Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (587 page)

was written that he was to be killed. I had no interest in his death, and he had his warning, I suppose. I can’t make out the system that this infernal mare runs under. Why him? Anyway, I’ll shoot her.” lie looked at Thurinda, the calm-eyed, the beautiful, and repented. “No! I’ll sell her.”

“What in the world has happened to Thurinda that Hordene is so keen on getting rid of her?” was the general question. “I want money,” said Hordene unblushingly, and the few who knew how his accounts stood saw that this was a varnished lie. But they held their peace because of the great love and trust that exists among the ancient and honourable fraternity of sportsmen.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” explained Hordene. “Try her as much as you like, but let her stay in my stable until you’ve made up your mind one way or the other. Nine hundred’s my price.”

“I’ll take her at that,” quoth a red-haired subaltern, nicknamed Carrots, later Gaja, and then, for brevity’s sake, Guj. “Let me have her out this afternoon. I want her more for hacking than anything else.”

Guj tried Thurinda exhaustively and had no fault to find with her. “She’s all right,” he said briefly. “I’ll take her. It’s a cash deal.” “Virtuous Guj!” said Hordene, pocketing the cheque. “If you go on like this you’ll be loved and respected by all who know you.”

A week later Guj insisted that Hordene should accompany him on a ride. They cantered merrily for a time. Then said the subaltern: “Listen to the mare’s beat a minute, will 3tou? Seems to me that you’ve sold me two horses.”

Behind the mare was plainly audible the cadence of a swiftly trotting horse. “D’you hear anything?” said Guj. “No — nothing but the regular triplet,” said Hordene; and he lied when he answered. Guj looked at him keenly and said nothing. Two or three months passed and Hordene was perplexed to see his old property running, and running well, under the curious title of “Sleipner — late Thurinda.3’ He consulted the Great Major, who said: “I don’t know a horse called Sleipncr, but I know of one. He was a northern bred, and belonged to Odin.” “A mythological beast?” “Exactly. Like Bucephalus and the rest of ‘em. He was a great horse. I wish I had some of his get in my stable.” “Why?” “Bccause he had eight legs. When he had used up one set, he let down the other four to come up the straight on. Stewards were lenient in those days. Now it’s all you can do to get a crock with three sound legs.”

Hordene cursed the red-haired Guj in his heart for finding out the mare’s peculiarity. Then he cursed the dead man .Tale for his ridiculous interference with a free gift. “If it was given — it was given,” said Hordene, “and he has no right to come messing about after it.” When Guj and he next met, he enquired tenderly after Thurinda. The red-haired subaltern, impassive as usual, answered: “I’ve shot her.” “Well — you know your own affairs best,” said Hordene. “You’ve given yourself away,” said Guj. “What makes you think I shot a sound horse? She might have been bitten by a mad dog, or lamed.” “You didn’t say that.” “No, I didn’t, because I’ve a notion that you knew what was wrong with her.” “Wrong with her! She was as sound as a bell” “I know that. Don’t pretend to misunderstand. You’ll believe me, and I’ll believe you in this show; but no one else will believe us. That mare was a bally nightmare.” “Go on,” said Hordene. “I stuck the noise of the other horse as long as I could, and called her Sleipner on the strength of it. Sleipner was a stallion, but that’s a detail. When it got to interfering with every race I rode it was more than I could stick. I took her off racing, and, on my honour, since that time I’ve been nearly driven out of my mind by a grey and nutmeg pony. It used to trot round my quarters at night, fool about the Mall, and graze about the compound. You know that pony. It isn’t a pony to catch or ride or hit, is it?”“ “No,” said Hordene; “I’ve seen it.” “So I shot Thurinda; that was a thousand rupees out of my pocket. And old Stiffer, who’s got his new crematorium in full blast, cremated her.

I say, what was the matter with the mare? Was she bewitched?”

Hordene told the story of the gift, which Guj heard out to the end. “Now, that’s a nice sort of yarn to tell in a messroom, isn’t it? They’d call it jumps or insanity,” said Guj. “There’s no reason in it. It doesn’t lead up to anything. It only killed poor Marish and made you stick me with the mare; and yet it’s true. Are you mad or drunk, or am I? That’s the only explanation.” “Can’t be drunk for nine months on end, and madness would show in that time,” said Hordene.

“All right,” said Guj recklessly, going to the window. “I’ll lay that ghost.” He leaned out into the night and shouted: “Jale! Jale! Jale! “Wherever you are.” There was a pause and then up the compound-drive came the clatter of a horse’s feet. The red-haired subaltern blanched under his freckles to the colour of glycerine soap. “Thurinda s dead,” he muttered, “and — and all bets are off. Go back to your grave again.”

Hordene was watching him open-mouthed.

“Now bring me a strait-jacket or a glass of brandy,” said Guj. “That’s enough to turn a man’s hair white. What did the poor wretch mean by knocking about the earth?”

“Don’t know,” whispered Hordene hoarsely. “Let’s get over to the Club. I’m feeling a bit shaky.”

A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER

Shall I not one day remember thy Bower —

One day when all days are one day to me?

Thinking I stirred not and yet had the power,

Yearning — ah, God, if again it might be!

—
The Song of the Bower.

THIS is a base betrayal of confidence, but the sin is Mrs. Hauksbee’s and not mine.

If you remember a certain foolish tale called “The Education of Otis Yeere,” you will not forget that Mrs. Mallowe laughed at the wrong time, which was a single, and at Mrs. Hauksbee, which was a double, offence. An experiment had gone wrong, and it seems that Mrs. Mallowe had said some quaint things about the experimentrix.

“Iam not angry,’’ said Mrs. Hauksbee, “ and I admire Polly in spite of her evil counsels to me. But I shall wait — I shall wait, like the frog footman in Alice in Wonderland, and Providence will deliver Polly into my hands. It always does if you wait.” And she departed to vex the soul of the “Hawley boy,” who says that she is singularly “ uninstruite and childlike.” He got that first word out of a Ouida novel. I do not know what it means, but am prepared to make an affidavit before the Collector that it does not mean Mrs. Hauksbee.

Mrs. Hauksbee’s ideas of waiting are very liberal. She told the “ Hawley boy “ that he dared not tell Mrs. Reiver that “ she was an intellectual woman with a gift for attracting men,” and she offered another man two waltzes if he would repeat the same thing in the same ears. But he said: “ Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” which means “ Mistrust all waltzes except those you get for legitimate asking.’’

The 11 Hawley boy ‘‘ did as he was told because he believes in Mrs. Hauksbee. He was the instrument in the hand of a Higher Power, and he wore jharun coats, like “ the scoriac rivers that roll their sulphurous torrents down Yahek, in the realms of the Boreal Pole,” that made your temples throb when seen early in the morning. I will introduce him to you some day if all goes well. He is worth knowing.

Unpleasant things have already been written about Mrs. Eeiver in other places.

She was a person without invention. She used to get her ideas from the men she captured, and this led to some eccentric changes of character. For a month or two she would act a la Madonna, and try Theo for a change if she fancied Theo’s ways suited her beauty. Then she would attempt the dark and fiery Lilith, and so and so on, exactly as she had absorbed the new notion. But there was always Mrs. Reiver — hard, selfish, stupid Mrs. Reiver — at the back of each transformation. Mrs. Hauksbee christened her the Magic Lantern on account of this borrowed mutability. “ It just depends upon the slide,” said Mrs. Hauksbee. “ The case is the only permanent thing in the exhibition. But that, thank Heaven, is getting old.”

There was a Fancy Ball at Government House and Mrs. Reiver came attired in some sort of ‘98 costume, with her hair pulled up to the top of her head, showing the clear outline on the back of the neck like the Recamier engravings. Mrs. Hauksbee had chosen to be loud, not to say vulgar, that evening, and went as The Black Death — a curious arrangement of barred velvet, black domino and flame-coloured satin puffery coming up to the neck and the wrists, with one of those shrieking keel-backed cicalas in the hair. The scream of the creature made people jump. It sounded so unearthly in a ballroom.

I heard her say to some one: “Let me introduce you to Madame Recamier,” and I saw a man dressed as Autolycus bowing to Mrs. Reiver, while The Black Death looked more than usually saintly. It was a very pleasant evening, and Autolycus and Madame Recamier — I heard her ask Autolycus who Madame Recamier was, by the way — danced together ever so much. Mrs. Hauksbee was in a meditative mood, but she laughed once or twice in the back of her throat, and that meant trouble.

Autolycus was Trewinnard, the man whom Mrs. Mallowe had told Mrs. Hauksbee about — the Platonic Paragon, as Mrs. Hauksbee called him. He was amiable, but his moustache hid his mouth, and so he did not explain himself all at once. If you stared at him, he turned his eyes away, and through the rest of the dinner kept looking at you to see whether you were looking again. He took stares as a tribute to his merits, which were generally known and recognised. When he played billiards he apologised at length between each bad stroke, and explained what would have happened if the red had been somewhere else, or the bearer had trimmed the third lamp, or the wind hadn’t made the door bang. Also he wriggled in his chair more than was becoming to one of his inches. Little men may wriggle and fidget without attracting notice. It doesn’t suit big-framed men. He was the Main Girder Boom of the Kutcha, Pukka, Bundobust and Benaoti Department and corresponded direct with the Three Taped Bashaw. Every one knows what that means. The men in his own office said that where anything was to be gained, even temporarily, he would never hesitate for a moment over handing up a subordinate to be hanged and drawn and quartered. He didn’t back up his underlings, and for that reason they dreaded taking responsibility on their shoulders, and the strength of the Department was crippled.

A weak Department can, and often does, do a power of good work simply because its chief sees it through thick and thin. Mistakes may be born of this policy, but it is safe and sounder than giving orders which may be read in two ways and reserving to yourself the right of interpretation according to subsequent failure or success. Offices prefer administration to diplomacy. They are very like Empires.

Hatchett of the Almirah and Thannicutch — a vicious little three-cornered Department that was always stamping on the toes of the Elect — had the fairest estimate of Trewinnard, when he said: “I don’t believe he is as good as he is.” They always quoted that verdict as an instance of the blind jealousy of the Uncov- enanted, but Hatchett was quite right. Tre- winnard was just as good and no better than Mrs. Mallowe could make him; and she had been engaged on the work for three years. Hatchett has a narrow-minded partiality for the more than naked — the anatomised Truth — but he can gauge a man.

Trewinnard had been spoilt by over-much petting, and the devil of vanity that rides nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand made him behave as he did. He had been too long one woman’s property; and that belief will sometimes drive a man to throw the best things in the world behind him, from rank perversity. Perhaps he only meant to stray temporarily and then return, but in arranging for this excursion he misunderstood both Mrs. Mallowe and Mrs. Reiver. The one made no sign, she would have died first; and the other — well, the high-falutin mindsome lay was her craze for the time being. She had never tried it before and several men had hinted that it would eminently become her. Trewinnard was in himself pleasant, with the great merit of belonging to somebody else. He was what they call “intellectual,” and vain to the marrow. Mrs. Reiver returned his lead in the first, and hopelessly out-trumped him in the second suit. Put down all that comes after this to Providence or The Black Death.

Trewinnard never realised how far he had fallen from his allegiance till Mrs. Reiver referred to some official matter that he had been telling her about as “ours.” He remembered then how that word had been sacred to Mrs. Mallowe and how she had asked his permission to use it. Opium is intoxicating, and so is whisky, but more intoxicating than either to a certain build of mind is the first occasion on which a woman — especially if she have asked leave for the “honour” — identifies herself with a man’s work. The second time is not so pleasant. The answer has been given before, and the treachery comes to the top and tastes coppery in the mouth.

Trewinnard swallowed the shame — he felt dimly that he was not doing Mrs. Reiver any great wrong by untruth — and told and told and continued to tell, for the snare of this form of open-heartedness is that no man, unless he be a consummate liar, knows where to stop. The office door of all others must be either open wide or shut tight with a sliaprassi to keep off callers.

Mrs. Mallowe made no sign to show that she felt Trewinnard’s desertion till a piece of information that could only have come from one quarter ran about Simla like quicksilver. She met Trewinnard at a dinner. “Choose your confidantes better, Harold,” she whispered as she passed him in the drawing-room. Pie turned salmon-colour, and swore very hard to himself that Babu Durga Charan Laha must go — must go — must go. He almost believed in that grey-headed old oyster’s guilt.