Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (744 page)

Presently, their talk nosed round hidden flat Pieces and Thin Papers. The tone was so exactly that of my Master and his Mate that I expected they would lift up the hearthstone. But theirs was in the chimney, whence the Person drew several white Pieces, which he gave to the Girl. I argued from this they had admitted me to their utmost intimacy and — I confess it — I danced like a puppy. My reward was their mirth — his specially. When the Girl laughed she coughed. But his voice warmed and possessed me before I knew it.

After night was well fallen, they went out and prepared a bed on a cot in the open, sheltered only by a large faggot-stack. The Girl disposed herself to sleep there, which astonished me. (In my lost world out- sleeping is not done, except when Persons wish to avoid Forest Guards.) The Person of the Spade then set a jug of water by the bed and, turning to reenter the house, delivered a long whistle. It was answered across the woods by the unforgettable voice of the old She of my culvert. I inserted myself at once between, and a little beneath, some of the more robust faggots.

On her silent arrival the She greeted the Girl with extravagant affection and fawned beneath her hand, till the coughings closed in uneasy slumber. Then, with no more noise than the moths of the night, she quested for me in order, she said, to tear out my throat. ‘Ma Tante,’ I replied placidly from within my fortress, ‘I do not doubt you could save yourself the trouble by swallowing me alive. But, first, tell me what I have done.’ ‘That there is My Bone,’ was the reply. It was enough! (Once in my life I had seen poor honest Pluton stand like a raging wolf between his Pierril, whom he loved, and a Forest Guard.) We use that word seldom and never lightly. Therefore, I answered, ‘I assure you she is not mine. She gives me the Black Fear.’

You know how We cannot deceive Each Other? The She accepted my statement; at the same time reviling me for my lack of appreciation — a crookedness of mind not uncommon among elderly Shes.

To distract her, I invited her to tell me her history. It appeared that the Girl had nursed her through some early distemper. Since then, the She had divided her life between her duties among sheep by day and watching, from the First Star till Break of Light, over the Girl, who, she said, also suffered from a slight distemper. This had been her existence, her joy and her devotion long before I was born. Demanding nothing more, she was prepared to back her single demand by slaughter.

Once, in my second month, when I would have run away from a very fierce frog, my friend the Vicomte told me that, at crises, it is best to go forward. On a sudden impulse I emerged from my shelter and sat beside her. There was a pause of life and death during which I had leisure to contemplate all her teeth. Fortunately, the Girl waked to drink. The She crawled to caress the hand that set down the jug, and waited till the breathing resumed. She came back to me — I had not stirred — with blazing eyes. ‘How can you dare this?’ she said. ‘But why not?’ I answered. ‘If it is not something, it is sure to be something else.’ Her fire and fury passed. ‘To whom do you say it! ‘she assented. ‘There is always something else to fear — not for myself but for My Bone yonder.’

Then began a conversation unique, I should imagine, even among Ourselves. My old, unlovely, savage Aunt, as I shall henceforth call her, was eaten alive with fears for the Girl — not so much on account of her distemper, but because of Two She-Persons-Enemies — whom she described to me minutely by Eye and Nose — one like a Ferret, the other like a Goose.

These, she said, meditated some evil to the Girl against which my Aunt and the Girl’s Father, the Person of the Spade, were helpless. The Two Enemies carried about with them certain papers, by virtue of which the Girl could be taken away from the cottage and my Aunt’s care, precisely as she had seen sheep taken out of her pasture by Persons with papers, and driven none knew whither.

The Enemies would come at intervals to the cottage in daytime (when my Aunt’s duty held her with the sheep) and always they left behind them the Taint of misery and anxiety. It was not that she feared the Enemies personally. She feared nothing except a certain Monsieur The- Law who, I understood later, cowed even her.

Naturally I sympathised. I did not know this gentilhommier de Loire, but I knew Fear. Also, the Girl was of the same stock as He who had fed and welcomed me and Whose voice had reassured. My Aunt suddenly demanded if I purposed to take up my residence with them. I would have detailed to her my adventures. She was acutely uninterested in them all except so far as they served her purposes, which she explained. She would allow me to live on condition that I reported to her, nightly beside the faggot-stack, all I had seen or heard or suspected of every action and mood of the Girl during the day; any arrival of the Enemies, as she called them; and whatever I might gather from their gestures and tones. In other words I was to spy for her as Those of Us who accompany the Forest Guards spy for their detestable Masters.

I was not disturbed. (I had had experience of the Forest Guard.) Still there remained my dignity and something which I suddenly felt was even more precious to me. ‘Ma Tante,’ I said, ‘what I do depends not on you but on My Bone in the cottage there.’ She understood. ‘What is there on Him,’ she said, ‘to draw you?’ ‘Such things are like Truffles,’ was my answer. ‘They are there or they are not there.’ ‘I do not know what “Truffles” may be,’ she snapped. ‘He has nothing useful to me except that He, too, fears for my Girl. At any rate your infatuation for Him makes you more useful as an aid to my plans.’ ‘We shall see,’ said I. ‘But — to talk of affairs of importance — do you seriously mean that you have no knowledge of Truffles?’ She was convinced that I mocked her. ‘Is it,’ she demanded, ‘some lapdog’s trick?’ She said this of Truffles — of my Truffles

The impasse was total. Outside of the Girl on the cot and her sheep (for I can testify that, with them, she was an artist) the square box of my Aunt’s head held not one single thought. My patience forsook me, but not my politeness. ‘Cheer-up, old one!’ I said. ‘An honest heart outweighs many disadvantages of ignorance and low birth.’...

And She? I thought she would have devoured me in my hair! When she could speak, she made clear that she was ‘born’ — entirely soof a breed mated and trained since the days of the First Shepherd. In return I explained that I was a specialist in the discovery of delicacies which the genius of my ancestors had revealed to Persons since the First Person first scratched in the first dirt.

She did not believe me — nor do I pretend that I had been entirely accurate in my genealogy — but she addressed me henceforth as ‘My Nephew.’

Thus that wonderful night passed, with the moths, the bats, the owls, the sinking moon, and the varied respirations of the Girl. At sunrise a call broke out from beyond the woods. My Aunt vanished to her day’s office. I went into the house and found Him lacing one gigantic boot. Its companion lay beside the hearth. I brought it to Him (I had seen my Father do as much for that Pierrounet my Master).

He was loudly pleased. He patted my head, and when the Girl entered, told her of my exploit. She called me to be caressed, and, though the Black Taint upon her made me cringe, I came. She belonged to Him — as at that moment I realised that I did.

Here began my new life. By day I accompanied Him to His charcoal — sole guardian of His coat and the bread and cheese on the bank, or, remembering my Aunt’s infatuation, fluctuated between the charcoal- mound and the house to spy upon the Girl, when she was not with Him. He was all that I desired — in the sound of His solid tread; His deep but gentle voice; the sympathetic texture and scent of His clothes; the safe hold of His hand when He would slide me into His great outer pocket and carry me through the far woods where He dealt secretly with rabbits. Like peasants, who are alone more than most Persons, He talked aloud to himself, and presently to me, asking my opinion of the height of a wire from the ground.

My devotion He accepted and repaid from the first. My Art he could by no means comprehend. For, naturally, I followed my Art as every Artist must, even when it is misunderstood. If not, he comes to preoccupy himself mournfully with his proper fleas.

My new surroundings; the larger size and closer spacing of the oaks; the heavier nature of the soils; the habits of the lazy wet winds — a hundred considerations which the expert takes into account — demanded changes and adjustments of my technique...My reward? I found and brought Him Truffles of the best. I nosed them into His hand. I laid them on the threshold of the cottage and they filled it with their fragrance. He and the Girl thought that I amused myself, and would throw — throw! — them for me to retrieve, as though they had been stones and...uppy! What more could I do? The scent over that ground was lost.

But the rest was happiness, tempered with vivid fears when we were apart lest, if the wind blew beyond moderation, a tree might fall and crush Him; lest when He worked late He might disappear into one of those terrible river pits so common in the world whence I had come, and be lost without trace. There was no peril I did not imagine for Him till I could hear His feet walking securely on sound earth long before the Girl had even suspected. Thus my heart was light in spite of the nightly conferences with my formidable Aunt, who linked her own dismal apprehensions to every account that I rendered of the Girl’s day-life and actions. For some cause or other, the Two Enemies had not appeared since my Aunt had warned me against them, and there was less of Fear in the house. Perhaps, as I once hinted to my Aunt, owing to my presence.

It was an unfortunate remark. I should have remembered her gender. She attacked me, that night, on a new scent, bidding me observe that she herself was decorated with a Collar of Office which established her position before all the world. I was about to compliment her, when she observed, in the low even tone of detachment peculiar to Shes of age, that, unless I were so decorated, not only was I outside the Law (that Person of whom, I might remember, she had often spoken) but could not be formally accepted into any household.

How, then, I demanded, might I come by this protection? In her own case, she said, the Collar was hers by right as a Preceptress of Sheep. To procure a Collar for me would be a matter of Pieces or even of Thin Papers, from His chimney. (I recalled poor Pluton’s warning that everything changes at last into such things.) If He chose to give of His Pieces for my Collar, my civil status would be impregnable. Otherwise, having no business or occupation, I lived, said my Aunt, like the rabbits — by favour and accident.

‘But, ma Tante,’ I cried, ‘I have the secret of an Art beyond all others.’

‘That is not understood in these parts,’ she replied. ‘You have told me of it many times, but I do not believe. What a pity it is not rabbits! You are small enough to creep down their burrows. But these precious things of yours under the ground which no one but you can find — it is absurd.’

‘It is an absurdity, then, which fills Persons’ chimney-places with Pieces and Thin Papers. Listen, ma Tante!’ I all but howled. ‘The world I came from was stuffed with things underground which all Persons desired. This world here is also rich in them, but I — I alone — can bring them to light!’

She repeated acridly, ‘Here is not there. It should have been rabbits.’

I turned to go. I was at the end of my forces.

‘You talk too much of the world whence you came,’ my Aunt sneered. ‘Where is that world?’

‘I do not know,’ I answered miserably and crawled under my faggots. As a matter of routine, when my report had been made to my Aunt, I would take post on the foot of His bed where I should be available in case of bandits. But my Aunt’s words had barred that ever-open door.

My suspicions worked like worms in my system. If He chose, He could kick me off on to the floor — beyond sound of His desired voice — into the rabid procession of fears and flights whence He had delivered me. Whither, then, should I go?...There remained only my lost world where Persons knew the value of Truffles and of Those of Us who could find them. I would seek that world!

With this intention, and a bitterness in my belly as though I had mouthed a toad, I came out after dawn and fled to the edge of the woods through which He and I had wandered so often. They were bounded by a tall stone wall, along which I quested for an opening. I found none till I reached a small house beside shut gates. Here an officious One of Us advanced upon me with threats. I was in no case to argue or even to expostulate. I hastened away and attacked the wall again at another point.

But after a while, I found myself back at the house of the Officious One. I recommenced my circuit, but — there was no end to that Wall. I remembered crying aloud to it in hope it might fall down and pass me through. I remember appealing to the Vicomte to come to my aid. I remember a flight of big black birds, calling the very name of my lost world — ’Aa — or’ — above my head. But soon they scattered in all directions. Only the Wall continued to continue, and I blindly at its foot. Once a She-Person stretched out her hand towards me. I fled — as I fled from an amazed rabbit who, like myself, existed by favour and accident.

Another Person coming upon me threw stones. This turned me away from the Wall and so broke its attraction. I subsided into an aimless limp of hours, until some woods that seemed familiar received me into their shades...

I found me at the back of the large white Château in the hollow, which I had seen only once, far off, on the first day of my arrival in this world. I looked down through bushes on to ground divided by strips of still water and stone. Here were birds, bigger than turkeys, with enormous voices and tails which they raised one against the other, while a white-haired She-Person dispensed them food from a pan she held between sparkling hands. My Nose told me that she was unquestionably of race-descended from champion strains. I would have crawled nearer, but the greedy birds forbade. I retreated uphill into the woods, and, moved by I know not what agonies of frustration and bewilderment, threw up my head and lamented.