Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Cleever said nothing for a long time. The Infant looked
uncomfortable. He feared that, misled by enthusiasm, he had filled
up the novelist's time with unprofitable recital of trivial
anecdotes.
Then said Cleever, "I can't understand. Why should you have seen
and done all these things before you have cut your wisdom-teeth?"
"Don't know," said The Infant apologetically. "I haven't seen much
- only Burmese jungle."
"And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility," said
Cleever, under his breath. "You won't have any sensations left at
thirty, if you go on as you have done. But I want to hear more
tales - more tales!" He seemed to forget that even subalterns
might have engagements of their own.
"We're thinking of dining out somewhere - the lot of us - and
going on to the Empire afterwards," said Nevin, with hesitation.
He did not like to ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might
be regarded as perilously near to "cheek."
And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden among boys
at large, said nothing on his side.
Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: "Won't you
come too, sir?"
Cleever almost shouted "Yes," and while he was being helped into
his coat continued to murmur "Good Heavens!" at intervals in a way
that the boys could not understand.
"I don't think I've been to the Empire in my life," said he; "but
- what is my life after all? Let us go."
They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because
they had come to see me, but had gone over to the better man;
which was humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost
reverence, for was he not the author of "As it was in the
Beginning," and a person in whose company it was an honour to go
abroad? From all I gathered later, he had taken less interest in
the performance before him than in their conversations, and they
protested with emphasis that he was "as good a man as they make;
knew what a man was driving at almost before he said it; and yet
he's so damned simple about things any man knows." That was one of
many comments.
At midnight they returned, announcing that they were "highly
respectable gondoliers," and that oysters and stout were what they
chiefly needed. The eminent novelist was still with them, and I
think he was calling them by their shorter names. I am certain
that he said he had been moving in worlds not realised, and that
they had shown him the Empire in a new light.
Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, "Thank Heaven we
have within the land ten thousand as good as they," and when he
departed, asked him what he thought of things generally.
He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though
singing was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure
that few lips would be moved to song if they could find a
sufficiency of kissing.
Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman
in words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this
in the morning.
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