Books: The Light That Failed
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Rudyard Kipling >> The Light That Failed
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'Don't be an idiot. You can't pose with us here,' said the Nilghai.
'There's no pose in the matter at all. It's a fact. I was loafing from Lima
to Auckland in a big, old, condemned passenger-ship turned into a
cargo-boat and owned by a second-had Italian firm. She was a crazy
basket. We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought
ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots an hour out of her. Then we
used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the
crack in the shaft was spreading.'
'Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?'
'I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I should have
been a steward, I think,' said Dick, with perfect gravity, returning to the
procession of angry wives. 'I was the only other passenger from Lima,
and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and cockroaches and
scorpions.'
'But what has this to do with the picture?'
'Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower
decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down,
and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port
holes--most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I hadn't
anything to do for weeks. The ship's charts were in pieces and our
skipper daren't run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did his best
to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one, and I went
into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as far forward in
her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some green paint that
they used for the boats, and some black paint for ironwork, and that was
all I had.'
'The passengers must have thought you mad.'
'There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of
my picture.'
'What was she like?' said Torpenhow.
'She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She
couldn't read or write, and she didn't want to, but she used to come down
and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was paying
her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.'
'I see. That must have been cheerful.'
'It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn't know whether
we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on; and
when it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints
and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few
minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire. So, you
see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a splendid
notion to work out in only three keys of colour.'
'What was the notion?'
'Two lines in Poe--
Neither the angles in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
It came out of the sea--all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in green
water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the model
for the devils and the angels both--sea-devils and sea-angels, and the soul
half drowned between them. It doesn't sound much, but when there was
a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy. It was
seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting light.'
'Did the woman inspire you much?' said Torpenhow.
'She and the sea between them--immensely. There was a heap of bad
drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten
for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for all
that it's the best thing I've ever done; and now I suppose the ship's
broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!'
'What happened after all?'
'It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but
even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the
demons scared them, I honestly believe.'
'And the woman?'
'She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself before
she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of getting
any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside, and the
fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!' He had ceased to look at
the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across the room.
'Why don't you try something of the same kind now?' said the Nilghai.
'Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a
cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life,
I may.'
'You won't find them here,' said the Nilghai.
'No, I shall not.' Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. 'This room's as
hot as an oven. Open the window, some one.'
He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London
below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other houses,
commanding a hundred chimneys--crooked cowls that looked like sitting
cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries
supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the
lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a copper-coloured
glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of the
Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and its
thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The Nilghai
looked at his watch and said shortly, 'That's the Paris night-mail. You
can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose.'
Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across
the river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai passed over
quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as
possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be
lightly disturbed.
'Well,' said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, 'have you never
seen this place before?'
A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then
the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged Dick.
'Good place to bank in--bad place to bunk in, Dickie, isn't it?'
Dick's chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general not
without fame, still looking out on the darkness--'"My God, what a city to
loot!"'
Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed plaintively.
'We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold,' said Torpenhow. 'Come in,' and
they withdrew their heads. 'You'll be buried in Kensal Green, Dick, one
of these days, if it isn't closed by the time you want to go there--buried
within two feet of some one else, his wife and his family.'
'Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room
to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie.' Dick flung himself down on the sofa and
tweaked Binkie's velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.
'You'll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune,' Torpenhow said
to the Nilghai. 'It's never touched except by you.'
'A piece of gross extravagance,' Dick grunted. 'The Nilghai only comes
when I'm out.'
'That's because you're always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear.'?
'The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter,
His writings are watered Dickens and water;
But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high
Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die!'?
Dick quoted from Torpenhow's letterpress in the Nungapunga Book.
'How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai?'
The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many
Press-tents in far-off lands had known.
'What shall I sing?' said he, turning in the chair.
'"Moll Roe in the Morning,"' said Torpenhow, at a venture.
'No,' said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty
whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty
one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without
prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles
the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--
'Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain.'?
Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the
Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern Cross.
Then came the chorus--
'We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,
Until we take soundings in the Channel of Old England
From Ushant to Scilly 'tis forty-five leagues.'?
'Thirty-five-thirty-five,' said Dick, petulantly. 'Don't tamper with Holy
Writ. Go on, Nilghai.'?
'The first land we made it was called the Deadman,'?
and they sang to the end very vigourously.
'That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way--to
the Ushant light, for instance,' said the Nilghai.
'Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill,' said Torpenhow. 'Give us
something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight.'
'Give us the "Ganges Pilot"; you sang that in the square the night before
El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive
to-night,' said Dick.
Torpenhow considered for a minute. 'By Jove! I believe only you and I.
Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo,
carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai.'
'Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a well-warmed
studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I charge
too much for my pictures.'
'They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,'
said the Nilghai.
'I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the
"Pilot." Where in the world did you get that song?'
'On a tombstone,' said the Nilghai. 'On a tombstone in a distant land. I
made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords.'
'Oh, Vanity! Begin.' And the Nilghai began--
'I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the tide,
I have my sailing orders, while yet an anchor ride.
And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea
With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and free.
'Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge
Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge.
Cries Charnock, "Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two,
The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you!"
'Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark?
Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours?--Why, hark!'?
They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open sea
about his ears as the deep bass voice let itself go.
'The morning gun--Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me!?
I ha' sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth sound the
sea.
'Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide,
Moore me close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.
My blessing to Kate at Fairlight--Holwell, my thanks to you;
Steady! We steer for heaven, through sand-drifts cold and blue.'?
'Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?' said Dick,
hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.
'It depends on the man,' said Torpenhow.
'The man who has been down to look at the sea,' said the Nilghai.
'I didn't know she was going to upset me in this fashion.'
'That's what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It's
more easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one's life and
surroundings.'
'But a woman can be----' began Dick, unguardedly.
'A piece of one's life,' continued Torpenhow. 'No, she can't. His face
darkened for a moment. 'She says she wants to sympathise with you and
help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must do
for himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the dickens
you haven't been wasting your time with her.'
'Don't generalise,' said the Nilghai. 'By the time you arrive at five notes a
day you must have gone through a good deal and behaved accordingly.
Shouldn't begin these things, my son.'
'I shouldn't have gone down to the sea,' said Dick, just a little anxious to
change the conversation. 'And you shouldn't have sung.'
'The sea isn't sending you five notes a day,' said the Nilghai.
'No, but I'm fatally compromised. She's an enduring old hag, and I'm
sorry I ever met her. Why wasn't I born and bred and dead in a
three-pair back?'
'Hear him blaspheming his first love! Why in the world shouldn't you
listen to her?' said Torpenhow.
Before Dick could reply the Nilghai lifted up his voice with a shout that
shook the windows, in 'The Men of the Sea,' that begins, as all know,
'The sea is a wicked old woman,' and after rading through eight lines
whose imagery is truthful, ends in a refrain, slow as the clacking of a
capstan when the boat comes unwillingly up to the bars where the men
sweat and tramp in the shingle.
'"Ye that bore us, O restore us!?
She is kinder than ye;
For the call is on our heart-strings!"
Said The Men of the Sea.'?
The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that
Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the men to
their wives.
'"Ye that love us, can ye move us?
She is dearer than ye;
And your sleep will be the sweeter,"
Said The Men of the Sea.'?
The rough words beat like the blows of the waves on the bows of the
rickety boat from Lima in the days when Dick was mixing paints, making
love, drawing devils and angels in the half dark, and wondering whether
the next minute would put the Italian captain's knife between his
shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors'
diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond
anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot, unregenerate life
again,--to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to
take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk
to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow 'Tina mixed the
drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward,
thin and thicken again till the shining black faces came through, and in
that hell every man was strictly responsible for his own head, and his
own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. It was impossible, utterly
impossible, but--
'"Oh, our fathers in the churchyard,
She is older than ye,
And our graves will be the greener,"
Said The Men of the Sea.'?
'What is there to hinder?' said Torpenhow, in the long hush that
followed the song.
'You said a little time since that you wouldn't come for a walk round the
world, Torp.'
'That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money for
travelling expenses. You've shot your bolt here and it has gone home. Go
away and do some work, and see some things.'
'Get some of the fat off you; you're disgracefully out of condition,' said
the Nilghai, making a plunge from the chair and grasping a handful of
Dick generally over the right ribs. 'Soft as putty--pure tallow born of
over-feeding. Train it off, Dickie.'
'We're all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the field
you'll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp, and die in a fit.'
'Never mind. You go away on a ship. Go to Lima again, or to Brazil.
There's always trouble in South America.'
'Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the only
difficulty is to know where I'm to stop. But I shall stay here, as I told you
before.'
'Then you'll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere with the
others,' said Torpenhow. 'Are you thinking of commissions in hand? Pay
forfeit and go. You've money enough to travel as a king if you please.'
'You've the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see myself
shipping first class on a six-thousand-ton hotel, and asking the third
engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn't very
warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I shipped
at all, which I'm not going to do. I shall compromise, and go for a small
trip to begin with.'
'That's something at any rate. Where will you go?' said Torpenhow. 'It
would do you all the good in the world, old man.'
The Nilghai saw the twinkle in Dick's eye, and refrained from speech.
'I shall go in the first place to Rathray's stable, where I shall hire one
horse, and take him very carefully as far as Richmond Hill. Then I shall
walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a lather
and make Rathray angry. I shall do that to-morrow, for the sake of air
and exercise.'
'Bah!' Dick had barely time to throw up his arm and ward off the
cushion that the disgusted Torpenhow heaved at his head.
'Air and exercise indeed,' said the Nilghai, sitting down heavily on Dick.
'Let's give him a little of both. Get the bellows, Torp.'
At this point the conference broke up in disorder, because Dick would not
open his mouth till the Nilghai held his nose fast, and there was some
trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth; and even
when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of the blast,
and his cheeks blew up with a great explosion; and the enemy becoming
helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a soft sofa
cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers, and Binkie,
interfering in Torpenhow's interests, was bundled into the half-empty
bag and advised to scratch his way out, which he did after a while,
travelling rapidly up and down the floor in the shape of an agitated green
haggis, and when he came out looking for satisfaction, the three pillars of
his world were picking feathers out of their hair.
'A prophet has no honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully,
dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will never brush off my legs.'
'It was all for your own good,' said the Nilghai. 'Nothing like air and
exercise.'
'All for your good,' said Torpenhow, not in the least with reference to
past clowning. 'It would let you focus things at their proper worth and
prevent your becoming slack in this hothouse of a town. Indeed it would,
old man. I shouldn't have spoken if I hadn't thought so. Only, you make a
joke of everything.'
'Before God I do no such thing,' said Dick, quickly and earnestly. 'You
don't know me if you think that.'
I don't think it,' said the Nilghai.
'How can fellows like ourselves, who know what life and death really
mean, dare to make a joke of anything? I know we pretend it, to save
ourselves from breaking down or going to the other extreme. Can't I see,
old man, how you're always anxious about me, and try to advise me to
make my work better? Do you suppose I don't think about that myself?
But you can't help me--you can't help me--not even you. I must play my
own hand alone in my own way.'
'Hear, hear,' from the Nilghai.
'What's the one thing in the Nilghai Saga that I've never drawn in the
Nungapunga Book?' Dick continued to Torpenhow, who was a little
astonished at the outburst.
Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch that
Dick had not drawn of the crowning exploit in the Nilghai's life; when
that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones belonged to
the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery grass
in the rear of Bredow's brigade on the day that the troopers flung
themselves at Caurobert's artillery, and for aught they knew twenty
battalions in front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry, to give
time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere their remnant came
back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and break
unshaken infantry. Whenever he was inclined to think over a life that
might have been better, an income that might have been larger, and a
soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would
comfort himself with the thought, 'I rode with Bredow's brigade at
Vionville,' and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might bring.
'I know,' he said very gravely. 'I was always glad that you left it out.'
'I left it out because Nilghai taught me what the Germany army learned
then, and what Schmidt taught their cavalry. I don't know German.
What is it? "Take care of the time and the dressing will take care of
itself." I must ride my own line to my own beat, old man.'
'Tempe ist richtung. You've learned your lesson well,' said the Nilghai.
'He must go alone. He speaks truth, Torp.'
'Maybe I'm as wrong as I can be--hideously wrong. I must find that out
for myself, as I have to think things out for myself, but I daren't turn my
head to dress by the next man. It hurts me a great deal more than you
know not to be able to go, but I cannot, that's all. I must do my own work
and live my own life in my own way, because I'm responsible for both.
Only don't think I frivol about it, Torp. I have my own matches and
sulphur, and I'll make my own hell, thanks.'
There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Torpenhow said blandly,
'What did the Governor of North Carolina say to the Governor of South
Carolina?'
'Excellent notion. It is a long time between drinks. There are the makings
of a very fine prig in you, Dick,' said the Nilghai.
'I've liberated my mind, estimable Binkie, with the feathers in his
mouth.' Dick picked up the still indignant one and shook him tenderly.
'You're tied up in a sack and made to run about blind, Binkie-wee,
without any reason, and it has hurt your little feelings. Never mind. Sic
volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas, and don't sneeze in my eye
because I talk Latin. Good-night.'
He went out of the room.
'That's distinctly one for you,' said the Nilghai. 'I told you it was hopeless
to meddle with him. He's not pleased.'
'He'd swear at me if he weren't. I can't make it out. He has the go-fever
upon him and he won't go. I only hope that he mayn't have to go some
day when he doesn't want to,' said Torpenhow.
* * * * * *
In his own room Dick was settling a question with himself--and the
question was whether all the world, and all that was therein, and a
burning desire to exploit both, was worth one threepenny piece thrown
into the Thames.
'It came of seeing the sea, and I'm a cur to think about it,' he decided.
'After all, the honeymoon will be that tour--with reservations; only . . .
only I didn't realise that the sea was so strong. I didn't feel it so much
when I was with Maisie. These damnable songs did it. He's beginning
again.'
But it was only Herrick's Nightpiece to Julia that the Nilghai sang, and
before it was ended Dick reappeared on the threshold, not altogether
clothed indeed, but in his right mind, thirsty and at peace.
The mood had come and gone with the rising and the falling of the tide
by Fort Keeling.
CHAPTER IX
'If I have taken the common clay
And wrought it cunningly
In the shape of a god that was digged a clod,
The greater honour to me.'?
'If thou hast taken the common clay,
And thy hands be not free
From the taint of the soil , thou hast made thy spoil
The greater shame to thee.'--The Two Potters.?
HE DID no work of any kind for the rest of the week. Then came another
Sunday. He dreaded and longed for the day always, but since the
red-haired girl had sketched him there was rather more dread than
desire in his mind.
He found that Maisie had entirely neglected his suggestions about
line-work. She had gone off at score filed with some absurd notion for a
'fancy head.' It cost Dick something to command his temper.
'What's the good of suggesting anything?' he said pointedly.
'Ah, but this will be a picture,--a real picture; and I know that Kami will
let me send it to the Salon. You don't mind, do you?'
'I suppose not. But you won't have time for the Salon.'
Maisie hesitated a little. She even felt uncomfortable.
'We're going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall get the
idea sketched out here and work it up at Kami's.
Dick's heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted with his
queen who could do no wrong. 'Just when I thought I had made some
headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It's too maddening!'
There was no possibility of arguing, for the red-haired girl was in the
studio. Dick could only look unutterable reproach.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'and I think you make a mistake. But what's the idea
of your new picture?'
'I took it from a book.'
'That's bad, to begin with. Books aren't the places for pictures. And----'
'It's this,' said the red-haired girl behind him. 'I was reading it to Maisie
the other day from The City of Dreadful Night. D'you know the book?'
'A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken her
fancy?'
'The description of the Melancolia--
'Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
But all too impotent to lift the regal
Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride.
And here again. (Maisie, get the tea, dear.)
'The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown,
Voluminous indented, and yet rigid
As though a shell of burnished metal frigid,
Her feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down.'?
There was no attempt to conceal the scorn of the lazy voice. Dick winced.
'But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of
Durer,' said he. 'How does the poem run?--
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