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

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СКАЧАТЬ will be there, Cassavetti will be there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as much as ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you of seeing things that would make the reputation of three Verestchagins.’

      ‘Um!’ said Dick, pulling at his pipe.

      ‘You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at your pictures? Just think how full an average man’s life is of his own pursuits and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look up between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they aren’t the least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.’

      ‘I know that as well as you do. Give me credit for a little gumption.’

      ‘Be hanged if I do!’

      ‘Be hanged, then; you probably will be,—for a spy, by excited Turks. Heigh-ho! I’m weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.’ Dick dropped into a chair, and was fast asleep in a minute.

      ‘That’s a bad sign,’ said the Nilghai, in an undertone.

      Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was beginning to burn, and put a pillow behind the head. ‘We can’t help; we can’t help,’ he said. ‘It’s a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I’m fond of it. There’s the scar of the wipe he got when he was cut over in the square.’

      ‘Shouldn’t wonder if that has made him a trifle mad.’

      ‘I should. He’s a most businesslike madman.’

      Then Dick began to snore furiously.

      ‘Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick, and go and sleep somewhere else, if you intend to make a noise about it.’

      ‘When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,’ said the Nilghai, in his beard, ‘I notice that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural history.’

      Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the night-watches he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous that he wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He would seek Maisie on a week-day,—would suggest an excursion, and would take her by train to Fort Keeling, over the very ground that they two had trodden together ten years ago.

      ‘As a general rule,’ he explained to his chin-lathered reflection in the morning, ‘it isn’t safe to cross an old trail twice. Things remind one of things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel said; but this is an exception to every rule that ever was. I’ll go to Maisie at once.’

      Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived, and Maisie in a paint-spattered blouse was warring with her canvas. She was not pleased to see him; for week-day visits were a stretch of the bond; and it needed all his courage to explain his errand.

      ‘I know you’ve been working too hard,’ he concluded, with an air of authority. ‘If you do that, you’ll break down. You had much better come.’

      ‘Where?’ said Maisie, wearily. She had been standing before her easel too long, and was very tired.

      ‘Anywhere you please. We’ll take a train to-morrow and see where it stops. We’ll have lunch somewhere, and I’ll bring you back in the evening.’

      ‘If there’s a good working light to-morrow, I lose a day.’ Maisie balanced the heavy white chestnut palette irresolutely.

      Dick bit back an oath that was hurrying to his lips. He had not yet learned patience with the maiden to whom her work was all in all.

      ‘You’ll lose ever so many more, dear, if you use every hour of working light. Overwork’s only murderous idleness. Don’t be unreasonable. I’ll call for you to-morrow after breakfast early.’

      ‘But surely you are going to ask——’

      ‘No, I am not. I want you and nobody else. Besides, she hates me as much as I hate her. She won’t care to come. To-morrow, then; and pray that we get sunshine.’

      Dick went away delighted, and by consequence did no work whatever. He strangled a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then retired into himself to consider things.

      ‘I’m going out for the day to-morrow with Dick,’ said Maisie to the red-haired girl when the latter returned, tired, from marketing in the Edgware road.

      ‘He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrubbed while you’re away. It’s very dirty.’

      Maisie had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked forward to the little excitement, but not without misgivings.

      ‘There’s nobody nicer than Dick when he talks sensibly, she though, but I’m sure he’ll be silly and worry me, and I’m sure I can’t tell him anything he’d like to hear. If he’d only be sensible, I should like him so much better.’

      Dick’s eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next morning and saw Maisie, gray-ulstered and black-velvet-hatted, standing in the hallway. Palaces of marble, and not sordid imitation of grained wood, were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The red-haired girl drew her into the studio for a moment and kissed her hurriedly. Maisie’s eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead; she was altogether unused to these demonstrations. ‘Mind my hat,’ she said, hurrying away, and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the hansom.

      ‘Are you quite warm enough! Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more breakfast? Put the cloak over you knees.’

      ‘I’m quite comf’y, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop singing like that. People will think we’re mad.’

      ‘Let ’em think,—if the exertion doesn’t kill them. They don’t know who we are, and I’m sure I don’t care who they are. My faith, Maisie, you’re looking lovely!’

      Maisie stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamy-yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the coming of spring.

      ‘It will be lovely weather in the country,’ said Dick.

      ‘But where are we going?’

      ‘Wait and see.’

      The stopped at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half the fraction of an instant it occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled by the waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to the booking-office than to elbow one’s own way through the crowd. Dick put her into a Pullman,—solely on account of the warmth there; and she regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train moved out into the country.

      ‘I wish I knew where we are going,’ she repeated for the twentieth time. The name of a well-remembered station flashed by, towards the end of the run, and Maisie was delighted.

      ‘Oh, Dick, you villain!’

      ‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ