Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (39 page)

‘They say you come here to see things.’

‘That’s true,’ said Tarvin.

‘When I’m king I shall allow nobody to come here — not even the viceroy.’

‘That leaves me out,’ remarked Tarvin, laughing.

‘You shall come,’ returned the child, measuredly, if you make me laugh. Make me laugh now.’

‘Shall I, little fellow? Well — there was once — I wonder what would make a child laugh in this country. I’ve never seen one do it yet. W-h-e-w!’ Tarvin gave a low, long-drawn whistle. ‘What’s that over there, my boy?’

A little puff of dust rose very far down the road. It was made by swiftly moving wheels, consequently it had nothing to do with the regular traffic of the State.

‘That is what I came out to see,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar. ‘She will make me well. My father, the Maharajah, said so. I am not well now.’ He turned imperiously to a favourite groom at the back of the carriage. ‘Soor Singh’ — he spoke in the vernacular — ’what is it when I become without sense? I have forgotten the English.’ The groom leaned forward.

‘Heaven-born, I do not remember,’ he said.

‘Now I remember,’ said the child suddenly. ‘Mrs. Estes says it is fits. What are fits?’

Tarvin put his hand tenderly on the child’s shoulder, but his eyes were following the dustcloud. ‘Let us hope she’ll cure them, anyway, young ‘un, whatever they are. But who is she?’

‘I do not know the name, but she will make me well. See! My father has sent a carriage to meet her.’

An empty barouche was drawn up by the side of the road as the rickety, straining mail-cart drew nearer, with frantic blasts upon a battered key-bugle.

‘It’s better than a bullock-cart anyway,’ said Tarvin to himself, standing up in the carriage, for he was beginning to choke.

‘Young man, don’t you know who she is?’ he asked huskily again.

‘She was sent,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar.

‘Her name’s Kate,’ said Tarvin in his throat, ‘and don’t you forget it.’ Then to himself in a contented whisper, ‘Kate!’

The child waved his hand to his escort, who, dividing, lined either side of the road, with all the ragged bravery of irregular cavalry. The mail-carriage halted, and Kate, crumpled, dusty, dishevelled from her long journey, and red-eyed from lack of sleep, drew back the shutters of the palanquin-like carriage, and stepped dazed into the road. Her numbed limbs would have doubled under her, but Tarvin, leaping from the barouche, caught her to him, regardless of the escort and of the calm-eyed child in the golden drapery, who was shouting, ‘Kate! Kate!’

‘Run along home, bub,’ said Tarvin. ‘Well, Kate?’

But Kate had only her tears for him and a gasping ‘You! You! You!’

IX

We meet in an evil land,
That is near to the gates of Hell —
I wait for thy command,
To serve, to speed, or withstand;
And thou sayest I do not well!

Oh, love, the flowers so red
Be only blossoms of flame,
The earth is full of the dead,
The new-killed, restless dead,
There is danger beneath and o’erhead;
And I guard at thy gates in fear
Of peril and jeopardy,
Of words thou canst not hear,
Of signs thou canst not see —
And thou sayest ‘t is ill that I came?

— In Shadowland.

Tears stood again in Kate’s eyes as she uncoiled her hair before the mirror in the room Mrs. Estes had prepared against her coming — tears of vexation. It was an old story with her that the world wants nothing done for it, and visits with displeasure those who must prod up its lazy content. But in landing at Bombay she had supposed herself at the end of outside hindrances and obstacles; what was now to come would belong to the wholesome difficulties of real work. And here was Nick!

She had made the journey from Topaz in a long mood of exaltation. She was launched; it made her giddy and happy; like the boy’s first taste of the life of men. She was free at last. No one could stop her. Nothing could keep her from the life to which she had promised herself. A little moment and she might stretch forth her hand and lay it fast upon her work. A few days and she should stoop eye to eye above the pain that had called to her across seas. In her dreams piteous hands of women were raised in prayer to her, and dry, sick palms were laid in hers. The steady urge of the ship was too slow for her; she counted the throbs of the screw. Standing far in the prow, with wind-blown hair, straining her eyes toward India, her spirit went longingly forth toward those to whom she was going; and her life seemed to release itself from her, and sped far, far over the waves, until it reached them and gave itself to them. For a moment, as she set foot on land, she trembled with a revulsion of feeling. She drew near her work; but was it for her? This old fear, which had gone doubtfully with her purpose from the beginning, she put behind her with a stern refusal to question there. She was for so much of her work as heaven would let her do; and she went forward with a new, strong, humble impulse of devotion filling and uplifting her.

It was in this mood that she stepped out of the coach at Rhatore into Tarvin’s arms.

She did justice to the kindness that had brought him over all these leagues, but she heartily wished that he had not come. The existence of a man who loved her, and for whom she could do nothing, was a sad and troubling fact enough fourteen thousand miles away. Face to face with it, alone in India, it enlarged itself unbearably, and thrust itself between her and all her hopes of bringing serious help to others. Love literally did not seem to her the most important thing in the world at that moment, and something else did; but that didn’t make Nick’s trouble unimportant, or prevent it, while she braided her hair, from getting in the way of her thoughts.. On the morrow she was to enter upon the life which she meant should be a help to those whom it could reach, and here she was thinking of Nicholas Tarvin.

It was because she foresaw that she would keep on thinking of him that she wished him away. He was the tourist wandering about behind the devotee in the cathedral at prayers; he was the other thought. In his person he represented and symbolised the life she had left behind; much worse, he represented a pain she could not heal. It was not with the haunting figure of love attendant that one carried out large purposes. Nor was it with a divided mind that men conquered cities. The intent with which she was aflame needed all of her. She could not divide herself even with Nick. And yet it was good of him to come, and like him. She knew that he had not come merely in pursuit of a selfish hope; it was as he had said — he couldn’t sleep nights, knowing what might befall her. That was really good of him.

Mrs. Estes had invited Tarvin to breakfast the day before, when Kate was not expected, but Tarvin was not the man to decline an invitation at the last moment on that account, and he faced Kate across the breakfast-table next morning with a smile which evoked an unwilling smile from her. In spite of a sleepless night she was looking very fresh and pretty in the white muslin frock which had replaced her travelling dress, and when he found himself alone with her after breakfast on the verandah (Mrs. Estes having gone to look after the morning affairs of a housekeeper, and Estes having betaken himself to his mission-school, inside the city walls), he began to make her his compliments upon the cool white, unknown to the West. But Kate stopped him.

‘Nick,’ she said, facing him, ‘will you do something for me?’

Seeing her much in earnest, Tarvin attempted the parry humorous; but she broke in —  —

‘No; it is something I want very much, Nick. Will you do it for me?’

‘Is there anything I wouldn’t do for you?’ he asked seriously.

‘I don’t know; this, perhaps. But you must do it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Go away.’

He shook his head.

‘But you must.’

‘Listen, Kate,’ said Tarvin, thrusting his hands deep into the big pockets of his white coat; ‘I can’t. You don’t know the place you’ve come to. Ask me the same question a week hence. I won’t agree to go. But I’ll agree to talk it over with you then.’

‘I know now everything that counts,’ she answered. ‘I want to do what I’ve come here for. I shan’t be able to do it if you stay. You understand, don’t you, Nick? Nothing can change that.’

‘Yes, it can. I can. I’ll behave.’

‘You needn’t tell me you’ll be kind. I know it. But even you can’t be kind enough to help hindering me. Believe that, now, Nick, and go. It isn’t that I want you to go, you know.’

‘Oh!’ observed Tarvin, with a smile.

‘Well — you know what I mean,’ returned Kate, her face unrelaxed.

‘Yes; I know. But if I’m good it won’t matter. I know that too. You’ll see,’ he said gently. ‘Awful journey, isn’t it?’

‘You promised me not to take it.’

‘I didn’t take it,’ returned Tarvin, smiling, and spreading a seat for her in the hammock, while he took one of the deep verandah chairs himself. He crossed his legs and fixed the white pith helmet he had lately adopted on his knee. ‘I came round the other way on purpose.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kate, dropping tentatively into the hammock.

‘San Francisco and Yokohama, of course. You told me not to follow you.’

‘Nick!’ She gathered into the single syllable the reproach and reproof, the liking and despair, with which the least and the greatest of his audacities alike affected her.

Tarvin had nothing to say for once, and in the pause that fell she had time to reassure herself of her abhorrence of his presence here, and time to still the impulse of pride, which told her that it was good to be followed over half the earth’s girdle for love, and the impulse of admiration for that fine devotion — time, above all — for this was worst and most shameful — to scorn the sense of loneliness and far-awayness that came rolling in on her out of the desert like a cloud, and made the protecting and home-like presence of the man she had known in the other life seem for a moment sweet and desirable.

‘Come, Kate, you didn’t expect me to stay at home, and let you find your way out here to take the chances of this old sand-heap, did you? It would be a cold day when I let you come to Gokral Seetarun all by your lone, little girl — freezing cold, I’ve thought since I’ve been here, and seen what sort of camp it is.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming.’

‘You didn’t seem particularly interested in what I did, when I last saw you.’

‘Nick! I didn’t want you to come here, and I had to come myself.’

‘Well, you’ve come. I hope you’ll like it,’ said he, grimly.

‘Is it so bad?’ she asked. ‘Not that I shall mind.’

‘Bad! Do you remember Mastodon?’

Mastodon was one of those Western towns which have their future behind them — a city without an inhabitant, abandoned and desolate.

‘Take Mastodon for deadness, and fill it with ten Leadvilles for wickedness — Leadville the first year — and you’ve got a tenth of it.’

He went on to offer her an exposition of the history, politics, and society of Gokral Seetarun, from his own point of view, dealing with the dead East from the standpoint of the living West, and dealing with it vividly. It was a burning theme, and it was a happiness to him to have a listener who could understand his attitude, even if she could not entirely sympathise with it. His tone besought her to laugh at it with him a little, if only a little, and Kate consented to laugh; but she said it all seemed to her more mournful than amusing.

Tarvin could agree to this readily enough, but he told her that he laughed to avoid weeping. It made him tired to see the fixedness, the apathy, and lifelessness of this rich and populous world, which should be up and stirring by rights — trading, organising, inventing, building new towns, making the old ones keep up with the procession, laying new railroads, going in for fresh enterprises, and keeping things humming.

‘They’ve got resources enough,’ he said. ‘It isn’t as if they had the excuse that the country’s poor. It’s a good country. Move the population of a lively Colorado town to Rhatore, set up a good local paper, organise a board of trade, and let the world know what there is here, and we’d have a boom in six months that would shake the empire. But what’s the use? They’re dead. They’re mummies. They’re wooden images. There isn’t enough real, old-fashioned downright rustle and razzle-dazzle and “git up and git” in Gokral Seetarun to run a milk-cart.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured, half to herself, with illumined eyes. ‘It’s for that I’ve come.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Because they are not like us,’ she answered, turning her lustrous face on him. ‘If they were clever, if they were wise, what could we do for them? It is because they are lost, stumbling, foolish creatures that they need us.’ She heaved a deep sigh. ‘It is good to be here.’

‘It’s good to have you,’ said Tarvin.

She started. ‘Don’t say such things any more, please, Nick,’ she said.

‘Oh, well!’ he groaned.

‘But it’s this way, Nick,’ she said earnestly, but kindly. ‘I don’t belong to such things any more — not even to the possibility of them. Think of me as a nun. Think of me as having renounced all such happiness, and all other kinds of happiness but my work.’

‘H’m. May I smoke?’ At her nod he lighted a cigar. ‘I’m glad I’m here for the ceremony.’

‘What ceremony?’ she asked.

‘Seeing you take the veil. But you won’t take it.’

‘Why not?’

He grumbled inarticulately over his cigar a moment. Then he looked up. ‘Because I’ve got big wealth that says you won’t. I know you, I know Rhatore, and I know —  — ’

‘What? Who?’

‘Myself,’ he said, looking up.

She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Nick,’ she said, leaning toward him, ‘you know I like you. I like you too well to let you go on thinking — you talk of not being able to sleep. How do you suppose I can sleep with the thought always by me that you are laying up a pain and disappointment for yourself — one that I can’t help, unless I can help it by begging you to go away now. I do beg it. Please go!’