Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (762 page)

‘Mary’s Meadow!’ Sandy’s hand banged the table.

‘Hsh!’ said Burges, enthralled. ‘Go on, Robin.’

‘And Wollin checked it all, with the sweat drying on him — remember, Will? — and he put in his own reminiscences — one about a lilac sun- bonnet, I remember.’

‘Not lilac-marigold. One string of it was canary-colour and one was white.’ McKnight corrected as though this were a matter of life and death.

‘Maybe. And there was a nightingale singing to the Man in the Moon, and an old Herbal — not Gerard’s, or I’d have known it — ”Paradise” something. Wollin contributed that sort of stuff all the time, with ten years knocked off his shoulders and a voice like the Town Crier’s. Yes, Sandy, the story was called Mary’s Meadow. It all came back to him — via Will.’

‘And that helped?’ I asked.

‘Well, Keede said slowly, ‘a General Practitioner can’t much believe in the remission of sins, can he? But if that’s possible, I know how a redeemed soul looks. The old lady had pretended to get supper, but she stopped when Will began his yarn, and listened all through. Then Wollin put up his hand, as though he were hearing his dam’ Voices. Then he brushed ‘em away, and he dropped his head on the table and wept. My God, how he wept! And then she kissed him, and me. Did she kiss you, Will?’

‘She certainly did not,’ said the scandalised Lemming, who has been completely married for a long while.

‘You missed something. She has a seductive old mouth still. And Wollin wouldn’t let us go — hung on to us like a child. So, after supper, we went over the affair in detail, till all hours. The pain and the dope had made that nursery story stick in one corner of his mind till it took charge — it does sometimes — but all mixed up with bombings and nightmares. As soon as he got the explanation it evaporated like ether and didn’t leave a stink. I sent him to bed full of his own beer, and growing a shade dictatorial. He was a not uncommon cross between a brave bully and an old maid; but a man, right enough, when the pressures were off. The old lady let us out — she didn’t kiss me again, worse luck! She was primitive Stone Age — bless her! She looked on us as a couple of magicians who’s broken the spell on him, she said.’

‘Well, you had,’ said Burges. ‘What did he do afterwards?’

‘‘Bought a side-car to his bike, to hold more vegetables — he’ll be had up for poaching or trespassing, some day — and he cuts about the Home Counties planting his stuff as happy as — Oh my soul! What wouldn’t I give to be even one fraction as happy as he is! But, mind you, he’d have committed suicide on the nod if Will and I had had him arrested. We aren’t exactly first-class Sherlocks.’

McKnight was grumbling to himself. ‘Juliaana Horratia Ewing,’ said he. ‘The best, the kindest, the sweetest, the most eenocent tale ever the soul of a woman gied birth to. I may sell tapioca for a living in the suburbs, but I know that. An’ as for those prints o’ mine,’ he turned to me, ‘they were not garrdeners. They were the Four Great British Botanists, an’ — an’ — I ask your pardon.’

He pulled the draw-chains of all the nine burners round the Altar of the Lesser Lights before we had time to put it to the vote.

The Coiner

(To be sung by the unlearned to the tune of ‘King John and the Abbot

of Canterbury,’ and by the learned to ‘Tempesta-brewing.’)

AGAINST the Bermudas we foundered, whereby

This Master, that Swabber, yon Bo’sun, and I

(Our pinnace and crew being drowned in the main)

Must beg for our bread through old England again.

For a bite and a sup, and a bed of clean straw

We’ll tell you such marvels as man never saw.

On a Magical Island which no one did spy

Save this Master, that Swabber, yon Bo’sun, and I.

Seven months among Mermaids and Devils and Sprites.

And Voices that howl in the cedars o’ nights.

With further enchantments we underwent there.

Good Sirs, ‘tis a tale to draw guts from a bear!

‘Twixt Dover and Southwark it paid us our way.

Where we found some poor players were labouring a play;

And, willing to search what such business might be.

We entered the yard, both to hear and to see.

One hailed us for seamen and courteous-ly

Did take us apart to a tavern near by

Where we told him our tale (as to many of late).

And he gave us good cheer, so we gave him good weight.

Mulled sack and strong waters on bellies well lined

With beef and black pudding do strengthen the mind;

And seeing him greedy for marvels, at last

From plain salted truth to flat leasing we passed.

But he, when on midnight our reckoning he paid.

Says, ‘Never match coins with a Coiner by trade.

Or he’ll turn your lead pieces to metal as rare

As shall fill him this globe, and leave something to spare...’

We slept where they laid us, and when we awoke

‘Was a crown or five shillings in every man’s poke.

We bit them and rang them, and, finding them good.

We drank to that Coiner as honest men should!

For a cup and a crust, and a truss, etc.

A Naval Mutiny

WHAT bronchitis had spared of him came, by medical advice, to Stephano’s Island, that gem of sub-tropical seas, set at a height above the Line where parrots do not breed.

Yet there were undoubtedly three of them, squawking through the cedars. He asked a young lady, who knew the Island by descent, how this came. ‘Two are ours,’ she replied. ‘We used to feed them in the veranda, but they got away, and set up housekeeping and had a baby.’

‘What does a baby parrot look like?’

‘Oh, just like a little Jew baby. I expect there will be some more soon.’ She smiled prophetically.

He watched H.M.S. Florealia work her way into the harbour. She moored, and sent a gig ashore. The bull-terrier, who is de facto Chief Superintendent of the Island Police, was explaining Port Regulations to the dog in charge of a Florida lumber schooner at the quay. His Policeman stood beside him. The gig, after landing her officer, lay off. The Policeman said in a clear voice to the dog ‘Come on, then, Polly! Pretty Polly! Come on, Polly, Polly, Polly!’ The gig’s crew seemed to grind their teeth a little as man and dog moved off. The invalid exchanged a few sentences with the Policeman and limped along the front street to the far and shallow end of the harbour, where Randolph’s boat-repairing yard stands, just off the main road, near the mangrove clump by the poinsettias. A small mongrel fox-terrier pup, recovering from distemper, lay in the path of two men, who wanted to haul in a forty-foot craft, known to have been in the West India trade for a century, and now needing a new barrel to her steering- wheel.

‘Let Lil lay,’ Mr. Randolph called. ‘Bring the boat in broadside, and run a plank to her.’ Then he greeted the visitor. ‘Mornin’, Mr. Heatleigh. How’s the cough? Our climate suitin’ you? That’s fine. Lil’s fine too. The milk’s helpin’ her. You ain’t the only one of her admirers. Winter Vergil’s fetchin’ her milk now. He ought to be here.’

‘Winter Vergil! What the — who’s he?’

‘He hasn’t been around the last week. He’s had trouble.’ Mr. Randolph laughed softly. ‘He’s a Navy Bo’sun — any age you please. He took his pension on the Island when I was a boy. ‘Married on the Island too — a widow out of Cornwall Parish. That ‘ud make her a Gallop or a Mewett. Hold a minute! It was Mewett. Her first man was a Gallop. He left her five acres of good onion-ground, that a Hotel wanted for golf- development. So-o, that way, an’ Vergil havin’ saved, he has his house an’ garden handy to the Dockyard. ‘No more keepin’ Daddy away from there than land-crabs off a dead nigger. I’m expectin’ him any time now.’

Mr. Heatleigh unbuttoned his light coat, for the sun was beginning to work deliciously. Behind the old boat lay a scarlet hydroplane crowded with nickel fitments and reeking of new enamels.

‘That’s Rembrandt Casalis’s latest,’ Mr. Randolph explained. ‘He’s Glucose Utilities — wuth fifteen million they say. But no boatman. He took her alongside a wharf last week. That don’t worry me. His estate can pay my repair-bills. I’m doo to deliver her back this morning... . Now! Now! Don’t get movin’ jest as you’re come. Set in the shed awhile. Vergil’s bound to be along with Lil’s milk. Lay-to an’ meet him. I’d not go, ‘lest I had to. But Lil ‘ll keep you company.’

He splashed out to the hydroplane, which he woke to outrageous howlings, and departed in one splitting crack. The dead-water-rubbish swirled in under the mangrove-stems as the sound of her flight up- harbour faded. Mr. Heatleigh watched the two hands on the West Indiaman. They laid a gang-plank up to her counter, bore away the rusty scarred wheel-barrel, and went elsewhere. Lil slept, and along the white coral road behind passed a procession of horse-drawn vehicles; for another tripper-steamer had arrived, and her passengers were being dealt out to the various hotels. An old, spare, clean- shaven man, in spotless tussore silk, stepped off the road into the yard. He bore left-handedly (his right was bandaged) a sealed bottle of sterilised milk. Lil ran to him, and he asked where her master might be. Mr. Heatleigh told him, and they exchanged names. Mr. Vergil rummaged a clean saucer out of the shed, but found he could not pour single-handed. Mr. Heatleigh helped him.

‘She may be worth seventy-five cents,’ Mr. Vergil observed as Lil lapped. ‘She’s cost more’n four dollars a week the last six weeks. Well, she’s Randolph’s dam’ dog, anyhow.’

‘‘Not fond of dogs?’ Mr. Heatleigh asked.

‘Not of any pets you might say, just now.’

Mr. Heatleigh glanced at the neatly-bandaged hand and nodded.

‘No — not dogs,’ said Mr. Vergil.. ‘Parrots. The medical officer at the Dockyard said it was more like the works of vulshures.’

‘I don’t know much about parrots.’

‘You get to know about most things in the Navy — sooner or later. Burst-a-Frog, you do!’

‘Mr. Randolph told me you had been in the Ser — Navy.’

‘Boy and man — forty odd years. I took my pension here in Nineteen Ten when Jacky’s dam’ first silly Dreadnought came in. All this so-called noo Navy has hove up since my time. I was boy, for example, in the old Black Fleet — Warrior, Minotaur, Hercules, an’ those. In the Hungry Six too, if that means anything...Are ye going away?’ Mr. Heatleigh had moved out from the shed.

‘Oh no! I was only thinking of bringing my — sitting up there for a bit.’ Mr. Heatleigh turned towards the boat, but seemed to wait for Mr. Vergil to precede him up the gang-plank. The old man ran up it and dropped inboard little less nimbly than Mr. Heatleigh, who followed. They settled themselves at the stern, by the wheel. All forward of her mast was the naked hold of black rock-hard timbers. Mr. Vergil’s glance, under frosty eyebrows, swept his companion’s long visage as a searchlight sweeps a half-guessed foreshore. ‘‘Tourist?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘Yes, for a bit. I’ve got a motor-boat at Southampton.’

‘‘Don’t believe in ‘em — never did. This beats ‘em all!’

He pointed to the bleached and cracked mast. There was silence while the two sunned themselves. Mr. Heatleigh joined hands across one knee to help lift a rather stiff leg, as he lolled against the low stern- rail. The action drew his coat-cuff more than half-way up his wrist, which was tattooed. Mr. Vergil, backed against the sun, dug out his pipe-bowl. A breath of warmed cedar came across a patch of gladioli. ‘Think o’ Southampton Water now!’ said Mr. Vergil. ‘Thick — an’ cold!’

The three parrots screamed and whirled across the tip of the harbour. Mr. Vergil shook his bandaged hand at them.

‘How did it happen?’ Mr. Heatleigh asked.

‘‘Obligin’ a friend. ‘No surer way.’

‘How? — If you don’t mind.’ But there was command in the voice.

Once more Mr. Vergil’s eyes raked the lean figure. ‘It’s due,’ he said, ‘to the Navy keepin’ pets. Battleships an’ armoured cruisers carry bears till they start huggin’ senior ranks. Smaller craft, monkeys and parrots where allowed. There was a man in the old Audacious — Go-ood Lord, an’ how she steered! — kep’ chameleons in the engine-room, but they interfered with the movin’ parts. Parrots are best. People pay high for well-spoken parrots.’

‘Who teaches ‘em?’

‘Parrots are like women. They pick up where they shouldn’t. I’ve heard it’s the tone that attracts ‘em. Now we’ve two cruisers — sloops I call ‘em — on the Station. One’s Bulleana, and t’other’s the Florealia. Both of ‘em stinkin’ with parrots. Every dam’ kind o’ green — an’ those pink-tailed greys like we used to get on the West Coast. Go-ood Lord! Burst-a-Frog! When was I in the Bight last? An’ what in? Theseus — St. George, was it? Benin Expedition, was it? When we found those four hundred sovereigns and the four dozen champagne left in the King’s Royal Canoe? An’ no one noticed the cash till after!...But parrots. There’s a man called Mowlsey, a sort of Dockyard makee-do on the Stores side. He came to see me, knowin’ Mrs. Vergil had a parrot. My house is handy to the Dockyard, because that way I can gratify my tastes. What I mean is what I’ve worked at forty years is good enough for me to stay by. That bein’ so, I am often asked to bear a hand at delicate jobs.’