Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (427 page)

Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the railway-bridge. It was necessary to pass by the bench once more, but the wicket was between us. The departure of the fly had waked the navvy. He crawled on to the seat, and with malignant eyes watched the driver flog down the road.

“The man inside o’ that,” he called, “‘as poisoned me. ‘E’s a body-snatcher. ‘E’s comin’ back again when I’m cold. ‘Ere’s my evidence!”

He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my way, because I was hungry. Framlynghame Admiral village is a good two miles from the station, and I waked the holy calm of the evening every step of that way with shouts and yells, casting myself down in the flank of the good green hedge when I was too weak to stand. There was an inn, — a blessed inn with a thatched roof, and peonies in the garden, — and I ordered myself an upper chamber in which the Foresters held their courts for the laughter was not all out of me. A bewildered woman brought me ham and eggs, and I leaned out of the mullioned window, and laughed between mouthfuls. I sat long above the beer and the perfect smoke that followed, till the lights changed in the quiet street, and I began to think of the seven forty-five down, and all that world of the “Arabian Nights” I had quitted.

Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled the low-ceiled tap-room. Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a fringe of the Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale of anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley of the Shadow from the which he was but newly risen. And as he talked he ate, and as he ate he drank, for there was much room in him; and anon he paid royally, speaking of Justice and the Law, before whom all Englishmen are equal, and all foreigners and anarchists vermin and slime.

On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head high among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell in the air — the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but seldom — a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of a truckload of lamps, and set them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of the population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel. I abode in obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse’s bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was the providential fly coming back, and for a moment I wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to revisit his practice.

“Get away; you’re drunk,” said the driver.

“I’m not,” said the navvy. “I’ve been waitin’ ‘ere hours and hours. Come out, you beggar inside there!”

“Go on, driver,” said a voice I did not know — a crisp, clear, English voice.

“All right,” said the navvy. “You wouldn’t ‘ear me when I was polite. Now will you come?”

There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different service of song.

“Come on, you bloomin’ body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did you?” roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly, inarticulate with rage.

“Ere’s a man murderin’ the Squire,” the driver shouted, and fell from his box upon the navvy’s neck.

To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch, but it was the three third-class tickets who attached themselves to his legs and freed the captive.

“Send for a constable! lock him up!” said that man, adjusting his collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the key, while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.

Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper nobly. Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one porter counted the damage in a loud voice, and the others, arming themselves with agricultural implements from the station garden, kept up a ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of the gaol. He answered little to the point, so far as they could understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded, he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It fell on the metals and went out. With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in all, followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor’s deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal exhibition, and — we heard the whistle of the seven forty-five down.

They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered over broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of it, and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and heads were out all along the carriages as I found me a seat.

“What is the row?” said a young man, as I entered. “‘Man drunk?”

“Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble those of Asiatic cholera than anything else,” I answered, slowly and judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme of things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that war.

He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: “Can I be of any service? I’m a doctor.”

From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing “Another bloomin’ doctor!”

And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by the road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is immortal and master of his fate.

THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

  
Girls and boys, come out to play

   The moon is shining as bright as day!

   Leave your supper and leave your sleep,

   And come with your playfellows out in the street!

   Up the ladder and down the wall —

A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one heard, for his nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a gardener among the laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way, and hurried to soothe him. He was her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.

“What was it, then? What was it, then? There’s nothing to frighten him, Georgie dear.”

“It was — it was a policeman! He was on the Down — I saw him! He came in. Jane said he would.”

“Policemen don’t come into houses, dearie. Turn over, and take my hand.”

“I saw him — on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand, Harper?”

The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing of sleep before she stole out.

“Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about policemen?”

“I haven’t told him anything.”

“You have. He’s been dreaming about them.”

“We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this morning. P’r’aps that’s what put it into his head.”

“Oh! Now you aren’t going to frighten the child into fits with your silly tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you again,” etc.

A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a new power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to him to carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he was delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head just as surprising as though he were listening to it “all new from the beginning.” There was a prince in that tale, and he killed dragons, but only for one night. Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince, pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see, he could not tell any one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales faded gradually into dreamland, where adventures were so many that he could not recall the half of them. They all began in the same way, or, as Georgie explained to the shadows of the night-light, there was “the same starting-off place” — a pile of brushwood stacked somewhere near a beach; and round this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys and girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and overthrown so long as he remembered it was only a dream. He could never hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real, and instead of pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the multiplication-table up to four times six.

The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she always applauded Georgie’s valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his life — Annie and Louise, pronounced “Annieanlouise.” When the dreams swamped the stories, she would change into one of the little girls round the brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he sank: “Poor Annieanlouise! She’ll be sorry for me now!” But “Annieanlouise,” walking slowly on the beach, called, “‘Ha! ha!’ said the duck, laughing,” which to a waking mind might not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and must have been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly wicked.

The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old, to a place called “Oxford-on-a-visit. “Here were huge buildings surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above all, something called the “buttery,” which Georgie was dying to see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him if he would like some, bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all round the clock, so he took what “buttery” gave him, and would have taken some brown liquid called “auditale” but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of a thing called “Pepper’s Ghost.” This was intensely thrilling. People’s heads came off and flew all over the stage, and skeletons danced bone by bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a man of the worst, waved his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass voice (Georgie had never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows unspeakable. Some grown-up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made with mirrors, and that there was no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know what illusions were, but he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass with the ivory handle on his mother’s dressing-table. Therefore the “grown-up” was “just saying things” after the distressing custom of “grown-ups,” and Georgie cast about for amusement between scenes. Next to him sat a little girl dressed all in black, her hair combed off her forehead exactly like the girl in the book called “Alice in Wonderland,” which had been given him on his last birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, and Georgie looked at her. There seemed to be no need of any further introduction.

“I’ve got a cut on my thumb,” said he. It was the first work of his first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most valuable possession.

“I’m tho thorry!” she lisped. “Let me look pleathe.”

“There’s a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it’s all raw under,” Georgie answered, complying.

“Dothent it hurt?” — her grey eyes were full of pity and interest.

“Awf’ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.”

“It lookth very horrid. I’m tho thorry!” She put a forefinger to his hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.

Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely. “You mustn’t talk to strange little girls, Master Georgie.”

“She isn’t strange. She’s very nice. I like her, an’ I’ve showed her my new cut.”