottenness. + +"Number Four Frame! That was your mother's pet comb once," whispered +Melissa to the Princess. "Many's the good egg I've watched her lay +there." + +"Aren't you confusing pod hoc with propter hoc?" said the Bee Master. +"Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees let them in." A third frame +crackled and rose into the light. "All this is full of laying workers' +brood. That never happens till the stock's weakened. Phew!" + +He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also crumbled to +pieces. + +The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone-grubs squirm +feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well +knowing their work was useless; but the actual sight of even useless +work destroyed disheartens a good worker. + +"No, they have some recuperative power left," said the second voice. +"Here's a Queen cell!" + +"But it's tucked away among--What on earth has come to the little +wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of cell-building." The +father held up the frame where the bees had experimented in circular +cell-work. It looked like the pitted head, of a decaying toadstool. + +"Not altogether," the son corrected. "There's one line, at least, of +perfectly good cells." + +"My work," said Sacharissa to herself. "I'm glad Man does me justice +before--" + +That frame, too, was smashed out and thrown atop of the others and the +foul earwiggy quilts. + +As frame after frame followed it, the swarm beheld the upheaval, +exposure, and destruction of all that had been well or ill done in every +cranny of their Hive for generations past. There was black comb so old +that they had forgotten where it hung; orange, buff, and ochre-varnished +store-comb, built as bees were used to build before the days of +artificial foundations; and there was a little, white, frail new work. +There were sheets on sheets of level, even brood-comb that had held in +its time unnumbered thousands of unnamed workers; patches of obsolete +drone-comb, broad and high-shouldered, showing to what marks the male +grub was expected to grow; and two-inch deep honey-magazines, empty, but +still magnificent, the whole gummed and glued into twisted scrap-work, +awry on the wires; half-cells, beginnings abandoned, or grandiose, +weak-walled, composite cells pieced out with rubbish and capped with +dirt. + +Good or bad, every inch of it was so riddled by the tunnels of the +Wax-moth that it broke in clouds of dust as it was flung on the heap. + +"Oh, see!" cried Sacharissa. "The Great Burning that Our Queen foretold. +Who can bear to look?" + +A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish, and they smelt singeing wax. + +The Figures stooped, lifted the Hive and shook it upside down over the +pyre. A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and +grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames +roared up and consumed all that fuel. + +"We must disinfect," said a Voice. "Get me a sulphur-candle, please." + +The shell of the Hive was returned to its place, a light was set in +its sticky emptiness, tier by tier the Figures built it up, closed the +entrance, and went away. The swarm watched the light leaking through +the cracks all the long night. At dawn one Wax-moth came by, fluttering +impudently. + +"There has been a miscalculation about the New Day, my dears," she +began; "one can't expect people to be perfect all at once. That was our +mistake." + +"No, the mistake was entirely ours," said the Princess. + +"Pardon me," said the Wax-moth. "When you think of the enormous +upheaval--call it good or bad--which our influence brought about, you +will admit that we, and we alone--" + +"You?" said the Princess. "Our stock was not strong. So you came--as any +other disease might have come. Hang close, all my people." + +When the sun rose, Veiled Figures came down, and saw their swarm at the +bough's end waiting patiently within sight of the old Hive--a handful, +but prepared to go on. + + + + +THE BEES AND THE FLIES + + A FARMER of the Augustan age + Perused in Virgil's golden page, + The story of the secret won + From Proteus by Cyrene's son + How the dank sea-god sowed the swain + Means to restore his hives again + More briefly, how a slaughtered bull + Breeds honey by the bellyful. + + The egregious rustic put to death + A bull by stopping of its breath: + Disposed the carcass in a shed + With fragrant herbs and branches spread. + And, having thus performed the charm, + Sat down to wait the promised swarm. + + Nor waited long... The God of Day + Impartial, quickening with his ray + Evil and good alike, beheld + The carcass--and the carcass swelled! + Big with new birth the belly heaves + Beneath its screen of scented leaves; + Past any doubt, the bull conceives! + + The farmer bids men bring more hives + To house the profit that arrives; + Prepares on pan, and key and kettle, + Sweet music that shall make 'em settle; + But when to crown the work he goes, + Gods! What a stink salutes his nose! + Where are the honest toilers? + Where The gravid mistress of their care? + A busy scene, indeed, he sees, + But not a sign or sound of bees. + Worms of the riper grave unhid + By any kindly coffin lid, + Obscene and shameless to the light, + Seethe in insatiate appetite, + Through putrid offal; while above + The hissing blow-fly seeks his love, + Whose offspring, supping where they supt, + Consume corruption twice corrupt. + + + + +WITH THE NIGHT MAIL + +A STORY OF 2000 A. D. + +(Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared) + +A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of +one of the G.P.O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec +in "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the +Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened +all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the +tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags +lay packed close as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our +G.P.O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were filled as I +watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting +packets three hundred feet nearer the stars. + +From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and +wonderfully learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Second Despatcher of +the Western Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old +romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He +introduces me to the captain of "162"--Captain Purnall, and his relief, +Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large and red; +but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and +aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, +from L.V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction +of eyes habitually turned through naked space. + +On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some +twenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress +of as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face +of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at +the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of +the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers', lofts notifies the +return of a homer. + +"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are shot +up by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "Our coach +will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard." + +"No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve +of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration +of trim makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips. + +Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to +rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn +bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, +and ice) to the inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some +two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, +is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of +any crack liner, and you will realize the power that must drive a hull +through all weathers at more than the emergency speed of the Cyclonic! + +The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping +hair-crack of the bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us the +dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and +half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gullwing" curve. Raise a few +feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she +will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. +Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant +the whole forward--a touch on the wheel will suffice--and she sweeps +at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she +presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing +within a half mile. + +"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought +he'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only +found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder +to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion and +Magniac he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his +country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're really +doing." + +"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's due +now," says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is +nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to +within a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of +the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, +but the G.P.O. serves them raw under a lick of grey official paint. The +inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, +but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as +the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost +amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an +aperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which our coach will +be locked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to +the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is +obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It +enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and +last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it +comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap +into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy them +selves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over +the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr. +Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. "Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary, +and disappears through the door which a foot high pneumatic compressor +locks after him. + +"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with +a tang. We are clear. + +Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which +I watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of +us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and +darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's +light ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant she gleams like +a star ere she drops toward the Highgate Receiving Towers. "The Bombay +Mail," says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. "She's forty +minutes late." + +"What's our level?" I ask. + +"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?" + +The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of ancientest +tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he +stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow +colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, +is feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. "It's steep +to-night," he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. "We +generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time +o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff." + +"So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!" says Captain +Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp +Night Mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to +port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. +The gale will have us over the North Sea in half-an-hour, but Captain +Purnall lets her go composedly--nosing to every point of the compass as +she rises. + +"Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred"--the dip-dial reads ere +we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand +fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keys down the +governor on the switch before him. There is no sense in urging machinery +when Eolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in +earnest now--our nose notched home on our chosen star. At this level the +lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the +East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we +rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical +gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to +silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and +Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) +are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry +Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten +seconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off +our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David's +Head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way. +There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does +not affect The Leek. + +"Our planet's over-lighted if anything," says Captain Purnall at the +wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. "I remember the old days of +common white verticals that 'ud show two or three hundred feet up in a +mist, if you knew where to look for 'em. In really fluffy weather they +might as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming home +then, an' have some fun. Now, it's like driving down Piccadilly." + +He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore through +the cloud-floor. We see nothing of England's outlines: only a white +pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variously +coloured fire--Holy Island's white and red--St. Bee's interrupted white, +and so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, +and the Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the world +whereby we travel in security! + +"Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?" asks Captain Hodgson. Cork +Light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Purnall +nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts--the cloud-bank beneath us is +streaked with running fissures of flame where the Atlantic boats are +hurrying Londonward just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed, +under the Conference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to +themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with +English air. "No. 162" lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the +fore-flange of the rudder and we make Valencia (white, green, white) at +a safe 7000 feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet. + +There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream round +Dingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. A big S.A.T.A. +liner (Societe Anonyme des Transports Aeriens) is diving and lifting +half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid west wind. +Lower still lies a disabled Dane she is telling the liner all about it +in International. Our General Communication dial has caught her talk and +begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to shut it off but +checks himself. "Perhaps you'd like to listen," he says. + +"Argol of St. Thomas," the Dane whimpers. "Report owners three starboard +shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, but impossible +further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?" + +The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. The Argol +answers that she has already done so without effect, and begins to +relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-bearings. The +Frenchman assents cordially, cries "Courage, mon ami," and switches off. + +Then lights sink under the curve of the ocean. + +"That's one of Lundt & Bleamers' boats," says Captain Hodgson. "Serves +'em right for putting German compos in their thrust-blocks. She won't +be in Fayal to-night! By the way, wouldn't you like to look round the +engine-room?" + +I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow Captain +Hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge +of the tanks. We know that Fleury's gas can lift anything, as the +world-famous trials of '89 showed, but its almost indefinite powers +of expansion necessitate vast tank room. Even in this thin air the +lift-shunts are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still +"162" must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our +flight would become a climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an +overlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike. +"When I take the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you'll see me shunt +forty per cent of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper +rudder. With a swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as you say. +Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip-dial! Tim fetches her +down once every thirty knots as regularly as breathing." + +So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the arrow creeps +from 6700 to 7300. There is the faint "szgee" of the rudder, and back +slides the arrow to 6000 on a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots. + +"In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well," says Captain +Hodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which divides the engine-room +from the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor. Here we find Fleury's +Paradox of the Bulk-headed Vacuum--which we accept now without +thought--literally in full blast. The three engines are H.T.&T. +assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3000 to the Limit--that is +to say, up to the point when the blades make the air "bell"--cut out a +vacuum for themselves precisely as over-driven marine propellers used +to do. "162's" Limit is low on account of the small size of her nine +screws, which, though handier than the old colloid Thelussons, "bell" +sooner. The midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is not +running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers draw direct +into the return-mains. + +The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched expansion-tanks +on either side the valves descend pillarwise to the turbine-chests, +and thence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades with a +force that would whip the teeth out of a power saw. Behind, is its own +pressure held in leash of spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, +the vacuum where Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled +turbillons of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are +pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for an +instant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the Ray +intently. It is the very heart of the machine--a mystery to this day. +Even Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire, +could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the U-tube +can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast +of gas into a chill greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it +trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and +the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had +almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, +upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a +liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's +Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to +Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human +finger touch the hooded terminals, Fleury's Ray will wink and disappear +and must be laboriously built up again. This means half a day's work for +all hands and an expense of, one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the +G.P.O. for radium-salts and such trifles. + +"Now look at our thrust-collars. You won't find much German compo there. +Full-jewelled, you see," says Captain Hodgson as the engineer shunts +open the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings are C.M.C. (Commercial +Minerals Company) stones, ground with as much care as the lens of a +telescope. They cost L837 apiece. So far we have not arrived at their +term of life. These bearings came from "No. 97," which took them over +from the old Dominion of Light which had them out of the wreck of the +Persew aeroplane in the years when men still flew wooden kites over oil +engines! + +They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German "ruby" enamels, +so-called "boort" facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina +compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy. +The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under the +engine-room dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The former +sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. +The latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another +Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is +to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. +That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a +sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped +tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between the +two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their +side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the +liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft +gluck-glock of gaslocks closing as Captain Purnall brings "162" down by +the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom of the air on our skin is +no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the universal stillness. And we +are running an eighteen-second mile. + +I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the hatch-coamings +into the coach. The mail-clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary, and +Medicine Hat bags; but there is a pack of cards ready on the table. + +Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbine-valves and +stand by; but the spectacled slave of the Ray in the U-tube never +lifts his head. He must watch where he is. We are hard-braked and going +astern; there is language from the Control Platform. + +"Tim's sparking badly about something," says the unruffled Captain +Hodgson. "Let's look." + +Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since, but +the embodied authority of the G.P.O. Ahead of us floats an ancient, +aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with no more right +to the 5000-foot lane than has a horse-cart to a modern road. She +carries an obsolete "barbette" conning tower--a six-foot affair with +railed platform forward--and our warning beam plays on the top of it +as a policeman's lantern flashes on the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief, +too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. Captain +Purnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him man to man. There are +times when Science does not satisfy. + +"What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping +chimney-sweep?" he shouts as we two drift side by side. "Do you know +this is a Mail-lane? You call yourself a sailor, sir? You ain't fit to +peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your name and number! Report and +get down, and be--!" + +"I've been blown up once," the shock-headed man cries, hoarsely, as a +dog barking. "I don't care two flips of a contact for anything you can +do, Postey." + +"Don't you, sir? But I'll make you care. I'll have you towed stern first +to Disko and broke up. You can't recover insurance if you're broke for +obstruction. Do you understand that?" + +Then the stranger bellows: "Look at my propellers! There's been a +wulli-wa down below that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! We've +been blown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's watch +inside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Ray +went out when the engines smashed; and... and... for pity's sake give +me my height, Captain! We doubt we're dropping." + +"Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?" Captain Purnall overlooks +all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. +The stranger leaks pungently. + +"We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug the +fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her captain wails. + +"She's sinking like a log," says Captain Purnall in an undertone. "Call +up the Banks Mark Boat, George." Our dip-dial shows that we, keeping +abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last few minutes. + +Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to swing +through the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity. + +"That'll fetch something," he says, while Captain Hodgson watches the +General Communicator. He has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a few +hundred miles west, and is reporting the case. + +"I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on the +conning-tower. + +"Is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "She isn't insured. She's +mine." + +"Might have guessed as much," mutters Hodgson. "Owner's risk is the +worst risk of all!" + +"Can't I fetch St. John's--not even with this breeze?" the voice +quavers. + +"Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you any lift in you, fore or aft?" + +"Nothing but the midship tanks, and they're none too tight. You see, my +Ray gave out and--" he coughs in the reek of the escaping gas. + +"You poor devil!" This does not reach our friend. "What does the Mark +Boat say, George?" + +"Wants to know if there's any danger to traffic. Says she's in a bit of +weather herself, and can't quit station. I've turned in a General Call, +so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound to help--or else we +must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on! Here we are! A Planet liner, +too! She'll be up in a tick!" + +"Tell her to have her slings ready," cries his brother captain. "There +won't be much time to spare... Tie up your mate," he roars to the +tramp. + +"My mate's all right. It's my engineer. He's gone crazy." + +"Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!" + +"But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by." + +"You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're less than +fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers." + +A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes +the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open land her +transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as she +adjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's conning-tower. +The mate comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into the +cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must +go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will find +a nice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. The bandaged head +goes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers +hollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon +colloid. + +"That's a pretty girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says Captain +Purnall. + +The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him +fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns--at which we little human +beings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the ship's kitten. +Up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she +hurtles away again. The dial shows less than 3000 feet. The Mark Boat +signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her death-song, as +she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags. + +"Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning," says Captain +Purnall, following her down. There is no need. Not a liner in air but +knows the meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and our quarry a +wide berth. + +"But she'll drown in the water, won't she?" I ask. "Not always," is +his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of +herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward +tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look sharp. +There's weather ahead." + +Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy +pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a +smoking-room settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We +hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The +derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. +She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down +that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her. + +"A filthy business," says Hodgson. "I wonder what it must have been like +in the old days?" + +The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if that wavering carcass had +been filled with the men of the old days, each one of them taught (that +is the horror of it!) that, after death he would very possibly go for +ever to unspeakable torment? + +And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows now that we are only our +fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), we, I say, ripped and rammed and +pithed to admiration. + +Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts that we are to get into our +inflators and to bring him his at once. + +We hurry into the heavy rubber suits--the engineers are already +dressed--and inflate at the air-pump taps. G.P.O. inflators are thrice +as thick as a racing man's "flickers," and chafe abominably under the +armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the +extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck he +would bounce back. But it is "162" that will do the kicking. + +"The Mark Boat's mad--stark ravin' crazy," he snorts, returning to +command. "She says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull +over to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first! We wasted half an hour +fussing over that dead duck down under, and now I'm expected to go +rubbin' my back all round the Pole. What does she think a Postal +packet's made of? Gummed silk? Tell her we're coming on straight, +George." + +George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the Direct Control. +Now under Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Accelerator; under his +left heel the Reverse, and so with the other foot. The lift-shunt stops +stand out on the rim of the steering-wheel where the fingers of his left +hand can play on them. At his right hand is the midships engine lever +ready to be thrown into gear at a moment's notice. He leans forward +in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked toward the +General Communicator. Henceforth he is the strength and direction of +"162," through whatever may befall. + +The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A. B..C. Directions to +the traffic at large. We are to secure all "loose objects"; hood up +our Fleury Rays; and "on no account to attempt to clear snow from our +conning-towers till the weather abates." Under-powered craft, we are +told, can ascend to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to look out +for them accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very badly, +"with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc." + +Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only warning is the +electric skin-tension (I feel as though I were a lace-maker's pillow) +and an irritability which the gibbering of the General Communicator +increases almost to hysteria. + +We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and our +turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots. + +Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us the +North Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round her rising and +falling--bewildered planets about an unstable sun--helpless shipping +hanging on to her light for company's sake. No wonder she could not quit +station. + +She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the bad vortex in which +(her beam shows it) she is even now reeling. + +The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous +films--wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe of +pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. It +leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of +our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow +sinks as though that light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch and +stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt +strike chords of numbers--1:4:7:--2:4:6:--7:5:3, and so on; for he is +running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy +air. All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated over +this thin ice the better. Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault +is charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin friction may excite +to unholy manifestations. Between the upper and lower levels--5000 and +7000, hints the Mark Boat--we may perhaps bolt through if... Our bow +clothes itself in blue flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can +keep pace with the changing tensions. A vortex has us by the beak and +we dive down a two-thousand foot slant at an angle (the dip-dial and my +bouncing body record it) of thirty-five. Our turbines scream shrilly; +the propellers cannot bite on the thin air; Tim shunts the lift out of +five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives her bullet wise through +the maelstrom till she cushions with jar on an up-gust, three thousand +feet below. + +"Now we've done it," says George in my ear: "Our skin-friction, that +last slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions! Look out for +laterals, Tim; she'll want some holding." + +"I've got her," is the answer. "Come up, old woman." + +She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and right like the +pinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her course four ways at once, +and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped into +a new chaos. We are never without a corposant grinning on our bows or +rolling head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle of +electricity around and within us is added once or twice the rattle of +hail--hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we may break +our back, pitch-poling. + +"Air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars George above the tumult. "About +as elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, ain't it?" + +He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on the Heavens +when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the +High Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots across +tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of any +rudeness in the reception. Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, one +corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into +the blackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his +knuckles at every turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head +to clear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that +George, watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his +face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a human +being could so continuously labour and so collectedly think as did Tim +through that Hell's half-hour when the flurry was at its worst. We were +dragged hither and yon by warm or frozen suctions, belched up on the +tops of wulii-was, spun down by vortices and clubbed aside by laterals +under a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a drunken moon. + +I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in and +out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the yelling +winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any lull that +promised hold for an instant. At last we began to claw up on a cant, +bow-rudder and port-propeller together; only the nicest balancing of +tanks saved us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days. + +"We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow," George +cried. + +"There's no windward," I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to a +stanchion. "How can there be?" + +He laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red man +laughed beneath his inflated hood! + +"Look!" he said. "We must clear those refugees with a high lift." + +The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuating +in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving +lights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie head to +wind, but, not being hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat +had risen to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement, had +dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa, and was +blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went +astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the Mark +Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple. + +"If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in +a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some +skippers--will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat +think she is doing, Tim?" + +"Playin' kiss in the ring," was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-Asiatic +Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there +was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out +like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and +all but over-ending. + +"Now I hope she's satisfied," said Tim. "I'm glad I'm not a +Mark Boat... Do I want help?" The General Communicator dial had caught +his ear. "George, you may tell that gentleman with my love--love, +remember, George--that I do not want help. Who is the officious +sardine-tin?" + +"A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow." + +"Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed +at present." + +"Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," George +explained. "We call' em kittiwakes." + +A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one +instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and +a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to the +insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay in +absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his +boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well. + +We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours when the +storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to northward +filled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite dissipating itself in +our atmosphere. + +Said George: "That may iron out all the tensions." Even as he spoke, the +conflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the laterals died out +in long, easy swells; the air-ways were smoothed before us. In less +than three minutes the covey round the Mark Boat had shipped their +power-lights and whirred away upon their businesses. + +"What's happened?" I gasped. The nerve-store within and the volt-tingle +without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead. + +"God, He knows!" said Captain George soberly "That old shooting-star's +skin-friction has discharged the different levels. I've seen it happen +before. Phew: What a relief!" + +We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. +Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming up +behind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped +his face. + +"Hello, Williams!" he cried. "A degree or two out o' station, ain't +you?" + +"May be," was the answer from the Mark Boat. "I've had some company this +evening." + +"So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draught?" + +"I warned you. Why didn't you pull out north? The east-bound packets +have." + +"Me? Not till I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. I was +squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son." + +"I'd be the last man to deny it," the captain of the Mark Boat replies +softly. "The way you handled her just now--I'm a pretty fair judge of +traffic in a volt-hurry--it was a thousand revolutions beyond anything +even I've ever seen." + +Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George on the c. +p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden +pinned up on Tim's telescope bracket above the steering-wheel. + +I see. Wholly and entirely do I see! + +There is some talk overhead of "coming round to tea on Friday," a brief +report of the derelict's fate, and Tim volunteers as he descends: "For +an A. B. C. man young Williams is less of a high-tension fool than some. +Were you thinking of taking her on, George? Then I'll just have a look +round that port-thrust seems to me it's a trifle warm--and we'll jog +along." + +The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed +eyrie. Here she will stay a shutterless observatory; a life-boat +station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorological +bureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till Wednesday next +when her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. Her +black hull, double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent +all that remains to the planet of that odd old word authority. She is +responsible only to the Aerial Board of Control the A. B. C. of which +Tim speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated body +of a few score of persons of both sexes, controls this planet. +"Transportation is Civilisation," our motto runs. Theoretically, we do +what we please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic AND +ALL IT IMPLIES. Practically, the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all +international arrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our +tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole +burden of public administration on its shoulders. + +I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the c. p. while George fans +her along over the white blur of the Banks in beautiful upward curves +of fifty miles each. The dip-dial translates them on the tape in flowing +freehand. + +Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record +"162's" path through the volt-flurry. + +"I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years," he +says ruefully. + +A postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. The tapes +then go to the A. B. C., which collates and makes composite photographs +of them for the instruction of captains. Tim studies his irrevocable +past, shaking his head. + +"Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at fifty-five degrees! We +must have been standing on our heads then, George." + +"You don't say so," George answers. "I fancied I noticed it at the +time." + +George may not have Captain Purnall's catlike swiftness, but he is all +an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that play on the shunt-stops. +The delicious flight-curves come away on the tape with never a waver. +The Mark Boat's vertical spindle of light lies down to eastward, setting +in the face of the following stars. Westward, where no planet should +rise, the triple verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still to the Southern +route) make a low-lifting haze. We seem the only thing at rest under all +the heavens; floating at ease till the earth's revolution shall turn up +our landing-towers. + +And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteen-second mile. + +"Some fine night," says Tim, "we'll be even with that clock's Master." + +"He's coming now," says George, over his shoulder. "I'm chasing the +night west." + +The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn under +unobserved, but the deep airboom on our skin changes to a joyful shout. + +"The dawn-gust," says Tim. "It'll go on to meet the Sun. Look! +Look! There's the dark being crammed back over our bows! Come to the +after-colloid. I'll show you something." + +The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are asleep, +and the Slave of the Ray is ready to follow them. Tim slides open the +aft colloid and reveals the curve of the world--the ocean's deepest +purple--edged with fuming and intolerable gold. + +Then the Sun rises and through the colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim +scowls in his face. + +"Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "That's all we are. Squirrels in +a cage! He's going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a few years, my +shining friend, and we'll take steps that will amaze you. We'll Joshua +you!" + +Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the Yale of Ajalon at our +pleasure. So far, we can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length +in these latitudes. But some day--even on the Equator--we shall hold the +Sun level in his full stride. + +Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big submersible +breaks water suddenly. Another and another follows with a swash and +a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea +freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely +ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam. + +"We'll lung up, too," says Tim, and when we return to the c. p. George +shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out. +There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will be revised at the end of +the year) allow twelve hours for a run which any packet can put behind +her in ten. So we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which +pushes us along at a languid twenty. + +To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or +so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which +has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the thickening +traffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reserved +to ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning hymn on a +Hospital boat. + +She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught +the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "Oh, ye Winds of God," sang +the unseen voices: "bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for +ever!" + +We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across her +great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their hands +neighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and the nurses +and the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. She passed slowly +beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the +night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a cloud +and vanished, her song continuing. "Oh, ye holy and humble men of heart, +bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever." + +"She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the Benedicite; +and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-blinds over her +colloids," said George at last. "She'll be bound for Frederikshavn or +one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month. If she was an accident ward +she'd be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level. Yes--consumptives." + +"Funny how the new things are the old thing I've read in books," Tim +answered, "that savages used to haul their sick and wounded up to +the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We hoist 'em in +sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do the doctors say we've +added to the average life of man?" + +"Thirty years," says George with a twinkle in his eye. "Are we going to +spend 'em all up here, Tim?" + +"Flap ahead, then. Flap ahead. Who's hindering?" the senior captain +laughed, as we went in. + +We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental shipping; +and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one, +there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We met Hudson Bay +furriers out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure +from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We +overcossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who +see no land between Trepassy and Lanco, know what gold they bring back +from West Erica. Trans-Asiatic Directs we met, soberly ringing the +world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and +white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, +their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is +in the North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their +grape-fruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we +sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed +the northern health stations in icebound ports where submersibles dare +not rise. + +Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely +out of the north, like strings of unfrightened wild duck. It does not +pay to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the +risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice pack off Nain or Hebron +are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and +scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the +Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are +busy, over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia. + +We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways +still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black +between its drifting iceblocks, all down the Park that the wisdom of our +fathers--but every one knows the Quebec run. + +We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes ahead of time, +and there hung at ease till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could pull +out and give us our proper slip. It was curious to watch the action of +the holding-down clips all along the frosty river front as the boats +cleared or came to rest. A big Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and her +crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to sing "Elsinore"--the +oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course: + + Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic + Forty couple waltzing on the floor! + And you can watch my Ray, + For I must go away + And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore! + +Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates: + + Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor + West from Sourabaya to the Baltic-- + Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw! + Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic + And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore! + +The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though +Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and +unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned and +floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the great +tower arms flung open--or did I think so because on the upper staging a +little hooded figure also opened her arms wide toward her father? + + * * * * * * * * + +In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the +receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle +turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the +maiden of the photograph on the shelf. "And by the way," said he to her, +stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, "I saw young +Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to tea on Friday." + + + + AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL + + Lights + +No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18th. + +CAPE VERDE--Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guide-light changes from +1st proximo to triple flash--green white green--in place of occulting +red as heretofore. The warning light for Harmattan winds will be +continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by +E. Main Routes. + +INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)--From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light (double +red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach of +Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April and +October. + +TABLE BAY--Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic making +Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor Bay at least +two thousand feet under, and do not round to till East of E. shoulder +Devil's Peak. + +SANDHEADS LIGHT--Green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage +for Bay and Burma traffic only. + +SNAEFELL JOKUL--White occulting light withdrawn for winter. + +PATAGONIA--No summer light south Cape Pilar. This includes Staten Island +and Port Stanley. + +C. NAVARIN--Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new). + +EAST CAPE--Fog--flash--single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals +(new). + +MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO--Lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Cape +Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels. + + +For the Board: + + CATTERTHUN } + ST. JUST } Lights. + VAN HEDDER } + + + +Casualties + +Week ending Dec. 18th. + +SABLE ISLAND--Green single barbette-tower freighter, number +indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, +passed 300-ft. level Q P. as Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by +Mark Boat. + +N. F. BANKS--Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter (Fowey--St. +John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 151 N. 50 15' W. Crew +rescued by Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and pithed by Postal +Packet, Dec. 14th. + +KERGUELEN, MARK BOAT reports last call from Cymena freighter (Gayer +Tong Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald +Islands. No wreckage recovered. Messages and wills of crew at all A. B. +C. offices. + +FEZZAN--T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during Harmattan on Akakus +Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th. + +BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports Caducci (Valandingham Line) slightly spiked in +western gorge Point de Benasdue. Passengers transferred Andorra (Fulton +Line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th. + +ASCENSION, MARE BOAT--Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden rudder, +wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and +salved 7 20' S. 18 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices. + + +Missing + +No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from +following overdues, they are posted as missing: + + Atlantis, W.17630. Canton--Valparaiso + Audhumla W. 889. Stockholm--Odessa + Berenice, W. 2206... Riga--Vladivostock + Draw, E. 446.. Coventry--Pontes + Arenas Tontine, E. 5068. C. Wrath--Ungava + Wu-Sung, E. 41776.. Hankow--Lobito Bay + +General Call (all Mark Boats) out for: + +Jane Eyre, W. 6990. Port Rupert--City of Mexico Santander, W. 6514.. +Gobi Desert--Manila Y. Edmundsun, E. 9690.. Kandahar--Fiume + + Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels + +VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York (twice warned). + GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia + (twice warned). + MARVEL of PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de +Janeiro (twice warned). For the Board: + + LAZAREFF } + McKEOUGH } Traffic + GOLDBRATT } + + + + NOTES + + High-Level Sleet + +The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all +quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the +higher levels. Racing planes and digs alike have suffered severely--the +former from 'unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and +only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross-wind +know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased +bodies. As a consequence, the Northern and North-western upper levels +have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers have returned to +the ignoble security of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. +But there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen +stays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean. + + + Bat-Boat Racing + +The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world +to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing. We have been treated +to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing-planes driven a +clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased down to touch +their so-called "native element" as they near the line. Judges and +starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public +demonstration off St. Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne +ample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the "bat" is to be a boat, and +the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight under +mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule +severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are +permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast +central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not +for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome +waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, +so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has +just expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain +on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is +admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future before +it. + + + Crete and the A. B. C. + +The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the A. B. C. Monthly +Report, is not without humour. Till the 25th October Crete, as all our +planet knows, was the sole surviving European repository of "autonomous +institutions," "local self-government," and the rest of the archaic +lumber devised in the past for the confusion of human affairs. She +has lived practically on the tourist traffic attracted by her annual +pageants of Parliaments, Boards, Municipal Councils, etc., etc. Last +summer the islanders grew wearied, as their premier explained, of +"playing at being savages for pennies," and proceeded to pull down all +the landing-towers on the island and shut off general communication till +such time as the A. B. C. should annex them. For side-splitting comedy +we would refer our readers to the correspondence between the Board of +Control and the Cretan premier during the "war." However, all's well +that ends well. The A. B. C. have taken over the administration of Crete +on normal lines; and tourists must go elsewhere to witness the "debates," +"resolutions," and "popular movements" of the old days. The only people +to suffer will be the Board of Control, which is grievously overworked +already. It is easy enough to condemn the Cretans for their +laziness; but when one recalls the large, prosperous, and presumably +public-spirited communities which during the last few years have +deliberately thrown themselves into the hands of the A. B. C., one, +cannot be too hard upon St. Paul's old friends. + + + + CORRESPONDENCE + + Skylarking on the Equator + +To THE EDITOR: Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W. 26-15), +I became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or +twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party +of Transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of the largest +pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard) and, in the intervals of +their pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This +orgie--I can give it no other name--went on for at least two hours, +and naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of +course, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two +brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was told +that these "professors" were engaged in scientific experiments. The +extent of their "scientific" knowledge, may be judged by the fact that +they expected to produce (I give their own words) "a little blue sky" +if "they went on long enough." This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450 +feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place +(it can be found at the 4000 level for practically twelve months out of +the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of +Transylvania, that "skylarking" in the centre of a main-travelled road +where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's +stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had +finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal +pressure layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least +an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush--solely due to these +diabolical throw-downs--that came near to wrecking my propeller. +Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without +the added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums. + + Rhyl. J. VINCENT MATHEN. + +[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathen's views, but till +the Board sees fit to further regulate the Southern areas in which +scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be exposed to +the risk which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a chimera +bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing +secondary causes.--Editor.] + + + Answers to Correspondents + +VIGILANS--The Laws of Auroral Derangements are still imperfectly +understood. Any overheated motor may of course "seize" without warning; +but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours +while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe with Lavalle +that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis are practically one big +electric "leak," and that the paralysis of your engines was due to +complete magnetization of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often +"glue up" when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science +why the same disability should not be experienced at higher levels when +the Auroras are "delivering" strongly. + +INDIGNANT--On your own showing, you were not under control. That +you could not hoist the necessary N. U. C. lights on approaching a +traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune +which might befall any one. The A. B. C., being responsible for the +planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this kind of +misfortune. A reference to the Code will show that you were fined on the +lower scale. + +PLANISTON--(1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won last year +by L. V. Rautsch; R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the same week pulling +off the Ten Thousand (oversee). R. M.'s average worked out at a +fraction over 500 kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. +(2) Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. For +commercial and practical purposes 15,000 tons is accepted as the most +manageable. + +PATERFAMILIAS--None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both to +your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into +garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may +be included, but the average courts are not, as a rule, swayed by +sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion of +your roof, you had better rest your case on decoverture of domicile (see +Parkins v. Duboulay). We sympathize with your position, but the night +of the 14th was stormy and confused, and--you may have to anchor on a +stranger's chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap! + +ALDEBARAN--(1) war, as a paying concern, ceased in 1987. (2) The +Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right of +waging war so long as it does not interfere with the traffic and all +that implies. (3) The A. B. C. was constituted in 1949. + +L. M. P.--(1) Keep her full head-on at half power, taking advantage of +the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She will strain much less this +way than in quartering across a gale. (2) Nothing is to be gained by +reversing into a following gale, and there is always risk of a turnover. +(3) The formulae for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will +continue to be so as long as air is compressible. + +PEGAMOID--(1) Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any other +material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely non-hygroscopic. +(2) We cannot recommend any particular make. + +PULMONAR--(1) For the symptoms you describe, try the Gobi Desert +Sanatoria. The low levels of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are against +them except at the outset of the disease. (2) We do not recommend +boarding-houses or hotels in this column. + +BEGINNER--On still days the air above a large inhabited city being +slightly warmer--i.e., thinner--than the atmosphere of the surrounding +country, a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area, precisely +as a ship sinks a little in fresh water. Hence the phenomena of "jolt" +and your "inexplicable collisions" with factory chimneys. In air, as on +earth, it is safest to fly high. + +EMERGENCY--There is only one rule of the road in air, earth, and water. +Do you want the firmament to yourself? + +PICCIOLA--Both Poles have been overdone in Art and Literature. Leave +them to Science for the next twenty years. You did not send a stamp with +your verses. + +NORTH NIGERIA--The Mark Boat was within her right in warning you off the +Reserve. The shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the game. You can +buy all the photos you need at Sokoto. + +NEW ERA--It is not etiquette to overcross an A. B. C. official's boat +without asking permission. He is one of the body responsible for the +planet's traffic, and for that reason must not be interfered with. You, +presumably, are out on your own business or pleasure, and must leave him +alone. For humanity's sake don't try to be "democratic." + +EXCORIATED--All inflators chafe sooner or later. You must go on till +your skin hardens by practice. Meantime vaseline. + + + + REVIEW + + The Life of Xavier Lavalle + (Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris) + +Ten years ago Lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of the heavens," +as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of a lifetime's +labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt, to a world bound +hand and foot to Barald's Theory of Vertices and "compensating electric +nodes." "They shall see," he wrote--in that immortal postscript to The +Heart of the Cyclone--"the Laws whose existence they derided written in +fire beneath them." + +"But even here," he continues, "there is no finality. Better a thousand +times my conclusions should be discredited than that my dead name should +lie across the threshold of the temple of Science--a bar to further +inquiry." + +So died Lavalle--a prince of the Powers of the Air, and even at his +funeral Cellier jested at "him who had gone to discover the secrets of +the Aurora Borealis." + +If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that Collier's +theories are today as exploded as the ludicrous deductions of the +Spanish school. In the place of their fugitive and warring dreams we +have, definitely, Lavalle's Law of the Cyclone which he surprised in +darkness and cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora +Borealis. It is there that I, intent on my own investigations, have +passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the +snow beneath him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon +the North Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism of +his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned to the +zenith. + +"Master," I would cry as I moved respectfully beneath him, "what is it +you seek today?" and always the answer, clear and without doubt, from +above: "The old secret, my son!" + +The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry of the +human always!) had I known--if I had known--I would many times have +bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera +possess, of having aided him in his monumental researches. + +It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the two volumes +consecrated to the ground-life of his father, so full of the holy +intimacies of the domestic hearth. Once returned from the abysms of the +utter North to that little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was +not the philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy that +imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a +farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must +be written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she +writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found "in +this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large and +very untidy boy." Here is her letter: + +"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed in +calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora--la belle Aurore, +whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,--I had set out the +guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the +plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with his +anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the +mayor's house that the grapnel first engages! That I do not regret, for +the mayor's wife and I are not sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my +pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into the conservatory I +protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs +to the window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason, +for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The Mayor +of Meudon, thunders at our door in the name of the Law, demanding, +I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation through the +megaphone--Xavier is two hundred feet above us: + +"'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile. +Descend, Mons. Lavalle!' + +"No one answers. + +"'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend and submit to process +for outrage of domicile.' + +"Xavier, roused from his calculations, comprehending only the last +words: 'Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man that has +corrupted thy Julie?' + +"The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle--' + +"Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. I am only a dealer in +cyclones!' + +"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and +my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he had done, excused +himself in a thousand apologies. At last the reconciliation was effected +in our house over a supper at two in the morning--Julie in a wonderful +costume of compromises, and I have her and the mayor pacified in bed in +the blue room." + +And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her Xavier +departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence his life's work. +M. Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic collision (en plane) on the +flank of Hecla between Herrera, then a pillar of the Spanish school, +and the man destined to confute his theories and lead him intellectually +captive. Even through the years, the immense laugh of Lavalle as he +sustains the Spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries: "Courage! I shall not +fall till I have found Truth, and I hold you fast!" rings like the +call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world, immersed in +speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect--the Lavalle +whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist. + +The human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed in his own +volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is marked with a simplicity, +clarity, and good sense beyond praise. I would specially refer such as +doubt the sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and +will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained +the opening and consummation of the Tellurionical Records extending over +nine years. Of their tremendous significance be sure that the modest +house at Meudon knew as little as that the Records would one day be the +planet's standard in all official meteorology. It was enough for +them that their Xavier--this son, this father, this husband--ascended +periodically to commune with powers, it might be angelic, beyond their +comprehension, and that they united daily in prayers for his safety. + +"Pray for me," he says upon the eve of each of his excursions, and +returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks "after supper in +the little room where he kept his barometers." + +To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, accepting--he who +had looked into the very heart of the lightnings--the dogmas of papal +infallibility, of absolution, of confession--of relics great and small. +Marvellous--enviable contradiction! + +The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself +was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours--labours from +which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have +shrunk. He had traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the +oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the inhospitable +heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by +league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting +cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost +ether of the upper atmosphere each one of the Isoconical Tellurions +Lavalle's Curves, as we call them today. He had disentangled the nodes +of their intersections, assigning to each its regulated period of flux +and reflux. Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and Tinsley, his pupils, +to the final demonstration as calmly as though he were ordering his +flighter for some mid-day journey to Marseilles. + +"I have proved my thesis," he writes. "It remains now only that you +should witness the proof. We go to Manila to-morrow. A cyclone will form +off the Pescadores S. 17 E. in four days, and will reach its maximum +intensity twenty-seven hours after inception. It is there I will show +you the Truth." + +A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Lavalle tells us +how the Master's prophecy was verified. + +I will not destroy its simplicity or its significance by any attempt to +quote. Note well, though, that Herrera's preoccupation throughout that +day and night of superhuman strain is always for the Master's bodily +health and comfort. + +"At such a time," he writes, "I forced the Master to take the broth"; or +"I made him put on the fur coat as you told me." Nor is Tinsley (see +pp. 184, 85) less concerned. He prepares the nourishment. He cooks +eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the Master +interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both +hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights in his capacity of a +devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master +as cold, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous +and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly, +we have changed very little in the course of the ages! The secrets of +earth and sky and the links that bind them, we felicitate ourselves +we are on the road to discover; but our neighbours' heart and mind we +misread, we misjudge, we condemn now as ever. Let all, then, who love a +man read these most human, tender, and wise volumes. + + + ************* + + Transcriber's note: These "advertisements" appeared in the format + that would have been used in a newspaper or magazine ad + section--that is in two columns for the smaller ads, and in + quarter, half, full and double page layouts for the others. Also + L is used as the symbol for pounds. + + ************* + + + ------------------------------------------------ + + MISCELLANEOUS + [ WANTS ] + + REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY, FOR East Africa, a thoroughly competent + Plane and Dirigible Driver, acquainted with Petrol Radium and + Helium motors and generators. Low-level work only, but must + understand heavy-weight digs. + MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC. + 84 Palestine Buildings, E. C. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + MAN WANTED-DIG DRIVER for Southern Alps with Saharan summer + trips. High levels, high speed, high wages: + Apply M. SIDNEY + Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + FAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A COMPETENT, steady man wanted for slow speed, + low level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be + member of the Church of England, and make himself useful in the + garden. + M. R. + The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + COMMERCIAL DIG, CENTRAL and Southern Europe. A smart, active man + for a L. M. T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and + Cairo. A linguist preferred. + BAGMAN + Charing Cross Hotel, W. C. (urgent.) + + ------------------------------------------------ + + FOR SALE--A BARGAIN--Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke + motor. Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit, 58 in. chest, 153 + collar. Can be seen by appointment. + N. 2650 This office. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + The BEE-LINE BOOKSHOP + + BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights for all towns over 4,000 + pop. as laid down by A. B. O. + THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12L 6d. + BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Short Lights of the World. 7s. 6d. + THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES. + (By authority of the A.B.C.) Paper, + 1s. 6d.; cloth. 2s. 6d. Ready, Jan. 16. + ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Gait. Cloth, bds. Ss. 6d. + LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s. + 6d. + RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative + Densities 3s. 6d. + ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d. + VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d. + VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIRMATEUR 1s. + HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d. + DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 6d. + SANGERS WEATHERS OF THE WORLD. 4s. + SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT HIGH ALTITUDES. 4s. + HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW To AVOID IT. 3s. + VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY EFFECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS. 4s. 6d. + DAHLGREN'S AIR CURRENTS AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 5s. 6d. + REDMAYNE'S DISEASE AND THE BAROMETER. 7s. 6d. + WALTON'S HEALTH RESORTS OF THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 3s. 6d. + WALTON'S THE POLE AND PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. ad. + MUTLOWS HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY. 7s. 6d. + HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment, + giving apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with + clamps for binnacle, 36 inch size, only L2. 2. 0. + Invaluable for night work.) With A.B.C. certificate. L3. 10s. + 0d. Zalinski's Standard Works: + PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS, 5s. + PASSES OF THE SIERRAS, 5s. + PASSES OF THE ROOKIES. 5s. + PASSES OF THE URALS, 5s. + The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s. + GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS at MOUNTAIN GORGES, 7s. 6d. + + A. C. BELT & SON, READING + ------------------------------------------------ + SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS + ------------------------------------------------ + Fickers! Flickers! Flickers! + + HIGH LEVEL FLICKERS + + "He that is down need fear no fall," + Fear not! You will fall lightly as down! + + Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions + in prices previous to winter stocking. Pure para kit with + cellulose seat and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. Unequalled + for all drop-work. + + Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne plus ultra of + comfort and safety. + + Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, nonconducting Flickers with + pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on + left hip. + + Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight + 197 Oxford Street + + The new weighted Flicker with tweed or cheviot surface + cannot be distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated. + + Fickers! Flickers! Flickers! + ------------------------------------------------ + + APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES + + ------------------------------------------------ + What + "SKID" + was to our forefathers on the ground, + "PITCH" + is to their sons in the air. + + The popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive Dirigible + over the light swift, Plane is mainly due to the former's + immunity from pitch. + + Collison's forward-socketed Air Van renders it impossible for any + plane to pitch. The C.F.S. is automatic, simple as a shutter, + certain\ as a power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of + plane. + + COLLISON + 186 Brompton Road + Workshops, Chiswick + + LUNDIE do MATTERS + Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere + + ------------------------------------------------ + + STARTERS AND GUIDES + + Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides + affixed by skilled workmen in accordance with local building + laws. + + Rackstraww's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic + release at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and + crampons included. The safest on the market. + + + Weaver & Denison + Middleboro + + ------------------------------------------------ + + AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS + + ------------------------------------------------ + + REMEMBER + + Planes are swift--so is Death + Planes are cheap--so is Life + + Why does the plane builder insist on the safety of his machines? + Methinks the gentleman protests too much. + + The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites. + + They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles. + + + Standard Dig construction Co. + Millwall and Buenos Ayres + + ------------------------------------------------ + HOVERS + + POWELL'S + Wind Hovers + + for 'planes lying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain + on the forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross" + wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h.p. and weight. + + We fit and test free to + 40 east of Greenwich Village + + L. & W. POWELL + 196 Victoria Street, W. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + REMEMBER + + We shall always be pleased to see you. + + We build and test and guarantee our dirigibles or all purposes. + They go up when you please and they do not come down till you + please. + + You can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a + dirigible. + + STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO. + Millwall and Buenos Ayres + + ------------------------------------------------ + + GAYER AND HUNT + Birmingham and Birmingham + Eng. Ala. + + Towers. Landing Stages, + Slips and Lifts + public and private + + Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal + Construction Dept. Sole patentees and owners of the + Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie. Only gold medal Kyoto + Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES + + ------------------------------------------------ + + C. M. C. + Our Synthetical Mineral + BEARINGS + + are chemically and crystal logically identical with the minerals + whose names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond, + Rock-Crystal, Agate and Ruby Bearings-cups, caps and collars for + the higher speeds. For tractor bearings and spindles-Imperative. + For rear propellers-Indispensable. For all working + parts-Advisable. + + Commercial Minerals Co. + 107 Minories + + ------------------------------------------------ + + RESURGAM! + + If you have not Clothed YOURSELF in a + + NORMANDIE RESURGAM + + YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF + AIR-KIT. + + RESURGAM AIR-KIT EMPORIUM + + HYMANS & GRAHAM + 1198 Lower Broadway, New York + + ------------------------------------------------ + + REMEMBER! + + ------------------------------------------------ + + * It is now nearly, a generation since the Plane was to + supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. * TO-DAY none of the + Planet's freight is carried en plane. * Less than two per rent of + the Planet's passengers are carried en plane. + + We design, equip guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes. + + Standard Dig Construction Company MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES + ------------------------------------------------ + + BAT-BOATS + ------------------------------------------------ + + + FLINT & MANTEL + SOUTHAMPTON + FOR SALE + + at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats: + + GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430(nom.) Maginnis Motor, + under-rake rudder. + MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, + Douglas' lock-steering gear. + IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator), + Miller keel and rudder. + + The above are well known on the South Coast as sound, wholesome + knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. Griselda + carries spare set of Hofman racing vans and can be lied three + foot clear in smooth water with ballast-tank swung aft. The + others do not lift, clear of water, and are recommended for + beginners. + + Also, by private treaty, racing B.B. Tarpon (76 winning flags) + 120 knt., 60 ft.; Long-Davidson double under-rake rudder, new + this season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis motor, Radium + relays and Pond generator. Bronze breakwater forward, and treble + reinforced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockered keel: Triple set + of Hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft. + + Tarpon-has been lifted and held seven feet for two miles between + touch and touch. + + Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the 9th + January. + + ------------------------------------------------ + + AIR PLANES AND STARTERS + + ------------------------------------------------ + + HINKS MODERATOR + + Monorail overhead starter + for family and private planes + up to twenty-five foot over all + + Absolutely Safe + + Hinks & Co.. Birmingham + ------------------------------------------------ + J. D. ARDAGH + + I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR PLANE I AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES, + BUT TILL THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE, + SAFETY, AND COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP CANNOT RELEASE + TILL THE MOTORS ARE WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS SECURING + A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT WITHOUT PITCHING. + + Remember our motto, "Upward and Outward," + and do not trust yourself to so-called "rigid" guide-bars + + J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN + + ------------------------------------------------ + + ACCESSORIES AND SPARES + + ------------------------------------------------ + + CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS + ESTABLISHED 1924 + + ACCESSORIES and SPARES + + Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording + change of level (illuminated face). + + All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet L2 10 0 + With Aerial Board of Control certificate L3 11 0 + Foot and Hand Foghoms; Sirens toned to any club note; with + air-chest belt-driven horn motor L6 8 0 + Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C. requirements, in neat + mahogany case, hundred mile range L3 3 0 + + Grapnels, mushroom--anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers, + snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public + installations. + + Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel. + + Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear, + turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist. Invaluable + for sea trips. + + Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos.00 to 20 A.B.C. + Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the + principal clubs (boxed). + A selection of twenty L2 17 6 + International night-signals (boxed) L1 11 6 + + Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover + (prices according to power). + + Wind-noses for dirigibles--Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered + cane or aluminum and flux for winter work. + + Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern. + + Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; paper-mache wire + stiffened; ribbed Xylonite (Nickson's patent); all razor-edged + (price by pitch and diameter). + + Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work. + + Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and collars. + Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch. + + Magniac's bow-rudders--(Lavales patent grooving). + + Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (nonmagnetic). + + Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h.p. (in pairs). + + Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h.p. (tandem). + + Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform. + + Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk + or fibre, wind-tight. + + CATALOGUES FREE THROUGHOUT THE PLANET + + ------------------------------------------------ + + + + +THE FOUR ANGELS + + As ADAM lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, + The Angel of the Earth came down, and offered Earth in fee. + But Adam did not need it, + Nor the plough he would not speed it, + Singing:--"Earth and Water, Air and Fire, + What more can mortal man desire?" + (The Apple Tree's in bud.) + + As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, + The Angel of the Waters offered all the Seas in fee. + But Adam would not take 'em, + Nor the ships he wouldn't make 'em, + Singing:--"Water, Earth and Air and Fire, + What more can mortal man desire?" + (The Apple Tree's in leaf.) + + As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, + The Angel of the Air he offered all the Air in fee. + But Adam did not crave it, + Nor the flight he wouldn't brave it, + Singing:--"Air and Water, Earth and Fire, + What more can mortal man desire?" + (The Apple Tree's in bloom.) + + As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, + The Angel of the Fire rose up and not a word said he. + But he wished a fire and made it, + And in Adam's heart he laid it, + Singing.--"Fire, fire, burning Fire, + Stand up and reach your heart's desire!" + (The Apple Blossom's set.) + + As Adam was a-working outside of Eden-Wall, + He used the Earth, he used the Seas, he used the Air and all; + And out of black disaster + He arose to be the master + Of Earth and Water, Air and Fire, + But never reached his heart's desire! + (The Apple Tree's cut down!) + + + + +A DEAL IN COTTON + +Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares, I wrote some +tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab Police (who married Miss +Youghal), and Adam, his son. Strickland has finished his Indian Service, +and lives now at a place in England called Weston-super-Mare, where his +wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Semi-occasionally he comes +up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends. +Otherwise he plays golf and follows the harriers for his figure's sake. + +If you remember that Infant who told a tale to Eustace Cleever the +novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with a vast estate. +He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses +his friends. I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital +for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal +nurses and a specialist in "Sprue." Another time the place was full of +schoolboys--sons of Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the +holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper's heart. + +But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire, and I +fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L. Corkran, so that +the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet +terminated the Delights, nor separated the Companions. + +Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a +native Infantry regiment on the border: "The Stricks are coming for +to-night-with their boy." + +"I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about," I said. "Is +he in the Service?" + +"No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate. He's +Assistant-Commissioner at Dupe--wherever that is. Somaliland, ain't it, +Stalky?" asked the Infant. + +Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. "You're only three thousand +miles out. Look at the atlas." + +"Anyhow, he's as rotten full of fever as the rest of you," said the +Infant, at length on the big divan. "And he's bringing a native servant +with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable +room." + +"Why? Is he a Yao--like the fellow Wade brought here--when your +housekeeper had fits?" Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some +odd things. + +"No. He's one of old Strickland's Punjabi policemen--and quite +European--I believe." + +"Hooray! Haven't talked Punjabi for three months--and a Punjabi from +Central Africa ought to be amusin'." + +We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was +Agnes Strickland, whom the Infant makes no secret of adoring. + +He is devoted, in a fat man's placid way, to at least eight designing +women; but she nursed him once through a bad bout of Peshawur fever, and +when she is in the house, it is more than all hers. + +"You didn't send rugs enough," she began. "Adam might have taken a +chill." + +"It's quite warm in the tonneau. Why did you let him ride in front?" + +"Because he wanted to," she replied, with the mother's smile, and we +were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the +shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Mohammedan. + +"That is all that came home of him," said his father to me. "There +was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Dalhousie +centuries since." + +"And what is this uniform?" Stalky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who +came to attention on the marble floor. + +"The uniform of the Protectorate troops, Sahib. Though I am the Little +Sahib's body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended +by folk dressed altogether as servants." + +"And--and you white men wait at table on horseback?" Stalky pointed to +the man's spurs. + +"These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England," said Imam +Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, +and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how +much leave he had, and he said "Six months." + +"But he'll take another six on medical certificate," said Agnes +anxiously. Adam knit his brows. + +"You don't want to--eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is +doing." Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs. + +"Ah!" said the Infant. "I've only a few thousand pheasants to look +after. Come along and dress for dinner. We're just ourselves. What +flower is your honour's ladyship commanding for the table?" + +"Just ourselves?" she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall. +"Then let's have marigolds the little cemetery ones." + +So it was ordered. + +Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. +That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally +fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those +who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay +window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the +hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the +moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember. + +Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched +his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam +Din--shoeless, out of respect to the floors--brought him his medicine, +poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders. + +"Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary," said his mother, and +Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits. + +"Now what d'you expect to get out of your country?" the Infant asked, +when--our India laid aside we talked Adam's Africa. It roused him at +once. + +"Rubber--nuts--gums--and so on," he said. "But our real future is +cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District." + +"My District!" said his father. "Hear him, Mummy!" + +"I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester chaps +said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on the market." + +"But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?" she asked. + +"My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and +he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of +black soil that was just the thing for cotton." + +"Ah! What was your Chief like?" Stalky asked, in his silkiest tones. + +"The best man alive--absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose +yourself. The people call him"--Adam jerked out some heathen +phrase--"that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know." + +"I'm glad of that. Because I've heard from other quarters" Stalky's +sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long +delayed. "Other quarters!" Adam threw out a thin hand. "Every dog has +his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!" The shake of his head was +as I remembered it among his father's policemen twenty years before, and +his mother's eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I +kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man's first love or +loyalty. + +A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table. + +"I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our +shirts," said the voice of Imam Din. + +"Does he know as much English as that?" cried the Infant, who had +forgotten his East. + +We all admired the cotton for Adam's sake, and, indeed, it was very long +and glossy. + +"It's--it's only an experiment," he said. "We're such awful paupers we +can't even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box +on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that"--he patted the +stuff--"by a pure fluke." + +"How much did it cost?" asked Strickland. + +"With seed and machinery--about two hundred pounds. I had the labour +done by cannibals." + +"That sounds promising." Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette. + +"No, thank you," said Agnes. "I've been at Weston-super-Mare a little +too long for cannibals. I'll go to the music-room and try over next +Sunday's hymns." + +She lifted the boy's hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across the +acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the Infant's +ancestors' banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress disappeared under +the musicians' gallery; two electrics broke out, and she stood backed +against the lines of gilded pipes. + +"There's an abominable self-playing attachment here!" she called. + +"Me!" the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. "That's how I +play Parsifal." + +"I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps." + +We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor. + +"Now for the direct expression," said Stalky, and moved on the Burgundy +recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned blood. + +"It's nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me +ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven't been able to prove +cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli +offers you four pounds of woman's breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered +up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you--" + +"Naturally burn the villages before lunch," said Stalky. + +Adam shook his head. "No troops," he sighed. "I told my Chief about it, +and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man. He advised me if +ever I felt like it not to commit a--a barren felo de se, but to let the +Sheshaheli do it. Then he could report, and then we could mop 'em up!" + +"Most immoral! That's how we got--" Stalky quoted the name of a province +won by just such a sacrifice. + +"Yes, but the beasts dominated one end of my cotton-belt like anything. +They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for analysis--me and +Imam Din." + +"Sahib! Is there a need?" The voice came out of the darkness, and the +eyes shone over Adam's shoulder ere it ceased. + +"None. The name was taken in talk." Adam abolished him with a turn of +the finger. "I couldn't make a casus belli of it just then, because my +Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north. +Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn Makarrah? He precious nearly +lost us the Protectorate at one time, though he's an ally of ours now." + +"Wasn't he rather a pernicious brute, even as they go?" said Stalky. +"Wade told me about him last year." + +"Well, his nickname all through the country was 'The Merciful,' and he +didn't get that for nothing. None of our people ever breathed his +proper name. They said 'He' or 'That One,' and they didn't say it aloud, +either. He fought us for eight months." + +"I remember. There was a paragraph about it in one of the papers," I +said. + +"We broke him, though. No--the slavers don't come our way, because our +men have the reputation of dying too much, the first month after they're +captured. That knocks down profits, you see." + +"What about your charming friends, the Sheshahelis?" said the Infant. + +"There's no market for Sheshaheli. People would as soon buy crocodiles. +I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn Makarrah dropped down on +'em once--to train his young men--and simply hewed 'em in pieces. +The bulk of my people are agriculturists just the right stamp for +cotton-growers. What's Mother playing?--'Once in royal'?" + +The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe +restored, steadied to a tune. + +"Magnificent! Oh, magnificent!" said the Infant loyally. I had never +heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant +morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond. + +"How did you get your cannibals to work for you?" asked Strickland. + +"They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn +Makarrah--just at the time I wanted 'em. You see my Chief had promised +me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he would not bag it +for his roads this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only +needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues didn't run to it." + +"What is your revenue?" Stalky asked in the vernacular. + +"With hut-tax, traders' game and mining licenses, not more than fourteen +thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months ahead." Adam +sighed. + +"Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib's camp. Last year +it exceeded three rupees," Imam Din said quietly. + +"Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather strict on +fines. I worked up my native clerk--Bulaki Ram--to a ferocious pitch +of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton-scheme +to three points of decimals, after office. I tell you I envied your +magistrates here hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed +to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about meet, and I +was crazy to get the odd two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of +thing grows on a chap when he's alone--and talks aloud!" + +"Hul-lo! Have you been there already?" the father said, and Adam nodded. + +"Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of 'Marmion' to a tree, sir. +Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking nigger came in +towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to little things like that.) +He said he'd found it, and please would I identify, because if it +was one of Ibn Makarrah's men there might be a reward. It was an old +Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab--a smallboned, bald-headed chap, +and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our climate when it +sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted +like--like the dog in 'Tom Sawyer,' when he sat on the what's-its-name +beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I could +see it had been sarkied. (That's a sort of gum-poison, pater, which +attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer is writing a +monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out the corpse one time, +with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder, and hot water. + +"I'd seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off his feet, +and he stopped sneezing, I knew he'd live. He was bad, though; lay like +a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged the paralysis out of him. +Then he told us he was a Hajji--had been three times to Mecca--come in +from French Africa, and that he'd met the nigger by the wayside--just +like a case of thuggee, in India--and the nigger had poisoned him. That +seemed reasonable enough by what I knew of Coast niggers." + +"You believed him?" said his father keenly. + +"There was no reason I shouldn't. The nigger never came back, and the +old man stayed with me for two months," Adam returned. "You know what +the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater? He was that." + +"None finer, none finer," was the answer. + +"Except a Sikh," Stalky grunted. + +"He'd been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote +poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess--you don't know what +that meant to me--like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration +of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the +sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, +of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That's why +he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by +cotton-growing, you know." + +"You talked of that too?" said Strickland. + +"Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don't know what it meant to me. +A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?" + +"Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the money +for our cotton-play." Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland's +chair. + +"Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He brought me +news when I was down with fever at Dupe that one of Ibn Makarrah's men +was parading through my District with a bunch of slaves--in the Fork!" + +"What's the matter with the Fork, that you can't abide it?" said Stalky. +Adam's voice had risen at the last word. + +"Local etiquette, sir," he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky's +atrocious pun. "If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he +ought to pretend that they're his servants. Hawkin' 'em about in the +Fork--the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know--is +insolence--same as not backing your topsails in the old days. Besides, +it unsettles the District." + +"I thought you said slavers didn't come your way," I put in. + +"They don't. But my Chief was smoking 'em out of the North all that +season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could +find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but +open slave-dealing in the Fork, was too much. I couldn't go myself, so I +told a couple of our Makalali police and Imam Din to make talk with +the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been +expensive, but it turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with +the slaver (he didn't show fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and +we tried him in my bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you +how demoralized the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a +defeat), he'd snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and +was offering 'em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered 'em +to you, didn't he, Imam Din?" + +"I was witness that he offered man-eaters' for sale," said Imam Din. + +"Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed, him both ways. You see, he +had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant +the double fine if I could get it out of him." + +"What was his defence?" said Strickland, late of the Punjab Police. + +"As far as I remember--but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the +time--he'd mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he was in French +territory. Said he'd never do it again, if we'd let him off with a fine. +I could have shaken hands with the brute for that. He paid up cash like +a motorist and went off one time." + +"Did you see him?" + +"Ye-es. Didn't I, Imam Din?" + +"Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the Sahib +also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and they swore +to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play. The Sahib leaned on +his own servant's shoulder the while." + +"I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me the +papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in +the safe--two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don't +know what that meant to me! I believe it cured my fever; and as soon +as I could, I staggered off with the Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli +about labour. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work! It +wasn't gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned +out a week or two before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me +for a job. I gave it 'em." + +"And so you were very happy?" His mother had stolen up behind us. "You +liked your cotton, dear?" She tidied the lump away. + +"By Jove, I was happy!" Adam yawned. "Now if any one," he looked at +the Infant, "cares to put a little money into the scheme, it'll be the +making of my District. I can't give you figures, sir, but I assure--" + +"You'll take your arsenic, and Imam Din'll take you up to bed, and I'll +come and tuck you in." + +Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands joined +across his dark hair, and "Isn't he a darling?" she said to us, with +just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break +of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year '84. We +were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imam Din returned to us +from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can. + +"Now," said Strickland, "tell us what truly befell, son of my servant." + +"All befell as our Sahib has said. Only--only there was an +arrangement--a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play." + +"Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant," said Strickland. + +But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din hunker +down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at attention. + +"When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupe," he +began, "the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected the names +of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue was beyond +belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this cotton-play. Being +at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our Sahib's forehead, to sink +into his brain news concerning a slave-dealer in his district who had +made a mock of the law. Sahib," Imam Din turned to Strickland, "our +Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to +the spur. He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the +slavedealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him." + +"Alone--servant of my son, and son of my servant?" said his father. + +"There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come in +with the Hajji's money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our Sahib died, +she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given me orders to +depart." + +"Being mad with fever--eh?" + +"What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart's desire. He +talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his heart's desire that +the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji could have given him money +enough out of hand for ten cottonplays; but in this respect also our +Sahib's virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange +moneys. Therefore the Hajji said--and I helped with my counsel--that we +must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with +the English Law. It was great trouble to us, but--the Law is the Law. +And the Hajji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if +our Sahib died. So I accompanied the Hajji." + +"Knowing who he was?" said Strickland. + +"No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue +of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the +seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji, +because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures +at five thousand rupees upon any slave-block. The Hajji then said to +me: 'Come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my +delight's delight' The Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father +for his son, of a saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One. +But I said: 'We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred +rifles. We have here five.' The Hajji said: 'I have untied as knot in my +head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a thousand.' I saw that +he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew +that he was a Great One with virtue in him. + +"We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the second +day--about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Hajji walked +delicately across the open place where their filth is, and scratched +upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I saw the man-eaters lying +on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose +up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their +faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate +guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: 'I am here once +again. Give me six and yoke up.' They zealously then pushed to us with +poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: 'Fetch +fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.' The wind is strong +on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of +fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town +roared into flame, and all went. The Hajji then said: 'At the end of +a time there will come here the white man ye once chased for sport. He +will demand labour to plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and +your spawn after you.' They said, lifting their heads a very little from +the edge of the ashes: 'We are that labour, and our spawn after us.' +The Hajji said: 'What is also my name?' They said: 'Thy name is also +The Merciful' The Hajji said: 'Praise then my mercy'; and while they did +this, the Hajji walked away, I following." + +The Infant made some noise in his throat, and reached for more Burgundy. + +"About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only frights Sahib! None +had--none could--touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of +the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for some heathen to do +what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The Hajji +said: 'What do ye see? They said: 'Oh, our Lord, we neither see nor +hear.' The Hajji said: 'But I command ye to see and to hear and to say.' +They said: 'Oh, our Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves +stood in a Fork.' The Hajji said: 'So testify before the officer who +waits you in the town of Dupe.' They said: 'What shall come to us +after?' The Hajji said: 'The just reward for the informer. But if ye do +not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds, to fall from +the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.' Hearing this, +the Angari men hastened to Dupe. The Hajji then said to me: 'Are those +things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village +full?' I said that three witnesses amply established any case, but as +yet, I said, the Hajji had not offered his slaves for sale. It is true, +as our Sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and +yet another for making to sell them. And it was the double fine that +we needed, Sahib, for our Sahib's cotton-play. We had fore-arranged +all this with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the +Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: 'O God, Refuge of +the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this dog's meat by the +roadside to gain his delight for my heart's delight?' None the less, he +admitted it was the English Law, and so he offered me the six--five--in +a small voice, with an averted head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour +milk as heathen should. They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because +they eat men." + +"Maybe," said Strickland. "But where were thy wits? One witness is not +sufficient to establish the fact of a sale." + +"What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji's reputation to consider. +We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing. And, +moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this +case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law +of evidence well enough. + +"So then we went to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari +men, 'I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his +mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened +her hair for death. The Hajji said: 'Be quick with my trial. I am not +Job!' The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound +of soothing voices round the bed. Yet--yet, because no man can be sure +whether a Sahib of that blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly +in the manner of the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and +the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose's sake." + +"Then he did not see the prisoner?" said Strickland. + +"I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by +God's favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true +he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the +safe--two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite true that the +gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner, +and having speech with the man-eaters--the Hajji breathed all that on +his forehead to sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard, +has remained.... Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib called +for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from Europe with +the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and cotton=3Dmills--ah, then he +laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart's desire, this +cotton-play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little, +little arrangement, Sahib, of which--is it necessary to tell all the +world?" + +"And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?" said Strickland. + +"Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their +visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our Sahib says, the +man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate +cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the Hajji said +to me: 'I go to my own place, though God knows whether the Man with the +Stone Eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.' I said: 'Thou art +then That One?' The Hajji said: 'I am ten thousand rupees reward into +thy hand. Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines +for the boy?' I said: 'What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy +life a thousand years!' The Hajji said: 'Who has seen to-morrow? God has +given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise Him. See that the +breed is not lost!' + +"He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib's office-table under +the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of Service +newly come in by runner from the North. At this, fearing evil news for +the Hajji, I would have restrained him, but he said: 'We be both Great +Ones. Neither of us will fail.' Our Sahib looked up to invite the Hajji +to approach before he opened the letter, but the Hajji stood off till +our Sahib had well opened and well read the letter. Then the Hajji said: +'Is it permitted to say farewell?' Our Sahib stabbed the letter on the +file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The Hajji said: +'I go to my own place,' and he loosed from his neck a chained heart +of ambergris set in soft gold and held it forth. Our Sahib snatched +it swiftly in the closed fist, down turned, and said 'If thy name be +written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my +heart.' The Hajji said: 'And on mine also is a name engraved; but there +is no name on the amulet.' The Hajji stooped to our Sahib's feet, but +our Sahib raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with +his shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and so he went away." + +"And what order was in the Service letter?" Stalky murmured. + +"Only an order for our Sahib to write a report on some new cattle +sickness. But all orders come in the same make of envelope. We could not +tell what order it might have been." + +"When he opened the letter--my son--made he no sign? A cough? An oath?" +Strickland asked. + +"None, Sahib. I watched his hands. They did not shake. Afterward he +wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heat." + +"Did he know? Did he know who the Hajji was?" said the Infant in +English. + +"I am a poor man. Who can say what a Sahib of that get knows or does not +know? But the Hajji is right. The breed should not be lost. It is not +very hot for little children in Dupe, and as regards nurses, my sister's +cousin at Jull--" + +"H'm! That is the boy's own concern. I wonder if his Chief ever knew?" +said Strickland. + +"Assuredly," said Imam Din. "On the night before our Sahib went down to +the sea, the Great Sahib--the Man with the Stone Eyes--dined with him in +his camp, I being in charge of the table. They talked a long while and +the Great Sahib said: 'What didst thou think of That One?' (We do not +say Ibn Makarrah yonder.) Our Sahib said: 'Which one?' The Great Sahib +said: 'That One which taught thy man-eaters to grow cotton for thee. He +was in thy District three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked +by every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head.' Our Sahib said: +'If his head had been needed, another man should have been appointed to +govern my District, for he was my friend.' The Great Sahib laughed and +said: 'If I had needed a lesser man in thy place be sure I would have +sent him, as, if I had needed the head of That One, be sure I would have +sent men to bring it to me. But tell me now, by what means didst thou +twist him to thy use and our profit in this cotton-play?' Our Sahib +said: 'By God, I did not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was +my friend.' The Great Sahib said: 'Toh Vac! (Bosh!) Tell!' Our Sahib +shook his head as he does--as he did when a child--and they looked at +each other like sword-play men in the ring at a fair. The Great Sahib +dropped his eyes first and he said: 'So be it. I should perhaps have +answered thus in my youth. No matter. I have made treaty with That One +as an ally of the State. Some day he shall tell me the tale.' Then I +brought in fresh coffee, and they ceased. But I do not think That One +will tell the Great Sahib more than our Sahib told him." + +"Wherefore?" I asked. + +"Because they are both Great Ones, and I have observed in my life +that Great Ones employ words very little between each other in their +dealings; still less when they speak to a third concerning those +dealings. Also they profit by silence.... Now I think that the +mother has come down from the room, and I will go rub his feet till he +sleeps." + +His ears had caught Agnes's step at the stair-head and presently she +passed us on her way to the music room humming the Magnificat. + + + + +THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD + + Who gives him the Bath? + "I," said the wet, + Rank Jungle-sweat, + "I'll give him the Bath!" + + Who'll sing the psalms? + "We," said the Palms. + "Ere the hot wind becalms, + We'll sing the psalms." + + Who lays on the sword? + "I," said the Sun, + "Before he has done, + I'll lay on the sword." + + Who fastens his belt? + "I," said Short-Rations, + "I know all the fashions + Of tightening a belt!" + + Who buckles his spur? + "I," said his Chief, + Exacting and brief, + "I'll give him the spur." + + Who'll shake his hand? + "I," said the Fever, + "And I'm no deceiver, + I'll shake his hand." + + Who brings him the wine? + "I," said Quinine, + "It's a habit of mine, + I'll come with his wine." + + Who'll put him to proof? + "I," said All Earth, + "Whatever he's worth, + I'll put to the proof." + + Who'll choose him for Knight? + "I," said his Mother, + "Before any other, + My very own knight!" + + And after this fashion, adventure to seek, + Was Sir Galahad made--as it might be last week! + + + + +THE PUZZLER + +I had not seen Penfentenyou since the Middle Nineties, when he was +Minister of Ways and Woodsides in De Thouar's first Administration. Last +summer, though he nominally held the same portfolio, he was his Colony's +Premier in all but name, and the idol of his own province, which is two +and a half times the size of England. Politically, his creed was his +growing country; and he came over to England to develop a Great Idea in +her behalf. + +Believing that he had put it in train, I made haste to welcome him to my +house for a week. + +That he was chased to my door by his own Agent-General in a motor; that +they turned my study into a Cabinet Meeting which I was not invited to +attend; that the local telegraph all but broke down beneath the strain +of hundred word coded cables; and that I practically broke into the +house of a stranger to get him telephonic facilities on a Sunday, are +things I overlook. What I objected to was his ingratitude, while I thus +tore up England to help him. So I said: "Why on earth didn't you see +your Opposite Number in Town instead of bringing your office work here?" + +"Eh? Who?" said he, looking up from his fourth cable since lunch. + +"See the English Minister for Ways and Woodsides." + +"I saw him," said Penfentenyou, without enthusiasm. + +It seemed that he had called twice on the gentleman, but without an +appointment--("I thought if I wasn't big enough, my business was")--and +each time had found him engaged. A third party intervening, suggested +that a meeting might be arranged if due notice were given. + +"Then," said Penfentenyou, "I called at the office at ten o'clock." + +"But they'd be in bed," I cried. + +"One of the babies was awake. He told me that--that 'my sort of +questions "'--he slapped the pile of cables--"were only taken between 11 +and 2 P.M. So I waited." + +"And when you got to business?" I asked. + +He made a gesture of despair. "It was like talking to children. They'd +never heard of it." + +"And your Opposite Number?" + +Penfentenyou described him. + +"Hush! You mustn't talk like that!" I shuddered. "He's one of the best +of good fellows. You should meet him socially." + +"I've done that too," he said. "Have you?" + +"Heaven forbid!" I cried; "but that's the proper thing to say." + +"Oh, he said all the proper things. Only I thought as this was England +that they'd more or less have the hang of all the--general hang-together +of my Idea. But I had to explain it from the beginning." + +"Ah! They'd probably mislaid the papers," I said, and I told him +the story of a three-million pound insurrection caused by a deputy +Under-Secretary sitting upon a mass of green-labelled correspondence +instead of reading it. + +"I wonder it doesn't happen every week," the answered. "D'you mind my +having the Agent-General to dinner again tonight? I'll wire, and he can +motor down." + +The Agent-General arrived two hours later, a patient and expostulating +person, visibly torn between the pulling Devil of a rampant Colony, +and the placid Baker of a largely uninterested England. But with +Penfentenyou behind him he had worked; for he told us that Lord +Lundie--the Law Lord was the final authority on the legal and +constitutional aspects of the Great Idea, and to him it must be +referred. + +"Good Heavens alive!" thundered Penfentenyou. "I told you to get that +settled last Christmas." + +"It was the middle of the house-party season," said the Agent-General +mildly. "Lord Lundie's at Credence Green now--he spends his holidays +there. It's only forty miles off." + +"Shan't I disturb his Holiness?" said Penfentenyou heavily. "Perhaps +'my sort of questions,"' he snorted, "mayn't be discussed except at +midnight." + +"Oh, don't be a child," I said. + +"What this country needs," said Penfentenyou, "is--" and for ten minutes +he trumpeted rebellion. + +"What you need is to pay for your own protection," I cut in when he +drew breath, and I showed him a yellowish paper, supplied gratis by +Government, which is called Schedule D. To my merciless delight he had +never seen the thing before, and I completed my victory over him and +all the Colonies with a Brassey's "Naval Annual" and a "Statesman's Year +Book." + +The Agent-General interposed with agent-generalities (but they were +merely provocateurs) about Ties of Sentiment. + +"They be blowed!" said Penfentenyou. "What's the good of sentiment +towards a Kindergarten?" + +"Quite so. Ties of common funk are the things that bind us together; and +the sooner you new nations realize it the better. What you need is an +annual invasion. Then you'd grow up." + +"Thank you! Thank you!" said the Agent-General. "That's what I am always +trying to tell my people." + +"But, my dear fool," Penfentenyou almost wept, "do you pretend that +these banana-fingered amateurs at home are grown up?" + +"You poor, serious, pagan man," I retorted, "if you take 'em that way, +you'll wreck your Great Idea." + +"Will you take him to Lord Lundie's to-morrow?" said the Agent-General +promptly. + +"I suppose I must," I said, "if you won't." + +"Not me! I'm going home," said the Agent-General, and departed. I am +glad that I am no colony's Agent-General. + +Penfentenyou continued to argue about naval contributions till 1.15 +A.M., though I was victor from the first. + +At ten o'clock I got him and his correspondence into the motor, and +he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over-night. +I replied that I waited an apology. This he made excuse for renewed +arguments, and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence of +England. + +For example we burst a tyre within a mile of Credence Green, and, to +save time, walked into the beautifully kept little village. His eye was +caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled "Calvinist Chapel," +before whose shuttered windows an Italian organ-grinder with a +petticoated monkey was playing "Dolly Grey-" + +"Yes. That's it!" snapped the egoist. "That's a parable of the general +situation in England. And look at those brutes!" A huge household +removals van was halted at a public-house. The men in charge were +drinking beer from blue and white mugs. It seemed to me a pretty sight, +but Penfentenyou said it represented Our National Attitude. + +Lord Lundie's summer resting-place we learned was a farm, a little out +of the village, up a hill round which curled a high hedged road. Only +an initiated few spend their holidays at Credence Green, and they have +trained the householders to keep the place select. Penfentenyou made a +grievance of this as we walked up the lane, followed at a distance by +the organ-grinder. + +"Suppose he is having a house-party," he said: "Anything's possible in +this insane land." + +Just at that minute we found ourselves opposite an empty villa. Its roof +was of black slate, with bright unweathered ridge-tiling; its walls were +of blood-coloured brick, cornered and banded with vermiculated stucco +work, and there was cobalt, magenta, and purest apple-green window-glass +on either side of the front door. The whole was fenced from the road by +a low, brick-pillared, flint wall, topped with a cast-iron Gothic rail, +picked out in blue and gold. + +Tight beds of geranium, calceolaria, and lobelia speckled the +glass-plat, from whose centre rose one of the finest araucarias (its +other name by the way is "monkey-puzzler"), that it has ever been my +lot to see. It must have been full thirty feet high, and its foliage +exquisitely answered the iron railings. Such bijou ne plus ultras, +replete with all the amenities, do not, as I pointed out to +Penfentenyou, transpire outside of England. + +A hedge, swinging sharp right, flanked the garden, and above it on +a slope of daisy-dotted meadows we could see Lord Lundie's tiled and +half-timbered summer farmhouse. Of a sudden we heard voices behind the +tree--the fine full tones of the unembarrassed English, speaking to +their equals--that tore through the hedge like sleet through rafters. + +"That it is not called 'monkey-puzzler' for nothing, I willingly +concede"--this was a rich and rolling note--"but on the other hand--" + +"I submit, me lud, that the name implies that it might, could, would, +or should be ascended by a monkey, and not that the ascent is a physical +impossibility. I believe one of our South American spider monkeys +wouldn't hesitate... By Jove, it might be worth trying, if--" + +This was a crisper voice than the first. A third, higher-pitched, and +full of pleasant affectations, broke in. + +"Oh, practical men, there is no ape here. Why do you waste one of God's +own days on unprofitable discussion? Give me a match!" + +"I've a good mind to make you demonstrate in your own person. Come on, +Bubbles! We'll make Jimmy climb!" + +There was a sound of scuffling, broken by squeaks from Jimmy of the high +voice. I turned back and drew Penfentenyou into the side of the flanking +hedge. I remembered to have read in a society paper that Lord Lundie's +lesser name was "Bubbles." + +"What are they doing?" Penfentenyou said sharply. "Drunk?" + +"Just playing! Superabundant vitality of the Race, you know. We'll watch +'em," I answered. The noise ceased. + +"My deliver," Jimmy gasped. "The ram caught in the thicket, and--I'm the +only one who can talk Neapolitan! Leggo my collar!" He cried aloud in a +foreign tongue, and was answered from the gate. + +"It's the Calvinistic organ-grinder," I whispered. I had already found +a practicable break at the bottom of the hedge. "They're going to try to +make the monkey climb, I believe." + +"Here--let me look!" Penfentenyou flung himself down, and rooted till he +too broke a peep-hole. We lay side by side commanding the entire garden +at ten yards' range. + +"You know 'em?" said Penfentenyou, as I made some noise or other. + +"By sight only. The big fellow in flannels is Lord Lundie; the +light-built one with the yellow beard painted his picture at the last +Academy: He's a swell R.A., James Loman." + +"And the brown chap with the hands?" + +"Tomling, Sir Christopher Tomling, the South American engineer who built +the--" + +"San Juan Viaduct. I know," said Penfentenyou. "We ought to have had him +with us.... Do you think a monkey would climb the tree?" + +The organ-grinder at the gate fenced his beast with one arm as +Jimmy-talked. + +"Don't show off your futile accomplishments," said Lord Lundie. "Tell +him it's an experiment. Interest him!" + +"Shut up, Bubbles. You aren't in court," Jimmy replied. "This needs +delicacy. Giuseppe says--" + +"Interest the monkey," the brown engineer interrupted. "He won't climb +for love. Cut up to the house and get some biscuits, Bubbles--sugar ones +and an orange or two. No need to tell our womenfolk." + +The huge white figure lobbed off at a trot which would not have +disgraced a boy of seventeen. I gathered from something Jimmy let fall +that the three had been at Harrow together. + +"That Tomling has a head on his Shoulders," muttered Penfentenyou. "Pity +we didn't get him for the Colony. But the question is, will the monkey +climb?" + +"Be quick, Jimmy. Tell the man we'll give him five bob for the loan of +the beast. Now run the organ under the tree, and we'll dress it when +Bubbles comes back," Sir Christopher cried. + +"I've often wondered," said Penfentenyou, "whether it would puzzle +a monkey?" He had forgotten the needs of his Growing Nation, and was +earnestly parting the white-thorn stems with his fingers. + + * * * * * * * * * * + +Giuseppe and Jimmy did as they were told, the monkey following them with +a wary and malignant eye. + +"Here's a discovery," said Jimmy. "The singing part of this organ comes +off the wheels." He spoke volubly to the proprietor. "Oh, it's so as +Giuseppe can take it to his room o' nights. And play it. D'you hear +that? The organ-grinder, after his day's crime, plays his accursed +machine for love. For love, Chris! And Michael Angelo was one of 'em!" + +"Don't jaw! Tell him to take the beast's petticoat off," said Sir +Christopher Tomling. + +Lord Lundie returned, very little winded, through a gap higher up the +hedge. + +"They're all out, thank goodness!" he cried, "but I've raided what I +could. Marrons glaces, candied fruit, and a bag of oranges." + +"Excellent!" said the world-renowned contractor. + +"Jimmy, you're the light-weight; jump up on the organ and impale these +things on the leaves as I hand 'em!" + +"I see," said Jimmy, capering like a springbuck. "Upward and onward, eh? +First, he'll reach out for--how infernal prickly these leaves are!--this +biscuit. Next we'll lure him on--(that's about the reach of his +arm)--with the marron glace, and then he'll open out this orange. How +human! How like your ignoble career, Bubbles!" + +With care and elaboration they ornamented that tree's lower branches +with sugar-topped biscuits, oranges, bits of banana, and marrons glaces +till it looked very ape's path to Paradise. + +"Unchain the Gyascutis!" said Sir Christopher commandingly. Giuseppe +placed the monkey atop of the organ, where the beast, misunderstanding, +stood on his head. + +"He's throwing himself on the mercy of the Court, me lud," said Jimmy. +"No--now he's interested. Now he's reaching after higher things. What +wouldn't I give to have here" (he mentioned a name not unhonoured in +British Art). "Ambition plucking apples of Sodom!" (the monkey had +pricked himself and was swearing). "Genius hampered by Convention? Oh, +there's a whole bushelful of allegories in it!" + +"Give him time. He's balancing the probabilities," said Lord Lundie. + +The three closed round the monkey,--hanging on his every motion with +an earnestness almost equal to ours. The great judge's head--seamed and +vertical forehead, iron mouth, and pike-like under-jaw, all set on that +thick neck rising out of the white flannelled collar--was thrown against +the puckered green silk of the organ-front as it might have been a cameo +of Titus. Jimmy, with raised eyes and parted lips, fingered his grizzled +chestnut beard, and I was near enough to-note, the capable beauty of his +hands. Sir Christopher stood a little apart, his arms folded behind his +back, one heavy brown boot thrust forward, chin in as curbed, and black +eyebrows lowered to shade the keen eyes. + +Giuseppe's dark face between flashing earrings, a twisted rag of red and +yellow silk round his throat, turned from the reaching yearning monkey +to the pink and white biscuits spiked on the bronzed leafage. And upon +them all fell the serious and workmanlike sun of an English summer +forenoon. + +"Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel!" said Lord Lundie suddenly in a +voice that made me think of Black Caps. I do not know what the +monkey thought, because at that instant he leaped off the organ and +disappeared. + +There was a clash of broken glass behind the tree. + +The monkey's face, distorted with passion, appeared at an upper window +of the house, and a starred hole in the stained-glass window to the left +of 'the front door showed the first steps of his upward path. + +"We've got to catch him," cried Sir Christopher. "Come along!" + +They pushed at the door, which was unlocked. + +"Yes. But consider the ethics of the case," said Jimmy. "Isn't this +burglary or something, Bubbles?" + +"Settle that when he's caught," said Sir Christopher. "We're responsible +for the beast." + +A furious clanging of bells broke out of the empty house, followed by +muffed gurglings and trumpetings. + +"What the deuce is that?" I asked, half aloud. + +"The plumbing, of course," said Penfentenyou. "What a pity! I believe +he'd have climbed if Lord Lundie hadn't put him off!" + +"Wait a moment, Chris," said Jimmy the interpreter; "Guiseppe says he +may answer to the music of his infancy. Giuseppe, therefore, will go +in with the organ. Orpheus with his lute, you know. Avante, Orpheus! +There's no Neapolitan for bathroom, but I fancy your friend is there." + +"I'm not going into another man's house with a hurdy-gurdy," said Lord +Lundie, recoiling, as Giuseppe unshipped the working mechanism of the +organ (it developed a hang-down leg) from its wheels, slipped a strap +round his shoulders, and gave the handle a twist. + +"Don't be a cad, Bubbles," was Jimmy's answer. "You couldn't leave us +now if you were on the Woolsack. Play, Orpheus! The Cadi accompanies." + + * * * * * * * * * + + +With a whoop, a buzz, and a crash, the organ sprang to life under +the hand of Giuseppe, and the procession passed through the +grained-to-imitate-walnut front door. A moment later we saw the monkey +ramping on the roof. + +"He'll be all over the township in a minute if we don't head him," said +Penfentenyou, leaping to his feet, and crashing into the garden. We +headed him with pebbles till he retired through a window to the tuneful +reminder that he had left a lot of little things behind him. As we +passed the front door it swung open, and showed Jimmy the artist sitting +at the bottom of a newly-cleaned staircase. He waggled his hands at us, +and when we entered we saw that the man was stricken speechless. His +eyes grew red--red like a ferret's--and what little breath he had +whistled shrilly. At first we thought it was a fit, and then we saw that +it was mirth--the inopportune mirth of the Artistic Temperament. + +The house palpitated to an infamous melody punctuated by the stump of +the barrel-organ's one leg, as Giuseppe, above, moved from room to room +after his rebel slave. Now and again a floor shook a little under the +combined rushes of Lord Lundie and Sir Christopher Tomling, who gave +many and contradictory orders. But when they could they cursed Jimmy +with splendid thoroughness. + +"Have you anything to do with the house?" panted Jimmy at last. "Because +we're using it just now." He gulped. "And I'm ah--keeping cave." + +"All right," said Penfentenyou, and shut the hall door. + +"Jimmy, you unspeakable blackguard, Jimmy, you cur! You coward!" +(Lord Lundie's voice overbore the flood of melody.) "Come up here! +Giussieppe's saying something we don't understand." + +Jimmy listened and interpreted between hiccups. + +"He says you'd better play the organ, Bubbles, and let him do the +stalking. The monkey knows him." + +"By Jove, he's quite right," said Sir Christopher from the landing. +"Take it, Bubbles, at once." + +"My God!" said Lord Lundie in horror. + +The chase reverberated over our heads, from the attics to the first +floor and back again. Bodies and Voices met in collision and argument, +and once or twice the organ hit walls and doors. Then it broke forth in +a new manner. + +"He's playing it," said Jimmy. "I know his acute Justinian ear. Are you +fond of music?" + +"I think Lord Lundie plays very well for a beginner," I ventured. + +"Ah! That's the trained legal intellect. Like mastering a brief. I +haven't got it." He wiped his eyes and shook. + +"Hi!" said Penfentenyou, looking through the stained glass window down +the garden. "What's that!" + + * * * * * * * * * + + +A household removals van, in charge of four men, had halted at the +gate. A husband and his wife householders beyond question--quavered +irresolutely up the path. He looked tired. She was certainly cross. +In all this haphazard world the last couple to understand a scientific +experiment. + +I laid hands on Jimmy--the clamour above drowning speech and with +Penfentenyou's aid, propped him against the window, that he should see. + +He saw, nodded, fell as an umbrella can fall, and kneeling, beat his +forehead on the shut door. Penfentenyou slid the bolt. + +The furniture men reinforced the two figures on the path, and advanced, +spreading generously. + +"Hadn't we better warn them up-stairs?" I suggested: + +"No. I'll die first!" said Jimmy. "I'm pretty near it now. Besides, they +called me names." + +I turned from the Artist to the Administrator. + +"Ceteris paribus, I think we'd better be going," said Penfentenyou, +dealer in crises. + +"Ta--take me with you," said Jimmy. "I've no reputation to lose, but I'd +like to watch 'em from--er--outside the picture." + +"There's always a modus vivendi," Penfentenyou murmured, and tiptoed +along the hall to a back door, which he opened quite silently. We passed +into a tangle of gooseberry bushes where, at his statesmanlike example, +we crawled on all fours, and regained the hedge. + +Here we lay up, secure in our alibi. + +"But your firm,"--the woman was wailing to the furniture removals +men--"your firm promised me everything should be in yesterday. And it's +to-day! You should have been here yesterday!" + +"The last tenants ain't out yet, lydy," said one of them. + +Lord Lundie was rapidly improving in technique, though organ-grinding, +unlike the Law, is more of a calling than a trade, and he hung +occasionally on a dead centre. Giuseppe, I think, was singing, but I +could not understand the drift of Sir Christopher's remarks. They were +Spanish. + +The woman said something we did not catch. + +"You might 'ave sub-let it," the man insisted. "Or your gentleman 'ere +might." + +"But I didn't. Send for the Police at once." + +"I wouldn't do that, lydy. They're only fruit pickers on a beano. They +aren't particular where they sleep." + +"D'you mean they've been sleeping there? I only had it cleaned last +week. Get them out." + +"Oh, if you say so, we'll 'ave 'em out of it in two twos. Alf, fetch me +the spare swingle-bar." + +"Don't! You'll knock the paint off the door. Get them out!" + +"What the 'ell else am I trying to do for you, lydy?" the man answered +with pathos; but the woman wheeled on her mate. + +"Edward! They're all drunk here, and they're all mad there. Do +something!" she said. + +Edward took one short step forward, and sighed "Hullo!" in the direction +of the turbulent house. The woman walked up and down, the very figure +of Domestic Tragedy. The furniture men swayed a little on their heels, +and-- + +"Got him!" The shout rang through all the windows at once. It was +followed by a blood-hound-like bay from Sir Christopher, a maniacal +prestissimo on the organ, and loud cries, for Jimmy. But Jimmy, at my +side, rolled his congested eyeballs, owl-wise. + +"I never knew them," he said. "I'm an orphan." + + * * * * * * * * * + + +The front, door opened, and the three came forth to short-lived triumph. +I had never before seen a Law Lord dressed as for tennis, with a +stump-leg barrel-organ strapped to his shoulder. But it is a shy bird +in this plumage. Lord Lundie strove to disembarrass himself of his +accoutrements much as an ill-trained Punch and Judy dog tries to escape +backwards through his frilled collar. Sir Christopher, covered with +limewash, cherished a bleeding thumb, and the almost crazy monkey tore +at Giuseppe's hair. + +The men on both sides reeled, but the woman stood her ground. "Idiots!" +she said, and once more, "Idiots!" + +I could have gladdened a few convicts of my acquaintance with a +photograph of Lord Lundie at that instant. + +"Madam," he began, wonderfully preserving the roll in his voice, "it was +a monkey." + +Sir Christopher sucked his thumb and nodded. + +"Take it away and go," she replied. "Go away!" + +I would have gone, and gladly, on this permission, but these still +strong men must ever be justifying themselves. Lord Lundie turned to the +husband, who for the first time spoke. + +"I have rented this house. I am moving in," he said. + +"We ought to have been in yesterday," the woman interrupted. + +"Yes. We ought to have been in yesterday. Have you slept there +overnight?" said the man peevishly. + +"No; I assure you we haven't," said Lord Lundie. + +"Then go away. Go quite away," cried the woman. + +They went--in single file down the path. They went silently, restrapping +the organ on its wheels, and rechaining the monkey to the organ. + +"Damn it all!" said Penfentenyou. "They do face the music, and they do +stick by each other in private life!" + +"Ties of Common Funk," I answered. Giuseppe ran to the gate and fled +back to the possible world. Lord Lundie and Sir Christopher, constrained +by tradition, paced slowly. + +Then it came to pass that the woman, who walked behind them, lifted up +her eyes, and beheld the tree which they had dressed. + +"Stop!" she called; and they stopped. "Who did that?" + +There was no answer. The Eternal Bad Boy in every man hung its head +before the Eternal Mother in every woman. + +"Who put these disgusting things there?" she repeated. + +Suddenly Penfentenyou, Premier of his Colony in all but name, left Jimmy +and me, and appeared at the gate. (If he is not turned out of office, +that is how he will appear on the Day of Armageddon.) + +"Well done you!" he cried zealously, and doffed his hat to the woman. +"Have you any children, madam?" he demanded. + +"Yes, two. They should have been here to-day. The firm promised--" + +"Then we're not a minute too soon. That monkey escaped. It was a very +dangerous beast. 'Might have frightened your children into fits. All the +organ-grinder's fault! A most lucky thing these gentlemen caught it when +they did. I hope you aren't badly mauled, Sir Christopher?" Shaken as +I was (I wanted to get away and laugh) I could not but admire the +scoundrel's consummate tact in leading his second highest trump. An ass +would have introduced Lord Lundie and they would not have believed him. + +It took the trick. The couple smiled, and gave respectful thanks for +their deliverance by such hands from such perils. + +"Not in the least," said Lord Lundie. "Anybody--any father would have +done as much, and pray don't apologize your mistake was quite natural." +A furniture man sniggered here, and Lord Lundie rolled an Eye of Doom on +their ranks. "By the way, if you have trouble with these persons--they +seem to have taken as much as is good for them--please let me know. +Er--Good morning!" + +They turned into the lane. + +"Heavens!" said Jimmy, brushing himself down. "Who's that real man +with the real head?" and we hurried after them, for they were running +unsteadily, squeaking like rabbits as they ran. We overtook them in a +little nut wood half a mile up the road, where they had turned aside, +and were rolling. So we rolled with them, and ceased not till we had +arrived at the extremity of exhaustion. + +"You--you saw it all, then?" said Lord Lundie, rebuttoning his +nineteen-inch collar. + +"I saw it was a vital question from the first," responded Penfentenyou, +and blew his nose. + +"It was. By the way, d'you mind telling me your name?" + + +Summa. Penfentenyou's Great Idea has gone through, a little chipped +at the edges, but in fine and far-reaching shape. His Opposite Number +worked at it like a mule--a bewildered mule, beaten from behind, coaxed +from in front, and propped on either soft side by Lord Lundie of the +compressed mouth and the searing tongue. + +Sir Christopher Tomling has been ravished from the Argentine, where, +after all, he was but preparing trade-routes for hostile peoples, and +now adorns the forefront of Penfentenyou's Advisory Board. This was an +unforeseen extra, as was Jimmy's gratis full-length--(it will be in this +year's Academy) of Penfentenyou, who has returned to his own place. + +Now and again, from afar off, between the slam and bump of his shifting +scenery, the glare of his manipulated limelight, and the controlled +rolling of his thunder-drums, I catch his voice, lifted in encouragement +and advice to his fellow-countrymen. He is quite sound on Ties of +Sentiment, and--alone of Colonial Statesmen ventures to talk of the Ties +of Common Funk. + +Herein I have my reward. + + + + +THE PUZZLER + + The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo, + His mental processes are plain--one knows what he will do, + And can logically predicate his finish by his start: + But the English--ah, the English!--they are quite a race apart. + + Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and rare; + They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw; + But the straw that they were tickled with--the chaff that + they were fed with-- + They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head + with. + + For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, + They arrive at their conclusions--largely inarticulate. + Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; + But sometimes, in a smoking-room, one learns why things were + done. + + In telegraphic sentences, half swallowed at the ends, + They hint a matter's inwardness--and there the matter ends. + And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall, + The English--ah, the English!--don't say anything at all! + + + + +LITTLE FOXES + +A TALE OF THE GIHON HUNT + +A fox came out of his earth on the banks of the Great River Gihon, +which waters Ethiopia. He saw a white man riding through the dry +dhurra-stalks, and, that his destiny might be fulfilled, barked at him. + +The rider drew rein among the villagers round his stirrup. + +"What," said he, "is that?" + +"That," said the Sheikh of the village, "is a fox, O Excellency Our +Governor." + +"It is not, then, a jackal?" + +"No jackal, but Abu Hussein the father of cunning." + +"Also," the white man spoke half aloud, "I am Mudir of this Province." + +"It is true," they cried. "Ya, Saart el Mudir" (O Excellency Our +Governor). + +The Great River Gihon, well used to the moods of kings, slid between his +mile-wide banks toward the sea, while the Governor praised God in a loud +and searching cry never before heard by the river. + +When he had lowered his right forefinger from behind his right ear, the +villagers talked to him of their crops--barley, dhurrah, millet, onions, +and the like. The Governor stood in his stirrups. North he looked up +a strip of green cultivation a few hundred yards wide that lay like a +carpet between the river and the tawny line of the desert. Sixty miles +that strip stretched before him, and as many behind. At every half-mile +a groaning water-wheel lifted the soft water from the river to the crops +by way of a mud-built aqueduct. A foot or so wide was the water-channel; +five foot or more high was the bank on which it ran, and its base was +broad in proportion. Abu Hussein, misnamed the Father of Cunning, drank +from the river below his earth, and his shadow was long in the low sun. +He could not understand the loud cry which the Governor had cried. + +The Sheikh of the village spoke of the crops from which the rulers of +all lands draw revenue; but the Governor's eyes were fixed, between his +horse's ears, on the nearest water-channel. + +"Very like a ditch in Ireland," he murmured, and smiled, dreaming of a +razor-topped bank in distant Kildare. + +Encouraged by that smile, the Sheikh continued. "When crops fail it is +necessary to remit taxation. Then it is a good thing, O Excellency +Our Governor, that you come and see the crops which have failed, and +discover that we have not lied." + +"Assuredly." The Governor shortened his reins. The horse cantered on, +rose at the embankment of the water-channel, changed leg cleverly on +top, and hopped down in a cloud of golden dust. + +Abu Hussein from his earth watched with interest. He had never before +seen such things. + +"Assuredly," the Governor repeated, and came back by the way he had +gone. "It is always best to see for one's self." + +An ancient and still bullet-speckled stern-wheel steamer, with a barge +lashed to her side, came round the river bend. She whistled to tell the +Governor his dinner was ready, and the horse, seeing his fodder piled on +the barge, whinnied back. + +"Moreover," the Sheikh added, "in the days of the Oppression the Emirs +and their creatures dispossessed many people of their lands. All up and +down the river our people are waiting to return to their lawful fields." + +"Judges have been appointed to settle that matter," said the Governor. +"They will presently come in steamers and hear the witnesses." + +"Wherefore? Did the Judges kill the Emirs? We would rather be judged by +the men who executed God's judgment on the Emirs. We would rather abide +by your decision, O Excellency Our Governor." + +The Governor nodded. It was a year since he had seen the Emirs stretched +close and still round the reddened sheepskin where lay El Mahdi, the +Prophet of God. Now there remained no trace of their dominion except the +old steamer, once part of a Dervish flotilla, which was his house and +office. She sidled into the shore, lowered a plank, and the Governor +followed his horse aboard. + +Lights burned on her till late, dully reflected in the river that tugged +at her mooring-ropes. The Governor read, not for the first time, the +administration reports of one John Jorrocks, M.F.H. + +"We shall need," he said suddenly to his Inspector, "about ten couple. +I'll get 'em when I go home. You'll be Whip, Baker?" + +The Inspector, who was not yet twenty-five, signified his assent in the +usual manner, while Abu Hussein barked at the vast desert moon. + +"Ha!" said the Governor, coming out in his pyjamas, "we'll be giving you +capivi in another three months, my friend." + + * * * * * + +It was four, as a matter of fact, ere a steamer with a melodious +bargeful of hounds anchored at that landing. The Inspector leaped down +among them, and the homesick wanderers received him as a brother. + +"Everybody fed 'em everything on board ship, but they're real dainty +hounds at bottom," the Governor explained. "That's Royal you've got hold +of--the pick of the bunch--and the bitch that's got, hold of you--she's +a little excited--is May Queen. Merriman, out of Cottesmore Maudlin, you +know." + +"I know. 'Grand old betch with the tan eyebrows,"' the Inspector cooed. +"Oh, Ben! I shall take an interest in life now. Hark to 'em! O hark!" + +Abu Hussein, under the high bank, went about his night's work. An eddy +carried his scent to the barge, and three villages heard the crash of +music that followed. Even then Abu Hussein did not know better than to +bark in reply. + +"Well, what about my Province?" the Governor asked. + +"Not so bad," the Inspector answered, with Royal's head between his +knees. "Of course, all the villages want remission of taxes, but, as far +as I can see, the whole country's stinkin' with foxes. Our trouble will +be choppin' 'em in cover. I've got a list of the only villages entitled +to any remission. What d'you call this flat-sided, blue-mottled beast +with the jowl?" + +"Beagle-boy. I have my doubts about him. Do you think we can get two +days a week?" + +"Easy; and as many byes as you please. The Sheikh of this village here +tells me that his barley has failed, and he wants a fifty per cent +remission." + +"We'll begin with him to-morrow, and look at his crops as we go. Nothing +like personal supervision," said the Governor. + +They began at sunrise. The pack flew off the barge in every direction, +and, after gambols, dug like terriers at Abu Hussein's many earths. Then +they drank themselves pot-bellied on Gihon water while the Governor and +the Inspector chastised them with whips. Scorpions were added; for May +Queen nosed one, and was removed to the barge lamenting. Mystery (a +puppy, alas!) met a snake, and the blue-mottled Beagle-boy (never a +dainty hound) ate that which he should have passed by. Only Royal, of +the Belvoir tan head and the sad, discerning eyes, made any attempt to +uphold the honour of England before the watching village. + +"You can't expect everything," said the Governor after breakfast. + +"We got it, though--everything except foxes. Have you seen May Queen's +nose?" said the Inspector. + +"And Mystery's dead. We'll keep 'em coupled next time till we get well +in among the crops. I say, what a babbling body-snatcher that Beagle-boy +is! Ought to be drowned!" + +"They bury people so damn casual hereabouts. Give him another chance," +the Inspector pleaded, not knowing that he should live to repent most +bitterly. + +"Talkin' of chances," said the Governor, "this Sheikh lies about his +barley bein' a failure. If it's high enough to hide a hound at this time +of year, it's all right. And he wants a fifty per cent remission, you +said?" + +"You didn't go on past the melon patch where I tried to turn Wanderer. +It's all burned up from there on to the desert. His other water-wheel +has broken down, too," the Inspector replied. + +"Very good. We'll split the difference and allow him twenty-five per +cent off. Where'll we meet to-morrow?" + +"There's some trouble among the villages down the river about their +land-titles. It's good goin' ground there, too," the Inspector said. + +The next meet, then, was some twenty miles down the river, and the pack +were not enlarged till they were fairly among the fields. Abu Hussein +was there in force--four of him. Four delirious hunts of four minutes +each--four hounds per fox--ended in four earths just above the river. +All the village looked on. + +"We forgot about the earths. The banks are riddled with 'em. This'll +defeat us," said the Inspector. + +"Wait a moment!" The Governor drew forth a sneezing hound. "I've just +remembered I'm Governor of these parts." + +"Then turn out a black battalion to stop for us. We'll need 'em, old +man." + +The Governor straightened his back. "Give ear, O people!" he cried. "I +make a new Law!" + +The villagers closed in. He called:-- + +"Henceforward I will give one dollar to the man on whose land Abu +Hussein is found. And another dollar"--he held up the coin--"to the man +on whose land these dogs shall kill him. But to the man on whose land +Abu Hussein shall run into a hole such as is this hole, I will give not +dollars, but a most unmeasurable beating. Is it understood?" + +"Our Excellency," a man stepped forth, "on my land Abu Hussein was found +this morning. Is it not so, brothers?" + +None denied. The Governor tossed him over four dollars without a word. + +"On my land they all went into their holes," cried another. "Therefore I +must be beaten." + +"Not so. The land is mine, and mine are the beatings." + +This second speaker thrust forward his shoulders already bared, and the +villagers shouted. + +"Hullo! Two men anxious to be licked? There must be some swindle about +the land," said the Governor. Then in the local vernacular: "What are +your rights to the beating?" + +As a river-reach changes beneath a slant of the sun, that which had been +a scattered mob changed to a court of most ancient justice. The hounds +tore and sobbed at Abu Hussein's hearthstone, all unnoticed among +the legs of the witnesses, and Gihon, also accustomed to laws, purred +approval. + +"You will not wait till the Judges come up the river to settle the +dispute?" said the Governor at last. + +"No!" shouted all the village save the man who had first asked to be +beaten. "We will abide by Our Excellency's decision. Let Our Excellency +turn out the creatures of the Emirs who stole our land in the days of +the Oppression." + +"And thou sayest?" the Governor turned to the man who had first asked to +be beaten. + +"I say 1 will wait till the wise Judges come down in the steamer. Then I +will bring my many witnesses," he replied. + +"He is rich. He will bring many witnesses," the village Sheikh muttered. + +"No need. Thy own mouth condemns thee!" the Governor cried. "No man +lawfully entitled to his land would wait one hour before entering upon +it. Stand aside!" The man, fell back, and the village jeered him. + +The second claimant stooped quickly beneath the lifted hunting-crop. The +village rejoiced. + +"Oh, Such an one; Son of such an one," said the Governor, prompted by +the Sheikh, "learn, from the day when I send the order, to block up all +the holes where Abu Hussein may hide on--thy--land!" + +The light flicks ended. The man stood up triumphant. By that accolade +had the Supreme Government acknowledged his title before all men. + +While the village praised the perspicacity of the Governor, a naked, +pock-marked child strode forward to the earth, and stood on one leg, +unconcerned as a young stork. + +"Hal" he said, hands behind his back. "This should be blocked up with +bundles of dhurra stalks--or, better, bundles of thorns." + +"Better thorns," said the Governor. "Thick ends innermost." + +The child nodded gravely and squatted on the sand. + +"An evil day for thee, Abu Hussein," he shrilled into the mouth of the +earth. "A day of obstacles to thy flagitious returns in the morning." + +"Who is it?" the Governor asked the Sheikh. "It thinks." + +"Farag the Fatherless. His people were slain in the days of the +Oppression. The man to whom Our Excellency has awarded the land is, as +it were, his maternal uncle." + +"Will it come with me and feed the big dogs?" said the Governor. + +The other peering children drew back. "Run!" they cried. "Our Excellency +will feed Farag to the big dogs." + +"I will come," said Farag. "And I will never go." He threw his arm round +Royal's neck, and the wise beast licked his face. + +"Binjamin, by Jove!" the Inspector cried. + +"No!" said the Governor. "I believe he has the makings of a James Pigg!" + +Farag waved his hand to his uncle, and led Royal on to the barge. The +rest of the pack followed. + + * * * * * + +Gihon, that had seen many sports, learned to know the Hunt barge well. +He met her rounding his bends on grey December dawns to music wild and +lamentable as the almost forgotten throb of Dervish drums, when, high +above Royal's tenor bell, sharper even than lying Beagle-boy's falsetto +break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed. +At sunrise the river would shoulder her carefully into her place, and +listen to the rush and scutter of the pack fleeing up the gang-plank, +and the tramp of the Governor's Arab behind them. They would pass over +the brow into the dewless crops where Gihon, low and shrunken, could +only guess what they were about when Abu Hussein flew down the bank +to scratch at a stopped earth, and flew back into the barley again. As +Farag had foretold, it was evil days for Abu Hussein ere he learned to +take the necessary steps and to get away crisply. Sometimes Gihon saw +the whole procession of the Hunt silhouetted against the morning-blue, +bearing him company for many merry miles. At every half mile the horses +and the donkeys jumped the water-channels--up, on, change your leg, and +off again like figures in a zoetrope, till they grew small along the +line of waterwheels. Then Gibon waited their rustling return through +the crops, and took them to rest on his bosom at ten o'clock. While the +horses ate, and Farag slept with his head on Royal's flank, the Governor +and his Inspector worked for the good of the Hunt and his Province. + +After a little time there was no need to beat any man for neglecting +his earths. The steamer's destination was telegraphed from waterwheel +to waterwheel, and the villagers stopped out and put to according. If an +earth were overlooked, it meant some dispute as to the ownership of the +land, and then and there the Hunt checked and settled it in this wise: +The Governor and the Inspector side by side, but the latter half a +horse's length to the rear; both bare-shouldered claimants well in +front; the villagers half-mooned behind them, and Farag with the pack, +who quite understood the performance, sitting down on the left. Twenty +minutes were enough to settle the most complicated case, for, as the +Governor said to a judge on the steamer, "One gets at the truth in a +hunting-field a heap quicker than in your lawcourts." + +"But when the evidence is conflicting?" the Judge suggested. + +"Watch the field. They'll throw tongue fast enough if you're running a +wrong scent. You've never had an appeal from one of my decisions yet." + +The Sheikhs on horseback--the lesser folk on clever donkeys--the +children so despised by Farag soon understood that villages which +repaired their waterwheels and channels stood highest in the Governor's +favour. He bought their barley, for his horses. + +"Channels," he said, "are necessary that we may all jump them. They are +necessary, moreover, for the crops. Let there be many wheels and sound +channels--and much good barley." + +"Without money," replied an aged Sheikh, "there are no waterwheels." + +"I will lend the money," said the Governor. + +"At what interest, O Our Excellency?" + +"Take you two of May Queen's puppies to bring up in your village in +such a manner that they do not eat filth, nor lose their hair, nor catch +fever from lying in the sun, but become wise hounds." + +"Like Ray-yal--not like Bigglebai?" (Already it was an insult along +the River to compare a man to the shifty anthropophagous blue-mottled +harrier.) + +"Certainly, like Ray-yal--not in the least like Bigglebai. That shall be +the interest on the loan. Let the puppies thrive and the waterwheel be +built, and I shall be content," said the Governor. + +"The wheel shall be built, but, O Our Excellency, if by God's favour +the pups grow to be well-smelters, not filth-eaters, not unaccustomed to +their names, not lawless, who will do them and me justice at the time of +judging the young dogs?" + +"Hounds, man, hounds! Ha-wands, O Sheikh, we call them in their +manhood." + +"The ha-wands when they are judged at the Sha-ho. I have unfriends down +the river to whom Our Excellency has also entrusted ha-wands to bring +up." + +"Puppies, man! Pah-peaz we call them, O Sheikh, in their childhood." + +"Pah-peat. My enemies may judge my pah-peaz unjustly at the Sha-ho. This +must be thought of." + +"I see the obstacle. Hear now! If the new waterwheel is built in a month +without oppression, thou, O Sheikh, shalt be named one of the judges to +judge the pah-peaz at the Sha-ho. Is it understood?" + +"Understood. We will build the wheel. I and my seed are responsible for +the repayment of the loan. Where are my pah-peaz? If they eat fowls, +must they on any account eat the feathers?" + +"On no account must they eat the feathers. Farag in the barge will tell +thee how they are to live." + +There is no instance of any default on the Governor's personal and +unauthorized loans, for which they called him the Father of Waterwheels. +But the first puppyshow at the capital needed enormous tact and the +presence of a black battalion ostentatiously drilling in the barrack +square to prevent trouble after the prize-giving. + +But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon Hunt--or their shames? +Who remembers the kill in the market-place, when the Governor bade the +assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the hounds would instantly +devour the body of Abu Hussein; but how, when he had scientifically +broken it up, the weary pack turned from it in loathing, and Farag wept +because he said the world's face had been blackened? What men who have +not yet ridden beyond the sound of any horn recall the midnight run +which ended--Beagleboy leading--among tombs; the hasty whip-off, and the +oath, taken Abo e bones, to forget the worry? The desert run, when Abu +Hussein forsook the cultivation, and made a six-mile point to earth in +a desolate khor--when strange armed riders on camels swooped out of a +ravine, and instead of giving battle, offered to take the tired hounds +home on their beasts. Which they did, and vanished. + +Above all, who remembers the death of Royal, when a certain Sheikh +wept above the body of the stainless hound as it might have been his +son's--and that day the Hunt rode no more? The badly-kept log-book says +little of this, but at the end of their second season (forty-nine brace) +appears the dark entry: "New blood badly wanted. They are beginning to +listen to beagle-boy." + + * * * * * + +The Inspector attended to the matter when his leave fell due. + +"Remember," said the Governor, "you must get us the best blood in +England--real, dainty hounds--expense no object, but don't trust your +own judgment. Present my letters of introduction, and take what they +give you." + +The Inspector presented his letters in a society where they make much +of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can +ride. They passed him from house to house, mounted him according to his +merits, and fed him, after five years of goat chop and Worcester sauce, +perhaps a thought too richly. + +The seat or castle where he made his great coup does not much matter. +Four Masters of Foxhounds were at table, and in a mellow hour the +Inspector told them stories of the Gihon Hunt. He ended: "Ben said I +wasn't to trust my own judgment about hounds, but I think there ought to +be a special tariff for Empire-makers." + +As soon as his hosts could speak, they reassured him on this point. + +"And now tell us about your first puppy-show all over again," said one. + +"And about the earth-stoppin'. Was that all Ben's own invention?" said +another. + +"Wait a moment," said a large, clean-shaven man--not an M.F.H.--at the +end of the table. "Are your villagers habitually beaten by your Governor +when they fail to stop foxes' holes?" + +The tone and the phrase were enough even if, as the Inspector confessed +afterwards, the big, blue double-chinned man had not looked so like +Beagle-boy. He took him on for the honour of Ethiopia. + +"We only hunt twice a week--sometimes three times. I've never known a +man chastised more than four times a week unless there's a bye." + +The large loose-lipped man flung his napkin down, came round the table, +cast himself into the chair next the Inspector, and leaned forward +earnestly, so that he breathed in the Inspector's face. + +"Chastised with what?" he said. + +"With the kourbash--on the feet. A kourbash is a strip of old hippo-hide +with a sort of keel on it, like the cutting edge of a boar's tusk. But +we use the rounded side for a first offender." + +"And do any consequences follow this sort of thing? For the victim, I +mean--not for you?" + +"Ve-ry rarely. Let me be fair. I've never seen a man die under the lash, +but gangrene may set up if the kourbash has been pickled." + +"Pickled in what?" All the table was still and interested. + +"In copperas, of course. Didn't you know that" said the Inspector. + +"Thank God I didn't." The large man sputtered visibly. + +The Inspector wiped his face and grew bolder. + +"You mustn't think we're careless about our earthstoppers. We've a Hunt +fund for hot tar. Tar's a splendid dressing if the toe-nails aren't +beaten off. But huntin' as large a country as we do, we mayn't be back +at that village for a month, and if the dressings ain't renewed, and +gangrene sets in, often as not you find your man pegging about on his +stumps. We've a well-known local name for 'em down the river. We call +'em the Mudir's Cranes. You see, I persuaded the Governor only to +bastinado on one foot." + +"On one foot? The Mudir's Cranes!" The large man turned purple to the +top of his bald head. "Would you mind giving me the local word for +Mudir's Cranes?" + +From a too well-stocked memory the Inspector drew one short adhesive +word which surprises by itself even unblushing Ethiopia. He spelt it +out, saw the large man write it down on his cuff and withdraw. Then the +Inspector translated a few of its significations and implications to the +four Masters of Foxhounds. He left three days later with eight couple of +the best hounds in England--a free and a friendly and an ample gift from +four packs to the Gihon Hunt. He had honestly meant to undeceive the +large blue mottled man, but somehow forgot about it. + +The new draft marks a new chapter in the Hunt's history. From an +isolated phenomenon in a barge it became a permanent institution with +brick-built kennels ashore, and an influence social, political, and +administrative, co-terminous with the boundaries of the province. Ben, +the Governor, departed to England, where he kept a pack of real dainty +hounds, but never ceased to long for the old lawless lot. His successors +were ex-officio Masters of the Gihon Hunt, as all Inspectors were Whips. +For one reason; Farag, the kennel huntsman, in khaki and puttees, would +obey nothing under the rank of an Excellency, and the hounds would obey +no one but Farag; for another, the best way of estimating crop returns +and revenue was by riding straight to hounds; for a third, though +Judges down the river issued signed and sealed land-titles to all lawful +owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title +valid till it had been confirmed, according to precedent, by the +Governor's hunting crop in the hunting field, above the wilfully +neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere +taps on the shoulder, but Governors who tried to evade that much found +themselves and their office compassed about with a great cloud of +witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits and, worse still, +neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs, indeed, stood out for the +unmeasurable beatings of the old days--the sharper the punishment, they +argued, the surer the title; but here the hand of modern progress was +against them, and they contented themselves with telling tales of Ben +the first Governor, whom they called the Father of Waterwheels, and of +that heroic age when men, horses, and hounds were worth following. + +This same Modern Progress which brought dog biscuit and brass water-taps +to the kennels was at work all over the world. Forces, Activities, and +Movements sprang into being, agitated themselves, coalesced, and, in +one political avalanche, overwhelmed a bewildered, and not in the least +intending it, England. The echoes of the New Era were borne into the +Province on the wings of inexplicable cables. The Gihon Hunt read +speeches and sentiments, and policies which amazed them, and they +thanked God, prematurely, that their Province was too far off, too hot, +and too hard worked to be reached by those speakers or their policies. +But they, with others, under-estimated the scope and purpose of the New +Era. + +One by one, the Provinces of the Empire were hauled up and baited, hit +and held, lashed under the belly, and forced back on their haunches for +the amusement of their new masters in the parish of Westminster. One by +one they fell away, sore and angry, to compare stripes with each other +at the ends of the uneasy earth. Even so the Gihon Hunt, like Abu +Hussein in the old days, did not understand. Then it reached +them through the Press that they habitually flogged to death good +revenue-paying cultivators who neglected to stop earths; but that +the few, the very few who did not die under hippohide whips soaked in +copperas, walked about on their gangrenous ankle-bones, and were known +in derision as the Mudir's Cranes. The charges were vouched for in +the House of Commons by a Mr. Lethabie Groombride, who had formed a +Committee, and was disseminating literature: The Province groaned; the +Inspector--now an Inspector of Inspectors--whistled. He had forgotten +the gentleman who sputtered in people's faces. + +"He shouldn't have looked so like Beagle-boy!" was his sole defence when +he met the Governor at breakfast on the steamer after a meet. + +"You shouldn't have joked with an animal of that class," said Peter the +Governor. "Look what Farag has brought me!" + +It was a pamphlet, signed on behalf of a Committee by a lady secretary, +but composed by some person who thoroughly understood the language of +the Province. After telling the tale of the beatings, it recommended +all the beaten to institute criminal proceedings against their Governor, +and, as soon as might be, to rise against English oppression and +tyranny. Such documents were new in Ethiopia in those days. + +The Inspector read the last half page. "But--but," he stammered, "this +is impossible. White men don't write this sort of stuff." + +"Don't they, just?" said the Governor. "They get made Cabinet Ministers +for doing it too. I went home last year. I know." + +"It'll blow over," said the Inspector weakly. + +"Not it. Groombride is coming down here to investigate the matter in a +few days." + +"For himself?" + +"The Imperial Government's behind him. Perhaps you'd like to look t my +orders." The Governor laid down an uncoded cable. The whiplash to it +ran: "You will afford Mr. Groombride every facility for his inquiry, +and will be held responsible that no obstacles are put in his way to +the fullest possible examination of any witnesses which he may consider +necessary. He will be accompanied by his own interpreter, who must not +be tampered with." + +"That's to me--Governor of the Province!" said Peter the Governor. + +"It seems about enough," the Inspector answered. + +Farag, kennel-huntsman, entered the saloon, as was his privilege. + +"My uncle, who was beaten by the Father of Waterwheels, would approach, +O Excellency," he said, "and there are others on the bank." + +"Admit," said the Governor. + +There tramped aboard sheikhs and villagers to the number of seventeen. +In each man's hand was a copy of the pamphlet; in each man's eye terror +and uneasiness of the sort that Governors spend and are spent to clear +away. Farag's uncle, now Sheikh of the village, spoke: "It is written in +this book, Excellency, that the beatings whereby we hold our lands are +all valueless. It is written that every man who received such a beating +from the Father of Waterwheels who slow the Emirs, should instantly +begin a lawsuit, because the title to his land is not valid." + +"It is so written. We do not wish lawsuits. We wish to hold the land as +it was given to us after the days of the Oppression," they cried. + +The Governor glanced at the Inspector. This was serious. To cast doubt +on the ownership of land means, in Ethiopia, the letting in of waters, +and the getting out of troops. + +"Your titles are good," said the Governor. The Inspector confirmed with +a nod. + +"Then what is the meaning of these writings which came from down the +river where the Judges are?" Farag's uncle waved his copy. "By whose +order are we ordered to slay you, O Excellency Our Governor?" + +"It is not written that you are to slay me." + +"Not in those very words, but if we leave an earth unstopped, it is +the same as though we wished to save Abu Hussein from the hounds. These +writings say: 'Abolish your rulers.' How can we abolish except we kill? +We hear rumours of one who comes from down the river soon to lead us to +kill." + +"Fools!" said the Governor. "Your titles are good. This is madness!" + +"It is so written," they answered like a pack. + +"Listen," said the Inspector smoothly. "I know who caused the writings +to be written and sent. He is a man of a blue-mottled jowl, in aspect +like Bigglebai who ate unclean matters. He will come up the river and +will give tongue about the beatings." + +"Will he impeach our land-titles? An evil day for him!" + +"Go slow, Baker," the Governor whispered. "They'll kill him if they get +scared about their land." + +"I tell a parable." The Inspector lit a cigarette. "Declare which of you +took to walk the children of Milkmaid?" + +"Melik-meid First or Second?" said Farag quickly. + +"The second--the one which was lamed by the thorn." + +"No--no. Melik-meid the Second strained her shoulder leaping my +water-channel," a sheikh cried. "Melik-meid the First was lamed by the +thorns on the day when Our Excellency fell thrice." + +"True--true. The second Melik-meid's mate was Malvolio, the pied hound," +said the Inspector. + +"I had two of the second Melik-meid's pups," said Farag's uncle. "They +died of the madness in their ninth month." + +"And how did they do before they died?" said the Inspector. + +"They ran about in the sun, and slavered at the mouth till they died." + +"Wherefore?" + +"God knows. He sent the madness. It was no fault of mine." + +"Thy own mouth hath answered thee." The Inspector laughed. "It is with +men as it is with dogs. God afflicts some with a madness. It is no fault +of ours if such men run about in the sun and froth at the mouth. The +man who is coming will emit spray from his mouth in speaking, and will +always edge and push in towards his hearers. When ye see and hear him ye +will understand that he is afflicted of God: being mad. He is in God's +hands." + +"But our titles--are our titles to our lands good?" the crowd repeated. + +"Your titles are in my hands--they are good," said the Governor. + +"And he who wrote the writings is an afflicted of God?" said Farag's +uncle. + +"The Inspector hath said it," cried the Governor. "Ye will see when the +man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies +together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these +years we should run riot on the scent of a madman--an afflicted of God?" + +"But the Hunt pays us to kill mad jackals," said Farag's uncle. "And he +who questions my titles to my land--" + +"Aahh! 'Ware riot!" The Governor's hunting-crop cracked like a +three-pounder. "By Allah," he thundered, "if the afflicted of God come +to any harm at your hands, I myself will shoot every hound and every +puppy, and the Hunt shall ride no more. On your heads be it. Go in +peace, and tell the others." + +"The Hunt shall ride no more," said Farag's uncle. "Then how can the +land be governed? No--no, O Excellency Our Governor, we will not harm +a hair on the head of the afflicted of God. He shall be to us as is Abu +Hussein's wife in the breeding season." + +When they were gone the Governor mopped his forehead. + +"We must put a few soldiers in every village this Groombride visits, +Baker. Tell 'em to keep out of sight, and have an eye on the villagers. +He's trying 'em rather high." + +"O Excellency," said the smooth voice of Farag, laying the Field and +Country Life square on the table, "is the afflicted of God who resembles +Bigglebai one with the man whom the Inspector met in the great house in +England, and to whom he told the tale of the Mudir's Cranes?" + +"The same man, Farag," said the Inspector. + +"I have often heard the Inspector tell the tale to Our Excellency at +feeding-time in the kennels; but since I am in the Government service +I have never told it to my people. May I loose that tale among the +villages?" + + * * * * * + +The Governor nodded. "No harm," said he. + +The details of Mr. Groombride's arrival, with his interpreter, whom he +proposed should eat with him at the Governor's table, his allocution +to the Governor on the New Movement, and the sins of Imperialism, I +purposely omit. At three in the afternoon Mr. Groombride said: "I will +go out now and address your victims in this village." + +"Won't you find it rather hot?" said the Governor. "They generally take +'a nap till sunset at this time of year." + +Mr. Groombride's large, loose lips set. "That," he replied pointedly, +"would be enough to decide me. I fear you have not quite mastered your +instructions. May I ask you to send for my interpreter? I hope he has +not been tampered with by your subordinates." + +He was a yellowish boy called Abdul, who had well eaten and drunk with +Farag. The Inspector, by the way, was not present at the meal. + +"At whatever risk, I shall go unattended," said Mr. Groombride. "Your +presence would cow them--from giving evidence. Abdul, my good friend, +would you very kindly open the umbrella?" + +He passed up the gang-plank to the village, and with no more prelude +than a Salvation Army picket in a Portsmouth slum, cried: "Oh, my +brothers!" + +He did not guess how his path had been prepared. The village was +widely awake. Farag, in loose, flowing garments, quite unlike a kennel +huntsman's khaki and puttees, leaned against the wall of his uncle's +house. "Come and see the afflicted of God," he cried musically, "whose +face, indeed, resembles that of Bigglebai." + +The village came, and decided that on the whole Farag was right. + +"I can't quite catch what they are saying," said Mr. Groombride. + +"They saying they very much pleased to see you, Sar," Adbul interpreted. + +"Then I do think they might have sent a deputation to the steamer; but +I suppose they were frightened of the officials. Tell them not to be +frightened, Abdul." + +"He says you are not to be frightened," Abdul explained. A child +here sputtered with laughter. "Refrain from mirth," Farag cried. "The +afflicted of God is the guest of The Excellency Our Governor. We are +responsible for every hair of his head." + +"He has none," a voice spoke. "He has the white and the shining mange." + +"Now tell them what I have come for, Abdul, and please keep the umbrella +well up. I think I shall reserve myself for my little vernacular speech +at the end." + +"Approach! Look! Listen!" Abdul chanted. "The afflicted of God will now +make sport. Presently he will speak in your tongue, and will consume +you with mirth. I have been his servant for three weeks. I will tell you +about his undergarments and his perfumes for his head." + +He told them at length. + +"And didst thou take any of his perfume bottles?" said Farag at the end. + +"I am his servant. I took two," Abdul replied. + +"Ask him," said Farag's uncle, "what he knows about our land-titles. Ye +young men are all alike." He waved a pamphlet. Mr. Groombride smiled to +see how the seed sown in London had borne fruit by Gihon. Lo! All the +seniors held copies of the pamphlet. + +"He knows less than a buffalo. He told me on the steamer that he was +driven out of his own land by Demah-Kerazi which is a devil inhabiting +crowds and assemblies," said Abdul. + +"Allah between us and evil!" a woman cackled from the darkness of a hut. +"Come in, children, he may have the Evil Eye." + +"No, my aunt," said Farag. "No afflicted of God has an evil eye. Wait +till ye hear his mirth-provoking speech which he will deliver. I have +heard it twice from Abdul." + +"They seem very quick to grasp the point. How far have you got, Abdul?" + +"All about the beatings, sar. They are highly interested." + +"Don't forget about the local self-government, and please hold the +umbrella over me. It is hopeless to destroy unless one first builds up." + +"He may not have the Evil Eye," Farag's uncle grunted, "but his devil +led him too certainly to question my land-title. Ask him whether he +still doubts my land-title?" + +"Or mine, or mine?" cried the elders. + +"What odds? He is an afflicted of God," Farag called. "Remember the tale +I told you." + +"Yes, but he is an Englishman, and doubtless of influence, or Our +Excellency would not entertain him. Bid the down-country jackass ask +him." + +"Sar," said Abdul, "these people, much fearing they may be turned out +of their land in consequence of your remarks. Therefore they ask you to +make promise no bad consequences following your visit." + +Mr. Groombride held his breath and turned purple. Then he stamped his +foot. + +"Tell them," he cried, "that if a hair of any one of their heads is +touched by any official on any account whatever, all England shall ring +with it. Good God! What callous oppression! The dark places of the +earth are full of cruelty." He wiped his face, and throwing out his arms +cried: "Tell them, oh! tell the poor, serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell +them I come to redress their wrongs--not, heaven knows, to add to their +burden." + +The long-drawn gurgle of the practised public speaker pleased them much. + +"That is how the new water-tap runs out in the kennel," said Farag. "The +Excellency Our Governor entertains him that he may make sport. Make him +say the mirth-moving speech." + +"What did he say about my land-titles?" Farag's uncle was not to be +turned. + +"He says," Farag interpreted, "that he desires, nothing better than that +you should live on your lands in peace. He talks as though he believed +himself to be Governor." + +"Well. We here are all witnesses to what he has said. Now go forward +with the sport." Farag's uncle smoothed his garments. "How diversely +hath Allah made His creatures! On one He bestows strength to slay Emirs; +another He causes to go mad and wander in the sun, like the afflicted +sons of Melik-meid." + +"Yes, and to emit spray from the mouth, as the Inspector told us. All +will happen as the Inspector foretold," said Farag. "I have never yet +seen the Inspector thrown out during any run." + +"I think," Abdul plucked at Mr. Groombride's sleeves, "I think perhaps +it is better now, Sar, if you give your fine little native speech. They +not understanding English, but much pleased at your condescensions." + +"Condescensions?" Mr. Groombride spun round. "If they only knew how +I felt towards them in my heart! If I could express a tithe of my +feelings! I must stay here and learn the language. Hold up the umbrella, +Abdull I think my little speech will show them I know something of their +vie intime." + +It was a short, simple; carefully learned address, and the accent, +supervised by Abdul on the steamer, allowed the hearers to guess its +meaning, which was a request to see one of the Mudir's Cranes; since the +desire of the speaker's life, the object to which he would consecrate +his days, was to improve the condition of the Mudir's Cranes. But first +he must behold them with his own eyes. Would, then, his brethren, whom +he loved, show him a Mudir's Crane whom he desired to love? + +Once, twice, and again in his peroration he repeated his demand, +using always--that they might see he was acquainted with their local +argot--using always, I say, the word which the Inspector had given +him in England long ago--the short, adhesive word which, by itself, +surprises even unblushing Ethiopia. + +There are limits to the sublime politeness of an ancient people. A +bulky, blue-chinned man in white clothes, his name red-lettered across +his lower shirtfront, spluttering from under a green-lined umbrella +almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the Unintroducible; naming +loudly the Unnameable; dancing, as it seemed, in perverse joy at mere +mention of the Unmentionable--found those limits. There was a moment's +hush, and then such mirth as Gihon through his centuries had never +heard--a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children +cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and +whooping; strong men, their faces hidden in their clothes, swayed in +silence, till the agony became insupportable, and they threw up their +heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek +upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the +roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled +voice would quack out the word, and the riot began afresh. Last to fall +was the city-trained Abdul. He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then +collapsed, throwing the umbrella from him. + +Mr. Groombride should not be judged too harshly. Exercise and strong +emotion under a hot sun, the shock of public ingratitude, for the moment +rued his spirit. He furled the umbrella, and with t beat the prostrate +Abdul, crying that he had been betrayed. In which posture the Inspector, +on horseback, followed by the Governor, suddenly found him. + + * * * * * + +"That's all very well," said the Inspector, when he had taken Abdul's +dramatically dying depositions on the steamer, "but you can't hammer a +native merely because he laughs at you. I see nothing for it but the law +to take its course." + +"You might reduce the charge to--er--tampering with an interpreter," +said the Governor. Mr. Groombride was too far gone to be comforted. + +"It's the publicity that I fear," he wailed. "Is there no possible +means of hushing up the affair? You don't know what a question--a single +question in the House means to a man of my position--the ruin of my +political career, I assure you." + +"I shouldn't have imagined it," said the Governor thoughtfully. + +"And, though perhaps I ought not to say it, I am not without honour +in my own country--or influence. A word in season, as you know, Your +Excellency. It might carry an official far." + +The Governor shuddered. + +"Yes, that had to come too," he said to himself. "Well, look here. If I +tell this man of yours to withdraw the charge against you, you can go +to Gehenna for aught I care. The only condition I make is that if you +write--I suppose that's part of your business about your travels, you +don't praise me!" + +So far Mr. Groombride has loyally adhered to this understanding. + + + + +GALLIO'S SONG + + All day long to the judgment-seat + The crazed Provincials drew-- + All day long at their ruler's feet + Howled for the blood of the Jew. + Insurrection with one accord + Banded itself and woke: + And Paul was about to open his mouth + When Achaia's Deputy spoke + + "Whether the God descend from above + Or the man ascend upon high, + Whether this maker of tents be Jove + Or a younger deity-- + I will be no judge between your gods + And your godless bickerings, + Lictor, drive them hence with rods-- + I care for none of these things! + + "Were it a question of lawful due + Or a labourer's hire denied, + Reason would I should bear with you + And order it well to be tried + But this is a question of words and names + And I know the strife it brings, + I will not pass upon any your claims. + I care for none of these things. + + "One thing only I see most clear, + As I pray you also see. + Claudius Caesar hath set me here + Rome's Deputy to be. + It is Her peace that ye go to break + Not mine, nor any king's, + But, touching your clamour of 'conscience sake,' + I care for none of these things!" + + + + +THE HOUSE SURGEON + +On an evening after Easter Day, I sat at a table in a homeward bound +steamer's smoking-room, where half a dozen of us told ghost stories. As +our party broke up a man, playing Patience in the next alcove, said to +me: "I didn't quite catch the end of that last story about the Curse on +the family's first-born." + +"It turned out to be drains," I explained. "As soon as new ones were put +into the house the Curse was lifted, I believe. I never knew the people +myself." + +"Ah! I've had my drains up twice; I'm on gravel too." + +"You don't mean to say you've a ghost in your house? Why didn't you join +our party?" + +"Any more orders, gentlemen, before the bar closes?" the steward +interrupted. + +"Sit down again, and have one with me," said the Patience player. "No, +it isn't a ghost. Our trouble is more depression than anything else." + +"How interesting? Then it's nothing any one can see?" + +"It's--it's nothing worse than a little depression. And the odd part is +that there hasn't been a death in the house since it was built--in 1863. +The lawyer said so. That decided me--my good lady, rather and he made me +pay an extra thousand for it." + +"How curious. Unusual, too!" I said. + +"Yes; ain't it? It was built for three sisters--Moultrie was the +name--three old maids. They all lived together; the eldest owned it. I +bought it from her lawyer a few years ago, and if I've spent a pound +on the place first and last, I must have spent five thousand. Electric +light, new servants' wing, garden--all that sort of thing. A man and his +family ought to be happy after so much expense, ain't it?" He looked at +me through the bottom of his glass. + +"Does it affect your family much?" + +"My good lady--she's a Greek, by the way--and myself are middle-aged. We +can bear up against depression; but it's hard on my little girl. I say +little; but she's twenty. We send her visiting to escape it. She almost +lived at hotels and hydros, last year, but that isn't pleasant for her. +She used to be a canary--a perfect canary--always singing. You ought to +hear her. She doesn't sing now. That sort of thing's unwholesome for the +young, ain't it?" + +"Can't you get rid of the place?" I suggested. + +"Not except at a sacrifice, and we are fond of it. Just suits us three. +We'd love it if we were allowed." + +"What do you mean by not being allowed?" + +"I mean because of the depression. It spoils everything." + +"What's it like exactly?" + +"I couldn't very well explain. It must be seen to be appreciated, as the +auctioneers say. Now, I was much impressed by the story you were telling +just now." + +"It wasn't true," I said. + +"My tale is true. If you would do me the pleasure to come down and spend +a night at my little place, you'd learn more than you would if I talked +till morning. Very likely 'twouldn't touch your good self at all. +You might be--immune, ain't it? On the other hand, if this +influenza,--influence does happen to affect you, why, I think it will be +an experience." + +While he talked he gave me his card, and I read his name was L. Maxwell +M'Leod, Esq., of Holmescroft. A City address was tucked away in a +corner. + +"My business," he added, "used to be furs. If you are interested in +furs--I've given thirty years of my life to 'em." + +"You're very kind," I murmured. + +"Far from it, I assure you. I can meet you next Saturday afternoon +anywhere in London you choose to name, and I'll be only too happy to +motor you down. It ought to be a delightful run at this time of year the +rhododendrons will be out. I mean it. You don't know how truly I mean +it. Very probably--it won't affect you at all. And--I think I may say I +have the finest collection of narwhal tusks in the world. All the best +skins and horns have to go through London, and L. Maxwell M'Leod, he +knows where they come from, and where they go to. That's his business." + +For the rest of the voyage up-channel Mr. M'Leod talked to me of the +assembling, preparation, and sale of the rarer furs; and told me things +about the manufacture of fur-lined coats which quite shocked me. Somehow +or other, when we landed on Wednesday, I found myself pledged to spend +that week-end with him at Holmescroft. + +On Saturday he met me with a well-groomed motor, and ran me out, in an +hour and a half, to an exclusive residential district of dustless roads +and elegantly designed country villas, each standing in from three to +five acres of perfectly appointed land. He told me land was selling at +eight hundred pounds the acre, and the new golf links, whose Queen +Anne pavilion we passed, had cost nearly twenty-four thousand pounds to +create. + +Holmescroft was a large, two-storied, low, creeper-covered residence. +A verandah at the south side gave on to a garden and two tennis courts, +separated by a tasteful iron fence from a most park-like meadow of five +or six acres, where two Jersey cows grazed. Tea was ready in the shade +of a promising copper beech, and I could see groups on the lawn of +young men and maidens appropriately clothed, playing lawn tennis in the +sunshine. + +"A pretty scene, ain't it?" said Mr. M'Leod. "My good lady's sitting +under the tree, and that's my little girl in pink on the far court. But +I'll take you to your room, and you can see 'em all later." + +He led me through a wide parquet-floored hall furnished in pale lemon, +with huge Cloisonnee vases, an ebonized and gold grand piano, and banks +of pot flowers in Benares brass bowls, up a pale oak staircase to a +spacious landing, where there was a green velvet settee trimmed with +silver. The blinds were down, and the light lay in parallel lines on the +floors. + +He showed me my room, saying cheerfully: "You may be a little tired. One +often is without knowing it after a run through traffic. Don't come down +till you feel quite restored. We shall all be in the garden." + +My room was rather warm, and smelt of perfumed soap. I threw up the +window at once, but it opened so close to the floor and worked so +clumsily that I came within an ace of pitching out, where I should +certainly have ruined a rather lop-sided laburnum below. As I set about +washing off the journey's dust, I began to feel a little tired. But, I +reflected, I had not come down here in this weather and among these new +surroundings to be depressed; so I began to whistle. + +And it was just then that I was aware of a little grey shadow, as it +might have been a snowflake seen against the light, floating at an +immense distance in the background of my brain. It annoyed me, and I +shook my head to get rid of it. Then my brain telegraphed that it was +the forerunner of a swift-striding gloom which there was yet time to +escape if I would force my thoughts away from it, as a man leaping for +life forces his body forward and away from the fall of a wall. But the +gloom overtook me before I could take in the meaning of the message. I +moved toward the bed, every nerve already aching with the foreknowledge +of the pain that was to be dealt it, and sat down, while my amazed and +angry soul dropped, gulf by gulf, into that horror of great darkness +which is spoken of in the Bible, and which, as auctioneers say, must be +experienced to be appreciated. + +Despair upon despair, misery upon misery, fear after fear, each causing +their distinct and separate woe, packed in upon me for an unrecorded +length of time, until at last they blurred together, and I heard a click +in my brain like the click in the ear when one descends in a diving +bell, and I knew that the pressures were equalised within and without, +and that, for the moment, the worst was at an end. But I knew also that +at any moment the darkness might come down anew; and while, I dwelt on +this speculation precisely as a man torments a raging tooth with his +tongue, it ebbed away into the little grey shadow on the brain of its +first coming, and once more I heard my brain, which knew what would +recur, telegraph to every quarter fox help, release or diversion. + +The door opened, and M'Leod reappeared. I thanked him politely, saying +I was charmed with my room, anxious to meet Mrs. M'Leod, much refreshed +with my wash, and so on and so forth. Beyond a little stickiness at +the corners of my mouth, it seemed to me that I was managing my words +admirably; the while that I myself cowered at the bottom of unclimbable +pits. M'Leod laid his hand on my shoulder, and said "You've got it now +already, ain't it?" + +"Yes," I answered. "It's making me sick!" + +"It will pass off when you come outside. I give you my word it will then +pass off. Come!" + +I shambled out behind him, and wiped my forehead in the hall. + +"You musn't mind," he said. "I expect the run tired you. My good lady is +sitting there under the copper beech." + +She was a fat woman in an apricot-coloured gown, with a heavily powdered +face, against which her black long-lashed eyes showed like currants +in dough. I was introduced to many fine ladies and gentlemen of those +parts. Magnificently appointed landaus and covered motors swept in and +out of the drive, and the air was gay with the merry outcries of the +tennis players. + +As twilight drew on they all went away, and I was left alone with Mr. +and Mrs. M'Leod, while tall menservants and maidservants took away the +tennis and tea things. Miss M'Leod had walked a little down the drive +with a light-haired young man, who apparently knew everything about +every South American railway stock. He had told me at tea that these +were the days of financial specialisation. + +"I think it went off beautifully, my dear," said Mr. M'Leod to his wife; +and to me: "You feel all right now, ain't it? Of course you do." + +Mrs. M'Leod surged across the gravel. Her husband skipped nimbly before +her into the south verandah, turned a switch, and all Holmescroft was +flooded with light. + +"You can do that from your room also," he said as they went in. "There +is something in money, ain't it?" + +Miss M'Leod came up behind me in the dusk. "We have not yet been +introduced," she said, "but I suppose you are staying the night?" + +"Your father was kind enough to ask me," I replied. + +She nodded. "Yes, I know; and you know too, don't you? I saw your face +when you came to shake hands with mamma. You felt the depression very +soon. It is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes. What do you +think it is--bewitchment? In Greece, where I was a little girl, it might +have been; but not in England, do you think? Or do you?" + +"Cheer up, Thea. It will all come right," he insisted. + +"No, papa." She shook her dark head. "Nothing is right while it comes." + +"It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I +will swear to you," said Mrs. M'Leod suddenly. "And we have changed our +servants several times. So we know it is not them." + +"Never mind. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can," said Mr. M'Leod, +opening the champagne. + +But we did not enjoy ourselves. The talk failed. There were long +silences. + +"I beg your pardon," I said, for I thought some one at my elbow was +about to speak. + +"Ah! That is the other thing!" said Miss M'Leod. Her mother groaned. + +We were silent again, and, in a few seconds it must have been, a live +grief beyond words--not ghostly dread or horror, but aching, helpless +grief--overwhelmed us, each, I felt, according to his or her nature, +and held steady like the beam of a burning glass. Behind that pain I was +conscious there was a desire on somebody's part to explain something on +which some tremendously important issue hung. + +Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M'Leod considered +his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the +girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed +on--as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted +from us. + +"There," said Miss M'Leod, half rising. "Now you see what makes a happy +home. Oh, sell it--sell it, father mine, and let us go away!" + +"But I've spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week, +Thea dear." + +"I'm only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing." + +"Cheer up, Thea. It is over. You know it does not often come here twice +in the same night. I think we shall dare now to be comfortable." + +He lifted a dish-cover, and helped his wife and daughter. His face was +lined and fallen like an old man's after debauch, but his hand did not +shake, and his voice was clear. As he worked to restore us by speech +and action, he reminded me of a grey-muzzled collie herding demoralised +sheep. + +After dinner we sat round the dining-room fire the drawing-room might +have been under the Shadow for aught we knew talking with the intimacy +of gipsies by the wayside, or of wounded comparing notes after a +skirmish. By eleven o'clock the three between them had given me every +name and detail they could recall that in any way bore on the house, and +what they knew of its history. + +We went to bed in a fortifying blaze of electric light. My one fear was +that the blasting gust of depression would return--the surest way, +of course, to bring it. I lay awake till dawn, breathing quickly and +sweating lightly, beneath what De Quincey inadequately describes as +"the oppression of inexpiable guilt." Now as soon as the lovely day was +broken, I fell into the most terrible of all dreams--that joyous one in +which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives, but has +never been committed; and in the very bliss of our assured innocence, +before our loves shriek and change countenance, we wake to the day we +have earned. + +It was a coolish morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south +verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games +that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the +time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South +American railways took Miss M'Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at +five M'Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town. + +"Now, don't say you will tell the Psychological Society, and that you +will come again," said Miss M'Leod, as we parted. "Because I know you +will not." + +"You should not say that," said her mother. "You should say, 'Goodbye, +Mr. Perseus. Come again.'" + +"Not him!" the girl cried. "He has seen the Medusa's head!" + +Looking at myself in the restaurant's mirrors, it seemed to me that I +had not much benefited by my week-end. Next morning I wrote out all +my Holmescroft notes at fullest length, in the hope that by so doing +I could put it all behind me. But the experience worked on my mind, as +they say certain imperfectly understood rays work on the body. + +I am less calculated to make a Sherlock Holmes than any man I know, +for I lack both method and patience, yet the idea of following up the +trouble to its source fascinated me. I had no theory to go on, except +a vague idea that I had come between two poles of a discharge, and had +taken a shock meant for some one else. This was followed by a feeling +of intense irritation. I waited cautiously on myself, expecting to be +overtaken by horror of the supernatural, but my self persisted in +being humanly indignant, exactly as though it had been the victim of +a practical joke. It was in great pains and upheavals--that I felt in +every fibre but its dominant idea, to put it coarsely, was to get back +a bit of its own. By this I knew that I might go forward if I could find +the way. + +After a few days it occurred to me to go to the office of Mr. J.M.M. +Baxter--the solicitor who had sold Holmescroft to M'Leod. I explained I +had some notion of buying the place. Would he act for me in the matter? + +Mr. Baxter, a large, greyish, throaty-voiced man, showed no enthusiasm. +"I sold it to Mr. M'Leod," he said. "It 'ud scarcely do for me to start +on the running-down tack now. But I can recommend--" + +"I know he's asking an awful price," I interrupted, "and atop of it he +wants an extra thousand for what he calls your clean bill of health." + +Mr. Baxter sat up in his chair. I had all his attention. + +"Your guarantee with the house. Don't you remember it?" + +"Yes, yes. That no death had taken place in the house since it was +built: I remember perfectly." + +He did not gulp as untrained men do when they lie, but his jaws moved +stickily, and his eyes, turning towards the deed boxes on the wall, +dulled. I counted seconds, one, two, three--one, two, three up to ten. A +man, I knew, can live through ages of mental depression in that time. + +"I remember perfectly." His mouth opened a little as though it had +tasted old bitterness. + +"Of course that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me." I went on. "I don't +expect to buy a house free from death." + +"Certainly not. No one does. But it was Mr. M'Leod's fancy--his wife's +rather, I believe; and since we could meet it--it was my duty to my +clients at whatever cost to my own feelings--to make him pay." + +"That's really why I came to you. I understood from him you knew the +place well." + +"Oh, yes. Always did. It originally belonged to some connections of +mine." + +"The Misses Moultrie, I suppose. How interesting! They must have loved +the place before the country round about was built up." + +"They were very fond of it indeed." + +"I don't wonder. So restful and sunny. I don't see how they could have +brought themselves to part with it." + +Now it is one of the most constant peculiarities of the English that in +polite conversation--and I had striven to be polite--no one ever does or +sells anything for mere money's sake. + +"Miss Agnes--the youngest--fell ill" (he spaced his words a little), +"and, as they were very much attached to each other, that broke up the +home." + +"Naturally. I fancied it must have been something of that kind. +One doesn't associate the Staffordshire Moultries" (my Demon of +Irresponsibility at that instant created 'em), "with--with being hard +up." + +"I don't know whether we're related to them," he answered importantly. +"We may be, for our branch of the family comes from the Midlands." + +I give this talk at length, because I am so proud of my first attempt at +detective work. When I left him, twenty minutes later, with instructions +to move against the owner of Holmescroft, with a view to purchase, I was +more bewildered than any Doctor Watson at the opening of a story. + +Why should a middle-aged solicitor turn plovers' egg colour and drop his +jaw when reminded of so innocent and festal a matter as that no death +had ever occurred in a house that he had sold? If I knew my English +vocabulary at all, the tone in which he said the youngest sister "fell +ill" meant that she had gone out of her mind. That might explain his +change of countenance, and it was just possible that her demented +influence still hung about Holmescroft; but the rest was beyond me. + +I was relieved when I reached M'Leod's City office, and could tell him +what I had done--not what I thought. + +M'Leod was quite willing to enter into the game of the pretended +purchase, but did not see how it would help if I knew Baxter. + +"He's the only living soul I can get at who was connected with +Holmescroft," I said. + +"Ah! Living soul is good," said M'Leod. "At any rate our little girl +will be pleased that you are still interested in us. Won't you come down +some day this week?" + +"How is it there now?" I asked. + +He screwed up his face. "Simply frightful!" he said. "Thea is at +Droitwich." + +"I should like it immensely, but I must cultivate Baxter for the +present. You'll be sure and keep him busy your end, won't you?" + +He looked at me with quiet contempt. "Do not be afraid. I shall be a +good Jew. I shall be my own solicitor." + +Before a fortnight was over, Baxter admitted ruefully that M'Leod +was better than most firms in the business: We buyers were coy, +argumentative, shocked at the price of Holmescroft, inquisitive, and +cold by turns, but Mr. M'Leod the seller easily met and surpassed us; +and Mr. Baxter entered every letter, telegram, and consultation at the +proper rates in a cinematograph-film of a bill. At the end of a month +he said it looked as though M'Leod, thanks to him, were really going +to listen to reason. I was many pounds out of pocket, but I had learned +something of Mr. Baxter on the human side. I deserved it. Never in my +life have I worked to conciliate, amuse, and flatter a human being as I +worked over my solicitor. + +It appeared that he golfed. Therefore, I was an enthusiastic beginner, +anxious to learn. Twice I invaded his office with a bag (M'Leod lent it) +full of the spelicans needed in this detestable game, and a vocabulary +to match. The third time the ice broke, and Mr. Baxter took me to his +links, quite ten miles off, where in a maze of tramway lines, railroads, +and nursery-maids, we skelped our divotted way round nine holes like +barges plunging through head seas. He played vilely and had never +expected to meet any one worse; but as he realised my form, I think +he began to like me, for he took me in hand by the two hours together. +After a fortnight he could give me no more than a stroke a hole, and +when, with this allowance, I once managed to beat him by one, he was +honestly glad, and assured me that I should be a golfer if I stuck +to it. I was sticking to it for my own ends, but now and again my +conscience pricked me; for the man was a nice man. Between games he +supplied me with odd pieces of evidence, such as that he had known the +Moultries all his life, being their cousin, and that Miss Mary, the +eldest, was an unforgiving woman who would never let bygones be. +I naturally wondered what she might have against him; and somehow +connected him unfavourably with mad Agnes. + +"People ought to forgive and forget," he volunteered one day between +rounds. "Specially where, in the nature of things, they can't be sure of +their deductions. Don't you think so?" + +"It all depends on the nature of the evidence on which one forms one's +judgment," I answered. + +"Nonsense!" he cried. "I'm lawyer enough to know that there's nothing in +the world so misleading as circumstantial evidence. Never was." + +"Why? Have you ever seen men hanged on it?" + +"Hanged? People have been supposed to be eternally lost on it," his face +turned grey again. "I don't know how it is with you, but my consolation +is that God must know. He must! Things that seem on the face of 'em like +murder, or say suicide, may appear different to God. Heh?" + +"That's what the murderer and the suicide can always hope--I suppose." + +"I have expressed myself clumsily as usual. The facts as God knows +'em--may be different--even after the most clinching evidence. I've +always said that--both as a lawyer and a man, but some people won't--I +don't want to judge 'em--we'll say they can't--believe it; whereas I +say there's always a working chance--a certainty--that the worst hasn't +happened." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Now, let's come on! This +time next week I shall be taking my holiday." + +"What links?" I asked carelessly, while twins in a perambulator got out +of our line of fire. + +"A potty little nine-hole affair at a hydro in the Midlands. My cousins +stay there. Always will. Not but what the fourth and the seventh holes +take some doing. You could manage it, though," he said encouragingly. +"You're doing much better. It's only your approach shots that are weak." + +"You're right. I can't approach for nuts! I shall go to pieces while +you're away--with no one to coach me," I said mournfully. + +"I haven't taught you anything," he said, delighted with the compliment. + +"I owe all I've learned to you, anyhow. When will you come back?" + +"Look here," he began. "I don't know, your engagements, but I've no one +to play with at Burry Mills. Never have. Why couldn't you take a few +days off and join me there? I warn you it will be rather dull. It's a +throat and gout place-baths, massage, electricity, and so forth. But the +fourth and the seventh holes really take some doing." + +"I'm for the game," I answered valiantly; Heaven well knowing that I +hated every stroke and word of it. + +"That's the proper spirit. As their lawyer I must ask you not to say +anything to my cousins about Holmescroft. It upsets 'em. Always did. But +speaking as man to man, it would be very pleasant for me if you could +see your way to--" + +I saw it as soon as decency permitted, and thanked him sincerely. +According to my now well-developed theory he had certainly +misappropriated his aged cousins' monies under power of attorney, and +had probably driven poor Agnes Moultrie out of her wits, but I wished +that he was not so gentle, and good-tempered, and innocent eyed. + +Before I joined him at Burry Mills Hydro, I spent a night at +Holmescroft. Miss M'Leod had returned from her Hydro, and first we made +very merry on the open lawn in the sunshine over the manners and customs +of the English resorting to such places. She knew dozens of hydros, and +warned me how to behave in them, while Mr. and Mrs. M'Leod stood aside +and adored her. + +"Ah! That's the way she always comes back to us," he said. "Pity it +wears off so soon, ain't it? You ought to hear her sing 'With mirth thou +pretty bird.'" + +We had the house to face through the evening, and there we neither +laughed nor sung. The gloom fell on us as we entered, and did not shift +till ten o'clock, when we crawled out, as it were, from beneath it. + +"It has been bad this summer," said Mrs. M'Leod in a whisper after we +realised that we were freed. "Sometimes I think the house will get up +and cry out--it is so bad." + +"How?" + +"Have you forgotten what comes after the depression?" + +So then we waited about the small fire, and the dead air in the room +presently filled and pressed down upon us with the sensation (but words +are useless here) as though some dumb and bound power were striving +against gag and bond to deliver its soul of an articulate word. It +passed in a few minutes, and I fell to thinking about Mr. Baxter's +conscience and Agnes Moultrie, gone mad in the well-lit bedroom +that waited me. These reflections secured me a night during which I +rediscovered how, from purely mental causes, a man can be physically +sick; but the sickness was bliss compared to my dreams when the birds +waked. On my departure, M'Leod gave me a beautiful narwhal's horn, much +as a nurse gives a child sweets for being brave at a dentist's. + +"There's no duplicate of it in the world," he said, "else it would have +come to old Max M'Leod;" and he tucked it into the motor. Miss M'Leod +on the far side of the car whispered, "Have you found out anything, Mr. +Perseus?" + +I shook my head. + +"Then I shall be chained to my rock all my life," she went on. "Only +don't tell papa." + +I supposed she was thinking of the young gentleman who specialised in +South American rails, for I noticed a ring on the third finger of her +left hand. + +I went straight from that house to Burry Mills Hydro, keen for the first +time in my life on playing golf, which is guaranteed to occupy the mind. +Baxter had taken me a room communicating with his own, and after lunch +introduced me to a tall, horse-headed elderly lady of decided manners, +whom a white-haired maid pushed along in a bath-chair through the +park-like grounds of the Hydro. She was Miss Mary Moultrie, and she +coughed and cleared her throat just like Baxter. She suffered--she +told me it was a Moultrie castemark--from some obscure form of chronic +bronchitis, complicated with spasm of the glottis; and, in a dead, flat +voice, with a sunken eye that looked and saw not, told me what washes, +gargles, pastilles, and inhalations she had proved most beneficial. From +her I was passed on to her younger sister, Miss Elizabeth, a small and +withered thing with twitching lips, victim, she told me, to very +much the same sort of throat, but secretly devoted to another set of +medicines. When she went away with Baxter and the bath-chair, I fell +across a major of the Indian army with gout in his glassy eyes, and a +stomach which he had taken all round the Continent. He laid everything +before me; and him I escaped only to be confided in by a matron with +a tendency to follicular tonsilitis and eczema. Baxter waited hand and +foot on his cousins till five o'clock, trying, as I saw, to atone for +his treatment of the dead sister. Miss Mary ordered him about like a +dog. + +"I warned you it would be dull," he said when we met in the +smoking-room. + +"It's tremendously interesting," I said. "But how about a look round the +links?" + +"Unluckily damp always affects my eldest cousin. I've got to buy her a +new bronchitis-kettle. Arthurs broke her old one yesterday." + +We slipped out to the chemist's shop in the town, and he bought a large +glittering tin thing whose workings he explained. + +"I'm used to this sort of work. I come up here pretty often," he said. +"I've the family throat too." + +"You're a good man," I said. "A very good man." + +He turned towards me in the evening light among the beeches, and his +face was changed to what it might have been a generation before. + +"You see," he said huskily, "there was the youngest--Agnes. Before +she fell ill, you know. But she didn't like leaving her sisters. Never +would." He hurried on with his odd-shaped load and left me among the +ruins of my black theories. The man with that face had done Agnes +Moultrie no wrong. + +We never played our game. I was waked between two and three in the +morning from my hygienic bed by Baxter in an ulster over orange and +white pyjamas, which I should never have suspected from his character. + +"My cousin has had some sort of a seizure," he said. "Will you come? I +don't want to wake the doctor. Don't want to make a scandal. Quick!" + +So I came quickly, and led by the white-haired Arthurs in a jacket and +petticoat, entered a double-bedded room reeking with steam and Friar's +Balsam. The electrics were all on. Miss Mary--I knew her by her +height--was at the open window, wrestling with Miss Elizabeth, who +gripped her round the knees. + +Miss Mary's hand was at her own throat, which was streaked with blood. + +"She's done it. She's done it too!" Miss Elizabeth panted. "Hold her! +Help me!" + +"Oh, I say! Women don't cut their throats," Baxter whispered. + +"My God! Has she cut her throat?" the maid cried out, and with no +warning rolled over in a faint. Baxter pushed her under the wash-basins, +and leaped to hold the gaunt woman who crowed and whistled as she +struggled toward the window. He took her by the shoulder, and she struck +out wildly: + +"All right! She's only cut her hand," he said. "Wet towel quick!" + +While I got that he pushed her backward. Her strength seemed almost as +great as his. I swabbed at her throat when I could, and found no mark; +then helped him to control her a little. Miss Elizabeth leaped back to +bed, wailing like a child. + +"Tie up her hand somehow," said Baxter. "Don't let it drip about the +place. She"--he stepped on broken glass in his slippers, "she must have +smashed a pane." + +Miss Mary lurched towards the open window again, dropped on her knees, +her head on the sill, and lay quiet, surrendering the cut hand to me. + +"What did she do?" Baxter turned towards Miss Elizabeth in the far bed. + +"She was going to throw herself out of the window," was the answer. +"I stopped her, and sent Arthurs for you. Oh, we can never hold up our +heads again!" + +Miss Mary writhed and fought for breath. Baxter found a shawl which he +threw over her shoulders. + +"Nonsense!" said he. "That isn't like Mary;" but his face worked when he +said it. + +"You wouldn't believe about Aggie, John. Perhaps you will now!" said +Miss Elizabeth. "I saw her do it, and she's cut her throat too!" + +"She hasn't," I said. "It's only her hand." + +Miss Mary suddenly broke from us with an indescribable grunt, flew, +rather than ran, to her sister's bed, and there shook her as one furious +schoolgirl would shake another. + +"No such thing," she croaked. "How dare you think so, you wicked little +fool?" + +"Get into bed, Mary," said Baxter. "You'll catch a chill." + +She obeyed, but sat up with the grey shawl round her lean shoulders, +glaring at her sister. "I'm better now," she panted. "Arthurs let me +sit out too long. Where's Arthurs? The kettle." + +"Never mind Arthurs," said Baxter. "You get the kettle." I hastened to +bring it from the side table. "Now, Mary, as God sees you, tell me what +you've done." + +His lips were dry, and he could not moisten. them with his tongue. + +Miss Mary applied herself to the mouth of the kettle, and between +indraws of steam said: "The spasm came on just now, while I was asleep. +I was nearly choking to death. So I went to the window I've done it +often before, without, waking any one. Bessie's such an old maid about +draughts. I tell you I was choking to death. I couldn't manage the +catch, and I nearly fell out. That window opens too low. I cut my hand +trying to save myself. Who has tied it up in this filthy handkerchief? +I wish you had had my throat, Bessie. I never was nearer dying!" She +scowled on us all impartially, while her sister sobbed. + +From the bottom of the bed we heard a quivering voice: "Is she dead? +Have they took her away? Oh, I never could bear the sight o' blood!" + +"Arthurs," said Miss Mary, "you are an hireling. Go away!" + +It is my belief that Arthurs crawled out on all fours, but I was busy +picking up broken glass from the carpet. + +Then Baxter, seated by the side of the bed, began to cross-examine in +a voice I scarcely recognised. No one could for an instant have doubted +the genuine rage of Miss Mary against her sister, her cousin, or her +maid; and that a doctor should have been called in for she did me the +honour of calling me doctor--was the last drop. She was choking with her +throat; had rushed to the window for air; had near pitched out, and in +catching at the window bars had cut her hand. Over and over she made +this clear to the intent Baxter. Then she turned on her sister and +tongue-lashed her savagely. + +"You mustn't blame me," Miss Bessie faltered at last. "You know what we +think of night and day.". + +"I'm coming to that," said Baxter. "Listen to me. What you did, +Mary, misled four people into thinking you--you meant to do away with +yourself." + +"Isn't one suicide in the family enough? Oh God, help and pity us! You +couldn't have believed that!" she cried. + +"The evidence was complete. Now, don't you think," Baxter's finger +wagged under her nose--"can't you think that poor Aggie did the same +thing at Holmescroft when she fell out of the window?" + +"She had the same throat," said Miss Elizabeth. "Exactly the same +symptoms. Don't you remember, Mary?" + +"Which was her bedroom?" I asked of Baxter in an undertone. + +"Over the south verandah, looking on to the tennis lawn." + +"I nearly fell out of that very window when I was at +Holmescroft--opening it to get some air. The sill doesn't come much +above your knees," I said. + +"You hear that, Mary? Mary, do you hear What this gentleman says? Won't +you believe that what nearly happened to you must have happened to +poor Aggie that night? For God's sake--for her sake--Mary, won't you +believe?" + +There was a long silence while the steam kettle puffed. + +"If I could have proof--if I could have proof," said she, and broke into +most horrible tears. + +Baxter motioned to me, and I crept away to my room, and lay awake till +morning, thinking more specially of the dumb Thing at Holmescroft which +wished to explain itself. I hated Miss Mary as perfectly as though I had +known her for twenty years, but I felt that, alive or dead, I should not +like her to condemn me. + +Yet at mid-day, when I saw Miss Mary in her bathchair, Arthurs behind +and Baxter and Miss Elizabeth on either side, in the park-like grounds +of the Hydro, I found it difficult to arrange my words. + +"Now that you know all about it," said Baxter aside, after the first +strangeness of our meeting was over, "it's only fair to tell you that +my poor cousin did not die in Holmescroft at all. She was dead when they +found her under the window in the morning. Just dead." + +"Under that laburnum outside the window?" I asked, for I suddenly +remembered the crooked evil thing. + +"Exactly. She broke the tree in falling. But no death has ever taken +place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself +quite easy on that point. Mr. M'Leod's extra thousand for what you +called the 'clean bill of health' was something toward my cousins' +estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for +them--at any cost to my own feelings." + +I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I +agreed with my solicitor. + +"Their sister's death must have been a great blow to your cousins," I +went on. The bath-chair was behind me. + +"Unspeakable," Baxter whispered. "They brooded on it day and night. +No wonder. If their theory of poor Aggie making away with herself was +correct, she was eternally lost!" + +"Do you believe that she made away with herself?" + +"No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night, +I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat +too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn't +like your having been in her room." + +"Very good. Is she convinced now about her sister's death?" + +"She'd give anything to be able to believe it, but she's a hard woman, +and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy. I have sometimes been +afraid of her reason--on the religious side, don't you know. Elizabeth +doesn't matter. Brain of a hen. Always had." + +Here Arthurs summoned me to the bath-chair, and the ravaged face, +beneath its knitted Shetland wool hood, of Miss Mary Moultrie. + +"I need not remind you, I hope, of the seal of secrecy--absolute +secrecy--in your profession," she began. "Thanks to my cousin's and my +sister's stupidity, you have found out," she blew her nose. + +"Please don't excite her, sir," said Arthurs at the back. + +"But, my dear Miss Moultrie, I only know what I've seen, of course, +but it seems to me that what you thought was a tragedy in your sister's +case, turns out, on your own evidence, so to speak, to have been an +accident--a dreadfully sad one--but absolutely an accident." + +"Do you believe that too?" she cried. "Or are you only saying it to +comfort me?" + +"I believe it from the bottom of my heart. Come down to Holmescroft for +an hour--for half an hour and satisfy yourself." + +"Of what? You don't understand. I see the house every day-every night. +I am always there in spirit--waking or sleeping. I couldn't face it in +reality." + +"But you must," I said. "If you go there in the spirit the greater need +for you to go there in the flesh. Go to your sister's room once more, +and see the window--I nearly fell out of it myself. It's--it's awfully +low and dangerous. That would convince you," I pleaded. + +"Yet Aggie had slept in that room for years," she interrupted. + +"You've slept in your room here for a long time, haven't you? But you +nearly fell out of the window when you were choking." + +"That is true. That is one thing true," she nodded. "And I might have +been killed as--perhaps Aggie was killed." + +"In that case your own sister and cousin and maid would have said you +had committed suicide, Miss Moultrie. Come down to Holmescroft, and go +over the place just once." + +"You are lying," she said quite quietly. "You don't want me to come down +to see a window. It is something else. I warn you we are Evangelicals. +We don't believe in prayers for the dead. 'As the tree falls--'" + +"Yes. I daresay. But you persist in thinking that your sister committed +suicide--" + +"No! No! I have always prayed that I might have misjudged her." + +Arthurs at the bath-chair spoke up: "Oh, Miss Mary! you would 'ave it +from the first that poor Miss Aggie 'ad made away with herself; an', of +course, Miss Bessie took the notion from you: Only Master--Mister John +stood out,--and--and I'd 'ave taken my Bible oath you was making away +with yourself last night." + +Miss Mary leaned towards me, one finger on my sleeve. + +"If going to Holmescroft kills me," she said, "you will have the murder +of a fellow-creature on your conscience for all eternity." + +"I'll risk it," I answered. Remembering what torment the mere reflection +of her torments had cast on Holmescroft, and remembering, above all, the +dumb Thing that filled the house with its desire to speak, I felt that +there might be worse things. + +Baxter was amazed at the proposed visit, but at a nod from that terrible +woman went off to make arrangements. Then I sent a telegram to M'Leod +bidding him and his vacate Holmescroft for that afternoon. Miss Mary +should be alone with her dead, as I had been alone. + +I expected untold trouble in transporting her, but to do her justice, +the promise given for the journey, she underwent it without murmur, +spasm, or unnecessary word. Miss Bessie, pressed in a corner by the +window, wept behind her veil, and from time to time tried to take +hold of her sister's hand. Baxter wrapped himself in his newly found +happiness as selfishly as a bridegroom, for he sat still and smiled. + +"So long as I know that Aggie didn't make away with herself," he +explained, "I tell you frankly I don't care what happened. She's as hard +as a rock--Mary. Always was. She won't die." + +We led her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her +into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking +experience of the day. M'Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no +one visible in the house or the gardens; and the front door stood open. + +Miss Mary rose from beside her sister, stepped forth first, and entered +the hall. + +"Come, Bessie," she cried. + +"I daren't. Oh, I daren't." + +"Come!" Her voice had altered. I felt Baxter start. "There's nothing to +be afraid of." + +"Good heavens!" said Baxter. "She's running up the stairs. We'd better +follow." + +"Let's wait below. She's going to the room." + +We heard the door of the bedroom I knew open and shut, and we waited in +the lemon-coloured hall, heavy with the scent of flowers. + +"I've never been into it since it was sold," Baxter sighed. "What a +lovely, restful plate it is! Poor Aggie used to arrange the flowers." + +"Restful?" I began, but stopped of a sudden, for I felt all over my +bruised soul that Baxter was speaking truth. It was a light, spacious, +airy house, full of the sense of well-being and peace--above all things, +of peace. I ventured into the dining-room where the thoughtful M'Leod's +had left a small fire. There was no terror there, present or lurking; +and in the drawing-room, which for good reasons we had never cared +to enter, the sun and the peace and the scent of the flowers worked +together as is fit in an inhabited house. When I returned to the hall, +Baxter was sweetly asleep on a couch, looking most unlike a middle-aged +solicitor who had spent a broken night with an exacting cousin. + +There was ample time for me to review it all--to felicitate myself upon +my magnificent acumen (barring some errors about Baxter as a thief +and possibly a murderer), before the door above opened, and Baxter, +evidently a light sleeper, sprang awake. + +"I've had a heavenly little nap," he said, rubbing his eyes with the +backs of his hands like a child. "Good Lord! That's not their step!" + +But it was. I had never before been privileged to see the Shadow +turned backward on the dial--the years ripped bodily off poor human +shoulders--old sunken eyes filled and alight--harsh lips moistened and +human. + +"John," Miss Mary called, "I know now. Aggie didn't do it!" and "She +didn't do it!" echoed Miss Mary. + +"I did not think it wrong to say a prayer," Miss Mary continued. "Not +for her soul, but for our peace. Then I was convinced." + +"Then we got conviction," the younger sister piped. + +"We've misjudged poor Aggie, John. But I feel she knows now. Wherever +she is, she knows that we know she is guiltless." + +"Yes, she knows. I felt it too," said Miss Elizabeth. + +"I never doubted," said John' Baxter, whose face was beautiful at that +hour. "Not from the first. Never have!" + +"You never offered me proof, John. Now, thank God, it will not be the +same any more. I can think henceforward of Aggie without sorrow." She +tripped, absolutely tripped, across the hall. "What ideas these Jews +have of arranging furniture!" She spied me behind a big Cloisonnee vase. +"I've seen the window," she said remotely. "You took a great risk in +advising me to undertake such a journey. However, as it turns out... +I forgive you, and I pray you may never know what mental anguish means! +Bessie! Look at this peculiar piano! Do you suppose, Doctor, these +people would offer one tea? I miss mine." + +"I will go and see," I said, and explored M'Leod's new-built servants' +wing. It was in the servants' hall that I unearthed the M'Leod family, +bursting with anxiety. + +"Tea for three, quick," I said. "If you ask me any questions now, +I shall have a fit!" So Mrs. M'Leod got it, and I was butler, amid +murmured apologies from Baxter, still smiling and self-absorbed, and +the cold disapproval of Miss Mary, who thought the pattern of the china +vulgar. However, she ate well, and even asked me whether I would not +like a cup of tea for myself. + +They went away in the twilight--the twilight that I had once feared. +They were going to an hotel in London to rest after the fatigues of the +day, and as their fly turned down the drive, I capered on the door step, +with the all-darkened house behind me. + +Then I heard the uncertain feet of the M'Leods and bade them not to turn +on the lights, but to feel--to feel what I had done; for the Shadow was +gone, with the dumb desire in the air. They drew short, but afterwards +deeper, breaths, like bathers entering chill water, separated one from +the other, moved about the hall, tiptoed upstairs, raced down, and then +Miss M'Leod, and I believe her mother, though she denies this, embraced +me. I know M'Leod did. + +It was a disgraceful evening. To say we rioted through the house is to +put it mildly. We played a sort of Blind Man's Buff along the darkest +passages, in the unlighted drawing-room, and little dining-room, calling +cheerily to each other after each exploration that here, and here, and +here, the trouble-had removed itself. We came up to the bedroom--mine +for the night again--and sat, the women on the bed, and we men +on chairs, drinking in blessed draughts of peace and comfort and +cleanliness of soul, while I told them my tale in full, and received +fresh praise, thanks, and blessings. + +When the servants, returned from their day's outing, gave us a supper +of cold fried fish, M'Leod had sense enough to open no wine. We had +been practically drunk since nightfall, and grew incoherent on water and +milk. + +"I like that Baxter," said M'Leod. "He's a sharp man. The death wasn't +in the house, but he ran it pretty close, ain't it?" + +"And the joke of it is that he supposes I want to buy the place from +you," I said. "Are you selling?" + +"Not for twice what I paid for it--now," said M'Leod. "I'll keep you in +furs all your life, but not our Holmescroft." + +"No--never our Holmescroft," said Miss M'Leod. "We'll ask him here on +Tuesday, mamma." They squeezed each other's hands. + +"Now tell me," said Mrs. M'Leod--"that tall one, I saw out of the +scullery window--did she tell you she was always here in the spirit? I +hate her. She made all this trouble. It was not her house after she had +sold it. What do you think?" + +"I suppose," I answered, "she brooded over what she believed was her +sister's suicide night and day--she confessed she did--and her thoughts +being concentrated on this place, they felt like a--like a burning +glass." + +"Burning glass is good," said M'Leod. + +"I said it was like a light of blackness turned on us," cried the girl, +twiddling her ring. "That must have been when the tall one thought worst +about her sister and the house." + +"Ah, the poor Aggie!" said Mrs. M'Leod. "The poor Aggie, trying to +tell every one it was not so! No wonder we felt Something wished to say +Something. Thea, Max, do you remember that night?" + +"We need not remember any more," M'Leod interrupted. "It is not our +trouble. They have told each other now." + +"Do you think, then," said Miss M'Leod, "that those two, the living +ones, were actually told something--upstairs--in your in the room?" + +"I can't say. At any rate they were made happy, and they ate a big tea +afterwards. As your father says, it is not our trouble any longer--thank +God!" + +"Amen!" said M'Leod. "Now, Thea, let us have some music after all these +months. 'With mirth, thou pretty bird,' ain't it? You ought to hear +that." + +And in the half-lighted hall, Thea sang an old English song that I had +never heard before. + + With mirth, thou pretty bird, rejoice + Thy Maker's praise enhanced; + Lift up thy shrill and pleasant voice, + Thy God is high advanced! + Thy food before He did provide, + And gives it in a fitting side, + Wherewith be thou sufficed! + Why shouldst thou now unpleasant be, + Thy wrath against God venting, + That He a little bird made thee, + Thy silly head tormenting, + Because He made thee not a man? + Oh, Peace! He hath well thought thereon, + Therewith be thou sufficed! + + + + +THE RABBI'S SONG + + IF THOUGHT can reach to Heaven, + On Heaven let it dwell, + For fear that Thought be given + Like power to reach to Hell. + For fear the desolation + And darkness of thy mind, + Perplex an habitation + Which thou hast left behind. + + Let nothing linger after-- + No whispering ghost remain, + In wall, or beam, or rafter, + Of any hate or pain: + Cleanse and call home thy spirit, + Deny her leave to cast, + On aught thy heirs inherit, + The shadow of her past. + + For think, in all thy sadness, + What road our griefs may take; + Whose brain reflect our madness, + Or whom our terrors shake. + For think, lest any languish + By cause of thy distress + The arrows of our anguish + Fly farther than we guess. + + Our lives, our tears, as water, + Are spilled upon the ground; + God giveth no man quarter, + Yet God a means hath found; + Though faith and hope have vanished, + And even love grows dim; + A means whereby His banished + Be not expelled from Him! + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Actions and Reactions, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACTIONS AND REACTIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 2381.txt or 2381.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/8/2381/ + +Produced by P. 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