Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (17 page)

‘What a cold-blooded barbarian it is! Don’t hit a woman when she’s down. Can’t we do anything? She was simply dropping with starvation.

She almost fell into my arms, and when she got to the food she ate like a wild beast. It was horrible.’

‘I can give her money, which she would probably spend in drinks. Is she going to sleep for ever?’

The girl opened her eyes and glared at the men between terror and effrontery.

‘Feeling better?’ said Torpenhow.

‘Yes. Thank you. There aren’t many gentlemen that are as kind as you are. Thank you.’

‘When did you leave service?’ said Dick, who had been watching the scarred and chapped hands.

‘How did you know I was in service? I was. General servant. I didn’t like it.’

‘And how do you like being your own mistress?’

‘Do I look as if I liked it?’

‘I suppose not. One moment. Would you be good enough to turn your face to the window?’

The girl obeyed, and Dick watched her face keenly, — so keenly that she made as if to hide behind Torpenhow.

‘The eyes have it,’ said Dick, walking up and down. ‘They are superb eyes for my business. And, after all, every head depends on the eyes. This has been sent from heaven to make up for — what was taken away. Now the weekly strain’s off my shoulders, I can get to work in earnest.

Evidently sent from heaven. Yes. Raise your chin a little, please.’

‘Gently, old man, gently. You’re scaring somebody out of her wits,’ said Torpenhow, who could see the girl trembling.

‘Don’t let him hit me! Oh, please don’t let him hit me! I’ve been hit cruel to-day because I spoke to a man. Don’t let him look at me like that! He’s reg’lar wicked, that one. Don’t let him look at me like that, neither! Oh, I feel as if I hadn’t nothing on when he looks at me like that!’

The overstrained nerves in the frail body gave way, and the girl wept like a little child and began to scream. Dick threw open the window, and Torpenhow flung the door back.

‘There you are,’ said Dick, soothingly. ‘My friend here can call for a policeman, and you can run through that door. Nobody is going to hurt you.’

The girl sobbed convulsively for a few minutes, and then tried to laugh.

‘Nothing in the world to hurt you. Now listen to me for a minute. I’m what they call an artist by profession. You know what artists do?’

‘They draw the things in red and black ink on the pop-shop labels.’

‘I dare say. I haven’t risen to pop-shop labels yet. Those are done by the Academicians. I want to draw your head.’

‘What for?’

‘Because it’s pretty. That is why you will come to the room across the landing three times a week at eleven in the morning, and I’ll give you three quid a week just for sitting still and being drawn. And there’s a quid on account.’

‘For nothing? Oh, my!’ The girl turned the sovereign in her hand, and with more foolish tears, ‘Ain’t neither o’ you two gentlemen afraid of my bilking you?’

‘No. Only ugly girls do that. Try and remember this place. And, by the way, what’s your name?’

‘I’m Bessic, — Bessie —  — It’s no use giving the rest. Bessie Broke, — Stone-broke, if you like. What’s your names? But there, — no one ever gives the real ones.’

Dick consulted Torpenhow with his eyes.

‘My name’s Heldar, and my friend’s called Torpenhow; and you must be sure to come here. Where do you live?’

‘South-the-water, — one room, — five and sixpence a week. Aren’t you making fun of me about that three quid?’

‘You’ll see later on. And, Bessie, next time you come, remember, you needn’t wear that paint. It’s bad for the skin, and I have all the colours you’ll be likely to need.’

Bessie withdrew, scrubbing her cheek with a ragged pocket-handkerchief. The two men looked at each other.

‘You’re a man,’ said Torpenhow.

‘I’m afraid I’ve been a fool. It isn’t our business to run about the earth reforming Bessie Brokes. And a woman of any kind has no right on this landing.’

‘Perhaps she won’t come back.’

‘She will if she thinks she can get food and warmth here. I know she will, worse luck. But remember, old man, she isn’t a woman; she’s my model; and be careful.’

‘The idea! She’s a dissolute little scarecrow, — a gutter-snippet and nothing more.’

‘So you think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear. That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won’t know her in a week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She’ll be too happy and smiling for my purposes.’

‘But surely you’re not taking her out of charity? — to please me?’

‘I am not in the habit of playing with hot coals to please anybody. She has been sent from heaven, as I may have remarked before, to help me with my Melancolia.’

‘Never heard a word about the lady before.’

‘What’s the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at him in words? You ought to know what I’m thinking about. You’ve heard me grunt lately?’

‘Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad ‘baccy to wicked dealers. And I don’t think I’ve been much in your confidence for some time.’

‘It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that it meant the Melancolia.’ Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the room, keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, ‘Now don’t you see it? Bessie’s abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one or two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my experience lately. Likewise some orange and black, — two keys of each. But I can’t explain on an empty stomach.’

‘It sounds mad enough. You’d better stick to your soldiers, Dick, instead of maundering about heads and eyes and experiences.’

‘Think so?’ Dick began to dance on his heels, singing —

‘They’re as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash, You ought to ‘ear the way they laugh an’ joke; They are tricky an’ they’re funny when they’ve got the ready money, — Ow! but see ‘em when they’re all stone-broke.’

Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a four-sheet letter of counsel and encouragement, and registered an oath that he would get to work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.

The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected to sit still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio with freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and the release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies of her head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia would not arrive.

‘What a mess you keep your things in!’ said Bessie, some days later, when she felt herself thoroughly at home. ‘I s’pose your clothes are just as bad.

Gentlemen never think what buttons and tape are made for.’

‘I buy things to wear, and wear ‘em till they go to pieces. I don’t know what Torpenhow does.’

Bessie made diligent inquiry in the latter’s room, and unearthed a bale of disreputable socks. ‘Some of these I’ll mend now,’ she said, ‘and some I’ll take home. D’you know, I sit all day long at home doing nothing, just like a lady, and no more noticing them other girls in the house than if they was so many flies. I don’t have any unnecessary words, but I put ‘em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me. No; it’s quite nice these days. I lock my door, and they can only call me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady, mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out both ends at once.’

‘Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks mended. Nothing from Torp except a nod on the landing now and again, and all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,’ thought Dick; and he looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had transformed the girl, as Dick knew they would.

‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t. You look reg’lar bad when you look that way. You don’t think much o’ me, do you?’

‘That depends on how you behave.’

Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them tea as though she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these occasions Dick caught Torpenhow’s eyes fixed on the trim little figure, and because Bessie’’ flittings about the room made Dick ardently long for Maisie, he realised whither Torpenhow’s thoughts were tending. And Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow’s linen. She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the landing.

‘I was a great fool,’ Dick said to himself. ‘I know what red firelight looks like when a man’s tramping through a strange town; and ours is a lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn’t feel that sometimes. But I can’t order Bessie away. That’s the worst of beginning things. One never knows where they stop.’

One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light, Dick was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow’s room. He jumped to his feet. ‘Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go in. — Oh, bless you, Binkie!’ The little terrier thrust Torpenhow’s door open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick’s chair. The door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie in the half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was kneeling by his side, and her hands were clasped across his knee.

‘I know, — I know,’ she said thickly. ‘‘Tisn’t right o’ me to do this, but I can’t help it; and you were so kind, — so kind; and you never took any notice o’ me. And I’ve mended all your things so carefully, — I did. Oh, please, ‘tisn’t as if I was asking you to marry me. I wouldn’t think of it.

But you — couldn’t you take and live with me till Miss Right comes along? I’m only Miss Wrong, I know, but I’d work my hands to the bare bone for you. And I’m not ugly to look at. Say you will!’

Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow’s voice in reply — ’But look here. It’s no use. I’m liable to be ordered off anywhere at a minute’s notice if a war breaks out. At a minute’s notice — dear.’

‘What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. ‘Tisn’t much I’m asking, and — you don’t know how good I can cook.’ She had put an arm round his neck and was drawing his head down.

‘Until — I — go, then.’

‘Torp,’ said Dick, across the landing. He could hardly steady his voice.

‘Come here a minute, old man. I’m in trouble’ — ’Heaven send he’ll listen to me!’ There was something very like an oath from Bessie’s lips. She was afraid of Dick, and disappeared down the staircase in panic, but it seemed an age before Torpenhow entered the studio. He went to the mantelpiece, buried his head on his arms, and groaned like a wounded bull.

‘What the devil right have you to interfere?’ he said, at last.

‘Who’s interfering with which? Your own sense told you long ago you couldn’t be such a fool. It was a tough rack, St. Anthony, but you’re all right now.’

‘I oughtn’t to have seen her moving about these rooms as if they belonged to her. That’s what upset me. It gives a lonely man a sort of hankering, doesn’t it?’ said Torpenhow, piteously.

‘Now you talk sense. It does. But, since you aren’t in a condition to discuss the disadvantages of double housekeeping, do you know what you’re going to do?’

‘I don’t. I wish I did.’

‘You’re going away for a season on a brilliant tour to regain tone. You’re going to Brighton, or Scarborough, or Prawle Point, to see the ships go by. And you’re going at once. Isn’t it odd? I’ll take care of Binkie, but out you go immediately. Never resist the devil. He holds the bank. Fly from him. Pack your things and go.’

‘I believe you’re right. Where shall I go?’

‘And you call yourself a special correspondent! Pack first and inquire afterwards.’

An hour later Torpenhow was despatched into the night for a hansom.

‘You’ll probably think of some place to go to while you’re moving,’ said Dick. ‘On to Euston, to begin with, and — oh yes — get drunk to-night.’

He returned to the studio, and lighted more candles, for he found the room very dark.

‘Oh, you Jezebel! you futile little Jezebel! Won’t you hate me to-morrow! — Binkie, come here.’

Binkie turned over on his back on the hearth-rug, and Dick stirred him with a meditative foot.

‘I said she was not immoral. I was wrong. She said she could cook. That showed premeditated sin. Oh, Binkie, if you are a man you will go to perdition; but if you are a woman, and say that you can cook, you will go to a much worse place.’

CHAPTER X

What’s you that follows at my side? —

The foe that ye must fight, my lord. —

That hirples swift as I can ride? —

The shadow of the night, my lord. —

Then wheel my horse against the foe! —

He’s down and overpast, my lord.

Ye war against the sunset glow;

The darkness gathers fast, my lord.

— The Fight of Heriot’s Ford.

‘THIS is a cheerful life,’ said Dick, some days later. ‘Torp’s away; Bessie hates me; I can’t get at the notion of the Melancolia; Maisie’s letters are scrappy; and I believe I have indigestion. What give a man pains across the head and spots before his eyes, Binkie? Shall us take some liver pills?’

Dick had just gone through a lively scene with Bessie. She had for the fiftieth time reproached him for sending Torpenhow away. She explained her enduring hatred for Dick, and made it clear to him that she only sat for the sake of his money. ‘And Mr. Torpenhow’s ten times a better man than you,’ she concluded.

‘He is. That’s why he went away. I should have stayed and made love to you.’

The girl sat with her chin on her hand, scowling. ‘To me! I’d like to catch you! If I wasn’t afraid o’ being hung I’d kill you. That’s what I’d do.