Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (69 page)

‘Have you much land then?'

‘Only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. The other six hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this Turpin is quite a new man – and a highway robber.'

‘But are you sure I shan't be—?'

‘Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn't any children.'

‘Ah, the children!' I said and slid my low chair back till it nearly touched the screen that hid them. ‘I wonder whether they'll come out for me.'

There was a murmur of voices – Madden's and a deeper note – at the low, dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the unmistakable tenant-farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.

‘Come to the fire, Mr Turpin,' she said.

‘If – if you please. Miss, I'll – I'll be quite as well by the door.' He clung to the latch as he spoke like a frightened child. Of a sudden I realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.

‘Well?'

‘About the new shed for the young stock – that was all. These first autumn storms settin' in … but I'll come again, Miss.' His teeth did not chatter much more than the door latch.

‘I think not,' she answered levelly. ‘The new shed – m'm. What did my agent write you on the 15th?'

‘I – fancied p'raps that if I came to see you – ma-man to man like, Miss. But—'

His eyes rolled into every corner of the room wide with horror. He half opened the door through which he had entered, but I noticed it shut again – from without and firmly.

‘He wrote what I told him,' she went on. ‘You are overstocked already. Dunnett's Farm never carried more than fifty bullocks – even in Mr Wright's time. And
he
used cake. You've sixty-seven and you don't cake. You've broken the lease in that respect. You're dragging the heart out of the farm.'

‘I'm – I'm getting some minerals – superphosphates – next week. I've as good as ordered a truck-load already. I'll go down to the station to-morrow about 'em. Then I can come and see you man to man like, Miss, in the daylight… That gentleman's not going away, is he?' He almost shrieked.

I had only slid the chair a little farther back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.

‘No. Please attend to me, Mr Turpin.' She turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him – his plea for the new cow-shed at his landlady's expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year's rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the intensity of his greed, when I saw him out – facing for its sake whatever terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.

I ceased to tap the leather – was, indeed, calculating the cost of the shed – when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would turn and acquaint myself with these quick-footed wanderers …

The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm – as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all-faithful half-reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even when grown-ups were busiest – a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago.

Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I looked across the lawn at the high window.

I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt that she knew.

What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fail of a log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place in the chair very close to the screen.

‘Now you understand,' she whispered, across the packed shadows.

‘Yes, I understand – now. Thank you.'

‘I – I only hear them.' She bowed her head in her hands. ‘Ihave no right, you know – no other right. I have neither borne nor lost – neither borne nor lost!'

‘Be very glad then,' said I, for my soul was torn open within me.

‘Forgive me!'

She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.

‘It was because I loved them so,' she said at last, brokenly. ‘
That
was why it was, even from the first – even before I knew that they – they were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!'

She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the shadow.

‘They came because I loved them – because I needed them. I – I must have made them come. Was that wrong, think you?'

‘No-no.'

‘I – I grant you that the toys and – and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but – but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was little.' She pointed to the gallery. ‘And the passages all empty … And how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose—'

‘Don't! For pity's sake, don't!' I cried. The twilight had brought a cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.

‘And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night.
I
don't think it so foolish – do you?'

I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.

‘I did all that and lots of other things – just to make believe. Then they came. I heard them, but I didn't know that they were not mine by right till Mrs Madden told me—'

‘The butler's wife? What?'

‘One of them – I heard – she saw. And knew. Hers!
Not
for me. I didn't knew at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand that it was only because I loved them, not because— … Oh, you
must
bear or lose,' she said piteously. ‘There is no other way – and yet they love me. They must! Don't they?'

There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire, but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair by the screen.

‘Don't think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but – but I'm all in the dark, you know, and
you
can see.'

In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer I would stay since it was the last time.

‘You think it is wrong, then?' she cried sharply, though I had said nothing.

‘Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right… I am grateful to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only …'

‘Why?' she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. ‘Oh, I see,' she went on simply as a child. ‘For you it would be wrong.' Then with a little indrawn laugh, ‘and d'you remember, I called you lucky – once – at first. You must never come here again!'

She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound of her feet the out along the gallery above.

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL: A STORY OF 2000 AD

From ‘The Windsor Magazine,' October, AD 2147

AT 9.30 p.m. of a windy winter's night I stood the lower stages of the GPO Outward Mail Tower. My purpose was a run to Quebec in ‘postal packet 162, or such other as may be appointed'; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the Despatching-caisson at the foot of the Tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags were packed close as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our GPO stilt calls ‘coaches.' Five such coaches were filled as I watched, and were shot up the guides, to be locked on to their waiting packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.

From the Despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully learned official – Mr L. L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route – to the Captain's Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the Mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He introduces me to the captain of 162 – Captain Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark, the other large and red, but each has the brooding, sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, from L. V. Rautsch to little Ada Warleigh – the fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space.

On the notice-board in the Captain's Room the pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators register degree by geographical degree the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word ‘Cape' rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: that is all. The South African mid-weekly mail is in at theHighgate Receiving-Towers. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the return of a homer.

‘Time for us to be on the move,' says Captain Purnall, and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to the top of the Despatch-towers. Our ‘coach' will lock on when it is filled, and the clerks are aboard …

Number 162 waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes her rack a little in her holding-down clips.

Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, 162 comes to rest level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and fifty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-four of any crack liner, and you will realise the power that must drive this hull through all weathers at more than twice the emergency speed of the
Cyclonic.

The eye detects no joint in her skin-plating, save the sweeping hair-crack of the bow rudder – Magniac's rudder, that assured us the dominion of the unstable air, and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's ‘gull-wing' curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch, and 162 will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her full helm, and she returns on her track like a whiplash. Cant the whole forward – a touch on the wheel will suffice – and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the full circle, and she presents to the air a mushroom head that will bring her up all standing within half the mile.

‘Yes,' says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought. ‘Castelli thought that he'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes, when he'd only found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion, and Magniac he wentout of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're really doing.'

‘If you want to see the coach locked, you'd better go aboard. It's due now,' says Mr Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but the GPO serves them raw under a lick of grey official paint: The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an aperture – bottomless hatch at present – into which our coach will be locked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr Geary satisfy themselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. ‘Pleasant run,' says Mr Geary, and disappears through the door which a foot high pneumatic compressor locks after him.

‘A-ah!' sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with a tang. We are clear.

Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which I watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the white fleece, For an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the Highgate ReceivingTowers. ‘The Bombay Mail,' says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. ‘She's forty minutes late.'

‘What's our level?' I ask.

‘Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?'

The bridge (let us ever praise the GPO as a repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. ‘It's steep tonight,' he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. ‘We generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff.'

‘So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!' says Captain Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp Night Mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea in half-an-hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly – nosing to every point of the compass as she rises.