Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Oh, not him, Miss Sichliffe!’ Attley cried. ‘He was overlaid or had sunstroke or something. They call him The Looney in the kennels. Besides, he squints.’

  ‘I think that’s rather fetching,’ she answered. Neither Malachi nor I had ever seen a squinting dog before.

  ‘That’s chorea – St. Vitus’s dance,’ Mrs Godfrey put in. ‘He ought to have been drowned.’

  ‘But I like his cast of countenance,’ the girl persisted.

  ‘He doesn’t look a good life,’ I said, ‘but perhaps he can be patched up.’ Miss Sichliffe turned crimson; I saw Mrs Godfrey exchange a glance with her married daughter, and knew I had said something which would have to be lived down.

  ‘Yes,’ Miss Sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, ‘he isn’t a good life, but perhaps I can – patch him up. Come here, sir.’ The misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick’s hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to separate them, and Mrs Godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it out in silence.

  ‘D’you know what that girl’s father was?’ Mrs Godfrey asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I loathe her for her own sake. She breathes through her mouth.’

  ‘He was a retired doctor,’ she explained. ‘He used to pick up stormy young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till they were sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again – with an appetite. Of course, no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.’

  ‘Strictly legitimate – highly respectable,’ I said. ‘But what a life for the daughter!’

  ‘Mustn’t it have been! Now d’you realise what you said just now?’

  ‘Perfectly; and now you’ve made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?’

  When we reached it they were all inside, sitting in committee on names.

  ‘What shall you call yours?’ I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.

  ‘Harvey,’ she replied – ‘Harvey’s Sauce, you know. He’s going to be quite saucy when I’ve’ – she saw Mrs Godfrey and me coming through the French window – ‘when he’s stronger.’

  Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I thought of the name.

  ‘Oh, splendid,’ I said at random. ‘H with an A, A with an R, R with a –’

  ‘But that’s Little Bingo,’ someone said, and they all laughed.

  Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, ‘You ought always to verify your quotations.’

  It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word ‘quotation’ set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory’s reach as a cat sits just beyond a dog’s jump. When I was going home, Miss Sichliffe came up to me in the twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her tennis racket.

  ‘‘Sorry,’ she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice. ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you about verifying quotations. I didn’t know you well enough and – anyhow, I oughtn’t to have.’

  ‘But you were quite right about Little Bingo,’ I answered. ‘The spelling ought to have reminded me.’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s the spelling,’ she said, and slouched off with the pup sliding after her. Once again my brain began to worry after something that would have meant something if it had been properly spelled. I confided my trouble to Malachi on the way home, but Bettina had bitten him in four places, and he was busy.

  Weeks later, Attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped Malachi let me know that Bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur. He greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and I greeted Mrs Godfrey, Attley, and a big basket.

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ said Attley tiredly. We took the basket into the garden, and there staggered out the angular shadow of a sandy-pied, broken-haired terrier, with one imbecile and one delirious ear, and two most hideous squints. Bettina and Malachi, already at grips on the lawn, saw him, let go, and fled in opposite directions.

  ‘Why have you brought that fetid hound here?’ I demanded.

  ‘Harvey? For you to take care of,’ said Attley. ‘He’s had distemper, but I’m going abroad.’

  ‘Take him with you. I won’t have him. He’s mentally afflicted.’

  ‘Look here,’ Attley almost shouted, ‘do I strike you as a fool?’

  ‘Always,’ said I.

  ‘Well, then, if you say so, and Ella says so, that proves I ought to go abroad.’

  ‘Will’s wrong, quite wrong,’ Mrs Godfrey interrupted; ‘but you must take the pup.’

  ‘My dear boy, my dear boy, don’t you ever give anything to a woman,’ Attley snorted.

  Bit by bit I got the story out of them in the quiet garden (never a sign from Bettina and Malachi), while Harvey stared me out of countenance, first with one cuttlefish eye and then with the other.

  It appeared that, a month after Miss Sichliffe took him, the dog Harvey developed distemper. Miss Sichliffe had nursed him herself for some time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to Mittleham, and wept – actually wept – at Attley’s feet, saying that Harvey was all she had or expected to have in this world, and Attley must cure him. Attley, being by wealth, position, and temperament guardian to all lame dogs, had put everything aside for this unsavoury job, and, he asserted, Miss Sichliffe had virtually lived with him ever since.

  ‘She went home at night, of course,’ he exploded, ‘but the rest of the time she simply infested the premises. Goodness knows, I’m not particular, but it was a scandal. Even the servants! . . . Three and four times a day, and notes in between, to know how the beast was. Hang it all, don’t laugh! And wanting to send me flowers and goldfish. Do I look as if I wanted goldfish? Can’t you two stop for a minute?’ (Mrs Godfrey and I were clinging to each other for support.) ‘And it isn’t as if I was – was so alluring a personality, is it?’

  Attley commands more trust, goodwill, and affection than most men, for he is that rare angel, an absolutely unselfish bachelor, content to be run by contending syndicates of zealous friends. His situation seemed desperate, and I told him so.

  ‘Instant flight is your only remedy,’ was my verdict. I’ll take care of both your cars while you’re away, and you can send me over all the greenhouse fruit.’

  ‘But why should I be chased out of my house by a she-dromedary?’ he wailed.

  ‘Oh, stop! Stop!’ Mrs Godfrey sobbed. ‘You’re both wrong. I admit you’re right, but I know you’re wrong.’

  ‘Three and four times a day,’ said Attley, with an awful countenance. ‘I’m not a vain man, but – look here, Ella, I’m not sensitive, I hope, but if you persist in making a joke of it – ‘

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ she almost shrieked. ‘D’you imagine for one instant that your friends would ever let Mittleham pass out of their hands? I quite agree it is unseemly for a grown girl to come to Mittleham at all hours of the day and night – ‘

  ‘I told you she went home o’ nights,’ Attley growled.

  ‘Specially if she goes home o’ nights. Oh, but think of the life she must have led, Will!’

  ‘I’m not interfering with it; only she must leave me alone.’

  ‘She may want to patch you up and insure you,’ I suggested.

  ‘D’you know what you are?’ Mrs Godfrey turned on me with the smile I have feared for the last quarter of a century. ‘You’re the nice, kind, wise, doggy friend. You don’t know how wise and nice you are supposed to be. Will has sent Harvey to you to complete the poor angel’s convalescence. You know all about dogs, or Will wouldn’t have done it. He’s written her that. You’re too far off for her to make daily calls on you. P’r’aps she’ll drop in two or three times a week, and write on other days. But it doesn’t ma
tter what she does, because you don’t own Mittleham, don’t you see?’

  I told her I saw most clearly.

  ‘Oh, you’ll get over that in a few days,’ Mrs Godfrey countered. ‘You’re the sporting, responsible, doggy friend who –’

  ‘He used to look at me like that at first,’ said Attley, with a visible shudder, ‘but he gave it up after a bit. It’s only because you’re new to him.’

  ‘But, confound you! he’s a ghoul – ’ I began.

  ‘And when he gets quite well, you’ll send him back to her direct with your love, and she’ll give you some pretty four-tailed goldfish,’ said Mrs Godfrey, rising. ‘That’s all settled. Car, please. We’re going to Brighton to lunch together.’

  They ran before I could get into my stride, so I told the dog Harvey what I thought of them and his mistress. He never shifted his position, but stared at me, an intense, lopsided stare, eye after eye. Malachi came along when he had seen his sister off, and from a distance counselled me to drown the brute and consort with gentlemen again. But the dog Harvey never even cocked his cockable ear.

  And so it continued as long as he was with me. Where I sat, he sat and stared; where I walked, he walked beside, head stiffly slewed over one shoulder in single-barrelled contemplation of me. He never gave tongue, never closed in for a caress, seldom let me stir a step alone. And, to my amazement, Malachi, who suffered no stranger to live within our gates, saw this gaunt, growing, green-eyed devil wipe him out of my service and company without a whimper. Indeed, one would have said the situation interested him, for he would meet us returning from grim walks together, and look alternately at Harvey and at me with the same quivering interest that he showed at the mouth of a rat-hole. Outside these inspections, Malachi withdrew himself as only a dog or a woman can.

  Miss Sichliffe came over after a few days (luckily I was out) with some elaborate story of paying calls in the neighbourhood. She sent me a note of thanks next day. I was reading it when Harvey and Malachi entered and disposed themselves as usual, Harvey close up to stare at me, Malachi half under the sofa, watching us both. Out of curiosity I returned Harvey’s stare, then pulled his lopsided head on to my knee, and took his eye for several minutes. Now, in Malachi’s eye I can see at any hour all that there is of the normal decent dog, flecked here and there with that strained half-soul which man’s love and association have added to his nature. But with Harvey the eye was perplexed, as a tortured man’s. Only by looking far into its deeps could one make out the spirit of the proper animal, beclouded and cowering beneath some unfair burden.

  Leggatt, my chauffeur, came in for orders.

  ‘How d’you think Harvey’s coming on?’ I said, as I rubbed the brute’s gulping neck. The vet had warned me of the possibilities of spinal trouble following distemper.

  ‘He ain’t my fancy,’ was the reply. ‘But I don’t question his comings and goings so long as I ’aven’t to sit alone in a room with him.’

  ‘Why? He’s as meek as Moses,’ I said.

  ‘He fair gives me the creeps. P’r’aps he’ll go out in fits.’

  But Harvey, as I wrote his mistress from time to time, throve, and when he grew better, would play by himself grisly games of spying, walking up, hailing, and chasing another dog. From these he would break off of a sudden and return to his normal stiff gait, with the air of one who had forgotten some matter of life and death, which could be reached only by staring at me. I left him one evening posturing with the unseen on the lawn, and went inside to finish some letters for the post. I must have been at work nearly an hour, for I was going to turn on the lights, when I felt there was somebody in the room whom, the short hairs at the back of my neck warned me, I was not in the least anxious to face. There was a mirror on the wall. As I lifted my eyes to it I saw the dog Harvey reflected near the shadow by the closed door. He had reared himself full-length on his hind legs, his head a little one side to clear a sofa between us, and he was looking at me. The face, with its knitted brows and drawn lips, was the face of a dog, but the look, for the fraction of time that I caught it, was human – wholly and horribly human. When the blood in my body went forward again he had dropped to the floor, and was merely studying me in his usual one-eyed fashion. Next day I returned him to Miss Sichliffe. I would not have kept him another day for the wealth of Asia, or even Ella Godfrey’s approval.

  Miss Sichliffe’s house I discovered to be a mid-Victorian mansion of peculiar villainy even for its period, surrounded by gardens of conflicting colours, all dazzling with glass and fresh paint on ironwork. Striped blinds, for it was a blazing autumn morning, covered most of the windows, and a voice sang to the piano an almost forgotten song of Jean Ingelow’s –

  Methought that the stars were blinking bright,

  And the old brig’s sails unfurled –

  Down came the loud pedal, and the unrestrained cry swelled out across a bed of tritomas consuming in their own fires –

  When I said I will sail to my love this night

  On the other side of the world.

  I have no music, but the voice drew. I waited till the end:

  Oh, maid most dear, I am not here

  I have no place apart –

  No dwelling more on sea or shore,

  But only in thy heart.

  It seemed to me a poor life that had no more than that to do at eleven o’clock of a Tuesday forenoon. Then Miss Sichliffe suddenly lumbered through a French window in clumsy haste, her brows contracted against the light.

  ‘Well?’ she said, delivering the word like a spear-thrust, with the full weight of a body behind it.

  ‘I’ve brought Harvey back at last,’ I replied. ‘Here he is.’

  But it was at me she looked, not at the dog who had cast himself at her feet – looked as though she would have fished my soul out of my breast on the instant.

  ‘Wha – what did you think of him? What did you make of him?’ she panted. I was too taken aback for the moment to reply. Her voice broke as she stooped to the dog at her knees. ‘O Harvey, Harvey! You utterly worthless old devil!’ she cried, and the dog cringed and abased himself in servility that one could scarcely bear to look upon. I made to go.

  ‘Oh, but please, you mustn’t!’ She tugged at the car’s side. ‘Wouldn’t you like some flowers or some orchids? We’ve really splendid orchids, and’ – she clasped her hands – ‘there are Japanese goldfish – real Japanese goldfish, with four tails. If you don’t care for ‘em, perhaps your friends or somebody – oh, please!’

  Harvey had recovered himself, and I realised that this woman beyond the decencies was fawning on me as the dog had fawned on her.

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, ashamed to meet her eye. ‘I’m lunching at Mittleham, but – ‘

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ she entreated. ‘What do you think of Harvey?’

  ‘He’s a queer beast,’ I said, getting out. ‘He does nothing but stare at me.’

  ‘Does he stare at you all the time he’s with you?’

  ‘Always. He’s doing it now. Look!’

  We had halted. Harvey had sat down, and was staring from one to the other with a weaving motion of the head.

  ‘He’ll do that all day,’ I said. ‘What is it, Harvey?’

  ‘Yes, what is it, Harvey?’ she echoed. The dog’s throat twitched, his body stiffened and shook as though he were going to have a fit. Then he came back with a visible wrench to his unwinking watch.

  ‘Always so?’ she whispered.

  ‘Always,’ I replied, and told her something of his life with me. She nodded once or twice, and in the end led me into the house.

  There were unaging pitch-pine doors of Gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantelpieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wallpapers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood whatnots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and 1878. And everything reeked of varnish.

  ‘Now!
’ she opened a baize door, and pointed down a long corridor flanked with more Gothic doors. ‘This was where we used to – to patch ‘em up. You’ve heard of us. Mrs Godfrey told you in the garden the day I got Harvey given me. I’ – she drew in her breath – ‘I live here by myself, and I have a very large income. Come back, Harvey.’

  He had tiptoed down the corridor, as rigid as ever, and was sitting outside one of the shut doors. ‘Look here!’ she said, and planted herself squarely in front of me. ‘I tell you this because you – you’ve patched up Harvey, too. Now, I want you to remember that my name is Moira. Mother calls me Marjorie because it’s more refined; but my real name is Moira, and I am in my thirty-fourth year.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember all that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Then with a sudden swoop into the humility of an abashed boy – ‘‘Sorry if I haven’t said the proper things. You see – there’s Harvey looking at us again. Oh, I want to say – if ever you want anything in the way of orchids or goldfish or – or anything else that would be useful to you, you’ve only to come to me for it. Under the will I’m perfectly independent, and we’re a long-lived family, worse luck!’ She looked at me, and her face worked like glass behind driven flame. ‘I may reasonably expect to live another fifty years,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Sichliffe,’ I replied. ‘If I want anything, you may be sure I’ll come to you for it.’ She nodded. ‘Now I must get over to Mittleham,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Attley will ask you all about this.’ For the first time she laughed aloud. ‘I’m afraid I frightened him nearly out of the county. I didn’t think, of course. But I dare say he knows by this time he was wrong. Say goodbye to Harvey.’

  ‘Goodbye, old man,’ I said. ‘Give me a farewell stare, so we shall know each other when we meet again.’

  The dog looked up, then moved slowly toward me, and stood, head bowed to the floor, shaking in every muscle as I patted him; and when I turned, I saw him crawl back to her feet.