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

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СКАЧАТЬ justice to the kindness that had brought him over all these leagues, but she heartily wished that he had not come. The existence of a man who loved her, and for whom she could do nothing, was a sad and troubling fact enough fourteen thousand miles away. Face to face with it, alone in India, it enlarged itself unbearably, and thrust itself between her and all her hopes of bringing serious help to others. Love literally did not seem to her the most important thing in the world at that moment, and something else did; but that didn’t make Nick’s trouble unimportant, or prevent it, while she braided her hair, from getting in the way of her thoughts.. On the morrow she was to enter upon the life which she meant should be a help to those whom it could reach, and here she was thinking of Nicholas Tarvin.

      It was because she foresaw that she would keep on thinking of him that she wished him away. He was the tourist wandering about behind the devotee in the cathedral at prayers; he was the other thought. In his person he represented and symbolised the life she had left behind; much worse, he represented a pain she could not heal. It was not with the haunting figure of love attendant that one carried out large purposes. Nor was it with a divided mind that men conquered cities. The intent with which she was aflame needed all of her. She could not divide herself even with Nick. And yet it was good of him to come, and like him. She knew that he had not come merely in pursuit of a selfish hope; it was as he had said—he couldn’t sleep nights, knowing what might befall her. That was really good of him.

      Mrs. Estes had invited Tarvin to breakfast the day before, when Kate was not expected, but Tarvin was not the man to decline an invitation at the last moment on that account, and he faced Kate across the breakfast-table next morning with a smile which evoked an unwilling smile from her. In spite of a sleepless night she was looking very fresh and pretty in the white muslin frock which had replaced her travelling dress, and when he found himself alone with her after breakfast on the verandah (Mrs. Estes having gone to look after the morning affairs of a housekeeper, and Estes having betaken himself to his mission-school, inside the city walls), he began to make her his compliments upon the cool white, unknown to the West. But Kate stopped him.

      ‘Nick,’ she said, facing him, ‘will you do something for me?’

      Seeing her much in earnest, Tarvin attempted the parry humorous; but she broke in——

      ‘No; it is something I want very much, Nick. Will you do it for me?’

      ‘Is there anything I wouldn’t do for you?’ he asked seriously.

      ‘I don’t know; this, perhaps. But you must do it.’

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘Go away.’

      He shook his head.

      ‘But you must.’

      ‘Listen, Kate,’ said Tarvin, thrusting his hands deep into the big pockets of his white coat; ‘I can’t. You don’t know the place you’ve come to. Ask me the same question a week hence. I won’t agree to go. But I’ll agree to talk it over with you then.’

      ‘I know now everything that counts,’ she answered. ‘I want to do what I’ve come here for. I shan’t be able to do it if you stay. You understand, don’t you, Nick? Nothing can change that.’

      ‘Yes, it can. I can. I’ll behave.’

      ‘You needn’t tell me you’ll be kind. I know it. But even you can’t be kind enough to help hindering me. Believe that, now, Nick, and go. It isn’t that I want you to go, you know.’

      ‘Oh!’ observed Tarvin, with a smile.

      ‘Well—you know what I mean,’ returned Kate, her face unrelaxed.

      ‘Yes; I know. But if I’m good it won’t matter. I know that too. You’ll see,’ he said gently. ‘Awful journey, isn’t it?’

      ‘You promised me not to take it.’

      ‘I didn’t take it,’ returned Tarvin, smiling, and spreading a seat for her in the hammock, while he took one of the deep verandah chairs himself. He crossed his legs and fixed the white pith helmet he had lately adopted on his knee. ‘I came round the other way on purpose.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ asked Kate, dropping tentatively into the hammock.

      ‘San Francisco and Yokohama, of course. You told me not to follow you.’

      ‘Nick!’ She gathered into the single syllable the reproach and reproof, the liking and despair, with which the least and the greatest of his audacities alike affected her.

      Tarvin had nothing to say for once, and in the pause that fell she had time to reassure herself of her abhorrence of his presence here, and time to still the impulse of pride, which told her that it was good to be followed over half the earth’s girdle for love, and the impulse of admiration for that fine devotion—time, above all—for this was worst and most shameful—to scorn the sense of loneliness and far-awayness that came rolling in on her out of the desert like a cloud, and made the protecting and home-like presence of the man she had known in the other life seem for a moment sweet and desirable.

      ‘Come, Kate, you didn’t expect me to stay at home, and let you find your way out here to take the chances of this old sand-heap, did you? It would be a cold day when I let you come to Gokral Seetarun all by your lone, little girl—freezing cold, I’ve thought since I’ve been here, and seen what sort of camp it is.’

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming.’

      ‘You didn’t seem particularly interested in what I did, when I last saw you.’

      ‘Nick! I didn’t want you to come here, and I had to come myself.’

      ‘Well, you’ve come. I hope you’ll like it,’ said he, grimly.

      ‘Is it so bad?’ she asked. ‘Not that I shall mind.’

      ‘Bad! Do you remember Mastodon?’

      Mastodon was one of those Western towns which have their future behind them—a city without an inhabitant, abandoned and desolate.

      ‘Take Mastodon for deadness, and fill it with ten Leadvilles for wickedness—Leadville the first year—and you’ve got a tenth of it.’

      He went on to offer her an exposition of the history, politics, and society of Gokral Seetarun, from his own point of view, dealing with the dead East from the standpoint of the living West, and dealing with it vividly. It was a burning theme, and it was a happiness to him to have a listener who could understand his attitude, even if she could not entirely sympathise with it. His tone besought her to laugh at it with him a little, if only a little, and Kate consented to laugh; but she said it all seemed to her more mournful than amusing.

      Tarvin could agree to this readily enough, but he told her that he laughed to avoid weeping. It made him tired to see the fixedness, the apathy, and lifelessness of this rich and populous world, which should be up and stirring by rights—trading, organising, inventing, building new towns, making the old ones keep up with the procession, laying new railroads, going in for fresh enterprises, and keeping things humming.

      ‘They’ve got resources enough,’ he said. ‘It isn’t as if they had the excuse that the country’s poor. It’s a good country. Move the population СКАЧАТЬ