The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories Read online

  ‘Who? – I don’t know. I have seen nothing of them since. I came straight in here.’

  ‘If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great profit to you, I suppose?’

  ‘A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett’s, a share to each of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.’

  ‘And you still think,’ he went on slowly, ‘that you will not give this business up?’

  Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder. ‘Don’t ask that,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. I must tell you, though I meant not to do it. What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my mother and myself with.’

  He was astonished. ‘I did not dream of such a thing,’ he said. ‘I would rather have scraped the roads, had I been you. What is money compared with a clear conscience?’

  ‘My conscience is clear. I know my mother, but the king I have never seen. His dues are nothing to me. But it is a great deal to me that my mother and I should live.’

  ‘Marry me, and promise to give it up. I will keep your mother.’

  ‘It is good of you,’ she said, moved a little. ‘Let me think of it by myself. I would rather not answer now.’

  She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a solemn face. ‘I cannot do what you wished!’ she said passionately. ‘It is too much to ask. My whole life has been passed in this way.’ Her words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.

  Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly. ‘Then, Lizzy, we must part. I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my profession a mockery. You know how I love you, and what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.’

  ‘But why should you belong to that profession?’ she burst out. ‘I have got this large house; why can’t you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more? I assure you, Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do! We only carry it on in winter: in summer it is never done at all. It stirs up one’s dull life at this time o’ the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly know how to do ’ithout it. At nights, when the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and down the room, and look out o’ window, and then you go out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.’

  ‘He frightened you a little last night, anyhow: and I would advise you to drop it before it is worse.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I must go on as I have begun. I was born to it. It is in my blood, and I can’t be cured. O, Richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for ’ee!’

  Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes. ‘We ought never to have met, Lizzy,’ he said. ‘It was an ill day for us! I little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this. Well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way. I have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.’

  ‘You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,’ she said. ‘And I don’t see why we are not well matched.’

  He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow.

  That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days. Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. But Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.

  Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said to her: ‘I have had a letter, Lizzy. I must call you that till I am gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ said she blankly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am going from this place. I felt it would be better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened. In fact, I couldn’t stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming weak and faltering in my course. I have just heard of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in about a week; and let me go elsewhere.’

  That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise. ‘You never loved me!’ she said bitterly.

  ‘I might say the same,’ he returned; ‘but I will not. Grant me one favour. Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.’

  Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended Stockdale’s chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded; and she promised.

  It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it. The intervening days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time. The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them. His hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion. In truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were too much for the young man’s equanimity. He hardly knew how he ended. He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed her home.

  She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.

  ‘We will part friends, won’t we?’ said Lizzy, with forced gaiety, and never alluding to the sermon: a reticence which rather disappointed him.

  ‘We will,’ he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.

  It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives, and probably the last that they would so share. When it was over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and took her hand. ‘Lizzy,’ he said, ‘do you say we must part – do you?’

  ‘You do,’ she said solemnly. ‘I can say no more.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said he. ‘If that is your answer, goodbye!’

  Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned his kiss. ‘I shall go early,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I shall not see you again.’

  And he did leave early. He fancied, when stepping forth into the grey morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy’s window, but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure. Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.

  One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original way. Jogging along in the van that afternoon he had put questions to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the minister deeply. The result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his former lodging. It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy’s snowdrops were raising their heads in the border under the wall.

  Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that he reached the door she was th
ere holding it open: and then, as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself back, saying with some constraint, ‘Mr Stockdale!’

  ‘You knew it was,’ said Stockdale, taking her hand. ‘I wrote to say I should call.’

  ‘Yes, but you did not say when,’ she answered.

  ‘I did not. I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these parts.’

  ‘You only came because business brought you near?’

  ‘Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come on purpose to see you…. But what’s all this that has happened? I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.’

  ‘I would not,’ she said sadly. ‘But I had been brought up to that life; and it was second nature to me. However, it is all over now. The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade is going to nothing. We were hunted down like rats.’

  ‘Owlett is quite gone, I hear.’

  ‘Yes. He is in America. We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when they tried to take him. It is a perfect miracle that he lived through it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed. I was shot in the hand. It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting; and it healed after a time. You know how he suffered?’

  ‘No,’ said Stockdale. ‘I only heard that he just escaped with his life.’

  ‘He was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball. He was badly hurt. We would not let him be took. The men carried him all night across the meads to Kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. Then he was caught, and tried with the others at the assizes; but they all got off. He had given up his mill for some time; and at last he went to Bristol, and took a passage to America, where he’s settled.’

  ‘What do you think of smuggling now?’ said the minister gravely.

  ‘I own that we were wrong,’ said she. ‘But I have suffered for it. I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months…. But won’t you come in, Mr Stockdale?’

  Stockdale went in: and it is to be supposed that they came to an understanding, for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy’s furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring town.

  He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a minister’s wife with praiseworthy assiduity. It is said that in after years she wrote an excellent tract called Render unto Caesar; or, The Repentant Villagers, in which her own experience was anonymously used as the introductory story. Stockdale got it printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.

  NOTE: The ending of this story with the marriage of Lizzy and the minister was almost de rigueur in an English magazine at the time of writing. But at this late date, thirty years after, it may not be amiss to give the ending that would have been preferred by the writer to the convention used above. Moreover it corresponds more closely with the true incidents of which the tale is a vague and flickering shadow. Lizzy did not, in fact, marry the minister, but – much to her credit in the author’s opinion – stuck to Jim the smuggler; and emigrated with him after their marriage, an expatrial step rather forced upon him by his adventurous antecedents. They both died in Wisconsin between 1850 and 1860. (May 1912.)

  Rudyard Kipling

  WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

  1

  I have done one braver thing

  Than all the Worthies did;

  And yet a braver thence doth spring,

  Which is, to keep that hid.

  The Undertaking

  ‘IS IT officially declared yet?’

  ‘They’ve gone as far as to admit extreme local scarcity, and they’ve started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.’

  ‘That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men and the rolling-stock. Shouldn’t wonder if it were as bad as the Big Famine.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair. ‘We’ve had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal report more than they know what to do with. They’ll be able to check it before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.’

  Martyn picked up the Pioneer from the table, read through the telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly-watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of days. Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens – from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes – or on the polo-ground or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters’ return. From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same faces night after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful company.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said Martyn, with a yawn. ‘Let’s have a swim before dinner.’

  ‘Water’s hot,’ said Scott. ‘I was at the bath today.’

  ‘Play you game o’ billiards – fifty up.’

  ‘It’s a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don’t be so abominably energetic.’

  A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider fumbling a leather pouch.

  ‘Kubber-kargaz – ki – yektraaa,’ the man whined, handing down the newspaper extra – a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the press. It was pinned on the green-baize board, between notices of ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.

  Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. ‘It’s declared!’ he cried. ‘One, two, three – eight districts go under the operations of the Famine Code ek dum. They’ve put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.’

  ‘Good business!’ said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had shown. ‘When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more bundobust than most men.’

  ‘Jimmy’s a Jubilee Knight now,’ said Martyn. ‘He was a good chap, even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in – all ungas or rungas or pillays or polliums.’

  A dog-cart drove up, and a man entered, mopping his head. He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a province of twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men, and as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his office hours ran variously from ten to twenty a day.

  ‘Hi, Raines; you’re supposed to know everything,’ said Martyn, stopping him. ‘How’s this Madras “scarcity” going to turn out?’

  ‘No one knows as yet. There’s a message as long as your arm coming in on the telephone. I’ve left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned she can’t manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting all the men he needs. Arbuthnot’s warned to hold himself in readiness.’

  ‘ “Badger” Arbuthnot?’

  ‘The Peshawur chap. Yes, and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay have been moved from the North-West already, and they’ve taken half a dozen Bombay men, too. It’s pukka famine, by the looks of it.’

  ‘They’re nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to indenting on the Punjab this early, there’s m
ore in this than meets the eye,’ said Martyn.

  ‘Here today and gone tomorrow. Didn’t come to stay for ever,’ said Scott, dropping one of Marryat’s novels, and rising to his feet. ‘Martyn, your sister’s waiting for you.’

  A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah, where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown calico habit and a white face under a grey felt hat.

  ‘Right, O,’ said Martyn. ‘I’m ready. Better come and dine with us if you’ve nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the house?’

  ‘I’ll go home first and see,’ was the rider’s answer. ‘You can drive him over – at eight, remember.’

  Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot, with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns’ was a decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrées of the Club. But it was a great pity Martyn could not afford to send his sister to the Hills for the hot weather. As an Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were the usual blue-and-white striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris draped to nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men’s effects; and the usual streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as though everything had been unpacked the night before to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the house was true on its hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott’s life. Thus did people live who had such an income; and in a land where each man’s pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretences in word or deed. Scott counted eight years’ service in the Irrigation Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His working life, which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with the opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver. He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of the great Mosuhl Canal, and – much against his will, for he hated office work – had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and everybody knew it.