Actions and Reactions
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Rudyard Kipling >> Actions and Reactions
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"These people don't tell. Haven't you learnt that yet? But I'll
obey, me lord. See you later!"
She set off afoot, for within the three main roads that bounded
the blunt triangle of the estate (even by night one could
scarcely hear the carts on them), wheels were not used except for
farm work. The footpaths served all other purposes. And though at
first they had planned improvements, they had soon fallen in with
the customs of their hidden kingdom, and moved about the
soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and shaw as freely as the
rabbits. Indeed, for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded
beneath her helmet of chestnut hair; but she had been plagued of
late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloke, who
asked some questions. How it came about Sophie never knew, but
after a while behold Mrs. Cloke's arm was about her waist, and
her head was on that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door.
"My dear! My dear!" the elder woman almost sobbed. "An' d'you
mean to tell me you never suspicioned? Why--why--where was you
ever taught anything at all? Of course it is. It's what we've
been only waitin' for, all of us. Time and again I've said to
Lady--" she checked herself. "An' now we shall be as we should
be."
"But--but--but--" Sophie whimpered.
"An' to see you buildin' your nest so busy--pianos and books--an'
never thinkin' of a nursery!"
"No more I did." Sophie sat bolt upright, and began to laugh.
"Time enough yet." The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad
knee. "But--they must be strange-minded folk over yonder with
you! Have you thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear,
my dear! Never mind! She'll be happy where she knows. 'Tis God's
work. An' we was only waitin' for it, for you've never failed in
your duty yet. It ain't your way. What did you say about my
Mary's doings?" Mrs. Cloke's face hardened as she pressed her
chin on Sophie's forehead. "If any of your girls thinks to be'ave
arbitrary now, I'll--But they won't, my dear. I'll see they do
their duty too. Be sure you'll 'ave no trouble."
When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and earth
changed about her as on the day of old Iggulden's death. For an
instant she thought of the wide turn of the staircase, and the
new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner could scar, but
presently, the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment
that made her reel. She leaned against one of their new gates and
looked over their lands for some other stay.
"Well," she said resignedly, half aloud, "we must try to make him
feel that he isn't a third in our party," and turned the corner
that looked over Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint.
Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she
had never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged, ample,
prepared by course of generations for all such things. As it had
steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that it had meaning
from their few months of life within, it soothed and promised
good. She went alone and quickly into the hall, and kissed either
door-post, whispering: "Be good to me. You know! You've never
failed in your duty yet."
When the matter was explained to George, he would have sailed at
once to their own land, but this Sophie forbade.
"I don't want science," she said. "I just want to be loved, and
there isn't time for that at home. Besides," she added, looking
out of the window, "it would be desertion."
George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friars Pardon to
the telegraph system of Great Britain by
telephone--three-quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Whybarne
and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the next
parish. Said he when the line was being run: "There's an old
ellum right in our road. Shall us throw her?"
"Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good luck, God help
'em." Old Whybarne shouted the local proverb from three poles
down the line. "We ain't goin' to lay any axe-iron to coffin-wood
here not till we know where we are yet awhile. Swing round 'er,
swing round!"
To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line across
the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Nor can
they tell why Skim Winsh, who came to his cottage under Dutton
Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45 P.M of every Saturday night,
as his father had done before him, sang no more at the bottom of
the garden steps, where Sophie always feared he would break his
neck. The path was undoubtedly an ancient right of way, and at
10.45 P.M. on Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty to
posterity to keep it open--till Mrs. Cloke spoke to him once. She
spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sewing maid at Pardons, and
to Mary's best new friend, the five-foot-seven imported London
house-maid, who taught Mary to trim hats, and found the country
dullish.
But there was no noise--at no time was there any noise--and when
Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had
signified a wish that way. Then they appeared to protest that all
was well with them and their children, their chickens, their
roofs, their water-supply, and their sons in the police or the
railway service.
"But don't you find it dull, dear?" said George, loyally doing
his best not to worry as the months went by.
"I've been so busy putting my house in order I haven't had time
to think," said she. "Do you?"
"No--no. If I could only be sure of you."
She turned on the green drawing-room's couch (it was Empire, not
Heppelwhite after all), and laid aside a list of linen and
blankets.
"It has changed everything, hasn't it?" she whispered.
"Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore "
"And missed our first real summer together. No thank you, me
lord."
"But we're absolutely alone."
"Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy? Don't you worry. I
like it--like it to the marrow of my little bones. You don't
realize what her house means to a woman. We thought we were
living in it last year, but we hadn't begun to. Don't you rejoice
in your study, George?"
"I prefer being here with you." He sat down on the floor by the
couch and took her hand.
"Seven," she said, as the French clock struck. "Year before last
you'd just be coming back from business."
He winced at the recollection, then laughed. "Business! I've been
at work ten solid hours to-day."
"Where did you lunch? With the Conants?"
"No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with my feet in a swamp.
But we've found out where the old spring is, and we're going to
pipe it down to Gale Anstey next year."
"I'll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open the door, dear. I
want to look down the passage. Isn't that corner by the
stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in?" She looked through
half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale green all
steeped in liquid gold.
"There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom," she went on--"and
his first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn't wonder if
those people hadn't put it there on purpose. George, will it make
any odds to you if he's a girl?"
He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was
his wife, not the child.
"Then you're the only person who thinks so." She laughed. "Don't
be silly, dear. It's expected. I know. It's my duty. I shan't be
able to look our people in the face if I fail."
"What concern is it of theirs, confound 'em!"
"You'll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs.
Cloke says, so I'm provided for. Shall you ever begin to
understand these people? I shan't."
"And we bought it for fun--for fun!" he groaned. "And here we are
held up for goodness knows bow long!"
"Why? Were you thinking of selling it?" He did not answer. "Do
you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?" she demanded.
This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman--a widow for
choice--who on Sophie's death was guilefully to marry George for
his wealth and ruin him in a year. George being busy, Sophie had
invented her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she
was alone among wives in so doing.
"You aren't going to bring her up again?" he asked anxiously.
"I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons
ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think
what we've put into it of our two selves."
"At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have
made--" He broke off.
"The beasts!" she went on. "They'd be sure to build a red-brick
lodge at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must
leave instructions in your will that he's never to do that,
George, won't you?"
He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was
time to dress. Then he muttered "What the devil use is a man's
country to him when he can't do business in it?"
Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed
time was born, not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant
to be so kind, but a godling; in beauty, it was manifest,
excelling Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer of delights,
a renewer of companionships and an interpreter of Destiny. This
last George did not realise till he met Lady Conant striding
through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event.
"My dear fellow," she cried, and slapped him heartily on the
back, "I can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all
right. (There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir
at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?" She felt largely in her
leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug. "I sent a
note to your wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot to
take this. You can save me a tramp. Give her my love." She
marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales.
The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was
the crest of a footless bird and the motto: " Wayte awhyle--wayte
awhyle."
"That's the other end of the riddle," Sophie whispered, when he
saw her that evening. "Read her note. The English write beautiful
notes."
The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will
appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though you have
said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as a little
stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar christening
mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar, your
great-grandmother's brother--
George stared at his wife.
"Go on," she twinkled, from the pillows.
--mother's brother, sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to
have acquired some of your household gods at that time, but
nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle, which I found
in the potting-shed and am having put in order for you. I hope
little George--Lashmar, he will be too, won't he?--will live to
see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mug.
Affectionately yours,
ALICE CONANT.
P.S.--How quiet you've kept about it all!
"Well, I'm--"
"Don't swear," said Sophie. "Bad for the infant mind."
"But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a
word about the Lashmars?"
"You know the only time--to young Iggulden at Rocketts--when
Iggulden died."
"Your great-grandmother's brother! She's traced the whole
connection--more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she
mean about our keeping quiet?"
Sophie's eyes sparkled. "I've thought that out too. We've got
back at the English at last. Can't you see that she thought that
we thought my mother's being a Lashmar was one of those things
we'd expect the English to find out for themselves, and that's
impressed her?" She turned the mug in her white hands, and sighed
happily. "'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's not a bad motto,
George. It's been worth it."
"But still I don't quite see--"
"I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part
of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They'd understand
that. And look how they've accepted us, all of them."
"Are we so undesirable in ourselves?" George grunted.
"Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice our money.
Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders? Not
by a jugful! The poor beast doesn't exist!"
"Do you think it's that then?" He looked toward the cot by the
fire where the godling snorted.
"The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what
every Lashmar gives in doles (that's nicer than tips) every time
a Lashmite is born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much
expected of me."
Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They
showed her the mug and her face shone. "Oh, now Lady Conant's
sent it, it'll be all proper, ma'am, won't it? 'George' of course
he'd have to be, but seein' what he is we was hopin'--all your
people was hopin'--it 'ud be 'Lashmar' too, and that'ud just
round it out. A very 'andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine.
'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's true with the Lashmars, I've
heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master
George won't open 'is nursery till he's thirty."
"Poor lamb!" cried Sophie. "But how did you know my folk were
Lashmars?"
Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. "I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am,
but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let
drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have
been what give us an inkling. An' so it came out, one thing in
the way o' talk leading to another, and those American people at
Veering Holler was very obligin' with news, I'm told, ma'am."
"Great Scott!" said George, under his breath. "And this is the
simple peasant!"
"Yiss," Mrs. Cloke went on. "An' Cloke was only wonderin' this
afternoon--your pillow's slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that
a-way--just for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you
wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir.
They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come
caterin' across us more. Cloke, 'e 'ud be glad to show you over
any day."
"But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he?"
"We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but"--with cold
contempt--"I think that trained nurse is just comin' up from her
dinner, so 'm afraid we'll 'ave to ask you, sir ... Now, Master
George--Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!"
A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in
the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge
carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all
the bluebells on God's earth that day to eat, and--Sophie adored
him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was
delayed.
"Here's the place," said his father at last among the water
forget-me-nots. "But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke?
I told you to have them down here ready."
"We'll get 'em down if f you say so," Cloke answered, with a
thrust of the underlip they both knew.
"But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug
here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America,
half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample."
"I don't know nothin' about that," said Cloke.
"An' I've nothin' to say against larch--IF you want to make a
temp'ry job of it. I ain't 'ere to tell you what isn't so, sir;
an' you can't say I ever come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to
lead you further in than you set out--"
A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he
scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and
waited.
"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of
it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be
done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet
six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an'
it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it
ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way,
he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again.
You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of
that."
"No," said George after a pause; "I've been realising that for
some time. Make it oak then; we can't get out of it."
THE RECALL
I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays;
I will bring back my children,
After certain days.
Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs.
They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.
Over their heads in the branches
Of their new-bought, ancient trees,
I weave an incantation,
And draw them to my knees.
Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,
The hours, the days and the seasons
Order their souls aright;
Till I make plain the meaning
Of all my thousand years
Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears.
GARM--A HOSTAGE
0ne night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military
cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the
back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye,
rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous
highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so
I told him to go home before any one caught him; but he fell
under the pole, and I heard voices of a military guard in search
of some one.
The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home
swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next
morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform
was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made
neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white
sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did
not tell this story to my friend's sergeant, who was a hostile
and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant, who did not know
us quite so well.
Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels
slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers--of the
old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier--that I had
ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle
just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin
whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year;
and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not approve.
"'E's for you," said my friend; but he did not look as though he
liked parting with him.
"Nonsense! That dog's worth more than most men, Stanley," I said.
"'E's that and more. 'Tention!"
The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full
minute.
"Eyes right!"
He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At
a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his
right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made
himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either
side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the
air. He fell with a howl, and held up one leg.
"Part o' the trick," said his owner. "You're going to die now.
Dig yourself your little grave an' shut your little eye."
Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a hole and
lay down in it. When told that he was cured, he jumped out,
wagging his tail, and whining for applause. He was put through
half-a-dozen other tricks, such as showing how he would hold a
man safe (I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth
bared, ready to spring), and how he would stop eating at the word
of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my
friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been
shot, took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet,
handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him and
howled. I read:
SIR--I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is
the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good as a
man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not
give him back to me, for I'm not going to take him, if you will
keep him. So please do not try to give him back any more. I have
kept his name back, so you can call him anything and he will
answer. but please do not give him back. He can kill a man as
easy as anything, but please do not give him too much meat. He
knows more than a man.
Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the
bull-terrier's despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that
a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one
dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than verminous
vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders, and unclean by the law
of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with whom one lives alone for at
least six months in the year; a free thing, tied to you so
strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise; a
patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul, who knows your moods
before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.
I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my friend
must have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style and
leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly
enough that I was his master, and did not follow the soldier. As
soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen, yelling
with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he might
have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly
when she nipped his deep iron sides, laid his heavy head on my
knee, and howled anew. I meant to dine at the Club that night;
but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty
house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I
felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening
alone. So we fed at home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog
on the other; she watching his every mouthful, and saying
explicitly what she thought of his table manners, which were much
better than hers.
It was Vixen's custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my
bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when morning
came I would always find that the little thing had braced her
feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot.
This night she hurried to bed purposefully, every hair up, one
eye on the stranger, who had dropped on a mat in a helpless,
hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily.
She settled her head on the pillow several times, to show her
little airs and graces, and struck up her usual whiney sing-song
before slumber. The stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I put
out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between
Vixen's teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech,
that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.
I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her
severely, and said:
"Vixen, if you do that again you'll be put into the verandah.
Now, remember!"
She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her she
mouthed my right wrist once more, and waited with her ears back
and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog's tail
thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way.
I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a
rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set
her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this
she howled. Then she used coarse language--not to me, but to the
bullterrier--till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round
the house trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and
barked as though some one were stealing the horses, which was an
old trick of hers. Last she returned, and her snuffing yelp said,
"I'll be good! Let me in and I'll' be good!"
She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I
whispered to the other dog, "You can lie on the foot of the bed."
The bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with
rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the
morning, and they had early breakfast with me, bite for bite,
till the horse came round and we went for a ride. I don't think
the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with
excitement, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and scuttered and
scooted, and took charge of the procession.
There was one corner of a village near by, which we generally
passed with caution, because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the
place gathered about it.
They were half-wild, starving beasts, and though utter cowards,
yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill
and eat an English dog. I kept a whip with a long lash for them.
That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps of design, had
moved from beyond my horse's shadow.
The bull was ploughing along in the dust, fifty yards behind,
rolling in his run, and smiling as bull-terriers will. I heard
Vixen squeal; half a dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white
streak came up behind me; a cloud of dust rose near Vixen, and,
when it cleared, I saw one tall pariah with his back broken, and
the bull wrenching another to earth. Vixen retreated to the
protection of my whip, and the bull paddled back smiling more
than ever, covered with the blood of his enemies. That decided me
to call him "Garin of the Bloody Breast," who was a great person
in his time, or "Garm" for short; so, leaning forward, I told him
what his temporary name would be. He looked up while I repeated
it, and then raced away. I shouted "Garin!" He stopped, raced
back, and came up to ask my will.
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