Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Rudyard Kipling

  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 that 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 truckload already. I’ll go down to the station tomorrow 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 further 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 cowshed 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 outfacing 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 those 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 fall 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. ‘I have 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 know 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 who must never come here again!’

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

  In the Same Boat

  ‘A throbbing vein,’ said Dr Gilbert soothingly, ‘is the mother of delusion.’

  ‘Then how do you account for my knowing when the thing is due?’ Conroy’s voice rose almost to a break.

  ‘Of course, but you should have consulted a doctor before using – palliatives.’

  ‘It was driving me mad. And now I can’t give them up.’

  ‘‘Not so bad as that! One doesn’t form fatal habits at twenty-five. Think again. Were you ever frightened as a child?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It began when I was a boy.’

  ‘With or without the spasm? By the way, do you mind describing the spasm again?’

  ‘Well,’ said Conroy, twisting in the chair, ‘I’m no musician, but suppose you were a violin-string – vibrating – and someone put his finger on you? As if a finger were put on the naked soul! Awful!’

  ‘So’s indigestion – so’s nightmare – while it lasts.’

  ‘But the horror afterwards knocks me out for days. And the waiting for it . . . and then this drug habit! It can’t go on!’ He shook as he spoke, and the chair creaked.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said the doctor, ‘when you’re older you’ll know what burdens the best of us carry. A fox to every Spartan.’

  ‘That doesn’t help me. I can’t! I can’t!’ cried Conroy, and burst into tears.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gilbert, when the
paroxysm ended. ‘I’m used to people coming a little – unstuck in this room.’

  ‘It’s those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out. I used to be fit once. Oh, I’ve tried exercise and everything. But – if one sits down for a minute when it’s due – even at four in the morning – it runs up behind one.’

  ‘Ye-es. Many things come in the quiet of the morning. You always know when the visitation is due?’

  ‘What would I give not to be sure!’ he sobbed.

  ‘We’ll put that aside for the moment. I’m thinking of a case where what we’ll call anaemia of the brain was masked (I don’t say cured) by vibration. He couldn’t sleep, or thought he couldn’t, but a steamer voyage and the thump of the screw – ‘

  ‘A steamer? After what I’ve told you!’ Conroy almost shrieked. ‘I’d sooner . . . ’

  ‘Of course not a steamer in your case, but a long railway journey the next time you think it will trouble you. It sounds absurd, but – ‘

  ‘I’d try anything. I nearly have,’ Conroy sighed.

  ‘Nonsense! I’ve given you a tonic that will clear that notion from your head. Give the train a chance, and don’t begin the journey by bucking yourself up with tabloids. Take them along, but hold them in reserve – in reserve.’

  ‘D’you think I’ve self-control enough, after what you’ve heard?’ said Conroy.

  Dr Gilbert smiled. ‘Yes. After what I’ve seen,’ he glanced round the room, ‘I have no hesitation in saying you have quite as much self-control as many other people. I’ll write you later about your journey. Meantime, the tonic,’ and he gave some general directions before Conroy left.

  An hour later Dr Gilbert hurried to the links, where the others of his regular weekend game awaited him. It was a rigid round, played as usual at the trot, for the tension of the week lay as heavy on the two King’s Counsels and Sir John Chartres as on Gilbert. The lawyers were old enemies of the Admiralty Court, and Sir John of the frosty eyebrows and Abernethy manner was bracketed with, but before, Rutherford Gilbert among nerve-specialists.

  At the Clubhouse afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally compared professional matters.

  ‘Lies – all lies,’ said Sir John, when Gilbert had told him Conroy’s trouble. ‘Post hoc, propter hoc. The man or woman who drugs is ipso facto a liar. You’ve no imagination.’

  ‘Pity you haven’t a little – occasionally.’

  ‘I have believed a certain type of patient in my time. It’s always the same. For reasons not given in the consulting room they take to the drug. Certain symptoms follow. They will swear to you, and believe it, that they took the drug to mask the symptoms. What does your man use? Najdolene? I thought so. I had practically the duplicate of your case last Thursday. Same old Najdolene – same old lie.’

  ‘Tell me the symptoms, and I’ll draw my own inferences, Johnnie.’

  ‘Symptoms! The girl was rank poisoned with Najdolene. Ramping, stamping possession. Gad, I thought she’d have the chandelier down.’

  ‘Mine came unstuck too, and he has the physique of a bull,’ said Gilbert. ‘What delusions had yours?’

  ‘Faces – faces with mildew on them. In any other walk of life we’d call it the Horrors. She told me, of course, she took the drugs to mask the faces. Post hoc, propter hoc again. All liars!’

  ‘What’s that?’ said the senior K.C. quickly. ‘Sounds professional.’

  ‘Go away! Not for you, Sandy.’ Sir John turned a shoulder against him and walked with Gilbert in the chill evening.

  To Conroy in his chambers came, one week later, this letter:

  Dear Mr Conroy – If your plan of a night’s trip on the 17th still holds good, and you have no particular destination in view, you could do me a kindness. A Miss Henschil, in whom I am interested, goes down to the West by the 10.8 from Waterloo (Number 3 platform) on that night. She is not exactly an invalid, but, like so many of us, a little shaken in her nerves. Her maid, of course, accompanies her, but if I knew you were in the same train it would be an additional source of strength. Will you please write and let me know whether the 10.8 from Waterloo, Number 3 platform, on the 17th, suits you, and I will meet you there? Don’t forget my caution, and keep up the tonic.

  Yours sincerely,

  L. Rutherford Gilbert

  ‘He knows I’m scarcely fit to look after myself,’ was Conroy’s thought. ‘And he wants me to look after a woman!’

  Yet, at the end of half an hour’s irresolution, he accepted.

  Now Conroy’s trouble, which had lasted for years, was this.

  On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time – in due time – would bring it forth.

  Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These guarantee, on the label, ‘Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.’ They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.

  Three years of M. Najdol’s preparations do not fit a man for many careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.

  When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr Gilbert had but given him more drugs – a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway carnages – and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e’en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger ‘a little shaken in her nerves.’

  He spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. At such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening Dr Gilbert’s tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors.

  Waterloo Station shook him into real life. The change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. The old 10.8 from Waterloo to the West was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station.

  Dr Gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor-coach; an older and stouter man behind him. ‘So glad you’re here!’ he cried. ‘Let me get your ticket.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Conroy answered. ‘I got it myself – long ago. My bag’s in too,’ he added proudly.

  ‘I beg your pardon. Miss Henschil’s here. I’ll introduce you.’

  ‘But – but,’ he stammered – ‘think of the state I’m in. If anything happens I shall collapse.’

  ‘Not you. You’d rise to the occasion like a bird. And as for the self-control you were talking of the other day’ – Gilbert swung him round – ‘look!’

  A young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly.

  ‘Oh, but that’s only drink,’ Conroy said. ‘I haven’t had one of my – my th
ings since lunch.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Gilbert. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Come along. Wait for a minute, Chartres.’

  A tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. She bowed her head as the doctor murmured Conroy knew not what. Then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets.

  ‘My maid – next compartment,’ she said slowly.

  Conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver Najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. He snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat.

  ‘How nice!’ said the woman. She leisurely lifted her veil, unbuttoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a Najdolene-case.

  ‘Don’t!’ said Conroy, not realising he had spoken.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ The deep voice was measured, even, and low. Conroy knew what made it so.

  ‘I said “don’t”! He wouldn’t like you to do it!’

  ‘No, he would not.’ She held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. ‘But aren’t you one of the – ah – “soul-weary” too?’

  ‘That’s why. Oh, please don’t! Not at first. I – I haven’t had one since morning. You – you’ll set me off!’

  ‘You? Are you so far gone as that?’

  He nodded, pressing his palms together. The train jolted through Vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the West.

  After long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked Conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book.

  Conroy shook his head. ‘No. Our sort can’t read. Don’t!’

  ‘Were you sent to watch me?’ The voice never changed.

  ‘Me? I need a keeper myself much more – this night of all!’

  ‘This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved me when I told them of mine.’ She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. ‘Aren’t doctors stu-upid? They don’t know.’

  She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her – till his eyes were blurred with tears.