Rudyard Kipling : The Complete Novels and Stories. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

her that it was good to be followed over half the earth’s girdle for love, and the impulse of admiration for that fine devotion—time, above all—for this was worst and most shameful—to scorn the sense of loneliness and far-awayness that came rolling in on her out of the desert like a cloud, and made the protecting and home-like presence of the man she had known in the other life seem for a moment sweet and desirable.

      ‘Come, Kate, you didn’t expect me to stay at home, and let you find your way out here to take the chances of this old sand-heap, did you? It would be a cold day when I let you come to Gokral Seetarun all by your lone, little girl—freezing cold, I’ve thought since I’ve been here, and seen what sort of camp it is.’

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming.’

      ‘You didn’t seem particularly interested in what I did, when I last saw you.’

      ‘Nick! I didn’t want you to come here, and I had to come myself.’

      ‘Well, you’ve come. I hope you’ll like it,’ said he, grimly.

      ‘Is it so bad?’ she asked. ‘Not that I shall mind.’

      ‘Bad! Do you remember Mastodon?’

      Mastodon was one of those Western towns which have their future behind them—a city without an inhabitant, abandoned and desolate.

      ‘Take Mastodon for deadness, and fill it with ten Leadvilles for wickedness—Leadville the first year—and you’ve got a tenth of it.’

      He went on to offer her an exposition of the history, politics, and society of Gokral Seetarun, from his own point of view, dealing with the dead East from the standpoint of the living West, and dealing with it vividly. It was a burning theme, and it was a happiness to him to have a listener who could understand his attitude, even if she could not entirely sympathise with it. His tone besought her to laugh at it with him a little, if only a little, and Kate consented to laugh; but she said it all seemed to her more mournful than amusing.

      Tarvin could agree to this readily enough, but he told her that he laughed to avoid weeping. It made him tired to see the fixedness, the apathy, and lifelessness of this rich and populous world, which should be up and stirring by rights—trading, organising, inventing, building new towns, making the old ones keep up with the procession, laying new railroads, going in for fresh enterprises, and keeping things humming.

      ‘They’ve got resources enough,’ he said. ‘It isn’t as if they had the excuse that the country’s poor. It’s a good country. Move the population of a lively Colorado town to Rhatore, set up a good local paper, organise a board of trade, and let the world know what there is here, and we’d have a boom in six months that would shake the empire. But what’s the use? They’re dead. They’re mummies. They’re wooden images. There isn’t enough real, old-fashioned downright rustle and razzle-dazzle and “git up and git” in Gokral Seetarun to run a milk-cart.’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured, half to herself, with illumined eyes. ‘It’s for that I’ve come.’

      ‘How’s that?’

      ‘Because they are not like us,’ she answered, turning her lustrous face on him. ‘If they were clever, if they were wise, what could we do for them? It is because they are lost, stumbling, foolish creatures that they need us.’ She heaved a deep sigh. ‘It is good to be here.’

      ‘It’s good to have you,’ said Tarvin.

      She started. ‘Don’t say such things any more, please, Nick,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, well!’ he groaned.

      ‘But it’s this way, Nick,’ she said earnestly, but kindly. ‘I don’t belong to such things any more—not even to the possibility of them. Think of me as a nun. Think of me as having renounced all such happiness, and all other kinds of happiness but my work.’

      ‘H’m. May I smoke?’ At her nod he lighted a cigar. ‘I’m glad I’m here for the ceremony.’

      ‘What ceremony?’ she asked.

      ‘Seeing you take the veil. But you won’t take it.’

      ‘Why not?’

      He grumbled inarticulately over his cigar a moment. Then he looked up. ‘Because I’ve got big wealth that says you won’t. I know you, I know Rhatore, and I know——’

      ‘What? Who?’

      ‘Myself,’ he said, looking up.

      She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Nick,’ she said, leaning toward him, ‘you know I like you. I like you too well to let you go on thinking—you talk of not being able to sleep. How do you suppose I can sleep with the thought always by me that you are laying up a pain and disappointment for yourself—one that I can’t help, unless I can help it by begging you to go away now. I do beg it. Please go!’

      Tarvin pulled at his cigar musingly for some seconds. ‘Dear girl, I’m not afraid.’

      She sighed, and turned her face away toward the desert. ‘I wish you were,’ she said hopelessly.

      ‘Fear is not for legislators,’ he retorted oracularly.

      She turned back to him with a sudden motion.

      Legislators! O Nick, are you——?’

      ‘I’m afraid I am—by a majority of 1518.’ He handed her the cable-despatch.

      ‘Poor father!’

      ‘Well, I don’t know.’

      ‘Oh! Well, I congratulate you, of course.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘But I’m not sure it will be a good thing for you.’

      ‘Yes; that’s the way it had struck me. If I spend my whole term out here, like as not my constituents won’t be in a mood to advance my political career when I get back.’

      ‘All the more reason——’

      ‘No; the more reason for fixing the real thing first. I can make myself solid in politics any time. But there isn’t but one time to make myself solid with you, Kate. It’s here. It’s now.’ He rose and bent over her. ‘Do you think I can postpone that, dear? I can adjourn it from day to day, and I do cheerfully, and you shan’t hear any more of it until you’re ready to. But you like me, Kate. I know that. And I—well, I like you. There isn’t but one end to that sort of thing.’ He took her hand. ‘Good-bye. I’ll come and take you for a look at the city to-morrow.’

      Kate gazed long after his retreating figure, and then took herself into the house, where a warm, healthful chat with Mrs. Estes, chiefly about the children at Bangor, helped her to a sane view of the situation she must face with the reappearance of Tarvin. She saw that he meant to stay, and if she didn’t mean to go, it was for her to find the brave way of adjusting the fact to her hopes. His perversity complicated an undertaking which she had never expected to find simple in itself; and it was finally only because she trusted all that he said implicitly that she was able to stay herself upon his promise to ‘behave.’ Liberally interpreted, this really meant much from Tarvin; perhaps it meant all that she need ask.

      When all was said, there remained the impulse to flight; but she was ashamed to find, when he came in the morning, that a formidable pang of home-sickness drew her toward him, and made his definite and cheerful presence a welcome sight. Mrs. Estes had been kind. The two women had made friends, and found each other’s heart with instant sympathy. But a home face was different, and perhaps Nick’s was even more different. At all events, she willingly let him carry out his plan of showing her the city.

      In their walk about it Tarvin did not spare her the advantage of his ten days’ residence in Rhatore preceding her coming; he made himself her guide, and stood on rocks overlooking things and spouted his second-hand history with an assurance that the oldest