Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (690 page)

“Go back and milk ‘em yourself, then.” Beetle danced with pain. “We shall miss Callover, hangin’ about like this; an’ I’ve got two black marks this week already.”

“Then you’ll have fatigue-drill on Monday,” said Corkran. “‘Come to think of it, I’ve got two black marks
aussi
. Hm! This is serious. This is hefty serious.”

“I told you,” said Beetle, with vindictive triumph. “An’ we want to go out after that hawk’s nest on Monday. We shall be swottin’ dum-bells, though.
All
your fault. If we’d bunked with De Vitré at first —  — ”

Corkran paused between the hedgerows. “Hold on a shake an’ don’t burble. Keep your eye on Uncle. Do you know, I believe some one’s shut up in that barn. I think we ought to go and see.”

“Don’t be a giddy idiot. Come on up to Coll.” But Corkran took no notice of Beetle.

He retraced his steps to the head of the lane, and, lifting up his voice, cried as in bewilderment, “Hullo? Who’s there? What’s that row about? Who are you?”

“Oh, Peter!” said Beetle, skipping, and forgetting his anguish in this new development.

“Hoi! Hoi! ‘Ere! Let us out!” The answers came muffled and hollow from the black bulk of the barn, with renewed thunders on the door.

“Now play up,” said Corkran. “Turkey, you keep the cows busy. ‘Member that we’ve just discovered ‘em.
We
don’t know anything. Be polite, Beetle.”

They picked their way over the muck and held speech through a crack by the door-hinge. Three more genuinely surprised boys the steady rain never fell upon. And they were so difficult to enlighten. They had to be told again and again by the captives within.

“We’ve been ‘ere for hours an’ hours.” That was Toowey. “An’ the cows to milk, an’ all.” That was Vidley. “The door she blewed against us an’ jammed herself.” That was Abraham.

“Yes, we can see that. It’s jammed on this side,” said Corkran. “How careless you chaps are!”

“Oppen un. Oppen un. Bash her oppen with a rock, young gen’elmen! The cows are milkheated an’ ragin’. Haven’t you boys no sense?”

Seeing that McTurk from time to time tweaked the cattle into renewed caperings, it was quite possible that the boys had some knowledge of a sort. But Mr. Vidley was rude. They told him so through the door, professing only now to recognize his voice.

“Humour un if ‘e can. I paid seven-an’-six for the padlock,” said Toowey. “Niver mind
him
. ‘Tes only old Vidley.”

“Be yeou gwaine to stay a prisoneer an’ captive for the sake of a lock, Toowey? I’m shaamed of ‘ee. Rowt un oppen, young gen’elmen! ‘Twas a God’s own mercy yeou heard us, Toowey, yeou’m a borned miser.”

“It’ll be a long job,” said Corkran. “Look here. It’s near our call-over. If we stay to help you we’ll miss it. We’ve come miles out of our way already — after you.”

“Tell yeour master, then, what keeped ‘ee — an arrand o’ mercy, laike. I’ll tal un to when I bring the milk to-morrow,” said Toowey.

“That’s no good,” said Corkran; “we may be licked twice over by then. You’ll have to give us a letter.” McTurk, backed against the barnwall, was firing steadily and accurately into the brown of the herd.

“Yiss, yiss. Come down to my house. My missus shall write ‘ee a beauty, young gen’elmen. She makes out the bills. I’ll give ‘ee just such a letter o’ racommendation as I’d give to my own son, if only yeou can humour the lock!”

“Niver mind the lock,” Vidley wailed. “Let me get to me pore cows, ‘fore they’m dead.”

They went to work with ostentatious rattlings and wrenchings, and a good deal of the by-play that Corkran always loved. At last — the noise of unlocking was covered by some fancy hammering with a young boulder — the door swung open and the captives marched out.

“Hurry up, Mister Toowey,” said Corkran; “we ought to be getting back. Will you give us that note, please?”

“Some of yeou young gentlemen was drivin’ my cattle off the Burrowses,” said Vidley. “I give ‘ee fair warnin’, I’ll tell yeour masters. I know
yeou
!” He glared at Corkran with malignant recognition.

McTurk looked him over from head to foot. “Oh, it’s only old Vidley. Drunk again, I suppose. Well, we can’t help that. Come on,
Mister
Toowey. We’ll go to your house.”

“Drunk, am I? I’ll drunk ‘ee! How do I know yeou bain’t the same lot? Abram!, did ‘ee take their names an’ numbers?”

“What
is
he ravin’ about?” said Beetle. “Can’t you see that if we’d taken your beastly cattle we shouldn’t be hanging round your beastly barn. ‘Pon my Sam, you Burrows guv’nors haven’t any sense —  — ”

“Let alone gratitude,” said Corkran. “I suppose he
was
drunk, Mister Toowey; an’ you locked him in the barn to get sober. Shockin’! Oh, shockin’!”

Vidley denied the charge in language that the boys’ mothers would have wept to hear.

“Well, go and look after your cows, then,” said McTurk. “Don’t stand there cursin’ us because we’ve been kind enough to help you out of a scrape. Why on earth weren’t your cows milked before?
You
’re no farmer. It’s long past milkin’. No wonder they’re half crazy. ‘Disreputable old bog-trotter, you are. Brush your hair, sir. . . . I
beg
your pardon, Mister Toowey. ‘Hope we’re not keeping you.”

They left Vidley dancing on the muck-heap, amid the cows, and devoted themselves to propitiating Mr. Toowey on their way to his house. Exercise had made them hungry; hunger is the mother of good manners; and they won golden opinions from Mrs. Toowey.

.     .     .     .     .

“Three-quarters of an hour late for Call-over, and fifteen minutes late for Lock-up,” said Foxy, the school Sergeant, crisply. He was waiting for them at the head of the corridor. “Report to your housemaster, please — an’ a nice mess you’re in, young gentlemen.”

“Quite right, Foxy. Strict attention to dooty does it,” said Corkran. “Now where, if we asked you, would you say that his honour Mister Prout might, at this moment of time, be found prouting — eh?”

“In ‘is study — as usual, Mister Corkran. He took Call-over.”

“Hurrah! Luck’s with us all the way. Don’t blub, Foxy. I’m afraid you don’t catch us this time.”

.     .     .     .     .

“We went up to change, sir, before comin’ to you. That made us a little late, sir. We weren’t really very late. We were detained — by a —  — ”

“An errand of mercy,” said Beetle, and they laid Mrs. Toowey’s laboriously written note before him. “We thought you’d prefer a letter, sir. Toowey got himself locked into a barn, and we heard him shouting — it’s Toowey who brings the Coll. milk, sir — and we went to let him out.”

“There were ever so many cows waiting to be milked,” said McTurk; “and of course, he couldn’t get at them, sir. They said the door had jammed. There’s his note, sir.”

Mr. Prout read it over thrice. It was perfectly unimpeachable; but it said nothing of a large tea supplied by Mrs. Toowey.

“Well, I don’t like your getting mixed up with farmers and potwallopers. Of course you will not pay any more — er — visits to the Tooweys,” said he.

“Of course not, sir. It was really on account of the cows, sir,” replied McTurk, glowing with philanthropy.

“And you came straight back?”

“We ran nearly all the way from the Cattle-gate,” said Corkran, carefully developing the unessential. “That’s one mile, sir. Of course, we had to get the note from Toowey first.”

“But it was because we went to change — we were rather wet, sir — that we were
really
late. After we’d reported ourselves to the Sergeant, sir, and he knew we were in Coll., we didn’t like to come to your study all dirty.” Sweeter than honey was the voice of Beetle.

“Very good. Don’t let it happen again.” Their housemaster learned to know them better in later years.

They entered — not to say swaggered — into Number Nine form-room, where De Vitré, Orrin, Parsons, and Howlett, before the fire, were still telling their adventures to admiring associates. The four rose as one boy.

“What happened to
you
? We just saved Call-over. Did you stay on? Tell us! Tell us!”

The three smiled pensively. They were not distinguished for telling more than was necessary.

“Oh, we stayed on a bit and then we came away,” said McTurk. “That’s all.”

“You scab! You might tell a chap anyhow.”

“‘Think so? Well, that’s awfully good of you, De Vitré. ‘Pon my sainted Sam, that’s awfully good of you,” said Corkran, shouldering into the centre of the warmth and toasting one slippered foot before the blaze. “So you really think we might tell you?”

They stared at the coals and shook with deep, delicious chuckles.

“My Hat! We
were
stalky,” said McTurk. “I swear we were about as stalky as they make ‘em. Weren’t we?”

“It was a frabjous Stalk,” said Beetle. “‘Much too good to tell you brutes, though.”

The form wriggled under the insult, but made no motion to avenge it. After all, on De Vitré’s showing, the three had saved the raiders from at least a public licking.

“It wasn’t half bad,” said Corkran. “Stalky
is
the word.”

“
You
were the really stalky one,” said McTurk, one contemptuous shoulder turned to a listening world. “By Gum! you
were
stalky.”

Corkran accepted the compliment and the name together. “Yes,” said he; “keep your eye on your Uncle Stalky an’ he’ll pull you through.”

“Well, you needn’t gloat so,” said De Vitré, viciously; “you look like a stuffed cat.”

Corkran, henceforth known as Stalky, took not the slightest notice, but smiled dreamily.

“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he murmured. “Your Uncle Stalky — a doocid good name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I swear he is. De Vitré, you’re an ass — a putrid ass.”

De Vitré would have denied this but for the assenting murmurs from Parsons and Orrin.

“You needn’t rub it in, then.”

“But I do. I does. You are such a woppin’ ass. D’you know it? Think over it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige me by thinkin’ of it every half hour till further notice. Gummy!
What
an ass you are! But your Uncle Stalky” — he picked up the form-room poker and beat it against the mantelpiece — ”is a Great Man!”

“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk, who had fought under that general.

“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man, De Vitré? Speak the truth, you fat-headed old impostor.”

“Yes,” said De Vitré, deserted by all his band. “I — I suppose he is.”

“‘Mustn’t suppose.
Is
he?”

“Well, he is.”

“A Great Man?”

“A Great Man.
Now
won’t you tell us?” said De Vitré pleadingly.

“Not by a heap,” said “Stalky” Corkran.

Therefore the tale has stayed untold till to-day.

The Hour of the Angel

SOONER
or late — in earnest or in jest —
    (But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel’s Hour
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
    Of our sole unbacked competence and power
    Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment — or beyond. But here we have
Prepared long since our garland or our grave.
    For, at that hour, the sum of all our past,
    Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast
    In one addition, be it more or less,
    And as that reading runs so shall we do;
    Meeting, astounded, victory at the last,
    Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to save!

1. Ithuriel was that Archangel whose spear had the magic property of showing every one exactly and truthfully what he was.    

The Last Lap

HOW
do we know, by the bank-high river,
    Where the mired and sulky oxen wait,
And it looks as though we might wait for ever,
    How do we know that the floods abate?
There is no change in the current’s brawling —
    Louder and harsher the freshet scolds;
Yet we can feel she is falling, falling,
    And the more she threatens the less she holds.
Down to the drift, with no word spoken,
    The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue.
Steady! The back of the worst is broken.
    And — lash your leaders! — we’re through — we’re through!

How do we know, when the port-fog holds us
    Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier,
And the week-long summer smother enfolds us —
    How do we know it is going to clear?
There is no break in the blindfold weather,
    But, one and another, around the bay,
The unseen capstans clink together,
    Getting ready to up and away.
A pennon whimpers — the breeze has found us —
    A headsail jumps through the thinning haze.
The whole hull follows, till — broad around us —
    The clean-swept ocean says: “Go your ways!”