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

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СКАЧАТЬ house. Then I was clerk in medical stores in British India. But his Highness have graciously given me this appointment, which I hold now.'

      Kate lifted her eyebrows. This, then, was to be her colleague. They passed into the hospital together in silence, Kate holding the skirt of her riding-habit clear of the accumulated grime of the floor.

      Six roughly made pallets, laced with hide and string, stood in the filthy central courtyard of the house, and on each cot a man, swathed in a white sheet, tossed and moaned and jabbered. A woman entered with a pot full of rancid native sweetmeats, and tried vainly to make one of the men eat of her delicacies. In the full glare of the sunlight stood a young man almost absolutely unclothed, his hands clasped behind his head, trying to outstare the sun. He began a chant, broke off, and hurried from bed to bed, shouting to each words that Kate could not understand. Then he returned to his place in the centre, and took up his interrupted song.

      'He is confirmed lunatic, also,' said the doctor. 'I have blistered and cupped him very severely, but he will not go away. He is quite harmless, except when he does not get his opium.'

      'Surely you don't allow the patients opium!' exclaimed Kate.

      'Of course I allow opium. Otherwise they would die. All Rajputs eat opium.'

      'And you?' asked Kate, with horror.

      'Once I did not--when I first came. But now----' He drew a smooth-worn tin tobacco box from his waist, and took from it what appeared to Kate a handful of opium pills.

      Despair was going over her in successive waves. 'Show me the women's ward,' she said wearily. 'Oh, they are all upstairs and downstairs and roundabout,' returned the doctor casually.

      'And the maternity cases?' she asked.

      'They are in casual ward.'

      'Who attends to them?'

      'They do not like me; but there is very clever woman from the outside--she comes in.'

      'Has she any training--any education?'

      'She is much esteemed in her own village,' said the doctor. 'She is here now, if you wish to see.'

      'Where?' demanded Kate.

      Dhunpat Rai, somewhat uneasy in his mind, made haste to lead the way up a narrow staircase to a closed door, from behind which came the wail of a new life.

      Kate flung the door open wrathfully. In that particular ward of the State Hospital were the clay and cow-dung images of two gods, which the woman in charge was besprinkling with marigold buds. Every window, every orifice that might admit a breath of air, was closed, and the birth-fire blazed fiercely in one corner, its fumes nearly asphyxiating Kate as she entered.

      What happened between Kate and the much esteemed woman will never be known. The girl did not emerge for half an hour. But the woman came out much sooner, dishevelled, and cackling feebly.

      After this Kate was prepared for anything, even for the neglected condition of the drugs in the dispensary--the mortar was never cleaned, and every prescription carried to the patient many more drugs than were written for him--and for the foul, undrained, uncleaned, unlighted, and unventilated rooms which she entered one after another hopelessly. The patients were allowed to receive their friends as they would, and to take from their hands whatever misguided kindness offered. When death came, the mourners howled in chorus about the cot, and bore the naked body through the courtyard, amid the jeers of the lunatic, to carry to the city what infection Heaven willed..

      There was no isolation of infectious cases during the progress of the disease, and children scourged with ophthalmia played light-heartedly with the children of the visitors or among diphtheria beds. At one point, and one point only, the doctor was strong; he was highly successful in dealing with the very common trouble entered on the day-book as 'loin bite.' The woodcutters and small traders who had occasion to travel through the lonely roads of the State were not infrequently struck down by tigers, and in these cases the doctor, discarding the entire English pharmacopoeia, fell back on simples of proved repute in the neighbouring villages, and wrought wonders. None the less, it was necessary to convey to him that in future there would be only one head of the State Hospital, that her orders must be obeyed without question, and that her name was Miss Kate Sheriff.

      The doctor, reflecting that she attended on the women of the court, offered no protest. He had been through many such periods of reform and reorganisation, and knew that his own inertia and a smooth tongue would carry him through many more. He bowed and assented, allowing Kate's reproaches to pass over his head, and parrying all questions with the statement--

      'This hospital only allowed one hundred and fifty rupees per mensem from State revenues. How can get drugs all the way from Calcutta for that?'

      'I am paying for this order,' said Kate, writing out a list of needed drugs and appliances on the desk in the bath-room, which was supposed to serve as an office; 'and I shall pay for whatever else I think necessary.'

      'Order going through me offeecially?' suggested Dhunpat Rai, with his head on one side.

      Unwilling to raise unnecessary obstacles, Kate assented. With those poor creatures lying in the rooms about her unwatched, untended, at the mercy of this creature, it was not a time to argue about commissions.

      'Yes,' she said decidedly; 'of course.' And the doctor, when he saw the size and scope of the order, felt that he could endure much at her hands.

      At the end of the three hours Kate came away, fainting with weariness, want of food, and bitter heartache.

XI

       Table of Contents

      Who speaks to the King carries his life in his hand.

       —Native Proverb.

      Tarvin found the Maharajah, who had not yet taken his morning allowance of opium, sunk in the deepest depression. The man from Topaz gazed at him shrewdly, filled with his purpose.

      The Maharajah's first words helped him to declare it. 'What have you come here for?' he asked.

      'To Rhatore?' inquired Tarvin, with a smile that embraced the whole horizon.

      'Yes; to Rhatore,' grunted the Maharajah. 'The agent sahib says you do not belong to any government, and that you have come here only to see things and write lies about them. Why have you come?'

      'I have come to turn your river. There is gold in it,' he said steadily.

      The Maharajah answered him with brevity. 'Go and speak to the Government,' he said sulkily.

      'It's your river, I guess,' returned Tarvin cheerfully.

      'Mine! Nothing in the State is mine. The shopkeeper people are at my gates day and night. The agent sahib won't let me collect taxes as my fathers used to do. I have no army.'

      'That's perfectly true,' assented Tarvin, under his breath. 'I'll run off with it some morning.'

      'And if I had,' continued the Maharajah, 'I have no one to fight against. I am only an old wolf, with all my teeth drawn. Go away!'

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