Rudyard Kipling: 440+ Short Stories in One Edition (Illustrated). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars."

      The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and I said no word.

      "By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"

      "Something about the galley."

      "I remember now. It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it?"

      "It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

      "I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've, I've an appointment." And he left me.

      Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords of Life and Death!

      When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a little parted.

      "I've done a poem," he said; and then quickly: "it's the best I've ever done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

      I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

      "The day is most fair, the cheery wind

       Halloos behind the hill,

       Where bends the wood as seemeth good,

       And the sapling to his will!

       Riot O wind; there is that in my blood

       That would not have thee still!

       "She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky:

       Grey sea, she is mine alone—I

       Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,

       And rejoice tho' they be but stone!

       'Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,

       Make merry! 'Tis bard on Spring;

       Make merry; my love is doubly worth

       All worship your fields can bring!

       Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth

       At the early harrowing."

      "Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my heart. Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

      "Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad; I am victor.

       Greet me O Sun, Dominant master and absolute lord

       Over the soul of one!"

      "Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

      I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth.

      "Isn't it—isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't think—it came like a thunderclap."

      "Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

      "My God—she—she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and bow he had loved in his past lives.

      "What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.

      "I don't care a damn what she says."

      At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by a man before.

      Charlie spoke on, and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

      "Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech.

      Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley—what galley? Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious it is!"

      Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the "finest story" in the world would never be written.

      Under the Deodars

       Table of Contents

       The Education of Otis Yeere

       At the Pit's Mouth

       A Wayside Comedy

       The Hill of Illusion

       A Second-Rate Woman

       Only a Subaltern

       In the Matter of a Private

       The Enlightenments of Pagett, M.P

      The Education of Otis Yeere

       Table of Contents

       I

      In the pleasant orchard-closes

       "God bless all our gains," say we;

       But "May God bless all our losses,"

       Better suits with our degree.

       —The Lost Bower.

      This is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that it might be an instructive tale to put into print for the benefit of the younger generation. The younger generation does not want instruction, being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen to it. None the less, here begins the story where every right-minded story should begin, that is to say at Simla, where all things begin and many come to an evil end.

      The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever woman's mistake is outside the regular course of Nature and Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only infallible thing in this world, except Government Paper of the '70 issue, bearing interest at four and a half per