Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (771 page)

Then she raced, with lowered head, straight towards the wall. Loftie snatched at her dress, turned her, so that she struck the wall with her shoulder and fell — and Frost came down to find him grappling with her, not inexpertly.

She broke away and skimmed across the room. Frost ran and tripped her, and brought her down. She would have beaten her head on the floor, but he jerked it up, his palm beneath her chin, and dragged her to her feet. Then he closed.

She was silent, absorbed in this one business of driving to the nearest wall through whatever stood between. Small and fragile though she was, she flung the twelve-stone Frost clear of her again and again; and a side-pushing stroke of her open palm spun Loftie half across the hall. The struggle lasted without a break, but her breath had not quickened, when like a string she relaxed, repeating that she did not want to die. As she cried to Loftie to hold her, she slipped away between them, and they had to chase her round the furniture.

They backed her down on the couch at last, Loftie clinging to her knees, while Frost’s full strength and weight forced the thin arms over her head. Again the body gave, and the low, casual whisper began: ‘After what you said outside Barker’s in the wet, you don’t think I reelly want to die. Mr. Frost? I don’t — not a mite. But I’ve got to. I’ve got to go where I’m wanted.’

Frost had to kneel on her right arm then, holding her left down with both hands. Loftie, braced against the sofa, mastered her feet, till the outbreak passed in shudders that shook all three. Her eyes were shut. Frost raised an eyelid with his thumb and peered closely.

‘Lor’!’ said she, and flushed to the temples. The two shocked men leapt clear at once. She lifted a hand to her disordered hair. ‘Who’s done this?’ she said. ‘Why’ve I come all over like this? I ought to be busy dying.’ Loftie was ready to throw himself on her again, but Frost held up a hand.

‘You can suit yourself about that, Mrs. Berners,’ he said. ‘What I’ve been at you all this time to find out is, what you’ve done with our plated toast-rack, towels, etcetera.’

He shook her by the shoulders, and the rest of her pale hair descended.

‘One plated toast-rack and two egg-cups, which went over to Mr. Vaughan’s on indent last April twenty-eighth, together with four table-napkins and six sheets. I ask because I’m responsible for ‘em at this end.’

‘But I’ve got to die.’

‘So we’ve all, Mrs. Berners. But before you do, I want to know what you did with...’ He repeated the list and the date. ‘You know the routine between the houses as well as I do. I sent ‘em by Mr. Ackerman’s orders, on Mr. Vaughan’s indent. When do you check your linen? Monthly or quarterly?’

‘Quarterly. But I’m wanted elsewhere.’

‘If you aren’t a little more to the point, Mrs. Berners, I’ll tell you where you will be wanted before long, and what for. I’m not going to lose my character on account of your carelessness — if no worse. An’ here’s Mr. Loftie...’

‘Don’t drag me in,’ Loftie whispered, with male horror.

‘Leave us alone! I know me class, sir...Mr. Loftie who has done everything for you.’

‘It was Mr. Vaughan. He wouldn’t let me die.’ She tried to stand, fell back, and sat up on the couch.

‘You won’t get out of it that way. Cast back in your memory and see if you can clear yourself!’ Frost began anew, scientifically as a female inquisitor; mingling details, inferences, dates, and innuendoes with reminders of housekeeping ritual: never overwhelming her, save when she tried to ride off on her one piteous side-issue, but never accepting an answer. Painfully, she drew out of her obsession, protesting, explaining, striving to pull her riven wits into service; but always hunted from one rambling defence to the next, till, with eyes like those of a stricken doe, she moaned: ‘Oh, Fred! Fred! The only thing I’ve ever took — you said so outside Barker’s — was your own ‘ard ‘eart.’

Frost’s face worked, but his voice was the petty-officer’s with the defaulter.

‘No such names between us, Mrs. Berners, till this is settled.’

He crumpled his wet eyes, as though judging an immense range. Then observed deliberately

‘‘Ask me — I’d say you’re a common thief.’

She stared at him for as long as a shell might take to travel to an horizon. Then came the explosion of natural human wrath — she would not stoop to denial, she said — till, choking on words of abuse, she hit him weakly over the mouth, and dropped between his feet.

‘She’s come back!’ said Frost, his face transfigured. ‘What next?’

‘My room. Tell Cook to put her to bed. Fill every hot-water bottle we’ve got, and warm the blankets. I’ll telephone the Home. Then we’ll risk the injections.’

Frost slung her, limp as a towel, over his shoulder, and, turning, asked: ‘This — all these symptoms don’t need to be logged, sir — do they? We — we know something like ‘em?’

Loftie nodded assent.

She came up shuddering out of the seven days’ chill of the cheated grave, and Vaughan’s nurses told her what a dreadful thing was this ‘suppressed influenza’ which had knocked her out, but that she might report for duty in a few weeks. Ackerman, who loved Vaughan more than the others put together, testified on their next film-night that Taffy was almost worthy to be called a medical man for his handling of the case.

‘Tacks,’ said Vaughan kindly, ‘you are as big a dam’ fool about my job as I was about Frost. I injected what the Lofter gave me, at the times that Harries told me. The rest was old wives’ practice.’

‘She always looked like a wet hen,’ said Harries. ‘Now she goes about like a smiling sheep. I wish I’d seen her crises. Did you or Frost time ‘em, Lofter?’

‘It wasn’t worth it,’ was the light answer. ‘Just hysteria. But she’s covered her full year now. D’you suppose we’ve held her?’

‘I should say yes. I don’t know how you feel, but’ — Vaughan beamed — ‘the more I see of her scar, the more pleased I am. Ah! That was a lovely bit of work, even if I am only a carpenter, Tacks!’

‘But, speaking with some relation to ordinary life, what does all this lunacy of ours prove?’ Ackerman demanded.

‘Not a dam’ thing, except that it may give us some data and inferences which may serve as some sort of basis for some detail of someone else’s work in the future,’ Harries pronounced. ‘The main point, as I read it, is that it makes one — not so much think — Research is gummed up with thinking — as imagine a bit.’

‘That’ll be possible, too — by the time Frost and I have finished with this film,’ said Loftie.

It included a sequence of cultures, from mice who had overcome their suicidal fits, attenuated through a human being who, very obligingly, in the intervals of running the camera, described the effects of certain injections on his own rugged system. The earlier ones, he admitted, had ‘fair slung him round the deck.’

‘It was chuck it and chance it,’ Loftie apologised. ‘You see, we couldn’t tell, all this summer, when Mrs. Berners might play up for the grave. So I rather rushed the injections through Frost. I haven’t worked out my notes yet. You’ll get ‘em later.’

He stayed to help Frost put back some of the more delicate gear, while the others went to change.

‘Not to talk about that lady of ours,’ Frost said presently. ‘My first — though, of course, her mother never warned me — drank a bit. She disgraced me all round Fratton pretty much the whole of one commission. And she died in Lock ‘Ospital. So, I’ve had my knock.’

‘Some of us seem to catch it. I’ve had mine, too,’ Loftie answered.

‘I never heard that. But’ — the voice changed — ’I knew it — surer than if I’d been told.’

‘Yes. God help us!’ said Loftie, and shook his hand. Frost, not letting go of it, continued ‘One thing more, sir. I didn’t properly take it in at the time — not being then concerned — but — that first operation on that lady of mine, was it of a nature that’ll preclude — so to say — expectations of — of offspring?’

‘Absolutely, old man,’ Loftie’s free hand dropped on Frost’s shoulder.

‘Pity! There ought to be some way of pulling ‘em through it — somehow — oughtn’t there?’

The Threshold

IN THEIR deepest caverns of limestone

  They pictured the Gods of Food —

The Horse, the Elk, and the Bison

  That the hunting might be good;

With the Gods of Death and Terror —

  The Mammoth, Tiger, and Bear.

And the pictures moved in the torchlight

  To show that the Gods were there!

      But that was before Ionia —

      (Or the Seven Holy Islands of Ionia)

      Any of the Mountains of Ionia.

      Had bared their peaks to the air.

The close years packed behind them.

  As the glaciers bite and grind

Filling the new gouged valleys.

  With Gods of every kind.

Gods of all-reaching power —

  Gods of all-searching eyes —

But each to be wooed by worship

  And won by sacrifice.

      Till, after many winters, rose Ionia —

      (Strange men brooding in Ionia)

      Crystal-eyed Sages of Ionia

      Who said, ‘These tales are lies.

‘We dream one Breath in all things.

  ‘That blows all things between.

‘We dream one Matter in all things —

  ‘Eternal, changeless, unseen.

‘‘That the heart of the Matter is single

  ‘Till the Breath shall bid it bring forth —

‘By choosing or losing its neighbour

  ‘All things made upon Earth.’

      But Earth was wiser than Ionia

      (Babylon and Egypt than Ionia)

      And they overlaid the teaching of Ionia

      And the Truth was choked at birth.

It died at the Gate of Knowledge —

  The Key to the Gate in its hand —

And the anxious priests and wizards

  Re-blinded the wakening land;

For they showed, by answering echoes.

  And chasing clouds as they rose.

How shadows could stand for bulwarks

  Between mankind and its woes.

      It was then that men bethought them of Ionia

      (The few that had not allforgot Ionia)

      Or the Word that was whispered in Ionia;

      And they turned from the shadows and the shows.

They found one Breath in all things.

  That blows all things between.

They proved one Matter in all things —

  Eternal, changeless, unseen;

‘That the heart of the Matter was single

  Till the Breath should bid it bring forth —

      Even as men whispered in Ionia.

      (Resolute unsatisfied Ionia)

      When the Word was stifled in lonia —

All things known upon earth.

Neighbours

THE MAN that is open of heart to his neighbour.

  And stops to consider his likes and dislikes.

His blood shall be wholesome whatever his labour.

  His luck shall be with him whatever he strikes.

The Splendour of Morning shall duly possess him.

  That he may not be sad at the falling of eve.

And, when he has done with mere living — God bless him!

  A many shall sigh, and one Woman shall grieve! —

But he that is costive of soul toward his fellow.

  Through the ways, and the works, and the woes of this life.

Him food shall not fatten, him drink shall not mellow;

  And his innards shall brew him perpetual strife.

His eye shall be blind to God’s Glory above him;

  His ear shall be deaf to Earth’s Laughter around;

His Friends and his Club and his Dog shall not love him;

  And his Widow shall skip when he goes under ground!

Beauty Spots

MR. WALTER GRAVELL was, after forty years, a director of the Jannockshire and Chemical Manure Works. Chemicals and dyes were always needed, and certain gases, derived from them, had been specially in demand of late. Besides his money, which did not interest him greatly, he had his adored son, James, a long, saddish person with a dusky, mottled complexion and a pleuritic stitch which he had got during the War through a leaky gas-mask. Jemmy was in charge of the firm’s research-work, for he had taken to the scientific side of things even more keenly than his father had to the administrative.