Contents


Actions and Reactions ....................................................................................................................................................... 4
An Habitation Enforced ........................................................................................................................................ 4
The Recall ................................................................................................................................................................. 35
Garm—A Hostage....................................................................................................................................................... 36
The Power of the Dog ............................................................................................................................................51
The Mother Hive ...................................................................................................................................................... 52
The Bees and the Flies ...........................................................................................................................................67
With the Night Mail ............................................................................................................................................... 68
Aerial Board of Control .................................................................................................................................... 89
Bat-Boat Racing .............................................................................................................................................................. 92
Crete and the A. B. C. ..................................................................................................................................................... 93
Correspondence ..................................................................................................................................................... 94
Answers to Correspondents ............................................................................................................................................ 96
Review .......................................................................................................................................................................... 98
Miscellaneous........................................................................................................................................................ 103
The Bee-Line Bookshop ................................................................................................................................................ 104
The Four ANgels ..................................................................................................................................................... 113
A Deal in Cotton .................................................................................................................................................... 114
The New Knighthood ........................................................................................................................................... 129
The Puzzler .............................................................................................................................................................. 131
The Puzzler ............................................................................................................................................................. 144
Little Foxes ..............................................................................................................................................................145
Gallio's Song .......................................................................................................................................................... 166
The House Surgeon ................................................................................................................................................ 167
The Rabbi's Song .....................................................................................................................................................190

An Habitation Enforced


My friend, if cause doth wrest thee,
Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,
Far from acquaintance kest thee
Where country may digest thee . . .
Thank God that so hath blessed thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee.

Thomas Tusser.


It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was
outstretched to crumple the Holz and Gunsberg Combine.
The New York doctors called it overwork, and he
lay in a darkened room, one ankle crossed above the other,
tongue pressed into palate, wondering whether the next
brain-surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all
anchorages. At last they gave judgment. With care he might
in two years return to the arena, but for the present he
must go across the water and do no work whatever. He
accepted the terms. It was capitulation; but the Combine
that had shivered beneath his knife gave him all the honours
of war: Gunsberg himself, full of condolences, came to the
steamer and filled the Chapins’ suite of cabins with overwhelming
flower-works.
“Smilax,” said George Chapin when he saw them. “Fitz is
right. I’m dead; only I don’t see why he left out the ‘In
Memoriam’ on the ribbons!”
“Nonsense!” his wife answered, and poured him his tincture.
“You’ll be back before you can think.”
He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised that his
face had not been branded by the hells of the past three
5
Kipling
months. The noise of the decks worried him, and he lay
down, his tongue only a little pressed against his palate.
An hour later he said: “Sophie, I feel sorry about taking
you away from everything like this. I—I suppose we’re the
two loneliest people on God’s earth to-night.”
Said Sophie his wife, and kissed him: “Isn’t it something
to you that we’re going together?”
They drifted about Europe for months—sometimes alone,
sometimes with chance met gipsies of their own land. From
the North Cape to the Blue Grotto at Capri they wandered,
because the next steamer headed that way, or because some
one had set them on the road. The doctors had warned
Sophie that Chapin was not to take interest even in other
men’s interests; but a familiar sensation at the back of the
neck after one hour’s keen talk with a Nauheimed railway
magnate saved her any trouble. He nearly wept.
“And I’m over thirty,” he cried. “With all I meant to do!”
“Let’s call it a honeymoon,” said Sophie. “D’ you know,
in all the six years we’ve been married, you’ve never told
me what you meant to do with your life?”
“With my life? What’s the use? It’s finished now.” Sophie
looked up quickly from the Bay of Naples. “As far as my
business goes, I shall have to live on my rents like that architect
at San Moritz.”
“You’ll get better if you don’t worry; and even if it rakes
time, there are worse things than—How much have you?”
“Between four and five million. But it isn’t the money.
You know it isn’t. It’s the principle. How could you respect
me? You never did, the first year after we married, till I
went to work like the others. Our tradition and upbringing
are against it. We can’t accept those ideals.”
“Well, I suppose I married you for some sort of ideal,”
she answered, and they returned to their forty-third hotel.
In England they missed the alien tongues of Continental
streets that reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In
England all men spoke one tongue, speciously like American
to the ear, but on cross-examination unintelligible.,
“Ah, but you have not seen England,” said a lady with
iron-grey hair. They had met her in Vienna, Bayreuth, and
Florence, and were grateful to find her again at Claridge’s,
for she commanded situations, and knew where prescriptions
are most carefully made up. “You ought to take an
6
Actions and Reactions
interest in the home of our ancestors as I do.”
“I’ve tried for a week, Mrs. Shonts,” said Sophie, “but I
never get any further than tipping German waiters.”
“These men are not the true type,” Mrs. Shouts went on.
“I know where you should go.”
Chapin pricked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from
the streets on which quick men, something of his kidney,
did the business denied to him.
“We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shonts,” said Sophie, feeling
his unrest as he drank the loathed British tea.
Mrs. Shonts smiled, and took them in hand. She wrote
widely and telegraphed far on their behalf till, armed with
her letter of introduction, she drove them into that wilderness
which is reached from an ash-barrel of a station called
Charing Cross. They were to go to Rockett’s—the farm of one
Cloke, in the southern counties—where, she assured them,
they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song.
Rocketts they found after some hours, four miles from a
station, and, so far as they could, judge in the bumpy darkness,
twice as many from a road. Trees, kine, and the outlines
of barns showed shadowy about them when they
alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloke, at the open door of a
deep stone-floored kitchen, made them shyly welcome. They
lay in an attic beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling, and,
because it rained, a wood fire was made in an iron basket
on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to the chirping of
mice and the whimper of flames.
When they woke it was a fair day, full of the noises, of
birds, the smell of box lavender, and fried bacon, mixed
with an elemental smell they had never met before.
“This,” said Sophie, nearly pushing out the thin casement
in an attempt to see round the, corner, “ is—what
did the hack-cabman say to the railway porter about my
trunk— ‘quite on the top?’”
“No; ‘a little bit of all right.’ I feel farther away from anywhere
than I’ve ever felt in my life. We must find out where
the telegraph office is.”
“Who cares?” said Sophie, wandering about, hairbrush
in hand, to admire the illustrated weekly pictures pasted
on door and cupboard.
But there was no rest for the alien soul till he had made
sure of the telegraph office. He asked the Clokes’ daugh7
Kipling
ter, laying breakfast, while Sophie plunged her face in the
lavender bush outside the low window.
“Go to the stile a-top o’ the Barn field,” said Mary, “and
look across Pardons to the next spire. It’s directly under.
You can’t miss it—not if you keep to the footpath. My sister’s
the telegraphist there. But you’re in the three-mile radius,
sir. The boy delivers telegrams directly to this door from
Pardons village.”
“One has to take a good deal on trust in this country,” he
murmured.
Sophie looked at the close turf, scarred only with last night’s
wheels, at two ruts which wound round a rickyard, and at the
circle of still orchard about the half-timbered house.
“What’s the matter with it?” she said. “Telegrams delivered
to the Vale of Avalon, of course,” and she beckoned in
an earnest-eyed hound of engaging manners and no engagements,
who answered, at times, to the name of Rambler.
He led them, after breakfast, to the rise behind the house
where the stile stood against the skyline, and, “I wonder
what we shall find now,” said Sophie, frankly prancing with
joy on the grass.
It was a slope of gap-hedged fields possessed to their centres
by clumps of brambles. Gates were not, and the rabbitmined,
cattle-rubbed posts leaned out and in. A narrow path
doubled among the bushes, scores of white tails twinkled
before the racing hound, and a hawk rose, whistling shrilly.
“No roads, no nothing!” said Sophie, her short skirt
hooked by briers. “I thought all England was a garden.
There’s your spire, George, across the valley. How curious!”
They walked toward it through an all abandoned land.
Here they found the ghost of a patch of lucerne that had
refused to die: there a harsh fallow surrendered to yardhigh
thistles; and here a breadth of rampant kelk feigning
to be lawful crop. In the ungrazed pastures swaths of dead
stuff caught their feet, and the ground beneath glistened
with sweat. At the bottom of the valley a little brook had
undermined its footbridge, and frothed in the wreckage.
But there stood great woods on the slopes beyond—old,
tall, and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the walls
of a ruined house.
“All this within a hundred miles of London,” he said.
“Looks as if it had had nervous prostration, too.” The, foot8
Actions and Reactions
path turned the shoulder of a slope, through a thicket of
rank rhododendrons, and crossed what had once been a
carriage drive, which ended in the shadow of two gigantic
holm-oaks.
“A house!” said Sophie, in a whisper. “A Colonial house!”
Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-bluish
brick Georgian pile, with a shell-shaped fan-light over
its pillared door. The hound had gone off on his own foolish
quests. Except for some stir it the branches and the
flight of four startled magpies; there was neither life nor
sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long
windows most friendlily.
“Cha-armed to meet you, I’m sure,” said Sophie, and curtsied
to the ground. “George, this is history I can understand.
We began here.” She curtsied again.
The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights. It was as
though an old lady, wise in three generations’ experience,
but for the present sitting out, bent to listen to her flushed
and eager grandchild.
“I must look!” Sophie tiptoed to a window, and shaded
her eyes with her hand. “Oh, this room’s half-full of cottonbales—
wool, I suppose! But I can see a bit of the mantelpiece.
George, do come! Isn’t that some one?”
She fell back behind her husband. The front door opened
slowly, to show the hound, his nose white with milk, in
charge of an ancient of days clad in a blue linen ephod curiously
gathered on breast and shoulders.
“Certainly,” said George, half aloud. “Father Time himself.
This is where he lives, Sophie.”
“We came,” said Sophie weakly. “Can we see the house?
I’m afraid that’s our dog.”
“No, ’tis Rambler,” said the old man. “He’s been, at my
swill-pail again. Staying at Rocketts, be ye? Come in. Ah!
you runagate!”
The hound broke from him, and he tottered after him
down the drive. They entered the hall—just such a high light
hall as such a house should own. A slim-balustered staircase,
wide and shallow and once creamy-white, climbed out
of it under a long oval window. On either side delicately
moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose
sea-green mantelpieces were adorned with nymphs, scrolls,
and Cupids in low relief.
9
Kipling
“What’s the firm that makes these things?” cried Sophie,
enraptured. “Oh, I forgot! These must be the originals.
Adams, is it? I never dreamed of anything like that steel-cut
fender. Does he mean us to go everywhere?”
“He’s catching the dog,” said George, looking out. “We
don’t count.”
They explored the first or ground floor, delighted as children
playing burglars.
“This is like all England,” she said at last. “Wonderful,
but no explanation. You’re expected to know it beforehand.
Now, let’s try upstairs.”
The stairs never creaked beneath their feet. From the
broad landing they entered a long, green-panelled room
lighted by three full-length windows, which overlooked the
forlorn wreck of a terraced garden, and wooded slopes beyond.
“The drawing-room, of course.” Sophie swam up and down
it. “That mantelpiece—Orpheus and Eurydice—is the best
of them all. Isn’t it marvellous? Why, the room seems furnished
with nothing in it! How’s that, George?”
“It’s the proportions. I’ve noticed it.”
“I saw a Heppelwhite couch once”—Sophie laid her finger
to her flushed cheek and considered. “With, two of them—
one on each side—you wouldn’t need anything else. Except—
there must be one perfect mirror over that mantelpiece.”
“Look at that view. It’s a framed Constable,” her husband
cried.
“No; it’s a Morland—a parody of a Morland. But about
that couch, George. Don’t you think Empire might be better
than Heppelwhite? Dull gold against that pale green?
It’s a pity they don’t make spinets nowadays.”
“I believe you can get them. Look at that oak wood behind
the pines.”
“‘While you sat and played toccatas stately, at the clavichord,”’
Sophie hummed, and, head on one; side, nodded
to where the perfect mirror should hang:
Then they found bedrooms with dressing-rooms and powdering-
closets, and steps leading up and down—boxes of
rooms, round, square, and octagonal, with enriched ceilings
and chased door-locks.
“Now about servants. Oh!” She had darted up the last
stairs to the chequered darkness of the top floor, where
10
Actions and Reactions
loose tiles lay among broken laths, and the walls were
scrawled with names, sentiments, and hop records. “They’ve
been keeping pigeons here,” she cried.
“And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere,”
said George.
“That’s what I say,” the old man cried below them on the
stairs. “Not a dry place for my pigeons at all.”
“But why was it allowed to get like this?” said Sophie.
“Tis with housen as teeth,” he replied. “Let ‘em go too
far, and there’s nothing to be done. Time was they was
minded to sell her, but none would buy. She was too far
away along from any place. Time was they’d ha’ lived here
theyselves, but they took and died.”
“Here?” Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the
roof.
“Nah—none dies here excep’ falling off ricks and such. In
London they died.” He plucked a lock of wool from his
blue smock. “They was no staple—neither the Elphicks nor
the Moones. Shart and brittle all of ‘em. Dead they be seventeen
year, for I’ve been here caretakin’ twenty-five.”
“Who does all the wool belong to downstairs?” George asked.
“To the estate. I’ll show you the back parts if ye like.
You’re from America, ain’t ye? I’ve had a son there once
myself.” They followed him down the main stairway. He
paused at the turn and swept one hand toward the wall.
“Plenty room, here for your coffin to come down. Seven
foot and three men at each end wouldn’t brish the paint. If
I die in my bed they’ll ‘ave to up-end me like a milk-can. ’Tis
all luck, dye see?”
He led them on and on, through a maze of back kitchens,
dairies, larders, and sculleries, that melted along covered
ways into a farm-house, visibly older than the main building,
which again rambled out among barns, byres, pig-pens,
stalls and stables to the dead fields behind.
“Somehow,” said Sophie, sitting exhausted on an ancient
well-curb—”somehow one wouldn’t insult these lovely old
things by filling them with hay.”
George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of
silvery-oak weather-boarding; buttresses of mixed flint and
bricks; outside stairs, stone upon arched stone; curves of
thatch where grass sprouted; roundels of house-leeked tiles,
and a huge paved yard populated by two cows and the re11
Kipling
pentant Rambler. He had not thought of himself or of the
telegraph office for two and a half hours.
“But why,” said Sophie, as they went back through the
crater of stricken fields,—” why is one expected to know
everything in England? Why do they never tell?”
“You mean about the Elphicks and the Moones?” he answered.
“Yes—and the lawyers and the estate. Who are they? I
wonder whether those painted floors in the green room
were real oak. Don’t you like us exploring things together—
better than Pompeii?”
George turned once more to look at the view. “Eight hundred
acres go with the house—the old man told me. Five
farms altogether. Rocketts is one of ‘em.”
“I like Mrs. Cloke. But what is the old house called?”
George laughed. “That’s one of the things you’re expected
to know. He never told me.”
The Clokes were more communicative. That evening and
thereafter for a week they gave the Chapins the official history,
as one gives it to lodgers, of Friars Pardon the house
and its five farms. But Sophie asked so many questions,
and George was so humanly interested, that, as confidence
in the strangers grew, they launched, with observed and
acquired detail, into the lives and deaths and doings of the
Elphicks and the Moones and their collaterals, the Haylings
and the Torrells. It was a tale told serially by Cloke in the
barn, or his wife in the dairy, the last chapters reserved for
the kitchen o’ nights by the big fire, when the two had been
half the day exploring about the house, where old Iggulden,
of the blue smock, cackled and chuckled to see them. The
motives that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension;
the fates that shifted them were gods they had
never met; the sidelights Mrs. Cloke threw on act and incident
were more amazing than anything in the record. Therefore
the Chapins listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs. Shonts.
“But why—why—why—did So-and-so do so-and-so?” Sophie
would demand from her seat by the pothook; and Mrs. Cloke
would answer, smoothing her knees, “For the sake of the place.”
“I give it up,” said George one night in their own room.
“People don’t seem to matter in this country compared to
the places they live in. The way she tells it, Friars Pardon
was a sort of Moloch.”
12
Actions and Reactions
“Poor old thing!” They had been walking round the farms
as usual before tea. “No wonder they loved it. Think of the
sacrifices they made for it. Jane Elphick married the younger
Torrell to keep it in the family. The octagonal room with
the moulded ceiling next to the big bedroom was hers. Now
what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs?” said
Sophie.
“About the Torrell cousins and the uncle who died in Java.
They lived at Burnt House—behind High Pardons, where
that brook is all blocked up.”
“No; Burnt House is under High Pardons Wood, before
you come to Gale Anstey,” Sophie corrected.
“Well, old man Cloke said—”
Sophie threw open the door and called down into the
kitchen, where the Clokes were covering the fire “Mrs. Cloke,
isn’t Burnt House under High Pardons?”
“Yes, my dear, of course,” the soft voice. answered absently.
A cough. “I beg your pardon, Madam. What was it
you said?”
“Never mind. I prefer it the other way,” Sophie laughed,
and George re-told the missing chapter as she sat on the bed.
“Here to-day an’ gone to-morrow,” said Cloke warningly.
“They’ve paid their first month, but we’ve only that Mrs.
Shonts’s letter for guarantee.”
“None she sent never cheated us yet. It slipped out before
I thought. She’s a most humane young lady. They’ll be
going away in a little. An’ you’ve talked a lot too, Alfred.”
“Yes, but the Elphicks are all dead. No one can bring my
loose talking home to me. But why do they stay on and stay
on so?”
In due time George and Sophie asked each other that question,
and put it aside. They argued that the climate—a pearly
blend, unlike the hot and cold ferocities of their native land—
suited them, as the thick stillness of the nights certainly
suited George. He was saved even the sight of a metalled
road, which, as presumably leading to business, wakes desire
in a man; and the telegraph office at the village of Friars
Pardon, where they sold picture post-cards and pegtops,
was two walking miles across the fields and woods.
For all that touched his past among his fellows, or their
remembrance of him, he might have been in another planet;
and Sophie, whose life had been very largely spent among
13
Kipling
husbandless wives of lofty ideals, had no wish to leave this
present of God. The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge
of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths of soft
sky under which they walked together and reckoned time
only by their hunger or thirst; the good grass beneath their
feet that cheated the miles; their discoveries, always together,
amid the farms—Griffons, Rocketts, Burnt House,
Gale Anstey, and the Home Farm, where Iggulden of the
blue smock-frock would waylay them, and they would ransack
the old house once more; the long wet afternoons when,
they tucked up their feet on the bedroom’s deep windowsill
over against the apple-trees, and talked together as never
till then had they found time to talk—these things contented
her soul, and her body throve.
“Have you realized,” she asked one morning, “that we’ve
been here absolutely alone for the last thirty-four days?”
“Have you counted them?” he asked.
“Did you like them?” she replied.
“I must have. I didn’t think about them. Yes, I have. Six
months ago I should have fretted myself sick. Remember at
Cairo? I’ve only had two or three bad times. Am I getting
better, or is it senile decay?”
“Climate, all climate.” Sophie swung her new-bought English
boots, as she sat on the stile overlooking Friars Pardon,
behind the Clokes’s barn.
“One must take hold of things though,” he said, “if it’s
only to keep one’s hand in.” His eyes did not flicker now as
they swept the empty fields. “Mustn’t one?”
“Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey. I dare say
you could hire it.”
“No, I’m not as English as that—nor as Morristown. Cloke
says all the farms here could be made to pay.”
“Well, I’m Anastasia in the ‘Treasure of Franchard.’ I’m
content to be alive and purr. There’s no hurry.”
“No.” He smiled. “All the same, I’m going to see after my
mail.”
“You promised you wouldn’t have any.”
“There’s some business coming through that’s amusing
me. Honest. It doesn’t get on my nerves at all.”
“Want a secretary?”
“No, thanks, old thing! Isn’t that quite English?”
“Too English! Go away.” But none the less in broad day14
Actions and Reactions
light she returned the kiss. “I’m off to Pardons. I haven’t
been to the house for nearly a week.”
“How’ve you decided to furnish Jane Elphick’s bedroom?”
he laughed, for it had come to be a permanent Castle in
Spain between them.
“Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade,” she answered,
and ran downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap
with a flourish of a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her
a week ago, and singing as she passed under the holmoaks,
sought the farm-house at the back of Friars Pardon. The old
man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-opened
door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blueeyed
sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler’s old enemy,
crawled out and besought her to enter.
Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between
his knees, his head drooped. Though she had never seen
death before, her heart, that missed a beat, told her that he
was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the
door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his
nose, she heard herself saying: “Don’t howl! Please don’t
begin to howl, Scottie, or I shall run away!”
She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard
moved toward noon; sat after a while on the steps by the
door, her arms round the dog’s neck, waiting till some one
should come. She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friars
Pardon slash its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of
Iggulden’s last lighted fire gradually thin and cease. Against
her will she fell to wondering how many Moones, Elphicks,
and Torrells had been swung round the turn of the broad
Mall stairs. Then she remembered the old man’s talk of
being “up-ended like a milk-can,” and buried her face on
Scottie’s neck. At last a horse’s feet clinked upon flags,
rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard, and she found
herself facing the vicar—a figure she had seen at church
declaiming impossibilities (Sophie was a Unitarian) in an
unnatural voice.
“He’s dead,” she said, without preface.
“Old Iggulden? I was coming for a talk with him.” The
vicar passed in uncovered. “Ah!” she heard him say. “Heartfailure!
How long have you been here?”
“Since a quarter to eleven.” She looked at her watch earnestly
and saw that her hand did not shake.
15
Kipling
“I’ll sit with him now till the doctor comes. D’you think
you could tell him, and—yes, Mrs. Betts in the cottage with
the wistaria next the blacksmith’s? I’m afraid this has been
rather a shock to you.”
Sophie nodded, and fled toward the village. Her body
failed her for a moment; she dropped beneath a hedge, and
looked back at the great house. In some fashion its silence
and stolidity steadied her for her errand.
Mrs. Betts, small, black-eyed, and dark, was almost as unconcerned
as Friars Pardon.
“Yiss, yiss, of course. Dear me! Well, Iggulden he had had
his day in my father’s time. Muriel, get me my little blue
bag, please. Yiss, ma’am. They come down like ellumbranches
in still weather. No warnin’ at all. Muriel, my
bicycle’s be’ind the fowlhouse. I’ll tell Dr. Dallas, ma’am.”
She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee, while
Sophie—heaven above and earth beneath changed—walked
stiffly home, to fall over George at his letters, in a muddle
of laughter and tears.
“It’s all quite natural for them,” she gasped. “They come
down like ellum-branches in still weather. Yiss, ma’am.’ No,
there wasn’t anything in the least horrible, only—only—Oh,
George, that poor shiny stick of his between his poor, thin
knees! I couldn’t have borne it if Scottie had howled. I didn’t
know the vicar was so—so sensitive. He said he was afraid it
was ra—rather a shock. Mrs. Betts told me to go home, and
I wanted to collapse on her floor. But I didn’t disgrace myself.
I—I couldn’t have left him—could I?”
“You’re sure you’ve took no ‘arm?” cried Mrs. Cloke, who
had heard the news by farm-telegraphy, which is older but
swifter than Marconi’s.
“No. I’m perfectly well,” Sophie protested.
“You lay down till tea-time.” Mrs. Cloke patted her shoulder.
“They’ll be very pleased, though she ‘as ‘ad no proper
understandin’ for twenty years.”
“They” came before twilight—a black-bearded man in moleskins,
and a little palsied old woman, who chirruped like a
wren.
“I’m his son,” said the man to Sophie, among the lavender
bushes. “We ‘ad a difference—twenty year back, and
didn’t speak since. But I’m his son all the ‘same, and we
thank you for the watching.”
16
Actions and Reactions
“I’m only glad I happened to be there,” she answered,
and from the bottom of her heart she meant it.
“We heard he spoke a lot o’ you—one time an’ another
since you came. We thank you kindly,” the man added.
“Are you the son that was in America?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. On my uncle’s farm, in Connecticut. He was
what they call rood-master there.”
“Whereabouts in Connecticut?” asked George over her
shoulder.
“Veering Holler was the name. I was there six year with
my uncle.”
“How small the world is!” Sophie cried. “Why, all my
mother’s people come from Veering Hollow. There must be
some there still—the Lashmars. Did you ever hear of them?”
“I remember hearing that name, seems to me,” he answered,
but his face was blank as the back of a spade.
A little before dusk a woman in grey, striding like a footsoldier,
and bearing on her arm a long pole, crashed through
the orchard calling for food. George, upon whom the unannounced
English worked mysteriously, fled to the parlour;
but Mrs. Cloke came forward beaming. Sophie could not
escape.
“We’ve only just heard of it;” said the stranger, turning
on her. “I’ve been out with the otter-hounds all day. It was
a splendidly sportin’ thing “
“Did you—er—kill?” said Sophie. She knew from books
she could not go far wrong here.
“Yes, a dry bitch—seventeen pounds,” was the answer. “A
splendidly sportin’ thing of you to do. Poor old Iggulden—”
“Oh—that!” said Sophie, enlightened.
“If there had been any people at Pardons it would never
have happened. He’d have been looked after. But what can
you expect from a parcel of London solicitors?”
Mrs. Cloke murmured something.
“No. I’m soaked from the knees down. If I hang about I
shall get chilled. A cup of tea, Mrs. Cloke, and I can eat one
of your sandwiches as I go.” She wiped her weather-worn
face with a green and yellow silk handkerchief.
“Yes, my lady!” Mrs. Cloke ran and returned swiftly.
“Our land marches with Pardons for a mile on the south,”
she explained, waving the full cup, “but one has quite enough
to do with one’s own people without poachin’. Still, if I’d
17
Kipling
known, I’d have sent Dora, of course. Have you seen her
this afternoon, Mrs. Cloke? No? I wonder whether that girl
did sprain her ankle. Thank you.” It was a formidable hunk
of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloke presented. “As I was
sayin’, Pardons is a scandal! Lettin’ people die like dogs.
There ought to be people there who do their duty. You’ve
done yours, though there wasn’t the faintest call upon you.
Good night. Tell Dora, if she comes, I’ve gone on.”
She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie reeled
breathless into the parlour, to shake the shaking George.
“Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind?
Why didn’t you come out and do your duty?”
“Because I should have burst. Did you see the mud on its
cheek?” he said.
“Once. I daren’t look again. Who is she?”
“God—a local deity then. Anyway, she’s another of the
things you’re expected to know by instinct.”
Mrs. Cloke, shocked at their levity, told them that it was
Lady Conant, wife of Sir Walter Conant, Baronet, a large
landholder in the neighbourhood; and if not God; at least
His visible Providence. George made her talk of that family
for an hour.
“Laughter,” said Sophie afterward in their own room, “is
the mark of the savage. Why couldn’t you control your emotions?
It’s all real to her.”
“It’s all real to me. That’s my trouble,” he answered in an
altered tone. “Anyway, it’s real enough to mark time with.
Don’t you think so?”
“What d’you mean?” she asked quickly, though she knew
his voice.
“That I’m better. I’m well enough to kick.”
“What at?”
“This!” He waved his hand round the one room. “I must
have something to play with till I’m fit for work again.”
“Ah!” She sat on the bed and leaned forward, her hands
clasped. “I wonder if it’s good for you.”
“We’ve been better here than anywhere,” he went on
slowly. “One could always sell it again.”
She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled.
“The only thing that worries me is what happened this
morning. I want to know how you feel about it. If it’s on
your nerves in the least we can have the old farm at the
18
Actions and Reactions
back of the house pulled down, or perhaps it has spoiled
the notion for you?”
“Pull it down?” she cried. “You’ve no business faculty.
Why, that’s where we could live while we’re putting the big
house in order. It’s almost under the same roof. No! What
happened this morning seemed to be more of a—of a leading
than anything else. There ought to be people at Pardons.
Lady Conant’s quite right.”
“I was thinking more of the woods and the roads. I could
double the value of the place in six months.”
“What do they want for it?” She shook her head, and her
loosened hair fell glowingly about her cheeks.
“Seventy-five thousand dollars. They’ll take sixty-eight.”
“Less than half what we paid for our old yacht when we
married. And we didn’t have a good time in her. You were—”
“Well, I discovered I was too much of an American to be
content to be a rich man’s son. You aren’t blaming me for
that?”
“Oh, no. Only it was a very businesslike honeymoon. How
far are you along with the deal, George?”
“I can mail the deposit on the purchase money to-morrow
morning, and we can have the thing completed in a
fortnight or three weeks—if you say so.”
“Friars Pardon—Friars Pardon!” Sophie chanted rapturously,
her dark gray eyes big with delight. “All the farms?
Gale Anstey, Burnt House, Rocketts, the Home Farm, and
Griffons? Sure you’ve got ‘em all?”
“Sure.” He smiled.
“And the woods? High Pardons Wood, Lower Pardons,
Suttons, Dutton’s Shaw, Reuben’s Ghyll, Maxey’s Ghyll, and
both the Oak Hangers? Sure you’ve got ‘em all?”
“Every last stick. Why, you know them as well as I do.”
He laughed. “They say there’s five thousand—a thousand
pounds’ worth of lumber—timber they call it—in the Hangers
alone.”
“Mrs. Cloke’s oven must be mended first thing, and the
kitchen roof. I think I’ll have all this whitewashed,” Sophie
broke in, pointing to the ceiling. “The whole place is a scandal.
Lady Conant is quite right. George, when did you begin
to fall in love with the house? In the greenroom that
first day? I did.”
“I’m not in love with it. One must do something to mark
19
Kipling
time till one’s fit for work.”
“Or when we stood under the oaks, and the door opened?
Oh! Ought I to go to poor Iggulden’s funeral?” She sighed
with utter happiness.
“Wouldn’t they call it a liberty now?” said he.
“But I liked him.”
“But you didn’t own him at the date of his death.”
“That wouldn’t keep me away. Only, they made such a
fuss about the watching”—she caught her breath—”it might
be ostentatious from that point of view, too. Oh, George”—
she reached for his hand—”we’re two little orphans moving
in worlds not realized, and we shall make some bad breaks.
But we’re going to have the time of our lives.”
“We’ll run up to London to-morrow, and see if we can
hurry those English law solicitors. I want to get to work.”
They went. They suffered many things ere they returned
across the fields in a fly one Saturday night, nursing a two
by two-and-a-half box of deeds and maps—lawful owners of
Friars Pardon and the five decayed farms therewith.
“I do most sincerely ‘ope and trust you’ll be ‘appy,
Madam,” Mrs. Cloke gasped, when she was told the news
by the kitchen fire.
“Goodness! It isn’t a marriage!” Sophie exclaimed, a little
awed; for to them the joke, which to an American means
work, was only just beginning.
“If it’s took in a proper spirit”—Mrs. Cloke’s eye turned
toward her oven.
“Send and have that mended to-morrow,” Sophie whispered.
“We couldn’t ‘elp noticing,” said Cloke slowly, “from the
times you walked there, that you an’ your lady was drawn
to it, but—but I don’t know as we ever precisely thought—”
His wife’s glance checked him.
“That we were that sort of people,” said George. “We
aren’t sure of it ourselves yet.”
“Perhaps,” said Cloke, rubbing his knees, “just for the
sake of saying something, perhaps you’ll park it?”
“What’s that?” said George.
“Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill”—he jerked a
thumb to westward—”that Mr. Sangres bought. It was four
farms, and Mr. Sangres made a fine park of them, with a
herd of faller deer.”
20
Actions and Reactions
“Then it wouldn’t be Friars Pardon,” said Sophie. “Would
it?”
“I don’t know as I’ve ever heard Pardons was ever anything
but wheat an’ wool. Only some gentlemen say that
parks are less trouble than tenants.” He laughed nervously.
“But the gentry, o’ course, they keep on pretty much as
they was used to.”
“I see,” said Sophie. “How did Mr. Sangres make his
money?”
“I never rightly heard. It was pepper an’ spices, or it may
ha’ been gloves. No. Gloves was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley
End. Spices was Mr. Sangres. He’s a Brazilian gentleman—
very sunburnt like.”
“Be sure o’ one thing. You won’t ‘ave any trouble,” said
Mrs. Cloke, just before they went to bed.
Now the news of the purchase was told to Mr. and Mrs.
Cloke alone at 8 P.M. of a Saturday. None left the farm till
they set out for church next morning. Yet when they reached
the church and were about to slip aside into their usual
seats, a little beyond the font, where they could see the redfurred
tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time,
they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank
(and yet they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the
ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger, who ushered
them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle,
under the pulpit.
“This,” he sighed reproachfully, “is the Pardons’ Pew,”
and shut them in.
They could see little more than the choir boys in the chancel,
but to the roots of the hair of their necks they felt the
congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look.
“When the wicked man turneth away.” The strong, alien
voice of the priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof,
and a loneliness unfelt before swamped their hearts, as they
searched for places in the unfamiliar Church of England
service. The Lord’s Prayer “Our Father, which art”—set the
seal on that desolation. Sophie found herself thinking how
in other lands their purchase would long ere this have been
discussed from every point of view in a dozen prints, forgetting
that George for months had not been allowed to
glance at those black and bellowing head-lines. Here was
nothing but silence—not even hostility! The game was up to
21
Kipling
them; the other players hid their cards and waited. Suspense,
she felt, was in the air, and when her sight cleared,
saw, indeed, a mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon
the carven motto, “ Wayte awhyle—wayte awhyle.”
At the Litany George had trouble with an unstable hassock,
and drew the slip of carpet under the pewseat. Sophie pushed
her end back also, and shut her eyes against a burning that felt
like tears. When she opened them she was looking at her
mother’s maiden name, fairly carved on a blue flagstone on
the pew floor: Ellen Lashmar. ob. 1796. aetat 27.
She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered, as they
kneeled, they looked for more knowledge, but the rest of
the slab was blank.
“Ever hear of her?” he whispered.
“Never knew any of us came from here.”
“Coincidence?”
“Perhaps. But it makes me feel better,” and she smiled
and winked away a tear on her lashes, and took his hand
while they prayed for “all women labouring of child”—not
“in the perils of childbirth”; and the sparrows who had found
their way through the guards behind the glass windows
chirped above the faded gilt and alabaster family tree of
the Conants.
The baronet’s pew was on the right of the aisle. After
service its inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so as
to block effectively a dusky person with a large family who
champed in their rear.
“Spices, I think,” said Sophie, deeply delighted as the
Sangres closed up after the Conants. “Let ‘em get away,
George.”
But when they came out many folk whose eyes were one
still lingered by the lychgate.
“I want to see if any more Lashmars are buried here,”
said Sophie.
“Not now. This seems to be show day. Come home
quickly,” he replied.
A group of families, the Clokes a little apart, opened to
let them through. The men saluted with jerky nods, the
women with remnants of a curtsey. Only Iggulden’s son, his
mother on his arm, lifted his hat as Sophie passed.
“Your people,” said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her
ear.
22
Actions and Reactions
“I suppose so,” said Sophie, blushing, for they were within
two yards of her; but it was not a question.
“Then that child looks as if it were coming down with
mumps. You ought to tell the mother she shouldn’t have
brought it to church.”
“I can’t leave ‘er behind, my lady,” the woman said. “She’d
set the ‘ouse afire in a minute, she’s that forward with the
matches. Ain’t you, Maudie dear?”
“Has Dr. Dallas seen her?”
“Not yet, my lady.”
“He must. You can’t get away, of course. M-m! My idiotic
maid is coming in for her teeth to-morrow at twelve. She
shall pick her up—at Gale Anstey, isn’t it?—at eleven.”
“Yes. Thank you very much, my lady.”
“I oughtn’t to have done it,” said Lady Conant apologetically,
“but there has been no one at Pardons for so long
that you’ll forgive my poaching. Now, can’t you lunch with
us? The vicar usually comes too. I don’t use the horses on a
Sunday”—she glanced at the Brazilian’s silver-plated chariot.
“It’s only a mile across the fields.”
“You—you’re very kind,” said Sophie, hating herself because
her lip trembled.
“My dear,” the compelling tone dropped to a soothing
gurgle, “d’you suppose I don’t know how it feels to come to
a strange county—country I should say—away from one’s
own people? When I first left the Shires—I’m Shropshire,
you know—I cried for a day and a night. But fretting doesn’t
make loneliness any better. Oh, here’s Dora. She did sprain
her leg that day.”
“I’m as lame as a tree still,” said the tall maiden frankly.
“You ought to go out with the otter-hounds, Mrs. Chapin. I
believe they’re drawing your water next week.”
Sir Walter had already led off George, and the vicar came
up on the other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the
swift procession or the leisurely lunch, where talk came
and went in low-voiced eddies that had the village for their
centre. Sophie heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her
husband lightly as Chapin! (She also remembered many
women known in a previous life who habitually addressed
their husbands as Mr. Such-an-one.) After lunch Lady Conant
talked to her explicitly of maternity as that is achieved in
cottages and farm-houses remote from aid, and of the duty
23
Kipling
thereto of the mistress of Pardons.
A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple lawns, let
them out before tea-time into the unkempt south side of
their land.
“I want your hand, please,” said Sophie as soon as they
were safe among the beech boles and the lawless hollies.
“D’you remember the old maid in ‘Providence and the Guitar’
who heard the Commissary swear, and hardly reckoned
herself a maiden lady afterward? Because I’m a relative of
hers. Lady Conant is—”
“Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?” he interrupted.
“I didn’t ask. I’m going to write to Aunt Sydney about it
first. Oh, Lady Conant said something at lunch about their
having bought some land from some Lashmars a few years
ago. I found it was at the beginning of last century.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Really, how interesting!’ Like that. I’m not going
to push myself forward. I’ve been hearing about Mr.
Sangres’s efforts in that direction. And you? I couldn’t see
you behind the flowers. Was it very deep water, dear?”
George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures.
“Oh no—dead easy,” he answered. “I’ve bought Friars Pardon
to prevent Sir Walter’s birds straying.”
A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and
exploded almost under their feet. Sophie jumped.
“That’s one of ‘em,” said George calmly.
“Well, your nerves are better, at any rate,” said she. “Did
you tell ‘em you’d bought the thing to play with?”
“No. That was where my nerve broke down. I only made
one bad break—I think. I said I couldn’t see why hiring land
to men to farm wasn’t as much a business proposition as
anything else.”
“And what did they say?”
“They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some
day. They don’t waste their smiles. D’you see that track by
Gale Anstey?”
They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a
cup-like hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday
best filed slowly along the paths that connected farm to
farm.
24
Actions and Reactions
“I’ve never seen so many on our land before,” said Sophie.
“Why is it?”
“To show us we mustn’t shut up their rights of way.”
“Those cow-tracks we’ve been using cross lots?” said
Sophie forcibly.
“Yes. Any one of ‘em would cost us two thousand pounds
each in legal expenses to close.”
“But we don’t want to,” she said.
“The whole community would fight if we did.”
“But it’s our land. We can do what we like.”
“It’s not our land. We’ve only paid for it. We belong to it,
and it belongs to the people—our people they call ‘em. I’ve
been to lunch with the English too.”
They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the
next—flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations
and restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue,
spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing
in to consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but
smiling covertly.
“We shall make some bad breaks,” he said at last.
“Together, though. You won’t let anyone else in, will you?”
“Except the contractors. This syndicate handles, this
proposition by its little lone.”
“But you might feel the want of some one,” she insisted.
“I shall—but it will be you. It’s business, Sophie, but it’s
going to be good fun.”
“Please God,” she answered flushing, and cried to herself
as they went back to tea. “It’s worth it. Oh, it’s worth it.”
The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business
of the most varied and searching, but all done English
fashion, without friction. Time and money alone were asked.
The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London,
or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs.
Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the centre stood
George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching
out on every side.
“I ain’t sayin’ anything against Londoners,” said Cloke,
self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer,
head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of
woods and forests; “but your own people won’t go about to
make more than a fair profit out of you.”
“How is one to know?” said George.
25
Kipling
“Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you’ll be lookin’
over your first year’s accounts, and, knowin’ what you’ll
know then, you’ll say: ‘Well, Billy Beartup’—or Old Cloke
as it might be—’did me proper when I was new.’ No man
likes to have that sort of thing laid up against him.”
“I think I see,” said George. “But five years is a long time
to look ahead.”
“I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben’s
Ghyll will be fit for her drawin-room floor in less than seven,”
Cloke drawled.
“Yes, that’s my work,” said Sophie. (Billy Beartup of Griffons,
a woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by
misfortune of marriage, had laid his broad axe at her feet a
month before.) “Sorry if I’ve committed you to another eternity.”
“And we shan’t even know where we’ve gone wrong with
your new carriage drive before that time either,” said Cloke,
ever anxious to keep the balance true with an ounce or two
in Sophie’s favour. The past four months had taught George
better than to reply. The carriage road winding up the hill
was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, and
the imported American scraper which had blighted the none
too sunny soul of “Skim” Winsh, the carter.
But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance,
Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.
“You lif’ her like that, an’ you tip her like that,” he explained
to the gang. “My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut.”
“Are they roads yonder?” said Skim, sitting under the
laurels.
“No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call ‘em.
They’d suit you, Skim.”
“Why?” said the incautious Skim.
“Cause you’d take no hurt when you fall out of your cart
drunk on a Saturday,” was the answer.
“I didn’t last time neither,” Skim roared.
After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped
feebly, “Well, dirt or no dirt, there’s no denyin’ Chapin
knows a good job when he sees it. ‘E don’t build one day
and dee-stroy the next, like that nigger Sangres.”
“She’s the one that knows her own mind,” said Pinky,
26
Actions and Reactions
brother to Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who
had helped to bring the grand piano across the fields in the
autumn rains.
“She had ought to,” said Iggulden. “Whoa, Buller! She’s
a Lashmar. They never was double-thinking.”
“Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your
uncle?” said Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as
America had posts.
The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a
day behind the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. “She’s
a Lashmar right enough. I started up to write to my uncle—
at once—the month after she said her folks came from Veering
Holler.”
“Where there ain’t any roads?” Skim interrupted, but none
laughed.
“My uncle he married an American woman for his second,
and she took it up like a like the coroner. She’s a
Lashmar out of the old Lashmar place, ‘fore they sold to
Conants. She ain’t no Toot Hill Lashmar, nor any o’ the
Crayford lot. Her folk come out of the ground here, neither
chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to
America—I’ve got it all writ down by my uncle’s woman—in
eighteen hundred an’ nothing. My uncle says they’re all slow
begetters like.”
“Would they be gentry yonder now?” Skim asked.
“Nah—there’s no gentry in America, no matter how long
you’re there. It’s against their law. There’s only rich and
poor allowed. They’ve been lawyers and such like over yonder
for a hundred years but she’s a Lashmar for all that.”
“Lord! What’s a hundred years?” said Whybarne, who had
seen seventy-eight of them.
“An’ they write too, from yonder—my uncle’s woman
writes—that you can still tell ‘em by headmark. Their hair’s
foxy-red still—an’ they throw out when they walk. He’s intoed-
treads like a gipsy; but you watch, an’ you’ll see ‘er
throw, out—like a colt.”
“Your trace wants taking up.” Pinky’s large ears had caught
the sound of voices, and as the two broke through the laurels
the men were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie’s feet.
She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Iggulden,
for her Aunt Sydney of Meriden (a badged and certificated
Daughter of the Revolution to boot) answered her inquir27
Kipling
ies with a two-paged discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of
a Village Improvement Society, of which she was president,
and a demand for an overdue subscription to a Factory Girls’
Reading Circle. Sophie burned it all in the Orpheus and
Eurydice grate, and kept her own counsel.
“What I want to know,” said George, when Spring was
coming, and the gardens needed thought. “is who will ever
pay me for my labour? I’ve put in at least half a million
dollars’ worth already.”
“Sure you’re not taking too much out of yourself?” his
wife asked.
“Oh, no; I haven’t been conscious of myself all winter.”
He looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled. “It’s all
behind me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all
that—those months before we sailed.”
“Don’t—ah, don’t!” she cried.
“But I must go back one day. You don’t want to keep me
out of business always—or do you?” He ended with a nervous
laugh.
Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash (of old
Iggulden’s cutting) from the hall rack.
“Aren’t you overdoing it too? You look a little tired,” he
said.
“You make me tired. I’m going to Rocketts to see Mrs.
Cloke about Mary.” (This was the sister of the telegraphist,
promoted to be sewing-maid at Pardons.) “Coming?”
“I’m due at Burnt House to see about the new well. By
the way, there’s a sore throat at Gale Anstey—”
“That’s my province. Don’t interfere. The Whybarne children
always have sore throats. They do it for jujubes.”
“Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure, honey.
Cloke ought to have told me.”
“These people don’t tell. Haven’t you learnt that yet? But
I’ll obey, me lord. See you later!”

She set off afoot, for within the three main roads that
bounded the blunt triangle of the estate (even by night one
could scarcely hear the carts on them), wheels were not
used except for farm work. The footpaths served all other
purposes. And though at first they had planned improvements,
they had soon fallen in with the customs of their
hidden kingdom, and moved about the soft-footed ways by
woodland, hedgerow, and shaw as freely as the rabbits. In28
Actions and Reactions
deed, for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded beneath
her helmet of chestnut hair; but she had been plagued of
late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloke,
who asked some questions. How it came about Sophie never
knew, but after a while behold Mrs. Cloke’s arm was about
her waist, and her head was on that deep bosom behind the
shut kitchen door.
“My dear! My dear!” the elder woman almost sobbed. “An’
d’you mean to tell me you never suspicioned? Why—why—
where was you ever taught anything at all? Of course it is.
It’s what we’ve been only waitin’ for, all of us. Time and
again I’ve said to Lady—” she checked herself. “An’ now we
shall be as we should be.”
“But—but—but—” Sophie whimpered.
“An’ to see you buildin’ your nest so busy—pianos and
books—an’ never thinkin’ of a nursery!”
“No more I did.” Sophie sat bolt upright, and began to
laugh.
“Time enough yet.” The fingers tapped thoughtfully on
the broad knee. “But—they must be strange-minded folk
over yonder with you! Have you thought to send for your
mother? She dead? My dear, my dear! Never mind! She’ll
be happy where she knows. ’Tis God’s work. An’ we was
only waitin’ for it, for you’ve never failed in your duty yet.
It ain’t your way. What did you say about my Mary’s doings?”
Mrs. Cloke’s face hardened as she pressed her chin
on Sophie’s forehead. “If any of your girls thinks to be’ave
arbitrary now, I’ll—But they won’t, my dear. I’ll see they do
their duty too. Be sure you’ll ‘ave no trouble.”
When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and
earth changed about her as on the day of old Iggulden’s
death. For an instant she thought of the wide turn of the
staircase, and the new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner
could scar, but presently, the shadow passed in a pure
wonder and bewilderment that made her reel. She leaned
against one of their new gates and looked over their lands
for some other stay.
“Well,” she said resignedly, half aloud, “we must try to make
him feel that he isn’t a third in our party,” and turned the
corner that looked over Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint.
Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood
up as she had never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged,
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Kipling
ample, prepared by course of generations for all such things.
As it had steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that it had
meaning from their few months of life within, it soothed and
promised good. She went alone and quickly into the hall,
and kissed either door-post, whispering: “Be good to me.
You know! You’ve never failed in your duty yet.”
When the matter was explained to George, he would have
sailed at once to their own land, but this Sophie forbade.
“I don’t want science,” she said. “I just want to be loved,
and there isn’t time for that at home. Besides,” she added,
looking out of the window, “it would be desertion.”
George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friars
Pardon to the telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone—
three-quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Whybarne
and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the
next parish. Said he when the line was being run: “There’s
an old ellum right in our road. Shall us throw her?”
“Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good luck, God
help ‘em.” Old Whybarne shouted the local proverb from
three poles down the line. “We ain’t goin’ to lay any axeiron
to coffin-wood here not till we know where we are yet
awhile. Swing round ‘er, swing round!”
To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line
across the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and
George. Nor can they tell why Skim Winsh, who came to his
cottage under Dutton Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45
P.M of every Saturday night, as his father had done before
him, sang no more at the bottom of the garden steps, where
Sophie always feared he would break his neck. The path
was undoubtedly an ancient right of way, and at 10.45 P.M.
on Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty to posterity
to keep it open—till Mrs. Cloke spoke to him once. She spoke
likewise to her daughter Mary, sewing maid at Pardons, and
to Mary’s best new friend, the five-foot-seven imported
London house-maid, who taught Mary to trim hats, and
found the country dullish.
But there was no noise—at no time was there any noise—
and when Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path
unless she had signified a wish that way. Then they appeared
to protest that all was well with them and their children,
their chickens, their roofs, their water-supply, and their sons
in the police or the railway service.
30
Actions and Reactions
“But don’t you find it dull, dear?” said George, loyally
doing his best not to worry as the months went by.
“I’ve been so busy putting my house in order I haven’t
had time to think,” said she. “Do you?”
“No—no. If I could only be sure of you.”
She turned on the green drawing-room’s couch (it was
Empire, not Heppelwhite after all), and laid aside a list of
linen and blankets.
“It has changed everything, hasn’t it?” she whispered.
“Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore
“
“And missed our first real summer together. No thank
you, me lord.”
“But we’re absolutely alone.”
“Isn’t that what I’m doing my best to remedy? Don’t you
worry. I like it—like it to the marrow of my little bones. You
don’t realize what her house means to a woman. We thought
we were living in it last year, but we hadn’t begun to. Don’t
you rejoice in your study, George?”
“I prefer being here with you.” He sat down on the floor
by the couch and took her hand.
“Seven,” she said, as the French clock struck. “Year before
last you’d just be coming back from business.”
He winced at the recollection, then laughed. “Business!
I’ve been at work ten solid hours to-day.”
“Where did you lunch? With the Conants?”
“No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with my feet in a
swamp. But we’ve found out where the old spring is, and
we’re going to pipe it down to Gale Anstey next year.”
“I’ll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open the door,
dear. I want to look down the passage. Isn’t that corner by
the stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in?” She looked
through half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale
green all steeped in liquid gold.
“There’s a step out of Jane Elphick’s bedroom,” she went
on—”and his first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn’t
wonder if those people hadn’t put it there on purpose.
George, will it make any odds to you if he’s a girl?”
He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest
was his wife, not the child.
“Then you’re the only person who thinks so.” She laughed.
“Don’t be silly, dear. It’s expected. I know. It’s my duty. I
31
Kipling
shan’t be able to look our people in the face if I fail.”
“What concern is it of theirs, confound ‘em!”
“You’ll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys,
Mrs. Cloke says, so I’m provided for. Shall you ever begin
to understand these people? I shan’t.”
“And we bought it for fun—for fun!” he groaned. “And
here we are held up for goodness knows bow long!”
“Why? Were you thinking of selling it?” He did not answer.
“Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?” she demanded.
This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman—a
widow for choice—who on Sophie’s death was guilefully to
marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year. George
being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years after
her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in
so doing.
“You aren’t going to bring her up again?” he asked anxiously.
“I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought
Pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second
Mrs. Chapin. Think what we’ve put into it of our two selves.”
“At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have
made—” He broke off.
“The beasts!” she went on. “They’d be sure to build a
red-brick lodge at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding
out. You must leave instructions in your will that he’s
never to do that, George, won’t you?”
He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till
it was time to dress. Then he muttered “What the devil use
is a man’s country to him when he can’t do business in it?”
Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed
time was born, not that third in their party to whom
Sophie meant to be so kind, but a godling; in beauty, it was
manifest, excelling Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer
of delights, a renewer of companionships and an
interpreter of Destiny. This last George did not realise till
he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few
days after the event.
“My dear fellow,” she cried, and slapped him heartily on
the back, “I can’t tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she’ll be
all right. (There’s never been any trouble over the birth of
an heir at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?” She felt
32
Actions and Reactions
largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver
mug. “I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly
ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp.
Give her my love.” She marched off amid her guard of grave
Airedales.
The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials,
G.L., was the crest of a footless bird and the motto: “ Wayte
awhyle—wayte awhyle.”
“That’s the other end of the riddle,” Sophie whispered,
when he saw her that evening. “Read her note. The English
write beautiful notes.”
The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he
will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though
you have said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as
a little stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar
christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar,
your great-grandmother’s brother—
George stared at his wife.
“Go on,” she twinkled, from the pillows.
—mother’s brother, sold his place to Walter’s family. We
seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that
time, but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle,
which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order
for you. I hope little George—Lashmar, he will be too,
won’t he?—will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth
on his mug.
Affectionately yours,
Alice Conant.
P.S.—How quiet you’ve kept about it all!
“Well, I’m—”
“Don’t swear,” said Sophie. “Bad for the infant mind.”
“But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever
said a word about the Lashmars?”
“You know the only time—to young Iggulden at Rocketts—
when Iggulden died.”
“Your great-grandmother’s brother! She’s traced the whole
connection—more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What
33
Kipling
does she mean about our keeping quiet?”
Sophie’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve thought that out too. We’ve
got back at the English at last. Can’t you see that she
thought that we thought my mother’s being a Lashmar
was one of those things we’d expect the English to find
out for themselves, and that’s impressed her?” She turned
the mug in her white hands, and sighed happily. “‘Wayte
awhyle—wayte awhyle.’ That’s not a bad motto, George.
It’s been worth it.”
“But still I don’t quite see—”
“I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t think our coming here
was part of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors.
They’d understand that. And look how they’ve accepted us,
all of them.”
“Are we so undesirable in ourselves?” George grunted.
“Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice
our money. Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between
the shoulders? Not by a jugful! The poor beast doesn’t
exist!”
“Do you think it’s that then?” He looked toward the cot
by the fire where the godling snorted.
“The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke
what every Lashmar gives in doles (that’s nicer than tips)
every time a Lashmite is born. I’ve done my duty thus far,
but there’s much expected of me.”
Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the
cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. “Oh,
now Lady Conant’s sent it, it’ll be all proper, ma’am, won’t
it? ‘George’ of course he’d have to be, but seein’ what he is
we was hopin’—all your people was hopin’—it ‘ud be
‘Lashmar’ too, and that’ud just round it out. A very
‘andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine. ‘Wayte
awhyle—wayte awhyle.’ That’s true with the Lashmars, I’ve
heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like
Master George won’t open ‘is nursery till he’s thirty.”
“Poor lamb!” cried Sophie. “But how did you know my
folk were Lashmars?”
Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. “I’m sure I can’t quite say,
ma’am, but I’ve a belief likely that it was something you
may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at
Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling. An’
so it came out, one thing in the way o’ talk leading to an34
Actions and Reactions
other, and those American people at Veering Holler was
very obligin’ with news, I’m told, ma’am.”
“Great Scott!” said George, under his breath. “And this is
the simple peasant!”
“Yiss,” Mrs. Cloke went on. “An’ Cloke was only wonderin’
this afternoon—your pillow’s slipped my dear, you mustn’t
lie that a-way—just for the sake o’ sayin’ something, whether
you wouldn’t think well now of getting the Lashmar farms
back, sir. They don’t rightly round off Sir Walter’s estate.
They come caterin’ across us more. Cloke, ‘e ‘ud be glad to
show you over any day.”
“But Sir Walter doesn’t want to sell, does he?”
“We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but”—with cold contempt—”
I think that trained nurse is just comin’ up from
her dinner, so ‘m afraid we’ll ‘ave to ask you, sir ... Now,
Master George—Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!”
A few months later the three of them were down at the
brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding
of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George
Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God’s earth
that day to eat, and—Sophie adored him in a voice like to
the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.
“Here’s the place,” said his father at last among the water
forget-me-nots. “But where the deuce are the larch-poles,
Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready.”
“We’ll get ‘em down if f you say so,” Cloke answered,
with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.
“But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that
timber-tug here for? We aren’t building a railway bridge.
Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be
ample.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Cloke.
“An’ I’ve nothin’ to say against larch—if you want to make
a temp’ry job of it. I ain’t ‘ere to tell you what isn’t so, sir;
an’ you can’t say I ever come creepin’ up on you, or tryin’ to
lead you further in than you set out—”
A year ago George would have danced with impatience.
Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his
spud, and waited.
“All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp’ry
job of it; and by the time the young master’s married it’ll
have to be done again. Now, I’ve brought down a couple of
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Kipling
as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we’ve ever drawed. You
put ‘em in an’ it’s off your mind or good an’ all. T’other
way—I don’t say it ain’t right, I’m only just sayin’ what I
think—but t’other way, he’ll no sooner be married than we’ll
lave it all to do again. You’ve no call to regard my words,
but you can’t get out of that.”
“No,” said George after a pause; “I’ve been realising that
for some time. Make it oak then; we can’t get out of it.”

The Recall


I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays;
I will bring back my children,
After certain days.
Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs.
They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.
Over their heads in the branches
Of their new-bought, ancient trees,
I weave an incantation,
And draw them to my knees.
Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,
The hours, the days and the seasons
Order their souls aright;
Till I make plain the meaning
Of all my thousand years
Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears

Garm----- A Hostage


0ne night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian
military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur
theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a
soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses
and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a
matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go
home before any one caught him; but he fell under the pole,
and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.
The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home
swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked
next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed.
When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been
shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks
with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I
had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my
friend’s sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person,
but to his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.
Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels
slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers—of the
old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier—that I
had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawncoloured
saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond
at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly
for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier,
knew him too, but did not approve.
“‘E’s for you,” said my friend; but he did not look as
though he liked parting with him.
“Nonsense! That dog’s worth more than most men,
Stanley,” I said.
“‘E’s that and more. ‘Tention!”
The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full
minute.
“Eyes right!”
He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the
right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook
hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder.
Here he made himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless,
hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick
him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and
held up one leg.
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Kipling
“Part o’ the trick,” said his owner. “You’re going to die
now. Dig yourself your little grave an’ shut your little eye.”
Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a
hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured, he
jumped out, wagging his tail, and whining for applause. He
was put through half-a-dozen other tricks, such as showing
how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he sat
down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how
he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no
more than finished praising him when my friend made a
gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot,
took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet,
handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after
him and howled. I read:
SIR—I give you the dog because of what you got me out of.
He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as
good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and
please do not give him back to me, for I’m not going to take
him, if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him
back any more. I have kept his name back, so you can call
him anything and he will answer. but please do not give him
back. He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do
not give him too much meat. He knows more than a man.
Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the
bull-terrier’s despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew
that a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who
loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no
more than verminous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders,
and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a
dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in
the year; a free thing, tied to you so strictly by love that
without you he will not stir or exercise; a patient, temperate,
humorous, wise soul, who knows your moods before
you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.
I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my
friend must have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style
and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood
clearly enough that I was his master, and did not follow the
soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him,
and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been
of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight,
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Actions and Reactions
but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep
iron sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled
anew. I meant to dine at the Club that night; but as darkness
drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty house
like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt
that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone.
So we fed at home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog
on the other; she watching his every mouthful, and saying
explicitly what she thought of his table manners, which were
much better than hers.
It was Vixen’s custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep
in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when
morning came I would always find that the little thing had
braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very
edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed purposefully,
every hair up, one eye on the stranger, who had dropped
on a mat in a helpless, hopeless sort of way, all four feet
spread out, sighing heavily. She settled her head on the
pillow several times, to show her little airs and graces, and
struck up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber. The
stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand
and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen’s
teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech, that
if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.
I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook
her severely, and said:
“Vixen, if you do that again you’ll be put into the verandah.
Now, remember!”
She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her
she mouthed my right wrist once more, and waited with
her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The
big dog’s tail thumped the floor in a humble and peacemaking
way.
I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a
rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised,
set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight.
At this she howled. Then she used coarse language—
not to me, but to the bullterrier—till she coughed with exhaustion.
Then she ran round the house trying every door.
Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some
one were stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers.
Last she returned, and her snuffing yelp said, “I’ll be good!
39
Kipling
Let me in and I’ll’ be good!”
She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was
quieted I whispered to the other dog, “You can lie on the
foot of the bed.” The bull jumped up at once, and though I
felt Vixen quiver with rage, she knew better than to protest.
So we slept till the morning, and they had early breakfast
with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we
went for a ride. I don’t think the bull had ever followed a
horse before. He was wild with excitement, and Vixen, as
usual, squealed and scuttered and scooted, and took charge
of the procession.
There was one corner of a village near by, which we generally
passed with caution, because all the yellow pariahdogs
of the place gathered about it.
They were half-wild, starving beasts, and though utter cowards,
yet where nine or ten of them get together they will
mob and kill and eat an English dog. I kept a whip with a
long lash for them.
That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps of design,
had moved from beyond my horse’s shadow.
The bull was ploughing along in the dust, fifty yards behind,
rolling in his run, and smiling as bull-terriers will. I
heard Vixen squeal; half a dozen of the curs closed in on
her; a white streak came up behind me; a cloud of dust rose
near Vixen, and, when it cleared, I saw one tall pariah with
his back broken, and the bull wrenching another to earth.
Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip, and the bull
paddled back smiling more than ever, covered with the blood
of his enemies. That decided me to call him “Garin of the
Bloody Breast,” who was a great person in his time, or
“Garm” for short; so, leaning forward, I told him what his
temporary name would be. He looked up while I repeated
it, and then raced away. I shouted “Garin!” He stopped,
raced back, and came up to ask my will.
Then I saw that my soldier friend was right, and that that
dog knew and was worth more than a man. At the end of
the ride I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated: “Go
away and get washed!” I said. Garin understood some part
of it, and Vixen interpreted the rest, and the two trotted off
together soberly. When I went to the back verandah Vixen
had been washed snowy-white, and was very proud of herself,
but the dog-boy would not touch Garm on any account
40
Actions and Reactions
unless I stood by. So I waited while he was being scrubbed,
and Garm, with the soap creaming on the top of his broad
head, looked at me to make sure that this was what I expected
him to endure. He knew perfectly that the dog-boy
was only obeying orders.
“Another time,” I said to the dog-boy, “you will wash the
great dog with Vixen when I send them home.”
“Does he know?” said the dog-boy, who understood the
ways of dogs.
“Garm,” I said, “another time you will be washed with
Vixen.”
I knew that Garm understood. Indeed, next washing-day,
when Vixen as usual fled under my bed, Garm stared at the
doubtful dog-boy in the verandah, stalked to the place where
he had been washed last time, and stood rigid in the tub.
But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three
would drive off in the morning at half-past eight and come
home at six or later. Vixen knowing the routine of it, went
to sleep under my table; but the confinement ate into Garm’s
soul. He generally sat on the verandah looking out on the
Mall; and well I knew what he expected.
Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on
their way to the Fort, and Garm rolled forth to inspect them;
or an officer in uniform entered into the office, and it was
pitiful to see poor Garm’s welcome to the cloth—not the man.
He would leap at him, and sniff and bark joyously, then run
to the door and back again. One afternoon I heard him bay
with a full throat—a thing I had never heard before—and he
disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the
day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the
far end, and the Garm that met me was a joyous dog. This
happened twice or thrice a week for a month.
I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and Vixen knew.
He would glide homewards from the office about four
o’clock, as though he were only going to look at the scenery,
and this he did so quietly that but for Vixen I should
not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under the table
would give a sniff and a snort, just loud enough to call my
attention to the flight. Garm might go out forty times in
the day and Vixen would never stir, but when he slunk off
to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own
tongue. That was the one sign she made to prove that Garm
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Kipling
did not altogether belong to the family. They were the best
of friends at all times, but, Vixen explained that I was never
to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me.
I never expected it. The dog was not my dog could never
be my dog—and I knew he was as miserable as his master
who tramped eight miles a day to see him. So it seemed to
me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all.
One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart (Garm
had gone before), and rode over to cantonments to find
another friend of mine, who was an Irish soldier and a great
friend of the dog’s master.
I explained the whole case, and wound up with:
“And now Stanley’s in my garden crying over his dog. Why
doesn’t he take him back? They’re both unhappy.”
“Unhappy! There’s no sense in the little man any more.
But ’tis his fit.”
“What is his fit? He travels fifty miles a week to see the
brute, and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me
on the road; and I’m as unhappy as he is. Make him take
the dog back.”
“It’s his penance he’s set himself. I told him by way of a joke,
afther you’d run over him so convenient that night, whin he
was drunk—I said if he was a Catholic he’d do penance. Off he
went wid that fit in his little head an’ a dose of fever, an nothin’
would suit but givin’ you the dog as a hostage.”
“Hostage for what? I don’t want hostages from Stanley.”
“For his good behaviour. He’s keepin’ straight now, the
way it’s no pleasure to associate wid him.”
“Has he taken the pledge?”
“If ’twas only that I need not care. Ye can take the pledge for
three months on an’ off. He sez he’ll never see the dog again,
an’ so mark you, he’ll keep straight for evermore. Ye know his
fits? Well, this is wan of them. How’s the dog takin’ it ?”
“Like a man. He’s the best dog in India. Can’t you make
Stanley take him back?”
“I can do no more than I have done. But ye know his fits.
He’s just doin’ his penance. What will he do when he goes
to the Hills? The doctor’s put him on the list.”
It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids
from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for
the hot weather; and though the men ought to enjoy the
cool and the comfort, they miss the society of the barracks
42
Actions and Reactions
down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid
going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head,
so I left Terrence hopefully, though he called after me “He
won’t take the dog, sorr. You can lay your month’s pay on
that. Ye know his fits.”
I never pretended to understand Private Ortheris; and so
I did the next best thing I left him alone.
That summer the invalids of the regiment to which my
friend belonged were ordered off to the Hills early, because
the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would
do them good. Their route lay south to a place called
Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they
would turn east and march up into the hills to Kasauli or
Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night
before they left—they were marching at five in the morning.
It was midnight when I drove into my garden, and surprised
a white figure flying over the wall.
“That man,” said my butler, “has been here since nine,
making talk to that dog. He is quite mad.”
I did not tell him to go away because he has been here
many times before, and because the dog-boy told me that if
I told him to go away, that great dog would immediately
slay me. He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the
Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink.”
“Kadir Buksh,” said I, “that was well done, for the dog
would surely have killed thee. But I do not think the white
soldier will come any more.”
Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams.
Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard
him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a
howl. He had dreamed he was with his master again, and I
nearly cried. It was all Stanley’s silly fault.
The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was
some miles from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and
ten miles distant from my house. By a mere chance one of
the officers drove back for another good dinner at the Club
(cooking on the line of march is always bad), and there I
met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew
that he knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big
fat retriever who was going up to the Hills for his health,
and, though it was still April, the round, brown brute puffed
and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.
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Kipling
“It’s amazing,” said the officer, “what excuses these invalids
of mine make to get back to barracks. There’s a
man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to
cantonments to pay a debt he’d forgotten. I was so taken
by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as
pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it
was really?”
“If you’ll drive me home I think I can show you,” I said.
So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever;
and on the way I told him the story of Garm.
“I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He’s the
best dog in the regiment,” said my friend. “I offered the
little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago. But he’s a
hostage, you say, for Stanley’s good conduct. Stanley’s one
of the best men I have when he chooses.”
“That’s the reason why,” I said. “A second-rate man
wouldn’t have taken things to heart as he has done.”
We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept
round the house. There was a place close to the wall all
grown about with tamarisk trees, where I knew Garm kept
his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to sit near it. In the
full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending
over the dog.
“Good-bye, old man,” we could not help hearing Stanley’s
voice. “For ‘Eving’s sake don’t get bit and go mad by any
measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man.
You don’t get drunk an’ run about ‘ittin’ your friends. You
takes your bones an’ you eats your biscuit, an’ you kills
your enemy like a gentleman. I’m goin’ away—don’t ‘owl—
I’m goin’ off to Kasauli, where I won’t see you no more.”
I could hear him holding Garm’s nose as the dog threw it
up to the stars.
“You’ll stay here an’ be’ave, an’—an’ I’ll go away an’ try to
be’ave, an’ I don’t know ‘ow to leave you. I don’t know—”
“I think this is damn silly,” said the officer, patting his
foolish fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who
leaped to his feet, marched forward, and saluted.
“You here?” said the officer, turning away his head.
“Yes, sir, but I’m just goin’ back.”
“I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You come
with me. I can’t have sick men running about fall over the
place. Report yourself at eleven, here.”
44
Actions and Reactions
We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer
muttered and pulled his retriever’s ears.
He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a dog; and when
he waddled off to my cookhouse to be fed, I had a brilliant
idea.
At eleven o’clock that officer’s dog was nowhere to be
found, and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made.
He called and shouted and grew angry, and hunted through
my garden for half an hour.
Then I said:
“He’s sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by
rail, and I’ll find the beast and return him.”
“Beast?” said the officer. “I value that dog considerably
more than I value any man I know. It’s all very fine for you
to talk—your dog’s here.”
So she was—under my feet—and, had she been missing,
food and wages would have stopped in my house till her
return. But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut
of the whip. My friend had to drive away at last with Stanley
in the back seat; and then the dog-boy said to me:
“What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib’s dog? Look at him!”
I went to the boy’s hut, and the fat old reprobate was
lying on a mat carefully chained up. He must have heard his
master calling for twenty minutes, but had not even attempted
to join him.
“He has no face,” said the dog-boy scornfully. “He is a
punniar-kooter (a spaniel). He never tried to get that cloth
off his jaws when his master called. Now Vixen-baba would
have jumped through the window, and that Great Dog would
have slain me with his muzzled mouth. It is true that there
are many kinds of dogs.”
Next evening who should turn up but Stanley. The officer
had sent him back fourteen miles by rail with a note begging
me to return the retriever if I had found him, and, if I
had not, to offer huge rewards. The last train to camp left
at half-past ten, and Stanley, stayed till ten talking to Garm.
I argued and entreated, and even threatened to shoot the
bull-terrier, bat the little man was as firm as a rock, though
I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely.
Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could
hope to see his man, and followed Stanley like a shadow.
The retriever said nothing, but licked his lips after his meal
45
Kipling
and waddled off without so much as saying “Thank you” to
the disgusted dog-boy.
So that last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as
Garm, who moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to
the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen,
and dropped flat till it was time to go home. There was no
more running out into the verandahs, no slinking away for
stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer the
dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my
side on the seat, Vixen with her head under the crook of my
left elbow, and Garm hugging the left handrail.
Here Vixen was ever in great form. She had to attend to
all the moving traffic, such as bullock-carts that blocked
the way, and camels, and led ponies; as well as to keep up
her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust.
She never yapped for yapping’s sake, but her shrill, high
bark was known all along the Mall, and other men’s terriers
ki-yied in reply, and bullock-drivers looked over their
shoulders and gave us the road with a grin.
But Garm cared for none of these things. His big eyes
were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut. There
was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief. We
called him “Bob the Librarian,” because he always imagined
vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in hunting for
them would drag out half the old newspaper-files. Bob was
a well-meaning idiot, but Garm did not encourage him. He
would slide his head round the door panting, “Rats! Come
along Garm!” and Garm would shift one forepaw over the
other, and curl himself round, leaving Bob to whine at a
most uninterested back. The office was nearly as cheerful
as a tomb in those days.
Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all contented with
his surroundings. He had gone for an unauthorised walk
with Vixen early one Sunday morning, and a very young
and foolish artilleryman (his battery had just moved to that
part of the world) tried to steal them both. Vixen, of course,
knew better than to take food from soldiers, and, besides,
she had just finished her breakfast. So she trotted back
with a large piece of the mutton that they issue to our troops,
laid it down on my verandah, and looked up to see what I
thought. I asked her where Garin was, and she ran in front
of the horse to show me the way.
46
Actions and Reactions
About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman
sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy
handkerchief on his knees. Garin was in front of him, looking
rather pleased. When the man moved leg or hand, Garin
bared his teeth in silence. A broken string hung from his
collar, and the other half of, it lay, all warm, in the
artilleryman’s still hand. He explained to me, keeping his
eyes straight in front of him, that he had met this dog (he
called him awful names) walking alone, and was going to
take him to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah.
I said that Garin did not seem to me much of a pariah,
but that he had better take him to the Fort if he thought
best. He said he did not care to do so. I told him to go to
the Fort alone. He said he did not want to go at that hour,
but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the
dog. I instructed Garin to take him to the Fort, and Garm
marched him solemnly up to the gate, one mile and a half
under a hot sun, and I told the quarter-guard what had happened;
but the young artilleryman was more angry than
was at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several regiments,
he was told, had tried to steal Garm in their time.
That month the hot weather shut down in earnest, and
the dogs slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where
the bath is placed. Every morning, as soon as the man filled
my bath the two jumped in, and every morning the man
filled the bath a second time. I said to him that he might as
well fill a small tub specially for the dogs. “Nay,” said he
smiling, “it is not their custom. They would not understand.
Besides, the big bath gives them more space.”
The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night
came to know Garin intimately. He noticed that when the
swaying fan stopped I would call out to the coolie and bid
him pull with a long stroke. If the man still slept I would
wake him up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing
to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe Stanley
had taught him all about this in barracks. At any rate, when
the punkah stopped, Garin would first growl and cock his
eye at the rope, and if that did not wake the man it nearly
always did—he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper’s
ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could never connect
the punkah and the coolie; so Garin gave me grateful
hours of cool sleep. But—he was utterly wretched—as miser47
Kipling
able as a human being; and in his misery he clung so closely
to me that other men noticed it, and were envious. If I moved
from one room to another Garin followed; if my pen stopped
scratching, Garm’s head was thrust into my hand; if I turned,
half awake, on the pillow, Garm was up and at my side, for
he knew that I was his only link with his master, and day
and night, and night and day, his eyes asked one question—
”When is this going to end?”
Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed that he was
more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather, till one day
at the Club a man said: “That dog of yours will die in a
week or two. He’s a shadow.” Then I dosed Garin with iron
and quinine, which he hated; and I felt very anxious. He
lost his appetite, and Vixen was allowed to eat his dinner
under his eyes. Even that did not make him swallow, and
we held a consultation on him, of the best man-doctor in
the place; a lady-doctor, who cured the sick wives of kings;
and the Deputy Inspector-General of the veterinary service
of all India. They pronounced upon his symptoms, and I
told them his story, and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand.
“He’s dying of a broken heart,” said the lady-doctor suddenly.
“‘Pon my word,” said the Deputy Inspector General, “I
believe Mrs. Macrae is perfectly right as usual.”
The best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription,
and the veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it
afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper
dog-proportions; and that was the first time in his life that
our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited. It
was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on his feet for a
week or two; then he lost flesh again. I asked a man I knew
to take him up to the Hills with him when he went, and the
man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the
carriage. Garin took in the situation at one red glance. The
hair rose along his back; he sat down in front of me and
delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in the
jaws of a dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once,
and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garin laid
his head on my knee and whined. So I knew his answer, and
devoted myself to getting Stanley’s address in the Hills.
My turn to go to the cool came late in August. We were
allowed thirty days’ holiday in a year, if no one fell sick,
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Actions and Reactions
and we took it as we could be spared. My chief and Bob the
Librarian had their holiday first, and when they were gone
I made a calendar, as I always did, and hung it up at the
head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till they returned.
Vixen had gone up to the Hills with me five times
before; and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the
beautiful wood fires there as much as I did.
“Garm,” I said, “we are going back to Stanley at Kasauli.
Kasauli—Stanley; Stanley Kasauli.” And I repeated it twenty
times. It was not Kasauli really, but another place. Still I
remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the
last night, and I dared not change the name. Then Garm
began to tremble; then he barked; and then he leaped up at
me, frisking and wagging his tail.
“Not now,” I said, holding up my hand. “When I say ‘Go,’
we’ll go, Garm.” I pulled out the little blanket coat and spiked
collar that Vixen always wore up in the Hills to protect her
against sudden chills and thieving leopards, and I let the
two smell them and talk it over. What they said of course I
do not know; but it made a new dog of Garm. His eyes were
bright; and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate
his food, and he killed his rats for the next three weeks,
and when he began to whine I had only to say “Stanley—
Kasauli; Kasauli—Stanley,” to wake him up. I wish I had
thought of it before.
My chief came back, all brown with living in the open air,
and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains. That same
afternoon we three and Kadir Buksh began to pack for our
month’s holiday, Vixen rolling in and out of the bullock-trunk
twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning all over and thumping
on the floor with his tail. Vixen knew the routine of travelling
as well as she knew my office-work. She went to the
station, singing songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while
Garin sat with me. She hurried into the railway carriage, saw
Kadir Buksh make up my bed for the night, got her drink of
water, and curled up with her black-patch eye on the tumult
of the platform. Garin followed her (the crowd gave him a
lane all to himself) and sat down on the pillows with his eyes
blazing, and his tail a haze behind him.
We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn, four or five
men, who had been working hard fox eleven months, shouting
for our dales—the two-horse travelling carriages that were
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Kipling
to take us up to Kalka at the foot of the Hills. It was all new
to Garm. He did not understand carriages where you lay at
full length on your bedding, but Vixen knew and hopped
into her place at once; Garin following. The Kalka Road,
before the railway was built, was about forty-seven miles
long, and the horses were changed every eight miles. Most
of them jibbed, and kicked, and plunged, but they had to
go, and they went rather better than usual for Garm’s deep
bay in their rear.
There was a river to be forded, and four bullocks pulled
the carriage, and Vixen stuck her head out of the slidingdoor
and nearly fell into the water while she gave directions.
Garin was silent and curious, and rather needed reassuring
about Stanley and Kasauli. So we rolled, barking and yelping,
into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate enough for two.
After Kalka the road wound among the hills, and we took
a curricle with half-broken ponies, which were changed every
six miles. No one dreamed of a railroad to Simla in
those days, for it was seven thousand feet up in the air. The
road was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation
pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here, again,
Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped
into the back seat, and shouted. A cool breath from the
snows met us about five miles out of Kalka, and she whined
for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on the liver. I had had
one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed to the fresh
breezes, I put it on, and arm chewed it uncomprehendingly,
but I think he was grateful.
“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toottoot-
toot!” went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places,
and “yow! yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front
seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat
of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. Now and
then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work
again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would
shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he
would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.
Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is
Solon”; and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my
knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has
the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and
windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for
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Actions and Reactions
something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me,
while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told, us we should
find Stanley “out there,” nodding his head towards a bare,
bleak hill.
When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley,
who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his
face in his hands, and his overcoat hanging loose about him.
I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as
this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great
gray hillside.
Here Garm left me.
He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see,
without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily,
and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley,
knocking the little man clean over. They rolled on the ground
together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I could not
see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up
and whimpered.
He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals,
and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even
while I watched, both man and dog plumped out to their
natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garin
was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the same
time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garin—
gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything
that I could understand, except that he had fancied he was
going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he
was not going to give up Garin any more to anybody under
the rank of Beelzebub.
Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.
We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley
stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer,
and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing
over him; and then Vixen and I went on.
Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me
three times, giving me both paws one after another, and
leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing
Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road.
Then he raced back to his own master.
Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight
came, and we could see the lights of Simla across the
hills, she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster.
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Kipling
I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. Then she gave a
contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my
breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest
people in all the world that night.

The Power of the Dog


There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.
When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair
But . . . you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.
When the body that lived at your single will
When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear!
We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:
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Actions and Reactions
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long
So why in Heaven (before we are there!)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

The Mother Hive


If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the
Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees
are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or
parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honeyflow,
and though the farmers worked, until their wings
ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.
A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alightingboard.
“Excuse me,” she began, “but it’s my first honeyflight.
Could you kindly tell me if this is my—”
“—own hive?” the Guard snapped. “Yes! Buzz in, and be
foul-brooded to you! Next!”
“Shame!” cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings
and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum.
The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the
alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled
in like a ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn
her out at once, dodged into a brood-frame, where youngsters
who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers
nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will
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Kipling
tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who
had been slanged by the Guard.
“What is the world like, Melissa?” said a companion.
“Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the
Guard told me to go and be foul-brooded!” She sat down in
the cool draught across the combs.
“If you’d only heard,” said the Wax-moth silkily, “the insolence
of the Guard’s tone when she cursed our sister. It
aroused the Entire Community.” She laid an egg. She had
stolen in for that purpose.
“There was a bit of a fuss on the Gate,” Melissa chuckled.
“You were there, Miss?” She did not know how to address
the slim stranger.
“Don’t call me ‘Miss.’ I’m a sister to all in affliction—just
a working-sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden.”
The Wax-moth caressed Melissa with her soft feelers
and laid another egg.
“You mustn’t lay here,” cried Melissa. “You aren’t a
Queen.”
“My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour
those aren’t eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to
die for them.” She raised her voice a little above the rustle
and tramp round her. “If you’d like to kill me, pray do.”
“Don’t be unkind, Melissa,” said a young bee, impressed
by the chaste folds of the Wax-moth’s wing, which hid her
ceaseless egg-dropping.
“I haven’t done anything,” Melissa answered. “She’s doing
it all.”
“Ah, don’t let your conscience reproach you later, but when
you’ve killed me, write me, at least, as one that loved her
fellow-worker.”
Laying at every sob, the Wax-moth backed into a crowd
of young bees, and left Melissa bewildered and annoyed. So
she lifted up her little voice in the darkness and cried,
“Stores!” till a gang of cell-fillers hailed her, and she left
her load with them.
“I’m afraid I foul-brooded you just now,” said a voice over
her shoulder. “I’d been on the Gate for three hours, and
one would foul-brood the Queen herself after that. No offence
meant.”
“None taken,” Melissa answered cheerily. “I shall be on
Guard myself, some day. What’s next to do?”
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Actions and Reactions
“There’s a rumour of Death’s Head Moths about. Send a
gang of youngsters to the Gate, and tell them to narrow it
in with a couple of stout scrap-wax pillars. It’ll make the
Hive hot, but we can’t have Death’s Headers in the middle
of our honey-flow.”
“My Only Wings! I should think not!” Melissa had all a
sound bee’s hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking,
feathery Thief of the Hives. “Tumble out!” she called across
the youngsters’ quarters. “All you who aren’t feeding babies,
show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the Ga-ate!” She
chanted the order at length.
“That’s nonsense,” a downy, day-old bee answered. “In
the first place, I never heard of a Death’s Header coming
into a hive. People don’t do such things. In the second, building
pillars to keep ‘em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy
of British bees. In the third, if you trust a Death’s
Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of confidence.
Our dear sister in grey says so.”
“Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste
of wax that is needed for higher and more practical ends,”
said the Wax-moth from an empty store-cell.
“The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I’ve ever heard
of. You mustn’t teach us to refuse work,” Melissa began.
“You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work’s the essence
of life; but to expend precious unreturning vitality
and real labour against imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly
absurd! If I can only teach a—a little toleration—a little
ordinary kindness here toward that absurd old bogey you
call the Death’s Header, I shan’t have lived in vain.”
“She hasn’t lived in vain, the darling!” cried twenty bees
together. “You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just
devotes herself to spreading her principles, and—and—she
looks lovely!”
An old, baldish bee came up the comb.
“Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps.
Buzz off!” she said. The Wax-moth slipped aside.
The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering.
“What’s the matter with ‘em?” said the oldster. “Why do
they call each other ‘ducky’ and ‘darling’? Must be the
weather.” She sniffed suspiciously. “Horrid stuffy smell
here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said Melissa, who, of course, only
55
Kipling
knew the Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never
thought to report her presence. She had always imagined
Wax-moths to be like blood-red dragon-flies.
“You had better fan out this corner for a little,” said the
old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once,
took firm hold with her fore-feet, and fanned obediently at
the regulation stroke three hundred beats to the second.
Fanning tries a bee’s temper, because she must always keep
in the same place where she never seems to be doing any
good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings.
When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows
it. The Wax-moth crept forth, and caressed Melissa again.
“I see,” she murmured, “that at heart you are one of Us.”
“I work with the Hive,” Melissa answered briefly.
“It’s the same thing. We and the Hive are one.”
“Then why are your feelers different from ours? Don’t
cuddle so.”
“Don’t be provincial, Carissima. You can’t have all the
world alike—yet.”
“But why do you lay eggs?” Melissa insisted. “You lay ‘em
like a Queen—only you drop them in patches all over the
place. I’ve watched you.”
“Ah, Brighteyes, so you’ve pierced my little subterfuge?
Yes, they are eggs. By and by they’ll spread our principles.
Aren’t you glad?”
“You gave me your most solemn word of honour that
they were not eggs.”
“That was my little subterfuge, dearest—for the sake of
the Cause. Now I must reach the young.” The Wax-moth
tripped towards the fourth brood-frame where the young
bees were busy feeding the babies.
It takes some time for a sound bee to realize a malignant
and continuous lie. “She’s very sweet and feathery,” was all
that Melissa thought, “but her talk sounds like ivy honey
tastes. I’d better get to my field-work again.”
She found the Gate in a sulky uproar. The youngsters
told off to the pillars had refused to chew scrap-wax because
it made their jaws ache, and were clamouring for virgin
stuff.
“Anything to finish the job!” said the badgered Guards.
“Hang up, some of you, and make wax for these slack-jawed
sisters.”
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Actions and Reactions
Before a bee can make wax she must fill herself with honey.
Then she climbs to safe foothold and hangs, while other
gorged bees hang on to her in a cluster. There they wait in
silence till the wax comes. The scales are either taken out
of the maker’s pockets by the workers, or tinkle down on
the workers while they wait. The workers chew them (they
are useless unchewed) into the all-supporting, all-embracing
Wax of the Hive.
But now, no sooner was the wax-cluster in position than
the workers below broke out again.
“Come down!” they cried. “Come down and work! Come
on, you Levantine parasites! Don’t think to enjoy yourselves
up there while we’re sweating down here!”
The cluster shivered, as from hooked fore-foot to hooked
hind-foot it telegraphed uneasiness. At last a worker sprang
up, grabbed the lowest waxmaker, and swung, kicking above
her companions.
“I can make wax too!” she bawled. “Give me a full gorge
and I’ll make tons of it.”
“Make it, then,” said the bee she had grappled. The spoken
word snapped the current through the cluster. It shook
and glistened like a cat’s fur in the dark. “Unhook!” it murmured.
“No wax for any one to-day.”
“You lazy thieves! Hang up at once and produce our wax,”
said the bees below.
“Impossible! The sweat’s gone. To make your wax we must
have stillness, warmth, and food. Unhook! Unhook!”
They broke up as they murmured, and disappeared among
the other bees, from whom, of course, they were
undistinguishable.
“Seems as if we’d have to chew scrap-wax for these pillars,
after all,” said a worker.
“Not by a whole comb,” cried the young bee who had
broken the cluster. “Listen here! I’ve studied the question
more than twenty minutes. It’s as simple as falling off a
daisy. You’ve heard of Cheshire, Root and Langstroth?”
They had not, but they shouted “Good old Langstroth!”
just the same.
“Those three know all that there is to be known about
making hives. One or t’other of ‘em must have made ours,
and if they’ve made it, they’re bound to look after it. Ours
is a ‘Guaranteed Patent Hive.’ You can see it on the label
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Kipling
behind.”
“Good old guarantee! Hurrah for the label behind!” roared
the bees.
“Well, such being the case, I say that when we find they’ve
betrayed us, we can exact from them a terrible vengeance.”
“Good old vengeance! Good old Root! ‘Nuff said! Chuck
it!” The crowd cheered and broke away as Melissa dived
through.
“D’you know where Langstroth, Root and Cheshire, live
if you happen to want em? she asked of the proud panting
orator.
“Gum me if I know they ever lived at all! But aren’t they
beautiful names to buzz about? Did you see how it worked
up the sisterhood?”
“Yes; but it didn’t defend the Gate,” she replied.
“Ah, perhaps that’s true, but think how delicate my position
is, sister. I’ve a magnificent appetite, and I don’t like
working. It’s bad for the mind. My instinct tells me that I
can act as a restraining influence on others. They would
have been worse, but for me.”
But Melissa had already risen clear, and was heading for
a breadth of virgin white clover, which to an overtired bee
is as soothing as plain knitting to a woman.
“I think I’ll take this load to the nurseries,” she said, when
she had finished. “It was always quiet there in my day,” and
she topped off with two little pats of pollen for the babies.
She was met on the fourth brood-comb by a rush of excited
sisters all buzzing together.
“One at a time! Let me put down my load. Now, what is it
Sacharissa?” she said.
“Grey Sister—that fluffy one, I mean—she came and said
we ought to be out in the sunshine gathering honey, because
life was short. She said any old bee could attend to
our babies, and some day old bees would. That isn’t true,
Melissa, is it? No old bees can take us away from our babies,
can they?”
“Of course not. You feed the babies while your heads are
soft. When your heads harden, you go on to field-work.
Any one knows that.”
“We told her so! We told her so; but she only waved her
feelers, and said we could all lay eggs like Queens if we
chose. And I’m afraid lots of the weaker sisters believe her,
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Actions and Reactions
and are trying to do it. So unsettling!”
Sacharissa sped to a sealed worker-cell whose lid pulsated,
as the bee within began to cut its way out.
“Come along, precious!” she murmured, and thinned the
frail top from the other side. A pale, damp, creased thing
hoisted itself feebly on to the comb. Sacharissa’s note
changed at once. “No time to waste! Go up the frame and
preen yourself!” she said. “Report for nursing-duty in my
ward to-morrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What’s the
matter with your third right leg?”
The young bee held it out in silence—unmistakably a drone
leg incapable of packing pollen.
“Thank you. You needn’t report till the day after to-morrow.”
Sacharissa turned to her companion. “That’s the fifth
oddity hatched in my ward since noon. I don’t like it.”
“There’s always a certain number of ‘em,” said Melissa.
“You can’t stop a few working sisters from laying, now and
then, when they overfeed themselves. They only raise dwarf
drones.”
But we’re hatching out drones with workers’ stomachs;
workers with drones’ stomachs; and albinoes and mixedleggers
who can’t pack pollen—like that poor little beast
yonder. I don’t mind dwarf drones any more than you do
(they all die in July), but this steady hatch of oddities frightens
me, Melissa!”
“How narrow of you! They are all so delightfully clever
and unusual and interesting,” piped the Wax-moth from a
crack above them. “Come here, you dear, downy duck, and
tell us all about your feelings.”
“I wish she’d go!” Sacharissa lowered her voice. “She meets
these—er -oddities as they dry out, and cuddles ‘em in corners.”
“I suppose the truth is that we’re over-stocked and too
well fed to swarm,” said Melissa.
“That is the truth,” said the Queen’s voice behind them.
They had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty
cells vibrating. Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate
and dragged her weary body forward. “Can you suggest a
remedy?” she said.
“New principles!” cried the Wax-moth from her crevice.
“We’ll apply them quietly later.”
“Suppose we sent out a swarm?” Melissa suggested. “It’s
a little late, but it might ease us off.”
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Kipling
“It would save us, but—I know the Hive! You shall see for
yourself.” The old Queen cried the Swarming Cry, which to
a bee of good blood should be what the trumpet was to
Job’s war-horse. In spite of her immense age (three, years),
it rang between the canon-like frames as a pibroch rings in
a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and repeated
it up in every gallery; and the broad-winged drones,
burly and eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak
of bugles: “La Reine le veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!”
But the roar which should follow the Call was wanting.
They heard a broken grumble like the murmur of a falling
tide.
“Swarm? What for? Catch me leaving a good bar-frame
Hive, with fixed foundations, for a rotten, old oak out in
the open where it may rain any minute! We’re all right! It’s
a ‘Patent Guaranteed Hive.’ Why do they want to turn us
out? Swarming be gummed! Swarming was invented to cheat
a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed!”
The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for
the night.
“You hear?” said the Queen. “I know the Hive!”
“Quite between ourselves, I taught them that,” cried the
Wax-moth. “Wait till my principles develop, and you’ll see
the light from a new quarter.”
“You speak truth for once,” the Queen said suddenly, for
she recognized the Wax-moth. “That Light will break into
the top of the Hive. A Hot Smoke will follow it, and your
children will not be able to hide in any crevice.”
“Is it possible?” Melissa whispered. “I-we have sometimes
heard a legend like it.”
“It is no legend,” the old Queen answered. “I had it from
my mother, and she had it from hers. After the Wax-moth
has grown strong, a Shadow will fall across the gate; a Voice
will speak from behind a Veil; there will be Light, and Hot
Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see everything
that they have done, all together in one place, burned
up in one great fire.” The old Queen was trying to tell what
she had been told of the Bee Master’s dealings with an infected
hive in the apiary, two or three seasons ago; and, of
course, from her point of view the affair was as important
as the Day of Judgment.
“And then?” asked horrified Sacharissa.
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Actions and Reactions
“Then, I have heard that a little light will burn in a great
darkness, and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I
think not.”
“Tut! Tut!” the Wax-moth cried. “You good, fat people
always prophesy ruin if things don’t go exactly your way.
But I grant you there will be changes.”
There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled
with little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars.
Flannelly lines ran through the honey-stores, the
pollen-larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, through
the babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards spent
half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines
ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb.
The caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked,
and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed and garmed
everything. Even where it did not hamper the bees’ feet,
the stale, sour smell of the stuff put them off their work;
though some of the bees who had taken to egg laying said it
encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital interest
in life.
When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends
with the ever-increasing Oddities—albinoes, mixed-leggers,
single-eyed composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying
sisters; and the ever-dwindling band of the old stock
worked themselves bald and fray-winged to feed their queer
charges. Most of the Oddities would not, and many, on account
of their malformations, could not, go through a day’s
field-work; but the Wax-moths, who were always busy on
the brood-comb, found pleasant home occupations for them.
One albino, for instance, divided the number of pounds of
honey in stock by the number of bees in the Hive, and proved
that if every bee only gathered honey for seven and three
quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time
to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating
flights. The drones were not at all pleased.
Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all
brood-cells should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere
with the grub or the workers. He proved that the old sixsided
cell was solely due to the workers building against
each other on opposite sides of the wall, and that if there
were no interference, there would be no angles. Some bees
tried the new plan for a while, and found it cost eight times
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Kipling
more wax than the old six sided specification; and, as they
never allowed a cluster to hang up and make wax in peace,
real wax was scarce. However, they eked out their task with
varnish stolen from new coffins at funerals, and it made
them rather sick. Then they took to cadging round sugarfactories
and breweries, because it was easiest to get their
material from those places, and the mixture of glucose and
beer naturally fermented in store and blew the store-cells
out of shape, besides smelling abominably. Some of the
sound bees warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper,
but the Oddities at once surrounded them and balled
them to death. That was a punishment they were almost as
fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound
bees to feed them. Curiously enough the age-old instinct of
loyalty and devotion towards the Hive made the sound bees
do this, though their reason told them they ought to slip
away and unite with some other healthy stock in the apiary.
“What, about seven and three-quarter minutes’ work
now?” said Melissa one day as she came in. “I’ve been at it
for five hours, and I’ve only half a load.”
“Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey which the Hive
produces,” said a blind Oddity squatting in a store-cell.
“But honey is gathered from flowers outside two miles
away sometimes,” cried Melissa.
“Pardon me,” said the blind thing, sucking hard. “But
this is the Hive, is it not?”
“It was. Worse luck, it is.”
“And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?” It opened a fresh
store-cell to prove it.
“Ye-es, but it won’t be long at this rate,” said Melissa.
“The rates have nothing to do with it. This Hive produces
the Hival Honey. You people never seem to grasp the economic
simplicity that underlies all life.”
“Oh, me!” said poor Melissa, “haven’t you ever been beyond
the Gate?”
“Certainly not. A fool’s eyes are in the ends of the earth.
Mine are in my head.” It gorged till it bloated.
Melissa took refuge in her poorly paid field-work and told
Sacharissa the story.
“Hut!” said that wise bee, fretting with an old maid of a
thistle. “Tell us something new. The Hive’s full of such as
him—it, I mean.”
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Actions and Reactions
“What’s the end to be? All the honey going out and none
coming in. Things can’t last this way!” said Melissa.
“Who cares?” said Sacharissa. “I know now how drones
feel the day before they’re killed. A short life and a merry
one for me.”
“If it only were merry! But think of those awful, solemn,
lop-sided Oddities waiting for us at home crawling and clambering
and preaching—and dirtying things in the dark.”
“I don’t mind that so much as their silly songs, after we’ve
fed ‘em, all about ‘work among the merry, merry blossoms,”
said Sacharissa from the deeps of a stale Canterbury bell.
“I do. How’s our Queen?” said Melissa.
“Cheerfully hopeless, as usual. But she lays an egg now
and then.”
“Does she so?” Melissa backed out of the next bell with a
jerk. “Suppose now, we sound workers tried to raise a Princess
in some clean corner?”
“You’d be put to it to find one. The Hive’s all Wax-moth
and muckings. But—well?”
“A Princess might help us in the time of the Voice behind
the Veil that the Queen talks of. And anything is better
than working for Oddities that chirrup about work that they
can’t do, and waste what we bring home.”
“Who cares?” said Sacharissa. “I’m with you, for the fun
of it. The Oddities would ball us to death, if they knew.
Come home, and we’ll begin.”
There is no room to tell how the experienced Melissa found
a far-off frame so messed and mishandled by abandoned cellbuilding
experiments that, for very shame, the bees never
went there. How in that ruin she blocked out a Royal Cell of
sound wax, but disguised by rubbish till it looked like a kopje
among deserted kopjes. How she prevailed upon the hopeless
Queen to make one last effort and lay a worthy egg. How
the Queen obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was flung
out on the rubbish heap, and how a multitude of laying sisters
went about dropping drone-eggs where they listed, and
said there was no more need of Queens. How, covered by
this confusion, Sacharissa educated certain young bees to
educate certain new-born bees in the almost lost art of making
Royal Jelly. How the nectar for it was won out of hours in
the teeth of chill winds. How the hidden egg hatched true—
no drone, but Blood Royal. How it was capped, and how des63
Kipling
perately they worked to feed and double-feed the now swarming
Oddities, lest any break in the food-supplies should set
them to instituting inquiries, which, with songs about work,
was their favourite amusement. How in an auspicious hour,
on a moonless night, the Princess came forth a Princess indeed,
and how Melissa smuggled her into a dark empty honeymagazine,
to bide her time; and how the drones, knowing
she was there, went about singing the deep disreputable lovesongs
of the old days—to the scandal of the laying sisters,
who do not think well of drones. These things are, written in
the Book of Queens, which is laid up in the hollow of the
Great Ash Ygdrasil.
After a few days the weather changed again and became
glorious. Even the Oddities would now join the crowd that
hung out on the alighting-board, and would sing of work
among the merry, merry blossoms till an untrained ear
might have received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet, in
truth, their store-honey had been eaten long ago. They lived
from day to day on the efforts of the few sound bees, while
the Wax-moth fretted and consumed again their already
ruined wax. But the sound bees never mentioned these
matters. They knew, if they did, the Oddities would hold a
meeting and ball them to death.
“Now you see what we have done,” said the Wax-moths.
“We have created New Material, a New Convention, a New
Type, as we said we would.”
“And new possibilities for us,” said the laying sisters gratefully.
“You have given us a new life’s work, vital and paramount.”
“More than that,” chanted the Oddities in the sunshine;
“you have created a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven,
cloudless and accessible” (it was a perfect August evening)
“and Earth teeming with the merry, merry blossoms, waiting
only our honest toil to turn them all to good. The—er—
Aster, and the Crocus, and the—er—Ladies’ Smock in her
season, the Chrysanthemum after her kind, and the Guelder
Rose bringing forth abundantly withal.”
“Oh, Holy Hymettus!” said Melissa, awestruck. “I knew
they didn’t know how honey was made, but they’ve forgotten
the Order of the Flowers! What will become of them?”
A Shadow fell across the alighting-board as the Bee Master
and his son came by. The Oddities crawled in and a Voice
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Actions and Reactions
behind a Veil said: “I’ve neglected the old Hive too long.
Give me the smoker.”
Melissa heard and darted through the gate. “Come, oh
come!” she cried. “It is the destruction the Old Queen foretold.
Princess, come!”
“Really, you are too archaic for words,” said an Oddity in
an alley-way. “A cloud, I admit, may have crossed the sun;
but why hysterics? Above all, why Princesses so late in the
day? Are you aware it’s the Hival Tea-time? Let’s sing grace.”
Melissa clawed past him with all six legs. Sacharissa had
run to what was left of the fertile brood-comb. “Down and
out!” she called across the brown breadth of it. “Nurses,
guards, fanners, sweepers—out!
Never mind the babies. They’re better dead.—Out, before
the Light and the Hot Smoke!”
The Princess’s first clear fearless call (Melissa had found
her) rose and drummed through all the frames. “La Reine
le veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!”
The Hive shook beneath the shattering thunder of a stuckdown
quilt being torn back.
“Don’t be alarmed, dears,” said the Wax-moths. “That’s
our work. Look up, and you’ll see the dawn of the New
Day.”
Light broke in the top of the hive as the Queen had, prophesied—
naked light on the boiling, bewildered bees.
Sacharissa rounded up her rearguard, which dropped
headlong off the frame, and joined the Princess’s detachment
thrusting toward the Gate. Now panic was in full blast,
and each sound bee found herself embraced by at least three
Oddities. The first instinct of a frightened bee is to break
into the stores and gorge herself with honey; but there were
no stores left, so the Oddities fought the sound bees.
“You must feed us, or we shall die!” they cried, holding
and clutching and slipping, while the silent scared earwigs
and little spiders twisted between their legs. “Think of the
Hive, traitors! The Holy Hive!”
“You should have thought before!” cried the sound bees.,
“Stay and see the dawn of your New Day.”
They reached the Gate at last over the soft bodies of many
to whom they had ministered.
“On! Out! Up!” roared Melissa in the Princess’s ear. “For
the Hive’s sake! To the Old Oak!”
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Kipling
The Princess left the alighting-board, circled once, flung
herself at the lowest branch of the Old Oak, and her little
loyal swarm—you could have covered it with a pint mug—
followed, hooked, and hung.
“Hold close!” Melissa gasped. “The old legends have come
true! Look!”
The Hive was half hidden by smoke, and Figures moved
through the smoke. They heard a frame crack stickily, saw
it heaved high and twirled round between enormous hands—
a blotched, bulged, and perished horror of grey wax, corrupt
brood, and small drone-cells, all covered with crawling
Oddities, strange to the sun.
“Why, this isn’t a hive! This is a museum of curiosities,”
said the Voice behind the Veil. It was only the Bee Master
talking to his son.
“Can you blame ‘em, father?” said a second voice. “It’s
rotten with Wax-moth. See here!”
Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it
broke away in rustling flakes of ashy rottenness.
“Number Four Frame! That was your mother’s pet comb
once,” whispered Melissa to the Princess. “Many’s the good
egg I’ve watched her lay there.”
“Aren’t you confusing pod hoc with propter hoc?” said
the Bee Master. “Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees
let them in.” A third frame crackled and rose into the light.
“All this is full of laying workers’ brood. That never happens
till the stock’s weakened. Phew!”
He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also
crumbled to pieces.
The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf dronegrubs
squirm feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had
nursed on that frame, well knowing their work was useless;
but the actual sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens
a good worker.
“No, they have some recuperative power left,” said the
second voice. “Here’s a Queen cell!”
“But it’s tucked away among—What on earth has come to
the little wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of
cell-building.” The father held up the frame where the bees
had experimented in circular cell-work. It looked like the
pitted head, of a decaying toadstool.
“Not altogether,” the son corrected. “There’s one line, at
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Actions and Reactions
least, of perfectly good cells.”
“My work,” said Sacharissa to herself. “I’m glad Man does
me justice before—”
That frame, too, was smashed out and thrown atop of the
others and the foul earwiggy quilts.
As frame after frame followed it, the swarm beheld the
upheaval, exposure, and destruction of all that had been
well or ill done in every cranny of their Hive for generations
past. There was black comb so old that they had forgotten
where it hung; orange, buff, and ochre-varnished
store-comb, built as bees were used to build before the days
of artificial foundations; and there was a little, white, frail
new work. There were sheets on sheets of level, even broodcomb
that had held in its time unnumbered thousands of
unnamed workers; patches of obsolete drone-comb, broad
and high-shouldered, showing to what marks the male grub
was expected to grow; and two-inch deep honey-magazines,
empty, but still magnificent, the whole gummed and glued
into twisted scrap-work, awry on the wires; half-cells, beginnings
abandoned, or grandiose, weak-walled, composite
cells pieced out with rubbish and capped with dirt.
Good or bad, every inch of it was so riddled by the tunnels
of the Wax-moth that it broke in clouds of dust as it
was flung on the heap.
“Oh, see!” cried Sacharissa. “The Great Burning that Our
Queen foretold. Who can bear to look?”
A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish, and they smelt
singeing wax.
The Figures stooped, lifted the Hive and shook it upside
down over the pyre. A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken
comb, scale, fluff, and grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled,
popped a little, and then the flames roared up and consumed
all that fuel.
“We must disinfect,” said a Voice. “Get me a sulphurcandle,
please.”
The shell of the Hive was returned to its place, a light was
set in its sticky emptiness, tier by tier the Figures built it
up, closed the entrance, and went away. The swarm watched
the light leaking through the cracks all the long night. At
dawn one Wax-moth came by, fluttering impudently.
“There has been a miscalculation about the New Day, my
dears,” she began; “one can’t expect people to be perfect
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all at once. That was our mistake.”
“No, the mistake was entirely ours,” said the Princess.
“Pardon me,” said the Wax-moth. “When you think of the
enormous upheaval—call it good or bad—which our influence
brought about, you will admit that we, and we alone—”
“You?” said the Princess. “Our stock was not strong. So
you came—as any other disease might have come. Hang close,
all my people.”
When the sun rose, Veiled Figures came down, and saw
their swarm at the bough’s end waiting patiently within sight
of the old Hive—a handful, but prepared to go on.

The Bees and the Flies


A farmer of the Augustan age
Perused in Virgil’s golden page,
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene’s son
How the dank sea-god sowed the swain
Means to restore his hives again
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.
The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath:
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread.
And, having thus performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.
Nor waited long … The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass—and the carcass swelled!
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves;
Past any doubt, the bull conceives!
The farmer bids men bring more hives
To house the profit that arrives;
Prepares on pan, and key and kettle,
Sweet music that shall make ‘em settle;
But when to crown the work he goes,
Gods! What a stink salutes his nose!
Where are the honest toilers?
Where The gravid mistress of their care?
A busy scene, indeed, he sees,
But not a sign or sound of bees.
Worms of the riper grave unhid
By any kindly coffin lid,
Obscene and shameless to the light,
Seethe in insatiate appetite,
Through putrid offal; while above
The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,
Whose offspring, supping where they supt,
Consume corruption twice corrupt.

With the Night Mail
A Story of 2000 A. D.

(Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared)

At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on
the lower stages of one of the G.P.O. outward mail
towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in “Postal
Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed”; and the
Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This
talisman opened all doors, even those in the despatchingcaisson
at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering
the sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close as
herrings in the long grey underbodies which our G.P.O. still
calls “coaches.” Five such coaches were filled as I watched,
and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting
packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous
and wonderfully learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Sec69
Kipling
ond Despatcher of the Western Route—to the Captains’
Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail
captains come on for their turn of duty. He introduces me
to the captain of “162”—Captain Purnall, and his relief,
Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large
and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic
of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures
of our racing professionals, from L.V. Rautsch to little
Ada Warrleigh—that fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually
turned through naked space.
On the notice-board in the Captains’ Room, the pulsing
arrows of some twenty indicators register, degree by geographical
degree, the progress of as many homeward-bound
packets. The word “Cape” rises across the face of a dial; a
gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the
Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically
of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers’,
lofts notifies the return of a homer.
“Time for us to be on the move,” says Captain Purnall,
and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to the top of the
despatch-towers. “Our coach will lock on when it is filled
and the clerks are aboard.”
“No. 162” waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The
great curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and
some minute alteration of trim makes her rock a little in
her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly,
“162” comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic
Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring
through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the
inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some two
hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well
forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred
by ninety-five of any crack liner, and you will realize
the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at
more than the emergency speed of the Cyclonic!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping
hair-crack of the bow-rudder—Magniac’s rudder that assured
us the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor
penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli’s
“gullwing” curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible
plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to
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Actions and Reactions
port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her
full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant
the whole forward—a touch on the wheel will suffice—and
she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the
complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroomhead
that will bring her up all standing within a half mile.
“Yes,” says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought,
“Castelli thought he’d discovered the secret of controlling
aeroplanes when he’d only found out how to steer dirigible
balloons. Magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats
ram each other; and war went out of fashion and Magniac
he went out of his mind because he said he couldn’t serve
his country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what
we’re really doing.”
“If you want to see the coach locked you’d better go
aboard. It’s due now,” says Mr. Geary. I enter through the
door amidships. There is nothing here for display. The inner
skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or
two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of the
bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration,
but the G.P.O. serves them raw under a lick of grey
official paint. The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow
and as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed
for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced for
the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost amidships.
Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an
aperture—a bottomless hatch at present—into which our
coach will be locked. One looks down over the coamings
three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices
boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of
thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly
from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a
pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it
comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers
and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains
and Mr. Geary satisfy them selves that the coach is locked
home. A clerk passes the way-bill over the hatch coaming.
Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr. Geary.
Receipt has been given and taken. “Pleasant run,” says Mr.
Geary, and disappears through the door which a foot high
pneumatic compressor locks after him.
“A-ah!” sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down
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Kipling
clips part with a tang. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole
through which I watch over-lighted London slide eastward
as the gale gets hold of us. The first of the low winter
clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens Middlesex.
On the south edge of it I can see a postal packet’s light
ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant she
gleams like a star ere she drops toward the Highgate Receiving
Towers. “The Bombay Mail,” says Captain Hodgson,
and looks at his watch. “She’s forty minutes late.”
“What’s our level?” I ask.
“Four thousand. Aren’t you coming up on the bridge?”
The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of
ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain
Hodgson’s legs where he stands on the Control Platform that
runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered
and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a
fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. “It’s steep to-night,” he
mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. “We generally
pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time
o’ the year. I hate slathering through fluff.”
“So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin’ for a slant!”
says Captain Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred
fathoms below. The Antwerp Night Mail makes her signal
and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks
blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale
will have us over the North Sea in half-an-hour, but Captain
Purnall lets her go composedly—nosing to every point of
the compass as she rises.
“Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred”—the dipdial
reads ere we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry
of snow at the thousand fathom level. Captain Purnall rings
up the engines and keys down the governor on the switch
before him. There is no sense in urging machinery when
Eolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are away
in earnest now—our nose notched home on our chosen star.
At this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed
by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong
westerly blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of
southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the
firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to silver
without a stain except where our shadow underruns us.
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Actions and Reactions
Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined
beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep
the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of
the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its
spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off
our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of
Saint David’s Head, swings its unmistakable green beam
twenty-five degrees each way. There must be half a mile of
fluff over it in this weather, but it does not affect The Leek.
“Our planet’s over-lighted if anything,” says Captain
Purnall at the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. “I remember
the old days of common white verticals that ‘ud
show two or three hundred feet up in a mist, if you knew
where to look for ‘em. In really fluffy weather they might
as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming
home then, an’ have some fun. Now, it’s like driving
down Piccadilly.”
He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers
bore through the cloud-floor. We see nothing of England’s
outlines: only a white pavement pierced in all directions by
these manholes of variously coloured fire—Holy Island’s
white and red—St. Bee’s interrupted white, and so on as far
as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and the
Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the
world whereby we travel in security!
“Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?” asks Captain
Hodgson. Cork Light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to
it. Captain Purnall nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts—
the cloud-bank beneath us is streaked. with running fissures
of flame where the Atlantic boats are hurrying Londonward
just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed, under the
Conference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to
themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties
with English air. “No. 162” lifts to a long-drawn wail of
the breeze in the fore-flange of the rudder and we make
Valencia (white, green, white) at a safe 7000 feet, dipping
our beam to an incoming Washington packet.
There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of
cream round Dingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer
the coast. A big S.A.T.A. liner (Societe Anonyme des
Transports Aeriens) is diving and lifting half a mile below
us in search of some break in the solid west wind. Lower
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Kipling
still lies a disabled Dane she is telling the liner all about it
in International. Our General Communication dial has
caught her talk and begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson
makes a motion to shut it off but checks himself. “Perhaps
you’d like to listen,” he says.
“Argol of St. Thomas,” the Dane whimpers. “Report owners
three starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make
Flores as we are, but impossible further. Shall we buy spares
at Fayal?”
The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the
bearings. The Argol answers that she has already done so
without effect, and begins to relieve her mind about cheap
German enamels for collar-bearings. The Frenchman assents
cordially, cries “Courage, mon ami,” and switches off.
Then lights sink under the curve of the ocean.
“That’s one of Lundt & Bleamers’ boats,” says Captain
Hodgson. “Serves ‘em right for putting German compos in
their thrust-blocks. She won’t be in Fayal to-night! By the
way, wouldn’t you like to look round the engine-room?”
I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow
Captain Hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to
avoid the bulge of the tanks. We know that Fleury’s gas can
lift anything, as the world-famous trials of ’89 showed, but
its almost indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank
room. Even in this thin air the lift-shunts are busy taking out
one-third of its normal lift, and still “162” must be checked
by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our flight would
become a climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an
overlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim
ship alike. “When I take the bridge,” says Captain Hodgson,
“you’ll see me shunt forty per cent of the lift out of the gas
and run her on the upper rudder. With a swoop upward instead
of a swoop downward, as you say. Either way will do.
It’s only habit. Watch our dip-dial! Tim fetches her down once
every thirty knots as regularly as breathing.”
So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the
arrow creeps from 6700 to 7300. There is the faint “szgee”
of the rudder, and back slides the arrow to 6000 on a falling
slant of ten or fifteen knots.
“In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well,”
says Captain Hodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which
divides the engine-room from the bare deck, he leads me
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Actions and Reactions
on to the floor. Here we find Fleury’s Paradox of the Bulkheaded
Vacuum—which we accept now without thought—literally
in full blast. The three engines are H.T.&T. assistedvacuo
Fleury turbines running from 3000 to the Limit—
that is to say, up to the point when the blades make the air
“bell”—cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely as overdriven
marine propellers used to do. “162’s” Limit is low
on account of the small size of her nine screws, which, though
handier than the old colloid Thelussons, “bell” sooner. The
midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is not running;
so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers
draw direct into the return-mains.
The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched expansion-
tanks on either side the valves descend pillarwise
to the turbine-chests, and thence the obedient gas whirls
through the spirals of blades with a force that would whip
the teeth out of a power saw. Behind, is its own pressure
held in leash of spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the
vacuum where Fleury’s Ray dances in violet-green bands
and whirled turbillons of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the
vacuum-chamber are pressure-tempered colloid (no glass
would endure the strain for an instant) and a junior engineer
with tinted spectacles watches the Ray intently. It is
the very heart of the machine—a mystery to this day. Even
Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire,
could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering
in the U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a second,
strike the furious blast of gas into a chill greyish-green
liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end
of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains
back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had
almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh.
Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber,
vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more
is the ordained cycle. Fleury’s Ray sees to that; and the
engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury’s Ray. If
a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human finger
touch the hooded terminals, Fleury’s Ray will wink and
disappear and must be laboriously built up again. This
means half a day’s work for all hands and an expense of,
one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the G.P.O. for radium-
salts and such trifles.
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Kipling
“Now look at our thrust-collars. You won’t find much German
compo there. Full-jewelled, you see,” says Captain
Hodgson as the engineer shunts open the top of a cap. Our
shaft-bearings are C.M.C. (Commercial Minerals Company)
stones, ground with as much care as the lens of a telescope.
They cost L837 apiece. So far we have not arrived at their
term of life. These bearings came from “No. 97,” which
took them over from the old Dominion of Light which had
them out of the wreck of the Persew aeroplane in the years
when men still flew wooden kites over oil engines!
They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German “ruby”
enamels, so-called “boort” facings, and the dangerous and
unsatisfactory alumina compounds which please dividendhunting
owners and turn skippers crazy. The rudder-gear
and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under the engineroom
dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The
former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and
falls half an inch. The latter, cased and guarded like the Utube
aft, exhibits another Fleury Ray, but inverted and more
green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the
gas, and this it will do without watching. That is all! A tiny
pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering
green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flattopped
tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute.
Between the two, three white-painted turbinetrunks,
like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate the
empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied
gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and
the soft gluck-glock of gaslocks closing as Captain Purnall
brings “162” down by the head. The hum of the turbines
and the boom of the air on our skin is no more than a
cotton-wool wrapping to the universal stillness. And we are
running an eighteen-second mile.
I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the hatchcoamings
into the coach. The mail-clerks are sorting the
Winnipeg, Calgary, and Medicine Hat bags; but there is a
pack of cards ready on the table.
Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbinevalves
and stand by; but the spectacled slave of the Ray in
the U-tube never lifts his head. He must watch where he is.
We are hard-braked and going astern; there is language from
the Control Platform.
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Actions and Reactions
“Tim’s sparking badly about something,” says the unruffled
Captain Hodgson. “Let’s look.”
Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour
since, but the embodied authority of the G.P.O. Ahead of
us floats an ancient, aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp
of the dingiest, with no more right to the 5000-foot lane
than has a horse-cart to a modern road. She carries an obsolete
“barbette” conning tower—a six-foot affair with railed
platform forward—and our warning beam plays on the top
of it as a policeman’s lantern flashes on the area sneak.
Like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a shock-headed navigator
in his shirt-sleeves. Captain Purnall wrenches open the colloid
to talk with him man to man. There are times when
Science does not satisfy.
“What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping
chimney-sweep?” he shouts as we two drift side by side.
“Do you know this is a Mail-lane? You call yourself a sailor,
sir? You ain’t fit to peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux.
Your name and number! Report and get down, and be—!”
“I’ve been blown up once,” the shock-headed man cries,
hoarsely, as a dog barking. “I don’t care two flips of a contact
for anything you can do, Postey.”
“Don’t you, sir? But I’ll make you care. I’ll have you towed
stern first to Disko and broke up. You can’t recover insurance
if you’re broke for obstruction. Do you understand
that?”
Then the stranger bellows: “Look at my propellers!
There’s been a wulli-wa down below that has knocked us
into umbrella-frames! We’ve been blown up about forty thousand
feet! We’re all one conjuror’s watch inside! My mate’s
arm’s broke; my engineer’s head’s cut open; my Ray went
out when the engines smashed; and ... and ... for pity’s sake
give me my height, Captain! We doubt we’re dropping.”
“Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?” Captain
Purnall overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid,
staring and snuffing. The stranger leaks pungently.
“We ought to blow into St. John’s with luck. We’re trying
to plug the fore-tank now, but she’s simply whistling it away,”
her captain wails.
“She’s sinking like a log,” says Captain Purnall in an undertone.
“Call up the Banks Mark Boat, George.” Our dipdial
shows that we, keeping abreast the tramp, have dropped
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Kipling
five hundred feet the last few minutes.
Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins
to swing through the night, twizzling spokes of light
across infinity.
“That’ll fetch something,” he says, while Captain Hodgson
watches the General Communicator. He has called up the
North Banks Mark Boat, a few hundred miles west, and is
reporting the case.
“I’ll stand by you,” Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure
on the conning-tower.
“Is it as bad as that?” comes the answer. “She isn’t insured.
She’s mine.”
“Might have guessed as much,” mutters Hodgson.
“Owner’s risk is the worst risk of all!”
“Can’t I fetch St. John’s—not even with this breeze?” the
voice quavers.
“Stand by to abandon ship. Haven’t you any lift in you,
fore or aft?”
“Nothing but the midship tanks, and they’re none too
tight. You see, my Ray gave out and—” he coughs in the
reek of the escaping gas.
“You poor devil!” This does not reach our friend. “What
does the Mark Boat say, George?”
“Wants to know if there’s any danger to traffic. Says she’s in
a bit of weather herself, and can’t quit station. I’ve turned in a
General Call, so even if they don’t see our beam some one’s
bound to help—or else we must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold
on! Here we are! A Planet liner, too! She’ll be up in a tick!”
“Tell her to have her slings ready,” cries his brother captain.
“There won’t be much time to spare ... Tie up your
mate,” he roars to the tramp.
“My mate’s all right. It’s my engineer. He’s gone crazy.”
“Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!”
“But I can make St. John’s if you’ll stand by.”
“You’ll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes.
You’re less than fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers.”
A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral
and takes the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is
open land her transporter-slings hang down like tentacles.
We shut off our beam as she adjusts herself—steering to a
hair—over the tramp’s conning-tower. The mate comes up,
his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into the cradle.
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Actions and Reactions
A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he
must go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him
that he will find a nice new Ray all ready in the liner’s engine-
room. The bandaged head goes up wagging excitedly.
A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers hollowly above
us, and we see the passengers’ faces at the saloon colloid.
“That’s a pretty girl. What’s the fool waiting for now?”
says Captain Purnall.
The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by
and see him fetch St. John’s. He dives below and returns—at
which we little human beings in the void cheer louder than
ever—with the ship’s kitten. Up fly the liner’s hissing slings;
her underbody crashes home and she hurtles away again.
The dial shows less than 3000 feet. The Mark Boat signals
we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her deathsong,
as she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags.
“Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning,”
says Captain Purnall, following her down. There is no
need. Not a liner in air but knows the meaning of that vertical
beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth.
“But she’ll drown in the water, won’t she?” I ask. “Not
always,” is his answer. “I’ve known a derelict up-end and sift
her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes
for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We’ll run no risks.
Pith her, George, and look sharp. There’s weather ahead.”
Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the
heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally
cased as a smoking-room settee, and at two hundred feet
releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped
arms opening as they descend. The derelict’s forehead is
punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern
first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that
pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.
“A filthy business,” says Hodgson. “I wonder what it must
have been like in the old days?”
The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if that wavering
carcass had been filled with the men of the old days,
each one of them taught (that is the horror of it!) that, after
death he would very possibly go for ever to unspeakable
torment?
And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows now that
we are only our fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), we, I
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say, ripped and rammed and pithed to admiration.
Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts that we are
to get into our inflators and to bring him his at once.
We hurry into the heavy rubber suits—the engineers are
already dressed—and inflate at the air-pump taps. G.P.O.
inflators are thrice as thick as a racing man’s “flickers,”
and chafe abominably under the armpits. George takes the
wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the extreme of
rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck he
would bounce back. But it is “162” that will do the kicking.
“The Mark Boat’s mad—stark ravin’ crazy,” he snorts, returning
to command. “She says there’s a bad blow-out ahead
and wants me to pull over to Greenland. I’ll see her pithed
first! We wasted half an hour fussing over that dead duck
down under, and now I’m expected to go rubbin’ my back all
round the Pole. What does she think a Postal packet’s made
of? Gummed silk? Tell her we’re coming on straight, George.”
George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the
Direct Control. Now under Tim’s left toe lies the port-engine
Accelerator; under his left heel the Reverse, and so
with the other foot. The lift-shunt stops stand out on the
rim of the steering-wheel where the fingers of his left hand
can play on them. At his right hand is the midships engine
lever ready to be thrown into gear at a moment’s notice. He
leans forward in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one
ear cocked toward the General Communicator. Henceforth
he is the strength and direction of “162,” through whatever
may befall.
The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A. B. .C.
Directions to the traffic at large. We are to secure all “loose
objects”; hood up our Fleury Rays; and “on no account to
attempt to clear snow from our conning-towers till the
weather abates.” Under-powered craft, we are told, can ascend
to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to look out for
them accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very
badly, “with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc.”
Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only warning
is the electric skin-tension (I feel as though I were a lacemaker’s
pillow) and an irritability which the gibbering of
the General Communicator increases almost to hysteria.
We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the
tramp and our turbines are giving us an honest two hun80
Actions and Reactions
dred and ten knots.
Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down,
shows us the North Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of
fire round her rising and falling—bewildered planets about
an unstable sun—helpless shipping hanging on to her light
for company’s sake. No wonder she could not quit station.
She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the bad
vortex in which (her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.
The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly
luminous films—wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms
itself into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with
eagerness till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the
blackness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes
there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as
though that light were lead—sinks and recovers to lurch and
stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim’s fingers on
the lift-shunt strike chords of numbers—1:4:7:—2:4:6:—7:5:3,
and so on; for he is running by his tanks only, lifting or
lowering her against the uneasy air. All three engines are at
work, for the sooner we have skated over this thin ice the
better. Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault is
charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin friction
may excite to unholy manifestations. Between the upper
and lower levels—5000 and 7000, hints the Mark Boat—we
may perhaps bolt through if ... Our bow clothes itself in
blue flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can keep
pace with the changing tensions. A vortex has us by the
beak and we dive down a two-thousand foot slant at an angle
(the dip-dial and my bouncing body record it) of thirty-five.
Our turbines scream shrilly; the propellers cannot bite on
the thin air; Tim shunts the lift out of five tanks at once
and by sheer weight drives her bullet wise through the maelstrom
till she cushions with jar on an up-gust, three thousand
feet below.
“Now we’ve done it,” says George in my ear: “Our skinfriction,
that last slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions!
Look out for laterals, Tim; she’ll want some holding.”
“I’ve got her,” is the answer. “Come up, old woman.”
She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and
right like the pinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her
course four ways at once, and cuffed into place again, only
to be swung aside and dropped into a new chaos. We are
81
Kipling
never without a corposant grinning on our bows or rolling
head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle
of electricity around and within us is added once or twice
the rattle of hail—hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow
we must or we may break our back, pitch-poling.
“Air’s a perfectly elastic fluid,” roars George above the tumult.
“About as elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, ain’t it?”
He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes
on the Heavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts;
if one disturbs the High Gods’ market-rates by hurling steel
hulls at ninety knots across tremblingly adjusted electric
tensions, one must not complain of any rudeness in the
reception. Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, one
corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting
into the blackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce
sparks flying from his knuckles at every turn of the hand.
Now and again he shook his head to clear the sweat trickling
from his eyebrows, and it was then that George, watching
his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his
face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined
that a human being could so continuously labour and so
collectedly think as did Tim through that Hell’s half-hour
when the flurry was at its worst. We were dragged hither
and yon by warm or, frozen suctions, belched up on the
tops of wulii-was, spun down by vortices and clubbed aside
by laterals under a dizzying rush of stars in the, company
of a drunken moon.
I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding
in and out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder
than the yelling winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder
gouging into any lull that promised hold for an instant.
At last we began to claw up on a cant, bow-rudder and portpropeller
together; only the nicest balancing of tanks saved
us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days.
“We’ve got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow,”
George cried.
“There’s no windward,” I protested feebly, where I swung
shackled to a stanchion. “How can there be?”
He laughed—as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out—
that red man laughed beneath his inflated hood!
“Look!” he said. “We must clear those refugees with a
high lift.”
82
Actions and Reactions
The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou’west of
us, fluctuating in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The
air was thick with moving lights at every level. I take it most
of them were trying to lie head to wind, but, not being
hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat had
risen to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement,
had dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb
wulli-wa, and was blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead
of shutting off she went astern and, naturally, rebounded
as from a wall almost into the Mark Boat, whose
language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple.
“If they’d only ride it out quietly it ‘ud be better,” said
George in a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them
all. “But some skippers -will navigate without enough lift.
What does that Tad-boat think she is doing, Tim?”
“Playin’ kiss in the ring,” was Tim’s unmoved reply. A
Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a smooth and butted
into it full power. But there was a vortex at the tail of that
smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out like a pea from off
a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and all but
over-ending.
“Now I hope she’s satisfied,” said Tim. “I’m glad I’m not
a Mark Boat . . . Do I want help?” The General Communicator
dial had caught his ear. “George, you may tell that gentleman
with my love—love, remember, George—that I do not
want help. Who is the officious sardine-tin?”
“A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow.”
“Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet
isn’t being towed at present.”
“Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage,”
George explained. “We call’ em kittiwakes.”
A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease
for one instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for
rescues, and a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking.
Surrendered to the insurrection of the airs through
which we tore our way, he lay in absolute peace. I saw the
smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat dropped,
it seemed, like a stone in a well.
We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly
neighbours when the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun.
A shooting-star to northward filled the sky with the green
blink of a meteorite dissipating itself in our atmosphere.
83
Kipling
Said George: “That may iron out all the tensions.” Even
as he spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest; the levels
filled; the laterals died out in long, easy swells; the air-ways
were smoothed before us. In less than three minutes the
covey round the Mark Boat had shipped their power-lights
and whirred away upon their businesses.
“What’s happened?” I gasped. The nerve-store within and
the volt-tingle without had passed: my inflators weighed
like lead.
“God, He knows!” said Captain George soberly “That old
shooting-star’s skin-friction has discharged the different levels.
I’ve seen it happen before. Phew: What a relief!”
We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our
clammy suits. Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame.
The Mark Boat was coming up behind us. He opened the
colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped his face.
“Hello, Williams!” he cried. “A degree or two out o’ station,
ain’t you?”
“May be,” was the answer from the Mark Boat. “I’ve had
some company this evening.”
“So I noticed. Wasn’t that quite a little draught?”
“I warned you. Why didn’t you pull out north? The eastbound
packets have.”
“Me? Not till I’m running a Polar consumptives’ sanatorium
boat. I was squinting through a colloid before you
were out of your cradle, my son.”
“I’d be the last man to deny it,” the captain of the Mark
Boat replies softly. “The way you handled her just now—
I’m a pretty fair judge of traffic in a volt-hurry—it was a
thousand revolutions beyond anything even I’ve ever seen.”
Tim’s back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George
on the c. p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly
attractive maiden pinned up on Tim’s telescope bracket
above the steering-wheel.
I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!
There is some talk overhead of “coming round to tea on
Friday,” a brief report of the derelict’s fate, and Tim volunteers
as he descends: “For an A. B. C. man young Williams
is less of a high-tension fool than some. Were you thinking
of taking her on, George? Then I’ll just have a look round
that port-thrust seems to me it’s a trifle warm—and we’ll
jog along.”
84
Actions and Reactions
The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in
her appointed eyrie. Here she will stay a shutterless observatory;
a life-boat station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate
appeal-cum-meteorological bureau for three hundred miles
in all directions, till Wednesday next when her relief slides
across the stars to take her buffeted place. Her black hull,
double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all
that remains to the planet of that odd old word authority.
She is responsible only to the Aerial Board of Control the
A. B. C. of which Tim speaks so flippantly. But that semielected,
semi-nominated body of a few score of persons of
both sexes, controls this planet. “Transportation is
Civilisation,” our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we
please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all
it implies. Practically , the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all
international arrangements and, to judge from its last report,
finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only
too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration
on its shoulders.
I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the c. p. while
George fans her along over the white blur of the Banks in
beautiful upward curves of fifty miles each. The dip-dial
translates them on the tape in flowing freehand.
Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet,
which record “162’s” path through the volt-flurry.
“I haven’t had a fever-chart like this to show up in five
years,” he says ruefully.
A postal packet’s dip-dial records every yard of every run.
The tapes then go to the A. B. C., which collates and makes
composite photographs of them for the instruction of captains.
Tim studies his irrevocable past, shaking his head.
“Hello! Here’s a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at fifty-five degrees!
We must have been standing on our heads then,
George.”
“You don’t say so,” George answers. “I fancied I noticed
it at the time.”
George may not have Captain Purnall’s catlike swiftness,
but he is all an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that
play on the shunt-stops. The delicious flight-curves come
away on the tape with never a waver. The Mark Boat’s vertical
spindle of light lies down to eastward, setting in the
face of the following stars. Westward, where no planet
85
Kipling
should rise, the triple verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still
to the Southern route) make a low-lifting haze. We seem
the only thing at rest under all the heavens; floating at ease
till the earth’s revolution shall turn up our landing-towers.
And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteensecond
mile.
“Some fine night,” says Tim, “we’ll be even with that
clock’s Master.”
“He’s coming now,” says George, over his shoulder. “I’m
chasing the night west.”
The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had
been drawn under unobserved, but the deep airboom on
our skin changes to a joyful shout.
“The dawn-gust,” says Tim. “It’ll go on to meet the Sun.
Look! Look! There’s the dark being crammed back over our
bows! Come to the after-colloid. I’ll show you something.”
The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach
are asleep, and the Slave of the Ray is ready to follow them.
Tim slides open the aft colloid and reveals the curve of the
world—the ocean’s deepest purple—edged with fuming and
intolerable gold.
Then the Sun rises and through the colloid strikes out
our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.
“Squirrels in a cage,” he mutters. “That’s all we are. Squirrels
in a cage! He’s going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a
few years, my shining friend, and we’ll take steps that will
amaze you. We’ll Joshua you!”
Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the Yale of
Ajalon at our pleasure. So far, we can drag out the dawn to
twice its normal length in these latitudes. But some day—even
on the Equator—we shall hold the Sun level in his full stride.
Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic.
A big submersible breaks water suddenly. Another and another
follows with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling
of relieved pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising
to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean
is all patterned with peacock’s eyes of foam.
“We’ll lung up, too,” says Tim, and when we return to the
c. p. George shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh
air sweeps her out. There is no hurry. The old contracts
(they will be revised at the end of the year) allow twelve
hours for a run which any packet can put behind her in ten.
86
Actions and Reactions
So we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which pushes
us along at a languid twenty.
To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning
half a mile or so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts
and after a volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered your
nerves. While we discussed the thickening traffic with the
superiority that comes of having a high level reserved to
ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning
hymn on a Hospital boat.
She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us
and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight.
“Oh, ye Winds of God,” sang the unseen voices: “bless ye
the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever!”
We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell
across her great open platforms they looked up and
stretched out their hands neighbourly while they sang. We
could see the doctors and the nurses and the white-buttonlike
faces of the cot-patients. She passed slowly beneath us,
heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night,
all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a
cloud and vanished, her song continuing. “Oh, ye holy and
humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and
magnify Him for ever.”
“She’s a public lunger or she wouldn’t have been singing
the Benedicite; and she’s a Greenlander or she wouldn’t
have snow-blinds over her colloids,” said George at last.
“She’ll be bound for Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier
sanatoriums for a month.
If she was an accident ward she’d be hung up at the eightthousand-
foot level. Yes—consumptives.”
“Funny how the new things are the old thing I’ve read in
books,” Tim answered, “that savages used to haul their sick
and wounded up to the tops of hills because microbes were
fewer there. We hoist ‘em in sterilized air for a while. Same
idea. How much do the doctors say we’ve added to the average
life of man?”
“Thirty years,” says George with a twinkle in his eye. “Are
we going to spend ‘em all up here, Tim?”
“Flap ahead, then. Flap ahead. Who’s hindering?” the senior
captain laughed, as we went in.
We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental
shipping; and we had need of it. Though our route is in no
87
Kipling
sense a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic
this way along. We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great
Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista
with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We
overcossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their
captains, who see no land between Trepassy and Lanco,
know what gold they bring back from West Erica. Trans-
Asiatic Directs we met, soberly ringing the world round the
Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and whitepainted
Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath
us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites.
Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria
where you can smell their grape-fruit and bananas across
the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of
enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed
the northern health stations in icebound ports where
submersibles dare not rise.
Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted
down leisurely out of the north, like strings of unfrightened
wild duck. It does not pay to “fly” minerals and oil a mile
farther than is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to
submersibles in the ice pack off Nain or Hebron are so
great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct,
and scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps
aloft except the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now
that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world’s shoulder,
timber-lifting in Siberia.
We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old
water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his
broad line of black between its drifting iceblocks, all down
the Park that the wisdom of our fathers—but every one
knows the Quebec run.
We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes
ahead of time, and there hung at ease till the Yokohama
Intermediate Packet could pull out and give us our proper
slip. It was curious to watch the action of the holding-down
clips all along the frosty river front as the boats cleared or
came to rest. A big Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and
her crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to sing
“Elsinore”—the oldest of our chanteys. You know it of
course:
88
Actions and Reactions
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic
Forty couple waltzing on the floor!
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away
And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!
Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:
Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor
West from Sourabaya to the Baltic—
Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic
And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!
The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as
though Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out
these light and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the
Heights. Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was
with passionate appeal that the great tower arms flung open—
or did I think so because on the upper staging a little hooded
figure also opened her arms wide toward her father?
* * *
In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the
receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at
the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced
me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf.
“And by the way,” said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine
under the hat of civil life, “I saw young Williams in the Mark
Boat. I’ve asked him to tea on Friday.”

Aerial Board of Control


Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec.
18th.
CAPE VERDE—Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guidelight
changes from 1st proximo to triple flash—green white
green—in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning
light for Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare
(white) on all oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.
INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)—From 1st prox.: extreme southerly
light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees
on approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high
off this coast between April and October.
TABLE BAY—Devil’s Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg.
Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from
Three Anchor Bay at least two thousand feet under, and do
not round to till East of E. shoulder Devil’s Peak.
SANDHEADS LIGHT -Green triple vertical marks new private
landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.
SNAEFELL JOKUL—White occulting light withdrawn for
winter.
PATAGONIA—No summer light south Cape Pilar. This includes
Staten Island and Port Stanley.
C. NAVARIN—Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals
(new).
EAST CAPE—Fog—flash -single white with single bomb, 30
sec. intervals (new).
MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO—Lights unreliable owing eruptions.
Lay from Cape Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping
highest levels.
90
Actions and Reactions
For the Board:
CATTERTHUN }
ST. JUST } Lights.
VAN HEDDER }
Casualties
Week ending Dec. 18th.
SABLE ISLAND—Green single barbette-tower freighter,
number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced
after collision, passed 300-ft. level Q P. as. Dec. 15th.
Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.
N. F. BANKS—Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter
(Fowey—St. John’s) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46
151 N. 50 15' W. Crew rescued by Planet liner Asteroid.
Watched to water and pithed by Postal Packet, Dec. 14th.
KERGUELEN, MARK BOAT reports last call from Cymena
freighter (Gayer Tong Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking
in snow-storm South McDonald Islands. No wreckage recovered.
Messages and wills of crew at all A. B. C. offices.
FEZZAN—T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during
Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew
at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th.
BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports Caducci (Valandingham Line)
slightly spiked in western gorge Point de Benasdue. Passengers
transferred Andorra (Fulton Line). Barcelona Mark
Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.
ASCENSION, MARE BOAT—Wreck of unknown racingplane,
Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and
Harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved 7 20' S. 18 41' W.
Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices.
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Kipling
Missing
No answer to General Call having been received during the
last week from following overdues, they are posted as missing:
Atlantis, W.17630 . Canton—Valparaiso
Audhumla W. 889 . Stockholm—Odessa
Berenice, W. 2206 .. . Riga—Vladivostock
Draw, E. 446 . . Coventry—Pontes
Arenas Tontine, E. 5068 . C. Wrath—Ungava
Wu-Sung, E. 41776 . . Hankow—Lobito Bay
General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:
Jane Eyre, W. 6990 . Port Rupert—City of Mexico Santander,
W. 6514 . . Gobi Desert—Manila Y. Edmundsun, E. 9690 . .
Kandahar—Fiume
Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels
VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York
(twice warned).
GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia
(twice warned).
MARVEL of PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio
de
Janeiro (twice warned).
For the Board:
LAZAREFF }
McKEOUGH } Traffic
GOLDBRATT }


Notes

High-Level Sleet
The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement.
From all quarters come complaints of the unusual
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Actions and Reactions
prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing planes and
digs alike have suffered severely—the former from ‘unequal
deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those
who have “held up” a badly balanced plane in a cross-wind
know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows
and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern
and North-western upper levels have been practically abandoned,
and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security
of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But
there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of
frozen stays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the
blue empyrean.