Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (818 page)

to Chisto saying: “Forgive the interruption. I am not always master of my time, but you were about to observe, my dear confrere...?” Then the play began. Out of compliment to Chisto, Apis chose as his objective (every bull varies in this respect) the inner edge of the cloak-that nearest to the man’s body. This allows but a few millimetres clearance in charging. But Apis trusted himself as Chisto trusted him, and, this time, he conformed to the man, with inimitable judgment and temper. He allowed himself to be played into the shadow or the sun, as the delighted audience demanded. He raged enormously; he feigned defeat; he despaired in statuesque abandon, and thence flashed into fresh paroxysms of wrath-but always with the detachment of the true artist who knows he is but the vessel of an emotion whence others, not he, must drink. And never once did he forget that honest Chisto’s cloak was to him the gauge by which to spare even a hair on the skin. He inspired Chisto too. My God! His youth returned to that meritorious beef-sticker-the desire, the grace, and the beauty of his early dreams. One could almost see that girl of the past for whom he was rising, rising to these present heights of skill and daring. It was his hour too-a miraculous hour of dawn returned to gild the sunset. All he knew was at Apis’ disposition. Apis acknowledged it with all that he had learned at home, at Arles and in his lonely murders on our grazing-grounds. He flowed round Chisto like a river of death-round his knees, leaping at his shoulders, kicking just clear of one side or the other of his head; behind his back, hissing as he shaved by; and once or twice- inimitable!-he reared wholly up before him while Chisto slipped back from beneath the avalanche of that instructed body. Those two, my dear friend, held five thousand people dumb with no sound but of their breathings-regular as pumps. It was unbearable. Beast and man realised together that we needed a change of note-a detente. They relaxed to pure buffoonery. Chisto fell back and talked to him outrageously. Apis pretended he had never heard such language. The audience howled with delight. Chisto slapped him; he took liberties with his short tail, to the end of which he clung while Apis pirouetted; he played about him in all postures; he had become the herdsman again-gross, careless, brutal, but comprehending. Yet Apis was always the more consummate clown. All that time (Christophe and I saw it) Apis drew off towards the gates of the toril where so many bulls enter but-have you ever heard of one that returned? We knew that Apis knew that as he had saved Chisto, so Chisto would save him. Life is sweet to us all; to the artist who lives many lives in one, sweetest. Chisto did not fail him. At the last, when none could laugh any longer, the man threw his cape across the bull’s back, his arm round his neck. He flung up a hand at the gate, as Villamarti, young and commanding but not a herdsman, might have raised it, and he cried: “Gentlemen, open to me and my honourable little donkey.” They opened-I have misjudged Spaniards in my time!-those gates opened to the man and the bull together, and closed behind them. And then? From the Mayor to the Guardia Civil they went mad for five minutes, till the trumpets blew and the fifth bull rushed out-an unthinking black Andalusian. I suppose some one killed him. My friend, my very dear friend, to whom I have opened my heart, I confess that I did not watch. Christophe and I, we were weeping together like children of the same Mother. Shall we drink to Her?’

THE WISH HOUSE

THE new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (Ts softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ‘bus brought Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt- patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.

‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’

‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’

Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’

Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly-she never hurried-and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs. Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’

‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs. Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’

‘This ‘un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’

‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it...’ Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday’ shopping’ ‘bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs. Ashcroft observed.

‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny-three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller-ain’t it?’

‘‘Tis for Arthur-my Jane’s eldest.’

‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’

‘No. ‘Tis a picnic-basket.’

‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ‘im-pore fool me!’

‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

‘He do. ‘No odds ‘twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ‘Take all an’ give naught-an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’

‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs. Ashcroft said.

‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ‘im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’

‘I lay he charged her, then.’

‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’

‘Tck!’

Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.

‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs. Ashcroft explained.

‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ‘oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’

‘They must look arter theirselves-’same as we did.’ Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘What’s in your head now?’

‘Dunno...But it come over me, sudden-like-about dat woman from Rye — I’ve slipped the name-Barnsley, wadn’t it?’

‘Batten-Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’

‘That’s it-Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay- fork-’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene-for stealin’ her man.’

‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

‘I did — an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’

‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds-Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’

‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs. Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ‘twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ‘Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’

‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’

‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but-him! Why, ‘tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!...Eh?’

‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so-bein’ barren-like, themselves.’

‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!...An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this — ’

‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs. Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’

Mrs. Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs. Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’

‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.

‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs. Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs. Fettley spoke with real affection.

‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ‘eart left me still,’ Mrs. Ashcroft returned.

‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’

‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs. Ashcroft’s answer.

‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. ‘Takes two sticks to make a fire.’

Mrs. Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motortraffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

Mrs. Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ‘is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns-let be I ‘adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ‘is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ‘bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ‘ome past endurance. So I ‘aven’t even that to stay me.’

‘But you’ve ‘ad your satisfactions?’

‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ‘e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’

‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ‘Nother cup o’ tea?’

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs. Ashcroft, her elbows on the teatable, and her sick leg propped on a stool...

‘Well I never! But what did your ‘usband say to that?’ Mrs. Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.

‘‘E said I might go where I pleased for all of ‘im. But seein’ ‘e was bedrid, I said I’d ‘tend ‘im out. ‘E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ‘im in that state. ‘E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ‘e propped ‘imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.” “An’ you?” I says, for you know, Liz, what a rover ‘e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ‘e, “but I’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday...An’ yet I’d set a heap by him-one time or- did I ever?’

‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs. Fettley ventured.

‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs. Marshall in Lunnon-which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid-Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ‘em in service between whiles, for years-when we wanted money, or — or my ‘usband was away — on occasion.’