Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Have you slipped out and bought some, then?’

  ‘You don’t know Nursey. Eh, but it’s good to be on a horse again! This chap cost me two hundred.’

  ‘Then you’ve been swindled,’ said Conroy.

  ‘I know it, but it’s no odds. I must go back to Toots and send him away. He’s neglecting his work for me.’

  She swung her heavy-topped animal on his none too sound hocks. ‘‘Sentence come, lad?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not minding it so much this time.’

  ‘Waterloo, then – and God help us!’ She thundered back to the little frock-coated figure that waited faithfully near the gate.

  Conroy felt the spring sun on his shoulders and trotted home. That evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill. But the other man owned he could not have kept the pace five minutes longer.

  * * *

  He carried his bag all down Number 3 platform at Waterloo, and hove it with one hand into the rack.

  ‘Well done!’ said Nurse Blaber, in the corridor. ‘We’ve improved too.’

  Dr Gilbert and an older man came out of the next compartment.

  ‘Hallo!’ said Gilbert. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me, Mr Conroy? Come under the lamp. Take off your hat. No – no. Sit, you young giant. Ve-ry good. Look here a minute, Johnnie.’

  A little, round-bellied, hawk-faced person glared at him.

  ‘Gilbert was right about the beauty of the beast,’ he muttered. ‘D’you keep it in your glove now?’ he went on, and punched Conroy in the short ribs.

  ‘No,’ said Conroy meekly, but without coughing. ‘Nowhere – on my honour! I’ve chucked it for good.’

  ‘Wait till you are a sound man before you say that, Mr Conroy.’ Sir John Chartres stumped out, saying to Gilbert in the corridor, ‘It’s all very fine, but the question is shall I or we “Sir Pandarus of Troy become,” eh? We’re bound to think of the children.’

  ‘Have you been vetted?’ said Miss Henschil, a few minutes after the train started. ‘May I sit with you? I – I don’t trust myself yet. I can’t give up as easily as you can, seemingly.’

  ‘Can’t you? I never saw anyone so improved in a month.’

  ‘Look here!’ She reached across to the rack, single-handed lifted Conroy’s bag, and held it at arm’s length. ‘I counted ten slowly. And I didn’t think of hours or minutes,’ she boasted.

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ he cried.

  ‘Ah! Now I’ve reminded myself. I wish I hadn’t. Do you think it’ll be easier for us tonight?’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ The smell of the carriage had brought back all his last trip to him, and Conroy moved uneasily.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve brought some games,’ she went on. ‘Draughts and cards – but they all mean counting. I wish I’d brought chess, but I can’t play chess. What can we do? Talk about something.’

  ‘Well, how’s Toots, to begin with?’ said Conroy.

  ‘Why? Did you see him on the platform?’

  ‘No. Was he there? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Oh yes. He doesn’t understand. He’s desperately jealous. I told him it doesn’t matter. Will you please let me hold your hand? I believe I’m beginning to get the chill.’

  ‘Toots ought to envy me,’ said Conroy.

  ‘He does. He paid you a high compliment the other night. He’s taken to calling again – in spite of all they say.’

  Conroy inclined his head. He felt cold, and knew surely he would be colder.

  ‘He said,’ she yawned. ‘(Beg your pardon.) He said he couldn’t see how I could help falling in love with a man like you; and he called himself a damned little rat, and he beat his head on the piano last night.’

  ‘The piano? You play, then?’

  ‘Only to him. He thinks the world of my accomplishments. Then I told him I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth instead of only the best-looking – not with a million in each stocking.’

  ‘No, not with a million in each stocking,’ said Conroy vehemently. ‘Isn’t that odd?’

  ‘I suppose so – to anyone who doesn’t know. Well, where was I? Oh, George as good as told me I was deceiving him, and he wanted to go away without saying good-night. He hates standing a-tiptoe, but he must if I won’t sit down.’

  Conroy would have smiled, but the chill that foreran the coming of the Lier-in-Wait was upon him, and his hand closed warningly on hers.

  ‘And – and so – ‘ she was trying to say, when her hour also overtook her, leaving alive only the fear-dilated eyes that turned to Conroy. Hand froze on hand and the body with it as they waited for the horror in the blackness that heralded it. Yet through the worst Conroy saw, at an uncountable distance, one minute glint of light in his night. Thither would he go and escape his fear; and behold, that light was the light in the watch-tower of her eyes, where her locked soul signalled to his soul: ‘Look at me!’

  In time, from him and from her, the Thing sheered aside, that each soul might step down and resume its own concerns. He thought confusedly of people on the skirts of a thunderstorm, withdrawing from windows where the torn night is, to their known and furnished beds. Then he dozed, till in some drowsy turn his hand fell from her warmed hand.

  ‘That’s all. The Faces haven’t come,’ he heard her say. ‘All – thank God! I don’t feel even I need what Nursey promised me. Do you?’

  ‘No.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But don’t make too sure.’

  ‘Certainly not. We shall have to try again next month. I’m afraid it will be an awful nuisance for you.’

  ‘Not to me, I assure you,’ said Conroy, and they leaned back and laughed at the flatness of the words, after the hells through which they had just risen.

  ‘And now,’ she said, strict eyes on Conroy, ‘why wouldn’t you take me – not with a million in each stocking?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been puzzling over.’

  ‘So have I. We’re as handsome a couple as I’ve ever seen. Are you well off, lad?’

  ‘They call me so,’ said Conroy, smiling.

  ‘That’s North country.’ She laughed again. Setting aside my good looks and yours, I’ve four thousand a year of my own, and the rents should make it six. That’s a match some old cats would lap tea all night to fettle up.’

  ‘It is. Lucky Toots!’ said Conroy.

  ‘Ay,’ she answered, ‘he’ll be the luckiest lad in London if I win through. Who’s yours?’

  ‘No – no one, dear. I’ve been in Hell for years. I only want to get out and be alive and – so on. Isn’t that reason enough?’

  ‘Maybe, for a man. But I never minded things much till George came. I was all stu-upid like.’

  ‘So was I, but now I think I can live. It ought to be less next month, oughtn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘I hope so. Ye-es. There’s nothing much for a maid except to be married, and 7 ask no more. Whoever yours is, when you’ve found her, she shall have a wedding present from Mrs George Skinner that –’

  ‘But she wouldn’t understand it any more than Toots.’

  ‘He doesn’t matter – except to me. I can’t keep my eyes open, thank God! Good-night, lad.’

  Conroy followed her with his eyes. Beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than George Skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops – but for the new-found life of him Conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. He put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered – with interest on arrears. There were many things in it, but no one face of any one woman.

  * * *

  Thrice afterward they took the same train, and each time their trouble shrank and weakened. Miss Henschil talked of Toots, his multiplied calls, the things he had said to his sisters, the much worse things his sisters had replied; of the late (he seemed very dead to them) M. Najdol’s gifts for the soul-weary; of shopping, of house rents, and the cost of really artis
tic furniture and linen.

  Conroy explained the exercises in which he delighted – mighty labours of play undertaken against other mighty men, till he sweated and, having bathed, slept. He had visited his mother, too, in Hereford, and he talked something of her and of the home-life, which his body, cut out of all clean life for five years, innocently and deeply enjoyed. Nurse Blaber was a little interested in Conroy’s mother, but, as a rule, she smoked her cigarette and read her paper-backed novels in her own compartment.

  On their last trip she volunteered to sit with them, and buried herself in The Cloister and the Hearth while they whispered together. On that occasion (it was near Salisbury) at two in the morning, when the Lier-in-Wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot.

  ‘But still,’ said Nurse Blaber, not looking up, ‘I think your Mr Skinner might feel jealous of all this.’

  ‘It would be difficult to explain,’ said Conroy.

  ‘Then you’d better not be at my wedding,’ Miss Henschil laughed.

  ‘After all we’ve gone through, too. But I suppose you ought to leave me out. Is the day fixed?’ he cried.

  ‘Twenty-second of September – in spite of both his sisters. I can risk it now.’ Her face was glorious as she flushed.

  ‘My dear chap!’ He shook hands unreservedly, and she gave back his grip without flinching. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am!’

  ‘Gracious Heavens!’ said Nurse Blaber, in a new voice. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I forgot I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’

  ‘What at? Oh, I see!’ Miss Henschil explained to Conroy. ‘She expected you were going to kiss me, or I was going to kiss you, or something.’

  ‘After all you’ve gone through, as Mr Conroy said,’

  ‘But I couldn’t, could you?’ said Miss Henschil, with a disgust as frank as that on Conroy’s face. ‘It would be horrible – horrible. And yet, of course, you’re wonderfully handsome. How d’you account for it, Nursey?’

  Nurse Blaber shook her head. ‘I was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. When you’re cured I shall go on to the next case – that senile-decay one at Bournemouth I told you about.’

  ‘And I shall be left alone with George! But suppose it isn’t cured,’ said Miss Henschil of a sudden. Suppose it comes back again. What can I do? I can’t send for him in this way when I’m a married woman!’ She pointed like an infant.

  ‘I’d come, of course,’ Conroy answered. ‘But, seriously, that is a consideration.’

  They looked at each other, alarmed and anxious, and then toward Nurse Blaber, who closed her book, marked the place, and turned to face them.

  ‘Have you ever talked to your mother as you have to me?’ she said.

  ‘No. I might have spoken to dad – but mother’s different. What d’you mean?’

  ‘And you’ve never talked to your mother either, Mr Conroy?’

  ‘Not till I took Najdolene. Then I told her it was my heart. There’s no need to say anything, now that I’m practically over it, is there?’

  ‘Not if it doesn’t come back, but – ‘ She beckoned with a stumpy, triumphant linger that drew their heads close together. ‘You know I always go in and read a chapter to mother at tea, child.’

  ‘I know you do. You’re an angel,’ Miss Henschil patted the blue shoulder next her. ‘Mother’s Church of England now,’ she explained. ‘But she’ll have her Bible with her pikelets at tea every night like the Skinners.’

  ‘It was Naaman and Gehazi last Tuesday that gave me a clue. I said I’d never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she’d seen too many.’

  ‘Where? She never told me,’ Miss Henschil began.

  ‘A few months before you were born – on her trip to Australia – at Mola or Molo something or other. It took me three evenings to get it all out.’

  ‘Ay – mother’s suspicious of questions,’ said Miss Henschil to Conroy. ‘She’ll lock the door of every room she’s in, if it’s but for five minutes. She was a Tackberry from Jarrow way, yo’ see.’

  ‘She described your men to the life – men with faces all eaten away, staring at her over the fence of a lepers’ hospital in this Molo Island. They begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street, back to the pier. One touched her and she nearly fainted. She’s ashamed of that still.’

  ‘My men? The sand and the fences?’ Miss Henschil muttered.

  ‘Yes. You know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. She remembered that the fences were broken – she remembered the wind blowing. Sand – sun – salt wind – fences – faces – I got it all out of her, bit by bit. You don’t know what I know! And it all happened three or four months before you were born. There!’ Nurse Blaber slapped her knee with her little hand triumphantly.

  ‘Would that account for it?’ Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.

  ‘Absolutely. I don’t care who you ask! You never imagined the thing. It was laid on you. It happened on earth to you! Quick, Mr Conroy, she’s too heavy for me! I’ll get the flask.’

  Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney. She came out of her swoon with teeth that chattered on the cup.

  ‘No – no,’ she said, gulping. ‘It’s not hysterics. Yo’ see I’ve no call to hev ’em any more. No call – no reason whatever. God be praised! Can’t yo’ feel I’m a right woman now?’

  ‘Stop hugging me!’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘You don’t know your strength. Finish the brandy and water. It’s perfectly reasonable, and I’ll lay long odds Mr Conroy’s case is something of the same. I’ve been thinking –’

  ‘I wonder – ’ said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.

  Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair. ‘Yes. Your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you. Ask her, child. Ask her and be done with it once for all.’

  ‘I will,’ said Conroy . . . ‘There ought to be – ’ He opened his bag and hunted breathlessly.

  ‘Bless you! Oh, God bless you, Nursey!’ Miss Henschil was sobbing. ‘You don’t know what this means to me. It takes it all off – from the beginning.’

  ‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously. ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’

  Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t changed anything. I want Toots. He has never been out of his mind in his life – except over silly me.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand. ‘If I change at Templecombe – for Bristol (Bristol – Hereford – yes) – I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’

  ‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while. You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’ She went out to get them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.

  ‘Goodbye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you’ve changed already – like me. Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘What should I have done without you?’

  ‘Or I?’ said Conroy. ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’

  ‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. ‘Yes, I would. She’d like it.’

  When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over The Cloister and the Hearth.

  Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’

  ‘B
ecause a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,’ Nurse Blaber answered. ‘And besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. You shouldn’t, you know.’

  ‘Ay, but you’ve never been in Hell,’ said Miss Henschil.

  The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:

  ABSOLUTELY CONFIRMED. SHE SAYS SHE REMEMBERS HEARING NOISE OF ACCIDENT IN ENGINE-ROOM RETURNING FROM INDIA EIGHTY-FIVE.

  ‘He means the year, not the thermometer,’ said Nurse Blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea.

  AND TWO MEN SCALDED THUS EXPLAINING MY HOOTS. (‘The idea of telling me that!’) SUBSEQUENTLY SILLY CLERGYMAN PASSENGER RAN UP BEHIND HER CALLING FOR JOKE, ‘FRIEND, ALL IS LOST’, THUS ACCOUNTING VERY WORDS.

  Nurse Blaber purred audibly.

  SHE SAYS ONLY REMEMBERS BEING UPSET MINUTE OR TWO. UNSPEAKABLE RELIEF. BEST LOVE NURSEY, WHO IS JEWEL. GET OUT OF HER WHAT SHE WOULD LIKE BEST.

  ‘Oh, I oughtn’t to have read that,’ said Miss Henschil.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything,’ said Nurse Blaber, ‘and if I did I shouldn’t get it.’

  The Dog Hervey

  My friend Attley, who would give away his own head if you told him you had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of Bettina’s pups, and half-a-dozen women were in raptures at the show on Mittleham lawn.

  We picked by lot. Mrs Godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter, second. I was third, but waived my right because I was already owned by Malachi, Bettina’s full brother, whom I had brought over in the car to visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if I had taken home one. Milly, Mrs Godfrey’s younger daughter, pounced on my rejection with squeals of delight, and Attley turned to a dark, sallow-skinned, slack-mouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and invited her to pick. She put on a pince-nez that made her look like a camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee, breathed hard, and considered the last couple.

  ‘I think I’d like that sandy-pied one,’ she said.