Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (555 page)

After Kalka the road wound among the hills, and we took a curricle with half-broken ponies, which were changed every six miles. No one dreamed of a railroad to Simla in those days, for it was seven thousand feet up in the air. The road was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here, again, Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped into the back seat, and shouted. A cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of Kalka, and she whined for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on the liver. I had had one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed to the fresh breezes, I put it on, and arm chewed it uncomprehendingly, but I think he was grateful.

“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toot-toot-toot!” went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places, and “yow! yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon”; and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told, us we should find Stanley “out there,” nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill.

When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great gray hillside.

Here Garm left me.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garin was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garin — gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garin any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road. Then he raced back to his own master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest people in all the world that night.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

       There is sorrow enough in the natural way

       From men and women to fill our day;

       But when we are certain of sorrow in store,

       Why do we always arrange for more?

       Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware

       Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

       Buy a pup and your money will buy

       Love unflinching that cannot lie —

       Perfect passion and worship fed

       By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.

       Nevertheless it is hardly fair

       To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

       When the fourteen years which Nature permits

       Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,

       And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs

       To lethal chambers or loaded guns,

       Then you will find — it’s your own affair

       But... you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

       When the body that lived at your single will

       When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!)

       When the spirit that answered your every mood

       Is gone wherever it goes — for good,

       You will discover how much you care,

       And will give your heart to a dog to tear!

       We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,

       When it comes to burying Christian clay.

       Our loves are not given, but only lent,

       At compound interest of cent per cent.

       Though it is not always the case, I believe,

       That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:

       For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,

       A short-time loan is as bad as a long

       So why in Heaven (before we are there!)

       Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

THE MOTHER HIVE

If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.

A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting-board. “Excuse me,” she began, “but it’s my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if this is my — ”

“ — own hive?” the Guard snapped. “Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to you! Next!”

“Shame!” cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum.

The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been slanged by the Guard.

“What is the world like, Melissa?” said a companion. “Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be foul-brooded!” She sat down in the cool draught across the combs.

“If you’d only heard,” said the Wax-moth silkily, “the insolence of the Guard’s tone when she cursed our sister. It aroused the Entire Community.” She laid an egg. She had stolen in for that purpose.

“There was a bit of a fuss on the Gate,” Melissa chuckled. “You were there, Miss?” She did not know how to address the slim stranger.

“Don’t call me ‘Miss.’ I’m a sister to all in affliction — just a working-sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden.” The Wax-moth caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid another egg.

“You mustn’t lay here,” cried Melissa. “You aren’t a Queen.”

“My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour those aren’t eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to die for them.” She raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp round her. “If you’d like to kill me, pray do.”

“Don’t be unkind, Melissa,” said a young bee, impressed by the chaste folds of the Wax-moth’s wing, which hid her ceaseless egg-dropping.

“I haven’t done anything,” Melissa answered. “She’s doing it all.”

“Ah, don’t let your conscience reproach you later, but when you’ve killed me, write me, at least, as one that loved her fellow-worker.”

Laying at every sob, the Wax-moth backed into a crowd of young bees, and left Melissa bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her little voice in the darkness and cried, “Stores!” till a gang of cell-fillers hailed her, and she left her load with them.

“I’m afraid I foul-brooded you just now,” said a voice over her shoulder. “I’d been on the Gate for three hours, and one would foul-brood the Queen herself after that. No offence meant.”

“None taken,” Melissa answered cheerily. “I shall be on Guard myself, some day. What’s next to do?”

“There’s a rumour of Death’s Head Moths about. Send a gang of youngsters to the Gate, and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of stout scrap-wax pillars. It’ll make the Hive hot, but we can’t have Death’s Headers in the middle of our honey-flow.”

“My Only Wings! I should think not!” Melissa had all a sound bee’s hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking, feathery Thief of the Hives. “Tumble out!” she called across the youngsters’ quarters. “All you who aren’t feeding babies, show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the Ga-ate!” She chanted the order at length.

“That’s nonsense,” a downy, day-old bee answered. “In the first place, I never heard of a Death’s Header coming into a hive. People don’t do such things. In the second, building pillars to keep ‘em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British bees. In the third, if you trust a Death’s Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of confidence. Our dear sister in grey says so.”

“Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax that is needed for higher and more practical ends,” said the Wax-moth from an empty store-cell.

“The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I’ve ever heard of. You mustn’t teach us to refuse work,” Melissa began.

“You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work’s the essence of life; but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour against imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd! If I can only teach a — a little toleration — a little ordinary kindness here toward that absurd old bogey you call the Death’s Header, I shan’t have lived in vain.”

“She hasn’t lived in vain, the darling!” cried twenty bees together. “You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to spreading her principles, and — and — she looks lovely!”

An old, baldish bee came up the comb.

“Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!” she said. The Wax-moth slipped aside.

The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering. “What’s the matter with ‘em?” said the oldster. “Why do they call each other ‘ducky’ and ‘darling’? Must be the weather.” She sniffed suspiciously. “Horrid stuffy smell here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never thought to report her presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths to be like blood-red dragon-flies.

“You had better fan out this corner for a little,” said the old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her fore-feet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke three hundred beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee’s temper, because she must always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows it. The Wax-moth crept forth, and caressed Melissa again.

“I see,” she murmured, “that at heart you are one of Us.”