Selected Stories (47 page)

‘Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they lasted, and I said to mysen, “'Liza Roantree hasn't six months to live.” And when we came into th' daylight again we were like dead men to look at, an' Blast come behind us without so much as waggin' his tail. When I saw ‘Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, “Who's telled tha? For I see tha knows.” And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke down.

‘Yo'see, I was a young chap i' them days, and had seen naught o' life, let alone death, as is allus a-waitin'. She telled me as Dr Warbottom said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin' to Bradford, to Jesse's brother David, as worked i' a mill, and I mun hold up like a man and a Christian, and she'd pray for me. Well, and they went away, and the preacher that same back end o' th' year were appointed
to another circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.

‘I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th' chapel, but ‘tweren't th' same thing at after. I hadn't ‘Liza's voice to follow i' th' singin', nor her eyes a'shinin' acrost their heads. And i' th' class-meetings they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn't a word to say for mysen.

‘Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn't behave ourselves over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they'd come to take us up. I can't tell how we got through th' time, while i' th' winter I gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th' door o' th' house, in the long street o' little houses. He'd been sendin' th' children 'way as were clatterin' their clogs in th' causeway, for she were asleep.

‘“Is it thee?” he says; “but you're not to see her. I'll none have her wakened for a nowt like thee. She's goin' fast, and she mun go in peace. Thou'lt never be good for naught i' th' world, and as long as thou lives thou'll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!” So he shut the door softly i' my face.

‘Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting sergeant. The old tales o' th' chapel folk came buzzin' into my head. I was to get away, and this were th' regular road for the likes o' me. I ‘listed there and then, took th' Widow's shillin', and had a bunch o' ribbons pinned i' my hat.

‘But next day I found my way to David Roantree's door, and Jesse came to open it. Says he, “Thou's come back again wi' th' devil's colours flyin' – thy true colours, as I always telled thee.”

‘But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say goodbye, till a woman calls down th' stair-way, “She says John Learoyd's to come up.” Th' old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like. “But thou'lt be quiet, John,” says he, “for she's rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.”

‘Her eyes were all alive wi' light, and her hair was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks were thin – thin to frighten a man that's strong. “Nay, father, yo mayn't say th' devil's colours. Them ribbons is pretty.” An' she held out her hands for th' hat, an' she put all straight as a woman will wi' ribbons. “Nay, but what they're pretty,” she says. “Eh, but I'd ha' liked to see thee i' thy red coat, John, for thou was allus my own lad – my very own lad, and none else.”

‘She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i' a gentle grip, and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. “Now yo' mun
get away, lad,” says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.

‘Th' recruiting sergeant were waitin' for me at th' corner public-house. “Yo've seen your sweetheart?” says he. “Yes, I've seen her,” says I. “Well, we'll have a quart now, and you'll do your best to forget her,” says he, bein' one o' them smart, bustlin' chaps. “Ay, sergeant,” says I. “Forget her.” And I've been forgettin' her ever since.'

He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled up the watercourse.

‘See that beggar?… Got 'im.'

Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.

‘That's a clean shot, little man,' said Mulvaney.

Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. ‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi' him, too,' said he.

Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work.

‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'
¹

At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
‘Nag,
²
come up and dance with death!'

Eye to eye and head to head,

(
Keep the measure, Nag.
)

This shall end when one is dead;

(
At thy pleasure, Nag.)

Turn for turn and twist for twist –

(
Run and hide thee, Nag.)

Hah! The hooded Death has missed!

(
Woe betide thee, Nag!)

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ‘
Rikki-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!
'

One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: ‘Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have a funeral.'

‘No,' said his mother; ‘let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn't really dead.'

They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not dead but half choked; so they
wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.

‘Now,' said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); ‘don't frighten him, and we'll see what he'll do.'

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is, ‘Run and find out'; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder.

‘Don't be frightened, Teddy,' said his father. ‘That's his way of making friends.'

‘Ouch! He's tickling under my chin,' said Teddy.

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.

‘Good gracious,' said Teddy's mother, ‘and that's a wild creature! I suppose he's so tame because we've been kind to him.'

‘All mongooses are like that,' said her husband. ‘If Teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of the house all day long. Let's give him something to eat.'

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the verandah and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.

‘There are more things to find out about in this house,' he said to himself, ‘than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.'

He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and burnt it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene-lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. ‘I don't like that,' said Teddy's mother; ‘he may bite the child.' ‘He'll do no such thing,' said the father. ‘Teddy's safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now–'

But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the General's house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. ‘This is a splendid hunting-ground,' he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.

‘What is the matter?' asked Rikki-tikki.

‘We are very miserable,' said Darzee. ‘One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.'

‘H'm!' said Rikki-tikki, ‘that is very sad – but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?'

Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss – a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.

‘Who is Nag?' said he. ‘
I
am Nag. The great god Brahm
³
put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!'

He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed
him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.