Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (413 page)

So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the famine-sheds were almost empty.

“You see!” said Jim. “There isn’t much more to do. ‘Better ride up and see the wife. They’ve pitched a tent for you. Dinner’s at seven. I’ve some work here.”

Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: “My word, how pulled down you look!”

“I’ve had a touch of fever. You don’t look very well yourself.”

“Oh, I’m fit enough. We’ve stamped it out. I suppose you know?”

Scott nodded. “We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told me.”

“Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha’n’t you be glad to go back? I can smell the wood-smoke already”; William sniffed. “We shall be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don’t suppose even the Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the new year?”

“It seems hundreds of years ago — the Punjab and all that — doesn’t it? Are you glad you came?”

“Now it’s all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.”

“Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?”

“I managed it somehow — after you taught me. ‘Remember?”

Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs. Jim.

“That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk. I thought perhaps you’d be coming here when you were transferred to the Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you didn’t.”

“I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle of a march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few minutes, and I couldn’t get ‘em over the ground till ten o’clock that night. I wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn’t you?”

“I — believe — I — did,” said William, facing him with level eyes. “She was no longer white.”

“Did you understand?”

“Why you didn’t ride in? Of course I did.”

“Why?”

“Because you couldn’t, of course. I knew that.”

“Did you care?”

“If you had come in — but I knew you wouldn’t — but if you had, I should have cared a great deal. You know I should.”

“Thank God I didn’t! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn’t trust myself to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging ‘em over here, don’t you know?”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” said William, contentedly. “Here’s your fifty.”

Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy notes. Its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head.

“And you knew, too, didn’t you?” said William, in a new voice.

“No, on my honour, I didn’t. I hadn’t the — the cheek to expect anything of the kind, except... I say, were you out riding anywhere the day I passed by to Khanda?”

William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a good deed.

“Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the — ”

“Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you came up from the mullah by the temple — just enough to be sure that you were all right. D’ you care?”

This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk of the dining-tent, and, because William’s knees were trembling under her, she had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to comfort her, she needing nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled abroad. There are fevers and fevers.

But it was worse — much worse — the strained, eye-shirking talk at dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more fever.

Apropos of these things and some others William said: “Being engaged is abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We must be thankful we’ve lots of things to do.”

“Things to do!” said Jim, when that was reported to him. “They’re neither of them any good any more. I can’t get five hours’ work a day out of Scott. He’s in the clouds half the time.”

“Oh, but they’re so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my heart when they go. Can’t you do anything for him?”

“I’ve given the Government the impression — at least, I hope I have — that he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants is to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William’s just as bad. Have you ever heard ‘em talking of barrage and aprons and waste-water? It’s their style of spooning, I suppose.”

Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. “Ah, that’s in the intervals — bless ‘em.”

And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in the Eight Districts.

Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern plains, as the mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge. William, wrapped in a poshteen — a silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough astrakhan — looked out with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of pagodas and palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with. Here was the land she knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she understood, among folk of her own caste and mind.

They were picking them up at almost every station now — men and women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William’s, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on the platforms as she walked up and down to get warm, visiting from carriage to carriage and everywhere being congratulated. Scott was with the bachelors at the far end of the train, where they chaffed him mercilessly about feeding babies and milking goats; but from time to time he would stroll up to William’s window, and murmur: “Good enough, isn’t it?” and William would answer with sighs of pure delight: “Good enough, indeed.” The large open names of the home towns were good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur, they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders — visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the country.

It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their friends. She and Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of it.

About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over from the Club to play “Waits,” and that was a surprise the Stewards had arranged — before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into “Good King Wenceslaus,” and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with her foot:

             “Mark my footsteps well, my page,

                Tread thou in them boldly.

              Thou shalt feel the winter’s rage

                Freeze thy blood less coldly!”

“Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn’t it pretty, coming out of the dark in that way? Look — look down. There’s Mrs. Gregory wiping her eyes!”

“It’s like Home, rather,” said Scott. “I remember — ”

“Hsh! Listen! — dear.” And it began again:

             “When shepherds watched their flocks by night — ”

“A-h-h!” said William, drawing closer to Scott.

              “All seated on the ground,

               The Angel of the Lord came down,

               And glory shone around.

              ‘Fear not,’ said he (for mighty dread

               Had seized their troubled mind);

              ‘Glad tidings of great joy I bring

               To you and all mankind.’”

This time it was William that wiped her eyes.

.007

A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman’s helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial — he had said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane — the big world was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him. He looked at the semicircle of bold, unwinking headlights, heard the low purr and mutter of the steam mounting in the gauges — scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve lifted a little — and would have given a month’s oil for leave to crawl through his own driving-wheels into the brick ash-pit beneath him. .007 was an eight-wheeled “American” loco, slightly different from others of his type, and as he stood he was worth ten thousand dollars on the Company’s books. But if you had bought him at his own valuation, after half an hour’s waiting in the darkish, echoing round-house, you would have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents.

A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that came down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game, speaking to a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.

“Where did this thing blow in from?” he asked, with a dreamy puff of light steam.

“it’s all I can do to keep track of our makes,” was the answer, “without lookin’ after your back-numbers. Guess it’s something Peter Cooper left over when he died.”

.007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even a hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper experimented upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and water in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.

Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step in front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.

“Something’s wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher tells us anything about our stock, I think. That kid’s all right. Eustis designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain’t that good enough?”

.007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.

“We don’t use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania,” said the Consolidation. “That — er — peanut-stand is old enough and ugly enough to speak for himself.”

“He hasn’t bin spoken to yet. He’s bin spoke at. Hain’t ye any manners on the Pennsylvania?” said the switching-loco.

“You ought to be in the yard, Poney,” said the Mogul, severely. “We’re all long-haulers here.”

“That’s what you think,” the little fellow replied. “You’ll know more ‘fore the night’s out. I’ve bin down to Track 17, and the freight there — oh, Christmas!”

“I’ve trouble enough in my own division,” said a lean, light suburban loco with very shiny brake-shoes. “My commuters wouldn’t rest till they got a parlourcar. They’ve hitched it back of all, and it hauls worsen a snow-plough. I’ll snap her off someday sure, and then they’ll blame every one except their foolselves. They’ll be askin’ me to haul a vestibuled next!”

“They made you in New Jersey, didn’t they?” said Poney. “Thought so. Commuters and truck-wagons ain’t any sweet haulin’, but I tell you they’re a heap better ‘n cuttin’ out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I’ve hauled — ”

“Haul! You?” said the Mogul, contemptuously. “It’s all you can do to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I — ” he paused a little to let the words sink in — ”I handle the Flying Freight — e-leven cars worth just anything you please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull out; and I’m timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly-perishable-fragile, immediate — that’s me! Suburban traffic’s only but one degree better than switching. Express freight’s what pays.”