THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard Kipling

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

      'It's good to have you,' said Tarvin.

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

      'Oh, well!' he groaned.

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

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

      'What ceremony?' she asked.

      'Seeing you take the veil. But you won't take it.'

      'Why not?'

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

      'What? Who?'

      'Myself,' he said, looking up.

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

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

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

      'Fear is not for legislators,' he retorted oracularly.

      She turned back to him with a sudden motion.

      Legislators! O Nick, are you----?'

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

      'Poor father!'

      'Well, I don't know.'

      'Oh! Well, I congratulate you, of course.'

      'Thanks.'

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

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

      'All the more reason----'

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

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

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

      In their walk about it Tarvin did not spare her the advantage of his ten days' residence in Rhatore preceding her coming; he made himself her guide, and stood on rocks overlooking things and spouted his second-hand history with an assurance that the oldest Political Resident might have envied. He was interested in the problems of the State, if not responsible for their solution. Was he not a member of a governing body? His ceaseless and fruitful curiosity about all new things had furnished him, in ten days, with much learning about Rhatore and Gokral Seetarun, enabling him to show to Kate, with eyes scarcely less fresh than her own, the wonders of the narrow, sand-choked streets, where the footfalls of camels and men alike fell dead. They lingered by the royal menagerie of starved tigers, and the cages of the two tame hunting leopards, hooded like hawks, that slept, and yawned, and scratched on their two bedsteads by the main gate of the city; and he showed her the ponderous door of the great gate itself, studded with foot-long spikes against the attacks of that living battering-ram, the elephant. He led her through the long lines of dark shops planted in and among the ruins of palaces, whose builders had been long since forgotten, and about the straggling barracks, past knots of fantastically attired soldiers, who hung their day's marketing from the muzzle of the Brown Bess or flint-lock; and then he showed her the mausoleum of the kings of Gokral Seetarun, under the shadow of the great temple where the children of the Sun and Moon went to worship, and where the smooth, black stone bull glared across the main square at the cheap bronze statue of Colonel Nolan's predecessor-an offensively energetic and very plain Yorkshireman. Lastly, they found beyond the walls the clamouring caravansary of traders by the gateway of the Three Gods, whence the caravans of camels filed out with their burdens of glistening rock-salt for the railroad, and where by day and by night cloaked and jaw-bound riders of the desert, speaking a tongue that none could understand, rode in from God knows what fastness beyond the white hillocks of Jeysulmir.

      As they went along, Tarvin asked her about Topaz. How had she left it? How was the dear old town looking? Kate said she had only left it three days after his departure.

      'Three days! Three days is a long time in the life of a growing town.'

      Kate smiled. 'I didn't see any changes,' she said.

      'No? Peters was talking about breaking ground for his new brick saloon on G Street the day after I left; Parsons was getting in a new dynamo for the city's electric light plant; they were just getting to work on the grading of Massachusetts Avenue, and they had planted the first tree in my twenty-acre plot. Kearney, the druggist, was putting in a plate-glass window, and I shouldn't wonder if Maxim had got his new post-office boxes from Meriden before you left. Didn't you notice?'

      Kate shook her head. 'I was thinking of something else just then.'

      'Pshaw! I'd like to know. But no matter. I suppose it is asking too much to expect a woman to play her own hand, and keep the run of improvements in the town,' he mused. 'Women aren't built that way. And yet I used to run a political canvass and a business or two, and something else in that town.' He glanced humorously at Kate, who lifted a warning hand. 'Forbidden СКАЧАТЬ