Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (608 page)

‘“Why, then,” says I, “the first heavy sea she sticks her nose into’ll claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. If she’s meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and I’ll porture you a pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good cheap. If she’s meant for the open — sea, pitch the draft into the fire. She can never carry that weight on her bows.”

‘He looks at me squintlings and plucks his under-lip.

‘“Is this your honest, unswayed opinion?” he says.

‘“Body o’ me! Ask about!” I says. “Any seaman could tell you ‘tis true. I’m advising you against my own profit, but why I do so is my own concern.”

‘“Not altogether “, he says. “It’s some of mine. You’ve saved me thirty pounds, Master Dawe, and you’ve given me good arguments to use against a willful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We’ll not have any scroll-work.” His face shined with pure joy.

‘“Then see that the thirty pounds you’ve saved on it are honestly paid the King,” I says, “and keep clear o’ women-folk.” I gathered up my draft and crumpled it under my arm. “If that’s all you need of me I’ll be gone,” I says. “I’m pressed.”

‘He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. “Too pressed to be made a knight, Sir Harry?” he says, and comes at me smiling, with three-quarters of a rusty sword.

‘I pledge you my Mark I never guessed it was the King till that moment. I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.

‘“Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe,” he says, and, in the same breath, “I’m pressed, too,” and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck calf.

‘It come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was I, a master craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the King’s tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d’ye see, I was made knight, not for anything I’d slaved over, or given my heart and guts to, but expressedly because I’d saved him thirty pounds and a tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castille — she that had asked for the ship. That thought shrivelled me with insides while I was folding away my draft. On the heels of it — maybe you’ll see why — I began to grin to myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man — the King, I should say — because I’d saved him the money; his smile as though he’d won half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish expectations that some day he’d honour me as a master craftsman. I thought of the broken-tipped sword he’d found behind the hangings; the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own concerns, scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he’d lie in, and — d’ye see? — -the unreason of it all — the mad high humour of it all — took hold on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done?

‘I never heard his feet behind me — he always walked like a cat — but his arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my heart — Benedetto! Even so I laughed — the fit was beyond my holding — laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark crazed for the time.

‘“Laugh,” he said. “Finish the laughter. I’ll not cut ye short. Tell me now” — he wrenched at my head — ”why the King chose to honour you, — you — you — you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now. I have waited so long.” Then he was off at score about his Jonah in Bury Refectory, and what I’d said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was my fault!), and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years.

‘“Ease off your arm a little,” I said. “I cannot die by choking, for I am just dubbed knight, Benedetto.”

‘“Tell me, and I’ll confess ye, Sir Harry Dawe, Knight. There’s a long night before ye. Tell,” says he.

‘So I told him — his chin on my crown — told him all; told it as well and with as many words as I have ever told a tale at a supper with Torrigiano. I knew Benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I’d ever tell top of mortal earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the Lodge. All art’s one art, as I said. I bore Benedetto no malice. My spirits, d’ye see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth’s vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it. I gave him the King’s very voice at “Master Dawe, you’ve saved me thirty pounds!”; his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the badger-eyed figures of Glory and Victory leered at me from the Flemish hangings. Body o’ me, ‘twas a fine, noble tale, and, as I thought, my last work on earth.

‘“That is how I was honoured by the King,” I said. “They’ll hang ye for killing me, Benedetto. And, since you’ve killed in the King’s Palace, they’ll draw and quarter you; but you’re too mad to care. Grant me, though, ye never heard a better tale.” ‘He said nothing, but I felt him shake. My head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my shoulder — shaking — shaking! I turned me round. No need to put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter — honest craftsman’s mirth. The first time I’d ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the short ribs? That was Benedetto’s case.

‘When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again — waving our hands and wagging our heads — till the watch came to know if we were drunk.

‘Benedetto says to ‘em, solemn as an owl: “You have saved me thirty pounds, Mus’ Dawe,” and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad-drunk — I because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too.

‘“Hal,” he cries, “I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English, you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? Tell me again, Hal, how the King grunted with joy. Oh, let us tell the Master.”

‘So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other’s necks, and when we could speak — he thought we’d been fighting — we told the Master. Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. Then he knocked our heads together.

‘“Ah, you English!” he cried. “You are more than pigs. You are English. Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool, Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English King.”

‘“And I meant to kill Hal,” says Benedetto. “Master, I meant to kill him because the English King had made him a knight.”

‘“Ah!” says the Master, shaking his finger. “Benedetto, if you had killed my Hal, I should have killed you — in the cloister. But you are a craftsman too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very slowly — in an hour, if I could spare the time!” That was Torrigiano — the Master!’

Mr Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished. Then he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Mr Springett, ‘but I was thinkin’ of some stables I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four. They was stables in blue brick — very particular work. Dunno as they weren’t the best job which ever I’d done. But the gentleman’s lady — she’d come from Lunnon, new married — she was all for buildin’ what was called a haw-haw — what you an’ me ‘ud call a dik — right acrost his park. A middlin’ big job which I’d have had the contract of, for she spoke to me in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o’ springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an’ she’d flood the park if she went on.’

‘Were there any springs at all?’ said Hal.

‘Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain’t there? But what I said about the springs put her out o’ conceit o’ diggin’ haw-haws, an’ she took an’ built a white tile dairy instead. But when I sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it ‘thout even lookin’ at it, and I hadn’t forgotten nothin’, I do assure you. More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the library, an’ “Ralph,” he says — he allers called me by name — ”Ralph,” he says, “you’ve saved me a heap of expense an’ trouble this autumn.” I didn’t say nothin’, o’ course. I knowed he didn’t want any haws-haws digged acrost his park no more’n I did, but I never said nothin’. No more he didn’t say nothin’ about my blue-brick stables, which was really the best an’ honestest piece o’ work I’d done in quite a while. He give me ten pounds for savin’ him a hem of a deal o’ trouble at home. I reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.’

Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn’t quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking.

When he looked up, Mr Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green-and-yellow pocket-handkerchief.

‘Bless me, Mus’ Dan, I’ve been asleep,’ he said. ‘An’ I’ve dreamed a dream which has made me laugh — laugh as I ain’t laughed in a long day. I can’t remember what ‘twas all about, but they do say that when old men take to laughin’ in their sleep, they’re middlin’ ripe for the next world. Have you been workin’ honest, Mus’ Dan?’

‘Ra-ather,’ said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice. ‘And look how I’ve cut myself with the small gouge.’

‘Ye-es. You want a lump o’ cobwebs to that,’ said Mr Springett. ‘Oh, I see you’ve put it on already. That’s right, Mus’ Dan.’

King Henry VII and the Shipwrights

  Harry our King in England from London town is gone,

  And comen to Hamull on the Hoke in the countie of Suthampton.

  For there lay the MARY OF THE TOWER, his ship of war so strong,

  And he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong.

  He told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would go

  (But only my Lord of Arundel), and meanly did he show,

  In an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark;

  With his frieze hood and cloak about, he looked like any clerk.

  He was at Hamull on the Hoke about the hour of the tide,

  And saw the MARY haled into dock, the winter to abide,

  With all her tackle and habiliments which are the King his own;

  But then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone.

  They heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree,

  And they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather at sea.

  But they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go,

  To maken beds for their own wives and little children also.

  There was a knave called Slingawai, he crope beneath the deck,

  Crying: ‘Good felawes, come and see!  The ship is nigh a wreck!

  For the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce and fell,

  Alack!  it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott as well!’

  With that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the hatch,

  While all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might snatch;

  All except Bob Brygandyne and he was a yeoman good,

  He caught Slingawai round the waist and threw him on to the mud.

  ‘I have taken plank and rope and nail, without the King his leave,

  After the custom of Portesmouth, but I will not suffer a thief.

  Nay, never lift up thy hand at me!  There’s no clean hands in the trade.

  Steal in measure,’ quo’ Brygandyne.  ‘There’s measure in all things made!’

  ‘Gramercy, yeoman!’ said our King.  ‘Thy counsel liketh me.’

  And he pulled a whistle out of his neck and whistled whistles three.

  Then came my Lord of Arundel pricking across the down,

  And behind him the Mayor and Burgesses of merry Suthampton town.

  They drew the naughty shipwrights up, with the kettles in their hands,

  And bound them round the forecastle to wait the King’s commands.

  But ‘Since ye have made your beds,’ said the King, ‘ye needs must lie

  thereon.

  For the sake of your wives and little ones — felawes, get you gone!’

  When they had beaten Slingawai, out of his own lips,

  Our King appointed Brygandyne to be Clerk of all his ships.

  ‘Nay, never lift up thy hands to me — there’s no clean hands in the trade.