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

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СКАЧАТЬ said Maisie, sniffing the air. ‘I wonder what makes the sea so smelly. I don’t like it.’

      ‘You never like anything that isn’t made just for you,’ said Dick bluntly. ‘Give me the cartridges, and I’ll try first shot. How far does one of these little revolvers carry?’

      ‘Oh, half a mile,’ said Maisie promptly. ‘At least it makes an awful noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I don’t like those jagged stick-up things on the rim. Dick, do be careful.’

      ‘All right. I know how to load. I’ll fire at the breakwater out there.’

      He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a spurt of mud to the right of the weed-wreathed piles.

      ‘Throws high and to the right. You try, Maisie. Mind, it’s loaded all round.’

      Maisie took the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of the mud, her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and left eye screwed up. Dick sat down on a tuft of bank and laughed. Amomma returned very cautiously. He was accustomed to strange experiences in his afternoon walks, and, finding the cartridge-box unguarded, made investigations with his nose. Maisie fired, but could not see where the bullet went.

      ‘I think it hit the post,’ she said, shading her eyes and looking out across the sailless sea.

      ‘I know it has gone out to the Marazion Bell Buoy,’ said Dick, with a chuckle. ‘Fire low and to the left; then perhaps you’ll get it. Oh, look at Amomma!—he’s eating the cartridges!’

      Maisie turned, the revolver in her hand, just in time to see Amomma scampering away from the pebbles Dick threw after him. Nothing is sacred to a billy-goat. Being well fed and the adored of his mistress, Amomma had naturally swallowed two loaded pin-fire cartridges. Maisie hurried up to assure herself that Dick had not miscounted the tale.

      ‘Yes, he’s eaten two.’

      ‘Horrid little beast! Then they’ll joggle about inside him and blow up, and serve him right…. Oh, Dick! have I killed you?’

      Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie could not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking smoke separated her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone off in his face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees beside him, crying, ‘Dick, you aren’t hurt, are you? I didn’t mean it.’

      ‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Dick, coming out of the smoke and wiping his cheek. ‘But you nearly blinded me. That powder stuff stings awfully.’ A neat little splash of gray lead on a stone showed where the bullet had gone. Maisie began to whimper.

      ‘Don’t,’ said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself. ‘I’m not a bit hurt.’

      ‘No, but I might have killed you,’ protested Maisie, the corners of her mouth drooping. ‘What should I have done then?’

      ‘Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.’ Dick grinned at the thought; then, softening, ‘Please don’t worry about it. Besides, we are wasting time. We’ve got to get back to tea. I’ll take the revolver for a bit.’

      Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick’s indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the breakwater. ‘Got it at last!’ he exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew from the wood.

      ‘Let me try,’ said Maisie imperiously. ‘I’m all right now.’

      They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook itself to pieces, and Amomma the outcast—because he might blow up at any moment—browsed in the background and wondered why stones were thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool which was commanded by the seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat down together before this new target.

      ‘Next holidays,’ said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver kicked wildly in his hand, ‘we’ll get another pistol,—central fire,—that will carry farther.’

      ‘There won’t be any next holidays for me,’ said Maisie. ‘I’m going away.’

      ‘Where to?’

      ‘I don’t know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I’ve got to be educated somewhere,—in France, perhaps,—I don’t know where; but I shall be glad to go away.’

      ‘I shan’t like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie, is it really true you’re going? Then these holidays will be the last I shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I wish——’

      The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow sea-poppy nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats and the milk-white sea beyond.

      ‘I wish,’ she said, after a pause, ‘that I could see you again some time. You wish that too?’

      ‘Yes, but it would have been better if—if—you had—shot straight over there—down by the breakwater.’

      Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the boy who only ten days before had decorated Amomma’s horns with cut-paper ham-frills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among the public ways! Then she dropped her eyes: this was not the boy.

      ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said reprovingly, and with swift instinct attacked the side-issue. ‘How selfish you are! Just think what I should have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I’m quite miserable enough already’

      ‘Why? Because you’re going away from Mrs. Jennett?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘From me, then?’

      No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He felt, though he did not know, all that the past four years had been to him, and this the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put his feelings in words.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is.’

      ‘Maisie, you must know. I’m not supposing.’

      ‘Let’s go home,’ said Maisie weakly.

      But Dick was not minded to retreat.

      ‘I can’t say things,’ he pleaded, ‘and I’m awfully sorry for teasing you about Amomma the other day. It’s all different now, Maisie, can’t you see? And you might have told me that you were going, instead of leaving me to find out.’

      ‘You didn’t. I did tell. Oh, Dick, what’s the use of worrying?’

      ‘There isn’t any; but we’ve been together years and years, and I didn’t know how much I cared.’

      ‘I don’t believe you ever did care.’

      ‘No, I didn’t; but I do,—I care awfully now. Maisie,’ he gulped,—‘Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ