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

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      ‘How do you do? Comment vous portez-vous? I am the prince of this State. I am the Maharaj Kunwar. Some day I shall be king. Come for a drive with me.’

      A tiny mittened hand was extended in greeting. The mittens were of the crudest magenta wool, with green stripes at the wrist; but the child was robed in stiff gold brocade from head to foot, and in his turban was set an aigrette of diamonds six inches high, while emeralds in a thick cluster fell over his eyebrow. Under all this glitter the dark onyx eyes looked out, and they were full of pride and of the loneliness of childhood.

      Tarvin obediently took his seat in the barouche. He was beginning to wonder whether he should ever wonder at anything again.

      ‘We will drive beyond the race-course on the railway road;’ said the child. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, softly laying his hand on Tarvin’s wrist.

      ‘Just a man, sonny.’

      The face looked very old under the turban, for those born to absolute power, or those who have never known a thwarted desire, and reared under the fiercest sun in the world, age even more swiftly than the other children of the East, who are self-possessed men when they should be bashful babes.

      ‘They say you come here to see things.’

      ‘That’s true,’ said Tarvin.

      ‘When I’m king I shall allow nobody to come here—not even the viceroy.’

      ‘That leaves me out,’ remarked Tarvin, laughing.

      ‘You shall come,’ returned the child, measuredly, if you make me laugh. Make me laugh now.’

      ‘Shall I, little fellow? Well—there was once—I wonder what would make a child laugh in this country. I’ve never seen one do it yet. W-h-e-w!’ Tarvin gave a low, long-drawn whistle. ‘What’s that over there, my boy?’

      A little puff of dust rose very far down the road. It was made by swiftly moving wheels, consequently it had nothing to do with the regular traffic of the State.

      ‘That is what I came out to see,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar. ‘She will make me well. My father, the Maharajah, said so. I am not well now.’ He turned imperiously to a favourite groom at the back of the carriage. ‘Soor Singh’—he spoke in the vernacular—‘what is it when I become without sense? I have forgotten the English.’ The groom leaned forward.

      ‘Heaven-born, I do not remember,’ he said.

      ‘Now I remember,’ said the child suddenly. ‘Mrs. Estes says it is fits. What are fits?’

      Tarvin put his hand tenderly on the child’s shoulder, but his eyes were following the dustcloud. ‘Let us hope she’ll cure them, anyway, young ’un, whatever they are. But who is she?’

      ‘I do not know the name, but she will make me well. See! My father has sent a carriage to meet her.’

      An empty barouche was drawn up by the side of the road as the rickety, straining mail-cart drew nearer, with frantic blasts upon a battered key-bugle.

      ‘It’s better than a bullock-cart anyway,’ said Tarvin to himself, standing up in the carriage, for he was beginning to choke.

      ‘Young man, don’t you know who she is?” he asked huskily again.

      ‘She was sent,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar.

      ‘Her name’s Kate,’ said Tarvin in his throat, ‘and don’t you forget it.’ Then to himself in a contented whisper, ‘Kate!’

      The child waved his hand to his escort, who, dividing, lined either side of the road, with all the ragged bravery of irregular cavalry. The mail-carriage halted, and Kate, crumpled, dusty, dishevelled from her long journey, and red-eyed from lack of sleep, drew back the shutters of the palanquin-like carriage, and stepped dazed into the road. Her numbed limbs would have doubled under her, but Tarvin, leaping from the barouche, caught her to him, regardless of the escort and of the calm-eyed child in the golden drapery, who was shouting, ‘Kate! Kate!’

      ‘Run along home, bub,’ said Tarvin. ‘Well, Kate?’

      But Kate had only her tears for him and a gasping ‘You! You! You!’

      ▲▲▲

IX

      We meet in an evil land,

      That is near to the gates of Hell—

      I wait for thy command,

      To serve, to speed, or withstand;

      And thou sayest I do not well!

      Oh, love, the flowers so red

      Be only blossoms of flame,

      The earth is full of the dead,

      The new-killed, restless dead,

      There is danger beneath and o’erhead;

      And I guard at thy gates in fear

      Of peril and jeopardy,

      Of words thou canst not hear,

      Of signs thou canst not see—

      And thou sayest ’t is ill that I came?

      —In Shadowland.

      Tears stood again in Kate’s eyes as she uncoiled her hair before the mirror in the room Mrs. Estes had prepared against her coming—tears of vexation. It was an old story with her that the world wants nothing done for it, and visits with displeasure those who must prod up its lazy content. But in landing at Bombay she had supposed herself at the end of outside hindrances and obstacles; what was now to come would belong to the wholesome difficulties of real work. And here was Nick!

      She had made the journey from Topaz in a long mood of exaltation. She was launched; it made her giddy and happy; like the boy’s first taste of the life of men. She was free at last. No one could stop her. Nothing could keep her from the life to which she had promised herself. A little moment and she might stretch forth her hand and lay it fast upon her work. A few days and she should stoop eye to eye above the pain that had called to her across seas. In her dreams piteous hands of women were raised in prayer to her, and dry, sick palms were laid in hers. The steady urge of the ship was too slow for her; she counted the throbs of the screw. Standing far in the prow, with wind-blown hair, straining her eyes toward India, her spirit went longingly forth toward those to whom she was going; and her life seemed to release itself from her, and sped far, far over the waves, until it reached them and gave itself to them. For a moment, as she set foot on land, she trembled with a revulsion of feeling. She drew near her work; but was it for her? This old fear, which had gone doubtfully with her purpose from the beginning, she put behind her with a stern refusal to question there. She was for so much of her work as heaven would let her do; and she went forward with a new, strong, humble impulse of devotion filling and uplifting her.

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