The Man Who Would Be King

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Quite so,’ said Mr Marsh. ‘I’m worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll be along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring some odds an’ ends with me. Send over young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch ’em. That’s a boy with ’is stummick in the proper place. Know anything about ’im?’

  Mr Hale knew a good deal, but he did not tell it all. He suggested that William himself should be approached, and would excuse him from the route-march for that purpose.

  ‘Route-march!’ said Mr Marsh in horror. ‘Lor’! The very worst use you can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em. Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e ain’t got the figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build as well as instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily in the skin, broad in the beam, short in the arm, but, mark you, light on the feet. That’s the way cooks ought to be issued. You never ’eard of a really good thin cook yet, did you? No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known millions that called ’emselves cooks.’

  Mr Hale regretted that he had not studied the natural history of cooks, and sent William over early in the day.

  Mr Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an hour that evening beside an open wood fire, from the ashes of which he drew forth (talking all the while) wonderful hot cakes called ‘dampers’; while from its top he drew off pans full of ‘lobscouse’, which he said was not to be confounded with ‘salmagundi’,11 and a hair-raising compound of bacon, cheese, and onions all melted together. And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed them with mirth or held them breathless with anecdotes of the High Seas and the World, so that the vote of thanks they passed him at the end waked all the cows in the Park. But William sat wrapped in visions, his hands twitching sympathetically to Mr Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and pans. He knew now what the name of Glasse signified; for he had spent an hour at the back of the baker’s shop reading in a brown-leather book dated AD 1767 and called The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady, and that lady’s name, as it appeared in facsimile at the head of Chap. I, was ‘H. Glasse’. Torture would not have persuaded him (or Mr Marsh), by that time, that she was not his direct ancestress; but, as a matter of form, he intended to ask his uncle.

  When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr Marsh had made no reference to his notions of cookery, asked William what he thought of the lecture and exhibition, William came out of his dreams with a start, and ‘Oh, all right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening much.’ Then The Prawn, who always improved an occasion, lectured him on lack of attention; and William missed all that too. The question in his mind was whether his uncle would let him stay with Mr Marsh for a couple of days after Camp broke up, or whether he would use the reply-paid telegram, which Mr Marsh had sent him, for his own French-polishing concerns. When The Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only promised to do better next time, but added, out of a vast and inexplicable pity that suddenly rose up inside him, ‘And I’m grateful to you, Prawn. I am reelly.’

  On his return to Town from that wonder-revealing visit, he found the Pelicans treating him with a new respect. For one thing, The Walrus had talked about the bacon and eggs; for another, The Prawn, who when he let himself go could be really funny, had given some artistic imitations of Mr Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly, Mr Hale had laid down that William’s future employ would be to cook for the Pelicans when they camped abroad. ‘And look out that you don’t poison us too much,’ he added.

  There were occasional mistakes and some very flat failures, but the Pelicans swallowed them all loyally; no one had even a stomach-ache, and the office of Cook’s mate to William was in great demand. The Prawn himself sought it next spring when the Troop stole a couple of fair May days on the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very happy. But William set him aside in favour of a new and specially hopeless recruit; oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but light on his feet, and with some notion of lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding the whole fireplace.

  ‘You see, Prawn,’ he explained, ‘cookin’ isn’t a thing one can just pick up.’

  ‘Yes, I could – watchin’ you,’ The Prawn insisted.

  ‘No. Mr Marsh says it’s a Gift – same as a Talent.’

  ‘D’you mean to tell me Rickworth’s got it, then?’

  ‘Dunno. It’s my job to find that out – Mr Marsh says. Anyway, Rickworth told me he liked cleaning out a fryin’-pan because it made him think of what it might be cookin’ next time.’

  ‘Well, if that isn’t silliness, it’s just greediness,’ said The Prawn. ‘What about those dampers you were talking of when I bought the fire-lighters for you this morning?’

  William drew one out of the ashes, tapped it lightly with his small hazel-wand of office, and slid it over, puffed and perfect, towards The Prawn.

  Once again the wave of pity – the Master’s pity for the mere consuming Public – swept over him as he watched The Prawn wolf it down.

  ‘I’m grateful to you. I reely am, Prawn,’ said William Glasse Sawyer.

  After all, as he was used to say in later years, if it hadn’t been for The Prawn, where would he have been?

  THE WISH HOUSE

  The new church visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (‘t’s softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ’bus brought Mrs Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood, but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

  Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.

  ‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’

  ‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’

  Mrs Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’

  Mrs Ashcroft shook her head slowly – she never hurried – and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs Fettley laid out more patches in the spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent a while.

  ‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

  Mrs Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’

  ‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’

  ‘This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’

  ‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it … ’ Mrs Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’

  The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday ‘shopping’ ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

  ‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs Ashcroft observed.

  ‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny – three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller – ain’t it?’

  ‘’Tis for Arthur – my Jane’s eldest.’

  �
�But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’

  ‘No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.’

  ‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles1 folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im – pore fool me!’

  ‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

  ‘He do. No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. Take all an’ give naught – an we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’

  ‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs Ashcroft said.

  ‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter she ordered a quarter-pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’

  ‘I lay he charged her, then.’

  ‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive2 that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’

  ‘Tck!’

  Mrs Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs Fettley peered at him closely.

  ‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs Ashcroft explained.

  ‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’

  ‘They must look arter theirselves – same as we did.’ Mrs Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

  ‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs Fettley.

  ‘What’s in your head now?’

  ‘Dunno … But it come over me, sudden-like – about dat woman from Rye – I’ve slipped the name – Barnsley, wadn’t it?’

  ‘Batten – Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’

  ‘That’s it – Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork – time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene – for stealin’ her man.’

  ‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

  ‘I did – an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastës when you said it.’

  ‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds – Polly. She shruck3 too much for reel doin’s.’

  ‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’

  ‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’

  ‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but – him! Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again! … Eh?’

  ‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so – bein’ barren-like, themselves.’

  ‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now! … An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this –’

  ‘Seven-and-twenty year,’ Mrs Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’

  Mrs Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

  ‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’

  ‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.

  ‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin,4 which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

  ‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs Fettley spoke with real affection.

  ‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs Ashcroft returned.

  ‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’

  ‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs Ashcroft’s answer.

  ‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. Takes two sticks to make a fire.’

  Mrs Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motor-traffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

  Mrs Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ’is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns – let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ’is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ’bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even that to stay me.’

  ‘But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?’

  ‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’

  ‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ’Nother cup o’ tea?’

  The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs Ashcroft, her elbows on the tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool …

  ‘Well, I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?’ Mrs Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.

  ‘’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e was bedrid, I said I’d ’tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ’imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.” “An’ you?” I says, for you know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ’e, “but I’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday … An’ yet I’d set a heap by him – one time, or – did I ever?’

  ‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs Fettley ventured.

  ‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs Marshall in Lunnon – which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid – Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years – when we wanted money, or – or my ’usband was away – on occasion.’

  ‘’E did get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ’e?’ Mrs Fettley whispered. ‘We never rightly won to the bottom of it.’

  ‘’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.’

  ‘None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?’

  ‘No! ’Twas the woman’s ’usband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshalls, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name.5 That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.’

  ‘Cosham,’ Mrs Fettley corrected. ‘There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.’

  ‘Well, then, I was a ye
ar-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ’long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ’ere to me sister Bessie – me wages in me pockets, an’ all ’ands glad to be’old of me.’

  ‘That would be when I was at Cosham,’ said Mrs Fettley.

  ‘You know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days, no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ’ud lay hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs ’ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the early potato-liftin’, stubbin’ hens,6 an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an’ me petticoats all shorted.’

  ‘Did it bring ye any good?’ Mrs Fettley asked.

  ‘’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s well’s me, that na’un happens to ye till it ’as ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.’

  ‘’Oo was it?’

  ‘’Arry Mockler.’ Mrs Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.

  Mrs Fettley gasped. ‘’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ I never guessed!’

  Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ I told myself – an’ I beleft it – that I wanted field-work.’

  ‘What did ye get out of it?’

  ‘The usuals. Everythin’ at first – worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with – with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. “No!” says he. “The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,” ’ he says, “the better.” ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.’