Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (772 page)

But Mr. Gravell, having made his fortune out of solid manures, now naturally wished to render them all unnecessary by breathing into the soil such gases as should wake its dormant powers. He believed that he had had successes with flowerpots on balconies, but he needed a larger field, and a nice country-house, where Jemmy could bring down friends for week-ends, and he could listen to them talking and watch how they deferred to his son.

On a spring day, then, Mr. Gravell drove sixty miles by appointment to a largish, comfortable house, with a hundred acres of land. These included a ravishing little dell, planted with azaleas, and screened from the tarred road by a belt of evergreens — a windless hollow, where gas could lie undisturbedly to benefit vegetation.

Thereupon he bought the place, told Jemmy what he had done, and, as usual, asked him to attend to the rest. Jemmy overhauled drains and roofs; imported the housekeeper and staff of their London house; reserved a couple of rooms for his own week-ends, and settled in beside his father. There had been some talk lately, behind the latter’s back, of increased blood-pressures, which would benefit by country life.

After a blissful honeymoon of months, Jemmy asked him whether he had met a Major Kniveat in the village, who expected his name to be pronounced ‘Kniveed,’ the t being soft in that very particular family.

‘Is there a village here? No-o, my dear. Who is he?’

‘One of the natives. You might have run across him.’

‘No. I didn’t come down here to run across people. I’m busy.’ Mr. Gravell went off to the dell as usual, to help the vegetation.

Jem had asked because Mrs. Saul, their housekeeper and a born gossip, had told him that a Major Kniveat, retired, of the Regular Army, had told everyone at the Golf Club that Mr. Gravell had bought the house for the purpose of thrusting himself into local society, and that the Major was eagerly awaiting any attempt in this direction, so that the village might show how outsiders should be treated. Jem had not dwelt on this till, at a tennis-party, he had been cross-examined by the Rector’s very direct wife as to whether his father meant to offer himself for the Bench of Justices of the Peace, or the County, District, or Parish Councils. She hinted that the Major was ambitious — in those directions. Putting two and two together, as scientific men should, Jem made the total four.

The house was burdened with a ‘home farm,’ which sent up milk, butter, and eggs, at more than London prices. That month they were making some hay. Jefferies, the working-foreman, was carrying the last field, and, though it was Saturday, when ‘work’ in England stops at noon, had cajoled his men to ‘work’ till five, promising he would pay them their wages and overtime in a field near a public-house, and remote from wives. While Mr. Gravell was busy in his dell, a woman came upon him, crying: ‘You ain’t paid your men!’

‘I don’t,’ said Mr. Gravell.

‘But I’ve got to get into town for my week-end shoppin’s. Why ain’t you paid ‘em off at noon, same as always?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t ye? Then I lay you don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. I’m goin’ right up to the Street (village), an’ I’m goin’ to tell ‘em there that this ‘ouse don’t pay its people. That’s what I’m goin’ to say, and I’ll lay they’ll believe it.’

Mr. Gravell was so sure that this was one of the things Jemmy attended to that he forgot to mention her to him. But Mrs. Jefferies’s tale ran, by way of tradesmen, gardeners, and errand-boys, through the village. After Major Kniveat had had his turn, it was common knowledge that ‘them Gravellses’ (in the higher circles, ‘those manure-dealers’) were undischarged bankrupts, who had made a practice of cheating their ‘labour’ elsewhere, but who could not hope to work that trick here. Mrs. Saul told Jem, who asked Jefferies what it meant. Jefferies apologised for the temper of his wife, who had nerves above her station, and took tonic wines to steady them, and was sorry if there had been any ‘misunderstanding.’ Jemmy, survivor of an unfeudal generation which had had all the trouble it wanted, telephoned the county town auctioneer to offer all live and dead stock on the home farm at the first autumn sales. Next, he let the fields as accommodation-land to local butchers; arranged for dairy produce to be delivered at the house by a real farm at much lower rates, and — for the North pays its debts — brought down from the main Jannockshire Works a retired foreman, who had married Jem’s nurse, to sit rent-free in the farmhouse. But angry Mr. Jefferies joined the Public Services of his country, and worked on the roads for one-and-threepence an hour at Government stroke — till he became an overseer.

In six weeks nothing remained of the Gravells’ agricultural past save one Angelique, an enormous white sow, for whom none would bid at the sales; she being stricken in years and a notorious gatecrasher. What did not yield to the judicial end of her carried away before the executive, and then she would wander far afield, where, though well- meaning as a hound-pup (for she had been the weakling of her litter and brought up in a Christian kitchen) her face and figure were against her with strangers. That was why she was indicted by a local body — on Major Kniveat’s clamour — for obstructing a right-of-way by terrifying foot-passengers — three summer London Lady lodgers, to wit. They blocked her most-used gaps with barb-wire, which tickled her pleasantly, and she broke out again and again, till the local body, harried by the Major, indicted Mr. Gravell once more as proprietor of a public nuisance.

After this, she was kept in a solid brick sty at the home farm, where Mr. and Mrs. Enoch, the childless couple from the Jannockshire Works, made much of her. At intervals she would be let out to test stock- proof fencing or gates; when, often, Jemmy and his young friends would be judges, and her prize a cabbage.

Father and son passed a pleasant autumn together, varied by visits to town, and visits from young men who never showed up at church. But the imported staff, headed by Mrs. Saul, went there regularly for the honour of the establishment and to catch neighbourly comments after divine service. They heard, for a fact, that Mr. Gravell had ‘cohabitated’ with a person of colour, which explained his son’s Asiatic complexion.

‘All right,’ said Jemmy to Mrs. Saul, who was full of it. ‘Don’t let it get round to Dad, that’s all.’

‘And that Major Kniveat at their nasty little cat-parties he calls you “The ‘Alf-Caste,”‘ Mrs. Saul insisted.

‘Nigger, if you like. Dad isn’t here for that sort of thing. He doesn’t know there is a village. Tell your wenches to keep their mouths shut, or I’ll sack ‘em.’

On Saturday of the next week-end, when Mr. Gravell had gone to bed, Jemmy told the tale to Kit Birtle — all but his own brother. Kit was the son of Jem’s godfather and brevet-uncle, Sir Harry Birtle, who was the Works’ leading lawyer — and he ranked therefore as brevet-nephew to Mr. Gravell, and kept changes of raiment at his house. He had done time as an Army doctor, and now specialised in post-war afflictions visible and invisible. Jem’s point was that his own dusky colour gave an interesting clue to the composition of some gas which he had inhaled near Arras a few years before. Said Kit: ‘You do look rather a half-caste. Get yourself overhauled again by that man in France.’

‘L’Espinasse, you mean? I will, but not just yet. It ‘ud worry Dad. But talking about gas:’

Then they both talked, for they were interested in some new combinations which had produced interesting results.

‘And you might use Angelique as a control for some of it,’ Kit suggested. ‘She hasn’t any nerves.’

That brought out the tale of her doings, the footpaths that she was said to have blocked, and Major Kniveat’s public-spirited activities in general.

‘‘Can’t make him out,’ said Jem. ‘We came down here to be quiet, but this sword-merchant seems to take it as a personal insult. What’s the complex, Kit?’

‘We’ve something like it in our hamlet — a retired officer bung-full of public-spirit and simian malignity. Idleness explains a lot, but I’ve a theory it’s glands at bottom. ‘Rather noisome for you, though.’

‘Oh, Dad don’t notice anything. He hands it all over to me, and I haven’t time to fuss with the natives. What ‘ud you care for to- morrow? The golf course ain’t fit yet, but I’ve got another patent stock-gate if you like — ’

‘Angelique every time!’ said Kit, who knew her of old, and often compared her to one Harry Tate, an artist in the stage-handling of deckchairs and motor-cars.

Sunday forenoon, they loafed over to the farm, released the lady, and introduced her to the patent gate. Her preliminary search for weak points was side-splitting enough: but by the time she had tucked up, as it were, her skirts, had backed through the gate with the weight and amplitude of a docking liner, had reached her cabbage, and stood with the stalk of it, cigarette-wise, in her mouth, asking them what they thought of Auntie now, the two young men were beating on the grass with their hands. Getting her back to her sty was no small affair either, for she valued her Sunday outings, and they laughed too much to head her off quickly. As they rolled back across the fields, reviewing the show, Major Kniveat appeared on a footpath near by. It was, he had given out, part of his Sabbath works to see that public paths were not closed by newly-arrived parvenues. The two passed him, still guffawing over Angelique, and Monday morn brought by hand a letter, complaining that the Major had been publicly mocked and derided by his neighbours (there was some reference also to ‘gentlemen’) till he had been practically hooted off a right-of-way. The car was due for town in half an hour, and Jemmy spent that while in written disclaimer of any intent to offend, and apology if offence had been taken. He did not want the thing to bother his father in his absence. Major Kniveat accepted the apology, and ran about quoting it to all above the rank of road-mender, as a sample of the spirit of half-castes when frontally tackled.

Then spring bulb-catalogues began to arrive, but, in spite of them, Mr. Gravell was worried by Jemmy’s increasing duskiness; and he and Kit at last got him shipped off to L’Espinasse, the French specialist, who dealt in his kind of trouble. Mr. Gravell went with him to the South of France, where the specialist wintered, and saw him bedded down for the treatment. Thence he botanised along the heathy Italian foreshore, branched north to Nancy, where the best lilacs are bred, and so home by bulbous Holland. Altogether five weeks’ refreshing holiday. On return he found a good deal of accumulated correspondence for Jem to attend to; but, since the boy was away, he opened one letter all by himself. It was from the same local body as had written about Angelique and her misdeeds. It informed Mr. Gravell that certain trees on his property overhung the main road to an extent constituting a nuisance of which ratepayers had complained, and which he was called upon to abate within a given time. Failing this, the local body would themselves abate the said nuisance, charging him with the cost of the labour involved. It had been posted two days after he had left England.

Mr. Gravell went to look.

For twenty yards along the main road, the mangled and lopped timber laid the dell open to passing cars and charabancs. Nor was that all. Under the trees ran a low sandstone wall, which time had hidden beneath laurel and rhododendron. In dropping on to, hauling over, or stacking behind it, the limbs that were cut, the rhododendrons had been badly torn, and lengths of wall had collapsed. A raw track showed where people had already entered the dell to pick primroses. A gardener came up to him.

‘They never told me,’ the man said. ‘If they’d said a word, I could have tipped back they few branches they fussed about, and ‘twould have been done. But they said naught to nobody. They done it all in one day like, and that Major Kniveat ‘e came down the road and told ‘em what was to be done, like. They didn’t know nothing. So they did it as ‘e told ‘em. They’ve fair savaged it — them and Jefferies.’

‘So I see,’ said Mr. Gravell. Then he wrote to the Company’s lawyer, Sir Harry Birtle, his lifelong friend.

The answer ran:

‘DEAR WALTER, — I also live in Arcadia. My advice to you is not to make trouble with local authorities. They will regret that their employees have exceeded their instructions, and that will be all. This Major Kniveat of yours, not being on any public body, has no locus standi. I know the type. We have one with us. If you insist, of course, my firm will give you a losing run for your money; but you had much better come up and dine with me, and I’ll tell you pretty stories of this kind. Love to your Jem, who writes my Kit that he is bleaching out properly in France.

‘Ever as ever, HARRY.’

This was, on the whole, a relief, for, after sending the letter, Mr. Gravell saw that the weight of the campaign would fall on his son when he came back and could attend to rebuilding the wall.

So he ordered his own meals, took his car when he wanted it, instead of waiting till Jemmy should be free, and went up to the London Office of the Works with the padded arm-rest down, which was never the case when his Jemmy came along.

On his return he would visit the head of the dell before people were about, and discharge the contents of carefully stoppered phials into the traps of some two-inch land-drains, which had been laid down to carry off surplus water. These followed the contours of the slopes, and all met at the bottom of the hollow. By April he began to think that the grasses there were responding to the stimulus of the liquids that purred off softly into heavy gas, as he freed them down the traps. It cheered him, for it showed that, despite lack of early training, he was in the way to become such a scientist as his own wonderful Jemmy.