Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (734 page)

‘By the way,’ said he, ‘you know your grave, of course!’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael’s own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the A.S.C. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early ‘Fifteen. She had not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names he might have used with his alias; but her Cook’s tourist ticket expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen’s breast; but the officer’s wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

‘They are often like this,’ said the officer’s wife, loosening the tight bonnet-strings. ‘Yesterday she said he’d been killed at Hooge. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again.

Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

‘I’m going to Hagenzeele myself,’ she explained .’Not to Hagenzeele Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosiere now. It’s just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel there!’

‘Oh yes, thank you. I’ve wired.’

‘That’s better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others there’s hardly a soul. But they’ve put bathrooms into the old Lion d’Or-that’s the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory-and it draws off a lot of people, luckily.’

‘It’s all new to me. This is the first time I’ve been over.’

‘Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own account. I haven’t lost any one, thank God-but, like every one else, I’ve a lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do, I find it helps them to have some one just look at the-the place and tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too. I get quite a list of commissions to execute.’ She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. ‘There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I’ve got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over and execute them. It does comfort people.’

‘I suppose so,’ Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train.

‘Of course it does. (Isn’t it lucky we’ve got window-seats!) It must do or they wouldn’t ask one to do it, would they! I’ve a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here’-she tapped the Kodak again-’I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What’s yours!’

‘My nephew,’ said Helen. ‘But I was very fond of him.’

‘Ah, yes! I sometimes wonder whether they know after death! What do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t-I haven’t dared to think much about that sort of thing,’ said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

‘Perhaps that’s better,’ the woman answered. ‘The sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well, I won’t worry you any more.’

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low- voiced relatives, took Helen through her ‘commissions’ with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room.

Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

‘Yes-yes-I know,’ she began. ‘You’re sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You-you aren’t married, are you? Then perhaps you won’t...But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to tell some one. I can’t go on any longer like this.’

‘But please-’ Mrs Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.

In a minute,’ she said. ‘You-you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now! They really are commissions. At least several of them are.’ Her eye wandered round the room. ‘What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you think? ...Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s one, d’you see, and- and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?’

Helen nodded.

‘More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he was. He is. That’s why I do the commissions, you see. That’s all.’

‘But why do you tell me!’ Helen asked desperately.

‘Because I’m so tired of lying. Tired of lying-always lying-year in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ‘em and I’ve got to think ‘em, always. You don’t know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been-the one real thing-the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!’

‘How many years?’ Helen asked.

‘Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I’ve gone to him eight times, since. Tomorrow’ll make the ninth, and- and I can’t-I can’t go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you understand! It doesn’t matter about me. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn’t worthy of him. So I-I had to tell you. I can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t.’

She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: ‘Oh, my dear! My-’ Mrs Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled.

‘My God!’ said she. ‘Is that how you take it!’

Helen could not speak, and the woman went out; but it a long while before Helen was able to sleep.

Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundred yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones-evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘Lieutenant Michael Turrell-my nephew,’ said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and I will show you where your son lies.’

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.

The Burden

ONE grief on me is laid

  Each day of every year.

Wherein no soul can aid.

  Whereof no soul can hear:

Whereto no end is seen

  Except to grieve again-

Ah, Mary Magdalene.

  Where is there greater pain?

To dream on dear disgrace

  Each hour of every day-

To bring no honest face

  To aught I do or say:

To lie from morn till e’en-

  To know my lies are vain-

Ah, Mary Magdalene.

  Where can be greater pain?

To watch my steadfast fear

  Attend my every way

Each day of every year-

  Each hour of every day

To burn, and chill between-

  To quake and rage again-

Ah, Mary Magdalene.

  Where shall be greater pain?

One grave to me was given-

  To guard till Judgment Day-

But God looked down from Heaven

  And rolled the Stone away!

One day of all my years-

  One hour of that one day-

His Angel saw my tears

  And rolled the Stone away!

THY SERVANT A DOG

This collection of seven stories was first published in 1930.

CONTENTS

‘THY SERVANT A DOG’

THE GREAT PLAY HUNT

TOBY DOG

THE SUPPLICATION OF THE BLACK ABERDEEN

A SEA DOG

HIS APOLOGIES

‘TEEM’: A TREASURE-HUNTER

‘THY SERVANT A DOG’

PLEASE may I come in? I am Boots. I am son of Kildonan Brogue — Champion Reserve — V.H.C. — very fine dog; and no-dash-parlour-tricks, Master says, except I can sit-up, and put paws over nose. It is called ‘Making Beseech.’ Look! I do it out of own head. Not for telling... This is Flat-in-Town. I live here with Own God. I tell:

I

There is walk-in-Park-on-lead. There is off-lead-when-we-come-to-the- grass. There is ‘nother dog, like me, off-lead. I say: ‘Name?’ He says: ‘Slippers.’ He says: ‘Name?’ I say: ‘Boots.’ He says: ‘I am fine dog. I have Own God called Miss.’ I say: ‘I am very-fine dog. I have Own God called Master.’ There is walk-round-on-toes. There is Scrap. There is Proper Whacking. Master says ‘Sorry! Awfully sorry! All my fault.’ Slippers’s Miss says: ‘Sorry! My fault too.’ Master says: ‘So glad it is both our faults. Nice little dog, Slippers.’ Slippers’s Miss says ‘Do you really think so?’ Then I made ‘Beseech.’ Slippers’s Miss says: ‘Darling little dog, Boots.’ There is on-lead, again, and walking with Slippers behind both Own Gods, long times... Slippers is not-half-bad dog. Very like me. ‘Make-fine-pair, Master says...There is more walkings in Park. There is Slippers and his Miss in that place, too. Own Gods walk together — like on-lead. We walk behind. We are tired. We yawn. Own Gods do not look. Own Gods do not hear...They have put white bows on our collars. We do not like. We have pulled off. They are bad to eat...

II

Now we live at Place-in-Country, next to Park, and plenty good smells. We are all here. Please look! I count paws. There is me, and own God- Master. There is Slippers, and Slippers’s Own God-Missus. That is all my paws. There is Adar. There is Cookey. There is James-with-Kennel- that-Moves. There is Harry-with-Spade. That is all Slippers’s paws. I cannot count more; but there is Maids, and Odd-man, and Postey, and Telegrams, and Pleasm-butcher and People. And there is Kitchen Cat which runs up Wall. Bad! Bad! Bad!