Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (810 page)

“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 TREE OF JUSTICE

It was a warm, dark winter day with the Sou’-West wind singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months’ job in the Rough at the back of Pound’s Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf Still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of Pound’s Wood, and heard a horse’s feet just as they came to the beech where Ridley the keeper hangs up the vermin. The poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches — some perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips.

‘Three more owls,’ said Dan, counting. ‘Two stoats, four jays, and a kestrel. That’s ten since last week. Ridley’s a beast.’

‘In my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.’ Sir Richard Dalyngridge reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind them. [This is the Norman knight they met the year before in PUCK OF POOK’S HILL. See ‘Young Men at the Manor,’ ‘The Knights of the Joyous Venture,’ and ‘Old Men at Pevensey,’ in that book.] ‘What play do you make?’he asked.

‘Nothing, Sir. We’re looking for old Hobden,’Dan replied.’He promised to get us a sleeper.’

‘Sleeper? A DORMEUSE, do you say?’

‘Yes, a dormouse, Sir.’ ‘I understand. I passed a woodman on the low grounds. Come!’ He wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old Hobden would turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before spring. The old man was as busy as a beaver.

Something laughed beneath a thorn, and Puck stole out, his finger on his lip.

‘Look!’ he whispered. ‘Along between the spindle-trees. Ridley has been there this half-hour.’

The children followed his point, and saw Ridley the keeper in an old dry ditch, watching Hobden as a cat watches a mouse.

‘Huhh!’ cried Una. ‘Hobden always ‘tends to his wires before breakfast. He puts his rabbits into the faggots he’s allowed to take home. He’ll tell us about ‘em tomorrow.’

‘We had the same breed in my day,’ Sir Richard replied, and moved off quietly, Puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the close-trimmed beech stuff.

‘What did you do to them?’ said Dan, as they repassed Ridley’s terrible tree.

‘That!’ Sir Richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls.

‘Not he!’ said Puck. ‘There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.’

‘I — I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?’ He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He walked as though all the woods belonged to him. ‘I have often told my friends,’ he went on, ‘that Red William the King was not the only Norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.’

‘D’you mean William Rufus?’said Dan.

‘Yes,’ said Puck, kicking a clump of red toad-stools off a dead log.

‘For example, there was a knight new from Normandy,’ Sir Richard went on, ‘to whom Henry our King granted a manor in Kent near by. He chose to hang his forester’s son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to pleasure the King.’

‘Now when would that be?’ said Puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully.

‘The summer of the year King Henry broke his brother Robert of Normandy at Tenchebrai fight. Our ships were even then at Pevensey loading for the war.’