Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (752 page)

With all these preoccupations and demands, John’s days slipped away like blanks beneath a stamping-machine. But, somehow, he picked up a slight cold one Sunday, and Shingle, who had been given the evening off with a friend, had reduced the neglected whisky to a quarter bottle. John eked it out with hot water, sugar, and three aspirins, and told Dinah that she might play with Ginger while he kept himself housed.

He was comfortably perspiring at 7 P.M., when he dozed on the sofa, and only woke for Sunday cold supper at eight. Dinah did not enter with it, and Shingle’s sister, who had small time-sense, said that she had seen her with Ginger mousing in the wash-house ‘just now.’ So he did not draw the house for her till past nine; nor finish his search of the barns, flashing his torch in all corners, till later. Then he hurried to the kitchen and told his tale.

‘She’ve been wired,’ said the cowman. ‘She’ve been poaching along with Ginger, an’ she’ve been caught in a rabbit-wire. Ginger wouldn’t never be caught — twice. It’s different with dogs as cats. That’s it. Wired.’

‘Where, think you?’

‘All about the woods somewhere — same’s Jock did when ‘e were young. But ‘e give tongue, so I dug ‘im out.’

At the sound of his name, the old ruffian pushed his head knee-high into the talk.

‘She’d answer me from anywhere,’ said John.

‘Then you’d best look for her. I’d go with ‘e, but it’s foot-washin’s for me to-night. An’ take you a graf’ along. I’ll tell Shingle to sit up till you come back. ‘E ain’t ‘ome yet.’

Shingle’s sister passed him a rabbiting-spade out of the wash-house, and John went forth with three aspirins and some whisky inside him, and all the woods and fields under the stars to make choice of. He felt Jock’s nose in his hand and appealed to him desperately.

‘It’s Dinah! Go seek, boy! It’s Dinah! Seek!’

Jock seemed unconcerned, but he slouched towards the brook, and turned through wet grasses while John, calling and calling, followed him towards a line of hanging woods that clothed one side of the valley. Stumps presently tripped him, and John fell several times but Jock waited. Last, for a long while, they quartered a full-grown wood, with the spotlight of his torch making the fallen stuff look like coils of half-buried wire between the Lines. He heard a church clock strike eleven as he drew breath under the top of the rise, and wondered a little why a spire should still be standing. Then he remembered that this was England, and strained his ears to make sure that his calls were not answered. The collie nosed ground and moved on, evidently interested. John thought he heard a reply at last; plunged forward without using his torch, fell, and rolled down a steep bank, breathless and battered, into a darkness deeper than that of the woods. Jock followed him whimpering. He called. He heard Dinah’s smothered whine — switched on the light and discovered a small cliff of sandstone ribbed with tree-roots. He moved along the cliff towards the sound, till his light showed him a miniature canon in its face, which he entered. In a few yards the cleft became a tunnel, but — he was calling softly now — there was no doubt that Dinah lay somewhere at the end. He held on till the lowering roof forced him to knees and elbows and, presently, stomach. Dinah’s whimper continued. He wriggled forward again, and his shoulders brushed either side of the downward- sloping way. Then every forgotten or hardly-held-back horror of his two years’ underground-work returned on him with the imagined weight of all earth overhead.

A handful of sand dropped from the roof and crumbled between his neck and coat-collar. He had but to retire an inch or two and the pressure would be relieved, and he could widen the bottlenecked passage with his spade; but terror beyond all terrors froze him, even though Dinah was appealing somewhere a little ahead. Release came in a spasm and a wrench that drove him backward six feet like a prawn. Then he realised that it would be all to do again, and shook as with fever.

At last his jerking hand steadied on the handle of the spade. He poked it ahead of him, at halfarm’s length, and gingerly pared the sides of the tunnel, raking the sand out with his hands, and passing it under his body in the old way of the old work, till he estimated, by torchlight, that he might move up a little without being pinned again. By some special mercy the tunnel beyond the section he had enlarged grew wider. He followed on, flashed once more, and saw Dinah, her head pressed close to the right-hand side of it, her white-rimmed eyes green and set.

He pushed himself forward over a last pit of terror, and touched her. There was no wire, but a tough, thumb-shaped root, sticking out of the sand-wall, had hooked itself into her collar, sprung backwards and upwards, and locked her helplessly by the neck. His fingers trembled so at first that he could not follow the kinks of it. He shut his eyes, and humoured it out by touch, as he had done with wires and cables deep down under the Ridge; grabbed Dinah, and pushed himself back to the free air outside.

There he was sick as never he had been in all his days or nights. When he was faintly restored, he saw Dinah sitting beside Jock, wondering why her Lover — King — and God did all these noisy things.

On his feet at last, he crawled out of the sandpit that had been a warren, badger’s holt, and foxes’ larder for generations, and wavered homeward, empty as a drum, cut, bruised, bleeding, streaked with dirt and raffle that had caked where the sweat had dried on him, knees bending both ways, and eyes unable to judge distance. Nothing in his working past had searched him to these depths. But Dinah was in his arms, and it was she who announced their return to the stilllighted farm at the hour of 1 A.M.

Shingle opened the door, and without a word steered him into the wash- house, where the copper was lit. He began to explain, but was pushed into a tub of very hot water, with a blanket that came to his chin, and a drink of something or other at his lips. Afterwards he was helped upstairs to a bed with hot bricks in it, and there all the world, and Dinah licking his nose, passed from him for the rest of the night and well into the next day again. But Shingle’s sister was shocked when she saw his torn and filthy clothing thrown down in the wash-house.

‘‘Looks as if ‘e’d been spending a night between the Lines, don’t it?’ her brother commented. ‘‘Asn’t ‘alf sweated either. Three hours of it, Marg’ret, an’ rainin’ on an’ off. Must ‘ave been all Messines with ‘im till ‘e found ‘er.’

‘An’ ‘e done it for ‘is dog! What wouldn’t ‘e do for ‘is woman!’ said she.

‘Yes. You would take it that way. I’m thinkin’ about ‘im.’

‘Ooh! Look at the blood. ‘E must ‘ave cut ‘isself proper.’

‘I went over ‘im for scratches before breakfast. Even the iodine didn’t wake ‘im. ‘Got ‘is tray ready?’

Shingle bore it up, and Dinah’s impenitent greeting of him roused her master.

‘She wasn’t wired. She knew too much for that,’ were John’s first words. ‘She was hung up by her collar in an old bury. Jock showed me, an’ I got her out. I fell about a bit, though. It was pitch-black; quite like old times.’

He went into details between mouthfuls, and Dinah between mouthfuls corroborated.

‘So, you see, it wasn’t her fault,’ John concluded.

‘That’s what they all say,’ Shingle broke in unguardedly.

‘Do they? That shows they know Ginger. Dinah, you aren’t to play with Ginger any more. Do you hear me?’

She knew it was reproof, as she flattened beneath the hand that caressed it away.

‘Oh, and look here, Shingle,’ John sat up and stretched himself. ‘It’s about, time we went to work again. Perhaps you’ve noticed I have not been quite fit lately?’

‘What with Dinah and all? — ye-es, sir — a bit,’ Shingle assented.

‘Anyhow, I’ve got it off the books now. It’s behind me.’

‘Very glad to ‘ear it. Shall I fill the bath?’

‘No. We’ll make our last night’s boil do for to-day. Lay out some sort of town-kit while I shave. I expect my last night’s rig is pretty well expended, isn’t it?’

‘There ain’t one complete scarecrow in the ‘ole entire aggregate.’

‘‘Don’t wonder. Look here, Shingle, I was underground a full half-hour before I could get at her. I should have said there wasn’t enough money ‘top of earth to make me do that over again. But I did. Damn it — I did! Didn’t I, Dinah? “Oh, show me a liddle where to find a rose.” Get off the bed and fetch my slippers, young woman! “To give to ma honey chi-ile.” No; put ‘em down; don’t play with ‘em!’

He began to strop his razor, always a mystery to Dinah. ‘Shingle, this is the most damnable Government that was ever pupped. Look here! If I die to-morrow, they take about a third of the cash out of the Works for Death-duties, counting four per cent. interest on the money from the time I begin to set. That means one-third of our working capital, which is doing something, will be dug out from under us, so’s these dam’ politicians can buy more dole-votes with it. An’ I’ve got to waste my thinkin’ time, which means making more employment — (I say, this razor pulls like a road-scraper) — I’ve got to knock off my payin’ work and spend Heaven knows how many days reorganising into companies, so that we shan’t have our business knocked out if I go under. It’s the time I grudge, Shingle. And we’ve got to make that up too, Dinah!’

The rasp of the blade on the chin set her tail thumping as usual. When he was dressed, she went out to patronise Jock and Ginger by the barn, where Shingle picked her up later, with orders to jump into the Hizzer-Swizzer at once and return to duty. She made her regulation walk round him, one foot crossing the other, and her tongue out sideways.

‘Yes, that’s all right, Dinah! You’re a bitch You’re all the bitch that ever was, but you’re a useful bitch. That’s where you ain’t like some of ‘em. Now come and say good-bye to your friends.’

He took her to the kitchen to bid farewell to the cowman and his wife. The woman looked at her coldly as she coquetted with the man.

‘She’ll get ‘er come-uppance one of these days,’ she said when the car was reported.

‘What for? She’s as good a little thing as ever was. ‘Twas Ginger’s fault,’ said the cowman.

‘I ain’t thinkin’ of her,’ she replied. ‘I’m thinkin’ she may ‘ave started a fire that someone else’ll warm at some fine day. It ‘appens — it ‘appens — as mother used to say when we was all young.’

Four-Feet

I have done mostly what most men do.

And pushed it out of my mind;

But I can’t forget, if I wanted to.

Four-Feet trotting behind.

Day after day, the whole day through —

Wherever my road inclined —

Four-Feet said, ‘I am coming with you!’

And trotted along behind.

Now I must go by some other round, —

Which I shall never find —

Somewhere that does not carry the sound

Of Four-Feet trotting behind.

The Totem

ERE the mother’s milk had dried

  On my lips, the Brethren came —

Tore me from my nurse’s side.

  And bestowed on me a name

Infamously overtrue —

  Such as ‘Bunny,’ ‘Stinker,’ ‘Podge’; —

But, whatever I should do.

  Mine for ever in the Lodge.

Then they taught with palm and toe —

  Then I learned with yelps and tears —

All the Armoured Man should know

  Through his Seven Secret Years...

Last, oppressing as oppressed.

  I was loosed to go my ways

With a Totem on my breast

  Governing my nights and days —

Ancient and unbribeable.

  By the virtue of its Name —

Which, however oft I fell

  Lashed me back into The Game.

And the World, that never knew.

  Saw no more beneath my chin

Than a patch of rainbow-hue.

  Mixed as Life and crude as Sin.

The Tie

This tale was written so long ago that I have honestly forgotten how much of it, if any, may be my own and how much is in Christopher Mervyn’s own words. But it is certain that Mervyn is dead, with Blore and Warrender. Macworth died ten years ago of tubercle after gas. Morrison Haylock’s father is a Peer of the Realm, and every trace of the 26th Battalion (Birdfanciers), Welland and Withan Rifles, has vanished. Nothing, unless some sort of useless moral, remains of a tale of 1915.

MEN, in war, will instinctively act as they have been taught to do in peace — for a certain time. The wise man is he who knows when that time is up. Mr. Morrison Haylock (Vertue and Pavey, Contractors, E.C.) did not know. But I give the tale, with a few omissions for decency’s sake, from the pen of Christopher Mervyn, anciently a schoolmaster of an ancient foundation, and later Lieutenant in the 26th (Birdfanciers) Battalion, Welland and Withan Rifles, quartered at Blagstowe. He wrote, being then second Lieutenant: —