 Section 1 of Actions and Reactions. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. An Habitation and Forest. My friend, if cause doth rest thee, ere foley hath match oppressed thee, far from acquaintance cast thee, where a country may digest thee, thank God that so hath blessed thee, and sit down robbing and rest thee. Thomas Tusser. It came without warning at the very hour his hand was outstretched to crumble the holds and gunsburg combine. The New York doctors called it overwork, and he lay in a darkened room, one angle crossed above the other, tongue pressed into pallet, wondering whether the next brain-surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages. At last they gave judgment. With care he might in two years return to the arena, but for the present he must go across the water and not work whatever. He accepted the terms. It was capitulation, but the combine, that hath shivered beneath his knife, gave him all the honors of war. Gunsburg himself, full of condolences, came to the steamer and filled the chapin suit of cabins with overwhelming flower-works. Smile-lux, said George Chapin when he saw them. Fit is right, I'm dead, only I don't see why he left out the in-memorium on the ribbons. Nonsense, his wife answered, and poured him his tincture. He'll be back before he can think. He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised that his face had not been branded by the health of the past three months. The noise of the decks worried him, and he lay down his tongue only a little pressed against his pallet. An hour later he said, Sophie, I feel sorry about taking you away from everything like this. I suppose we're the two loneliest people on God's earth tonight. Said Sophie, his wife, and kissed him. Isn't it something to you that we're going together? They drifted about Europe for months, sometimes alone, sometimes with chance-met gypsies of their own land. From the North Cape to the Blue Grotto at Capri, they wondered, because the next steamer headed that way, or because someone had set them on the road. The doctors had warned Sophie that Chapin was not to take interest, even in other men's interests, but a familiar sensation at the back of the neck after one hour's keen talk with the now-hymed railway magnate, saved her any trouble. He nearly wept. And I'm over thirty, he said, with all I meant to do. Let's call it a honeymoon, said Sophie. Do you know, in all the six years we've been married, you've never told me what you meant to do with your life. With my life, what's the use? It's finished now. Sophie looked up quickly from the Bay of Naples. As far as my business goes, I shall have to live on my rents, like that architect at San Moritz. You'll get better, if you don't worry, and even if it takes time, there are worse things than... How much have you? Between four and five million. But it isn't the money. You know it isn't. It's the principle. How could you respect me? You never did the first year after we married, till I went to work like the others. Our tradition and upper-bringing are against it. We can't accept those ideals. Well, I suppose I married you for some sort of ideal, she answered, and they returned to their forty-third hotel. In England they missed the alien tongues of continental streets that reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In England all men spoke one tongue, speciously like American to the ear, but on cross-examination, unintelligible. But you have not seen England, said a lady with iron-grey hair. They had met her in Vienna, Bayreuth, and Florence, and were grateful to find her again at Claridge's. For she commanded situations and knew where prescriptions are most carefully made up. You ought to take an interest in the home of our ancestors, as I do. I've tried for a week, Mrs. Schantz, said Sophie, but I never get any further than tipping German waiters. These are not the true types, Mrs. Schantz went on. I know where you should go. Chopin picked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from the streets in which quick men, something of his kidney, did the business denied to him. We hear in wee obey Mrs. Schantz, said Sophie, feeling his unrest as he drank the loathed British tea. Mrs. Schantz smiled and took them in hand. She rode widely and telegraphed far on their behalf. Till armed with her letter of introduction, she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from an ash barrel of a station called Charing Cross. The way to go to Rockets, the farm of one cloak in the southern counties, where she assured them they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song. Rockets they found after some hours, four miles from a station, and so far as they could judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from a road. Trees, kind and the outlines of barns showed shadowy about them when they alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloak at the open door of a deep stone-floored kitchen made them shyly welcome. They lay in an attic beneath a wavy, wide-washed ceiling, and because it rained, a wood-fire was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames. When they walked, it was a fair day, full of the noises of birds, the smell of bugs, lavender and fried bacon mixed with an elemental smell they had never met before. This, set Sophie nearly pushing out the encasement in an attempt to see round the corner, is what did the hack-cabin say to the railway porter about my trunk, quite on the top? No, a little bit of all right. I fell further away from anywhere than I've ever felt in my life. We must find out where the telegraph office is. Who cares, said Sophie, wondering about, hairbrush in hand, to admire the illustrated weekly pictures, bases on the door and cupboard. But there was no rest for the alien soul, till he had made sure of the telegraph office. He asked the Cloak's daughter, laying breakfast while Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window. Go to the stellar top of the barn field, said Mary, and look across pardons to the next spire. It's directly under, you can't miss it. Not if you keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist there, but during the three mile radius, sir, the boy delivers telegrams directly to this door from pardons village. One has to take a good deal on trust in this country, he murmured. Sophie looked at the closed turf, scarred only with last night's wheels, at two rods which wound round a rickyard, and at the circle of still orchard about the half-timbered house. What's the matter with it? she said. Telegrams delivered to the Vale of Avalon, of course, and she beckoned in an earnest odd hound of engaging manners and no engagements who answered at times to the name of Rumbler. He led them, after breakfast, to their rise behind the house, where the stiles stood against the skyline, and— I wonder what we shall find now, said Sophie, frankly prancing with joy on the grass. It was a slope of gupp hedged fields possessed to their centres by clumps of brumbles. Gates were not, and the rabid-mind, cuttle-wrapped posts leaned out and in. An arrow-path doubled among the bushes, scores of white tails twinkled before the racing hound, and a hawk rose whistling shrilly. No roads, no nothing, said Sophie, her short skirt hooked by briars. I thought all England was a garden. There is your spire, George, across the valley. How curious! They walked a worded through an all-abandoned land. Here they found the ghost of a patch of Lucerne that had refused to die. There a harsh fallow surrendered to yard-high thistles, and here a breath of rampant calque, feigning to be loaful crop. In the ungraced pastures swathes of dead staff caught their feet, and the ground beneath glistened with sweat. At the bottom of the valley a little brook had undermined its footbridge, and frothed in the wreckage, but there stood great woods on the slopes beyond, old, tall and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the walls of a ruined house. All this within a hundred miles of London, he said. Looks as if it had had nervous prostration, too. The footpath turned the shoulder of the slope, threw a thicket of wrangrowed addendrons, and crossed what had once been a carriage-drive, which ended in the shadow of two gigantic hallmokes. A house! said Sophie in a whisper. A colonial house! Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark bluish brick Georgian pile with a shell-shaped fan-light over its billoured door. The hound had gone off on his own foolish quests. Except for some stirrer in the branches and the fright of four startled magpies, there was neither life nor sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long windows most friendly. Charmed to meet you, I'm sure, said Sophie, and curts it to the ground. George, this is history I can understand. We began here, she curts it again. The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights. It was as though an old lady, wise in three generations' experience, but for the present sitting out, bent to listen to her flushed and eager grandchild. I must look, Sophie tipped out to a window, and shaded her eyes with her hand. Oh, this room's half full of cotton-bales, wool, I suppose. But I can see a bit of the mantel-piss, George, do come. Isn't that someone? She fell back behind her husband. The front door opened slowly to show the hound, his nose wide with milk. In charge of an ancient of days, clad in a blue-liland ephod, curiously gathered and breast in shoulders. Certainly, said George half aloud, father time himself. This is where he lives, Sophie. We came, said Sophie weakly. Can we see the house? I'm afraid that's our dog. No, this rumbler, said the old man. He's been at my swole-pail again. Staying at Rockett's, be ye? Come in. Ah, you're on a gate. The hound broke from him, and he tortured after him down the drive. They entered the hall, just such a high-light hall, as such a house should own. A slim ballasted staircase, wide and shallow, and one screamy white, climbed out of it under a long oval window. On either side, delicately moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose sea-green mantel-pieces were adorned with neems, scrolls and cupids in low relief. What's the firm that makes these things? cried Sophie enruptured. Oh, I forgot! This must be the originals. Adams, is it? I never dreamed of anything like that still-cut fender. Does he meanest to go everywhere? He's catching the dog, said George, looking out. We don't count. They explored the first, or ground floor, delighted as children playing burglars. This is like all England, she said at last, wonderful, but no explanation. You're expected to know it beforehand. Now, let's try upstairs. The stairs never quicked beneath their feet. From the broad landing they entered a long, green-paneled room, lighted by three full-length windows, which overlooked the forlorn wreck of a terraced garden, and wooded slopes beyond. The drawing-room, of course, Sophie swam up and down it. That mantel-piece, Orpheus and Eurydice, is the best of them all. Isn't it marvellous? Why, the room seems furnished with nothing in it. How's that, George? It's the proportions. I've noticed it. I saw a hebble-wide couch once. Sophie said, her finger to her flushed cheek, and considered. With two of them, one on each side, you wouldn't need anything else. Except, there must be one perfect mirror over the mantel-piece. Look at that view. It's a framed constable. Her husband cried. No, it's a moorland. A parody of a moorland. But about that couch, George, don't you think empire might be better than hebble-wide? Dull gold against the pale green? It's a pity they don't make spinnets nowadays. I believe you can get them. Look at that oakwood behind the pines. While you sat and played to cut us stately at the clavichord, Sophie hummed and, head on one side, nodded to where the perfect mirror should hang. Then they found bedrooms, with dressing rooms and powdering closets, and steps leading up and down, boxes of rooms, round, square and octagonal, with enriched ceilings and chased door locks. Now about servants. Oh! She had darted up the last stairs to the checkered darkness of the top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken laths, and the walls were scrawled with names, sentiments and hop-records. They've been keeping pigeons here, she cried. And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere, said George. That's what I say. The old man cried below them on the stairs. Not a dry place for my pigeons at all. But why was it allowed to get like this? said Sophie. Tis with housing as tith, he replied. Let him go too far, and there is nothing to be done. Time was they was minded to sell her, but none would buy. She was too far away along from any place. Time was they had lived here they selves, but they took and died. Here Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof. Nah, none dies here except falling off ricks and such. In London they died. He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. There was no staple, neither the elfics nor the moons. Chart and brittle all of them. Dead they be seventeen year, for I've been here care-taking twenty-five. Who does all the wool belong to downstairs? George asked. To the estate. I'll show you the back parts if you like. You're from America, ain't you? I've had a son there once myself. They followed him down the main stairway. He posed at the turn and swept one hand towards the wall. Planned a room here for your coffin to come down. Seven foot and three minute each end wouldn't breach the paint. If I die in my bed they'll have to up-end me like a milk-can. Tis allack, do you see? He let them on and on through a maze of back-kitchens, dairies, larders, and scolleries that melted along covered ways into a farm-house, visibly older than the main building which again rumbled out among barns, buyers, peak-pens, stalls, and stables to the dead fields behind. Somehow, said Sophie, sitting exhausted on an ancient well-carb, somehow one wouldn't insult these lovely old things by filling them with hay. George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of silvery oak, weather-boarding, buttresses of mixed flint and bricks, outside stairs, stone upon art stone, curves of thatch where grass sprouted, roundels of house-licked tiles, and a huge paved yard populated by two cows in the repentant rumbler. He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph office for two-and-a-half hours. But why, said Sophie, as they went back through the crater of streaking fields, why is one expected to know everything in England? Why do they never tell? You mean about the elfics and the moons? he answered. Yes, and the lawyers and the estate. Who are they? I wonder whether those painted floors in the green room were real oak. Don't you like us exploring things together, better than Pompeii? George turned once more to look at the view. Eight hundred acres go with a house, the old man told me. Five farms altogether. Rockets is one of them. I like Mrs. Cloak, but what is the old house called? George laughed. That's one of the things you're expected to know. He never told me. The cloaks were more communicative. That evening, and thereafter for a week, they gave the chapence the official history, as one gives it to lodgers of friars pardon, the house, and its five farms. But Sophie asked so many questions, and George was so humanely interested, that, as confidence in the strangers grew, they launched, with observed and acquired detail, into the lives and deaths and doings of the elfics and the moons, and their collaterals, the halings and the torals. It was a tale told serially by Cloak and the barn, or his wife and the dairy, the last chapters reserved for the kitchener-knights by the big fire, when the two had been half the day exploring about the house, where old Iggleton, of the blue smock, cuckled and chuckled to see them. The motifs that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension. The fates that shifted them were gods they had never met. The sidelights Mrs. Cloak threw, or knocked an incident, were more amazing than anything in the record. Therefore the chapence listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs. Chauns. But why, why, why did so and so do so and so? Sophie would demand from her seat by the pot-hook, and Mrs. Cloak would answer, smoothing her knees, for the sake of the place. I give it up, said George, one night in their own room. People don't seem to mutter in this country compared to the places they live in. The way she tells it, Friar's pardon, was a sort of mollock. Poor old thing! They had been walking round the farms as usual before tea. No wonder they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made for it. Jane Elphick married the younger torel to keep it in the family. The octagonal room, with a molded ceiling next to the big bedroom, was hers. Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs, said Sophie? About the torel cousins and the uncle who died in Java. They lived at Burn House, behind High Partons, where that brook is all blocked up. No, Burn House is under High Partons' wood, before you come to Gale Unsty. Sophie corrected. Well, old man Cloak said. Sophie threw open the door and called down into the kitchen, where the Cloaks were covering the fire. Mrs. Cloak? Isn't Burn House under High Partons? Yes, my dear, of course," the soft voice answered absently. A cough. I beg your pardon, madam. What was it you said? Never mind, I prefer it the other way. Sophie laughed, and George retold the missing chapter, as she sat on the bed. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, said Cloak, warningly. They've paid their first month, but we've only that Mrs. Sean's letter for guarantee. None she's sent never cheated as yet. It slipped out before I thought. She's the most humane young lady. They'll be going away in a little. And you've talked a lot, too, Alfred. Yes, but the alphics are all dead. No one can bring my loose talking home to me. But why do they stay on and stay on, so? In due time, George and Sophie asked each other that question and put it aside. They argued that the climate, a pearly blend, unlike the hot and cold ferocities of their own native land, suited them as the thick stillness of the night certainly suited George. He was saved, even the sight of a metaled road, which, as presumably leading to business, wakes desire in a man, and the telegraph office at the village of Friar's Pardon, where they sold picture postcards and peck tops, was two walking miles across the fields and woods. For all that touched his past among his fellows, on their remembrance of him, he might have been in another planet, and Sophie, whose life had been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals, had no wish to live this present of God. The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadth of soft sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst, the good grass beneath their feet that cheated the miles, their discoveries always together amid the farms, griffins, rockets, burnt house, Gale-Anstey and the home farm, where Igelden of the blue smock frock would waylay them, and they would ransack the old house once more, the long wet afternoons when they tacked up their feet on the bedroom's deep windowsill over against the apple trees and tucked together as never till then had they found time to talk. These things contented her soul and her body-throve. Have you realized, she asked one morning, that we've been here absolutely alone for the last thirty-four days? Have you counted them? he asked. Did you like them? she replied. I must have. I didn't think about them. Yes, I have. Six months ago I should have fretted myself sick. Remember at Cairo? I've only had two or three bad times. Am I getting better, or is it senile decay? Climate, all climate. Sophie swung her new-bod English boots as she sat on the stile overlooking Friar's pardon behind the cloaks' barn. One must take hold of things, though, he said, if it's only to keep one's hand in. His eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty fields. Mustn't one? Lay out a Morristown links over Gale-Anstey. I dare say you could hire it. No, I'm not as English as that, nor as Morristown. Clocks as all the farms here could be made to pay. Well, I'm Anastasia in the treasure of Frankard. I'm content to be alive and purr, there's no hurry. No, he smiled, all the same I'm going to see after my mail. You promised you wouldn't have any. There's some business coming through that's amusing me, honest. It doesn't get on my nerves at all. Want a secretary? No, thanks, old thing. Isn't that quite English? Too English. Go away! But nonetheless, in broad daylight, she returned the keys. I'm off to pardons. I haven't been to the house for nearly a week. How have you decided to furnish Jane Owlfick's bedroom? He laughed, for it had come to be a permanent castle in Spain between them. Black Jane is furniture and yellow silk brocade, she answered in Rundown Hill. She scattered a few cows at a gab with a flourish of a ground-ash, that Eagledon had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she passed under the hall-mokes sought the farmhouse at the back of Friar's pardon. The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-open door, for she needed him to fill her idol at four noon. A blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend and Rumbler's old enemy, crawled out and besought her to enter. Eagledon sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spat between his knees, his head drooped. Though she had never seen death before, her heart, that missed a bit, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his nose, she heard herself saying, Don't howl, please don't begin to howl, Scotty, or I shall run away. She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon, sat after a while, on the steps by the door, her arms round the dog's neck, waiting till someone should come. She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friar's pardon slush its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of Eagledon's last lighted fire gradually seen and seized. Against her will she fell to wondering how many moons, howlfix and howls had been swung round the turn of the broad-hole stairs. Then she remembered the old man's stock of being upended like a milk-can, and buried her face and Scotty's neck. At last a horse's feet, clinked upon flags, rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard, and she found herself facing the vicar, a figure she had seen at church, in the impossibilities, Sophie was a Unitarian, in an unnatural voice. He's dead, she said without preface. All Diggledon, I was coming for a talk with him, the vicar passed in uncovered. Ah, she heard him say, hard failure, how long have you been here? Since the quarter to eleven. She looked at her watch earnestly, and so that her hand did not shake. I'll sit with him now till the doctor comes. Do you think you could tell him, and yes, Mrs. Betts in the cottage, with the wisteria next the blacksmiths? I'm afraid this has been rather a shock to you. Sophie nodded and fled toward the village. Her body failed her for a moment. She dropped beneath a hedge, and looked back at the great house. In some fashion, its silence and solidity steadied her for her errand. Mrs. Betts, small black-eyed and dark, was almost as unconcerned as friars pardon. Yes, yes, of course, dear me. Well, Iggledon, he had had his day in my father's time. Muriel, get me my little blue-back, please. Yes, ma'am, they come down like elm-branches in still weather, no warning at all. Muriel, my bicycle's behind the foul house. I'll tell Dr. Dulles, ma'am. She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee while Sophie, heaven above and earth beneath changed, walked stiffly home to fall over George at his letters in a muddle of laughter and tears. It's all quite natural for them, she gasped. They come down like elm-branches in still weather, yes, ma'am. No, there wasn't anything in the least horrible, only, only, oh, George, that poor, shiny stick of his between his poor, thin knees. I couldn't have worn it if Scotty had howled. I didn't know the vicar was so, so sensitive. He said he was afraid it was rather a shock. Mrs. Betts told me to go home, and I wanted to collapse on her floor, but I didn't disgrace myself. I, I couldn't have left him, could I? You're sure you've taken no harm, cried Mrs. Cloak, who had heard the news by farm telegraphy, which is older but swifter than Marconis. No, I'm perfectly well. Sophie protested. You lay down till tea-time, Mrs. Cloak patted her shoulder. They'll be very pleased, though she has had no proper understanding for twenty years. They came before twilight, a black-birded man in mole-skins and a little pulsid old woman who churrobed like a wren. I'm his son, said the man to Sophie among the lavender bushes. We had a difference twenty years back and didn't speak since, but I'm his son all the same, and we thank you for the watching. I'm only glad I happened to be there, she answered, and from the bottom of her heart she mented. We heard he spoke a lot of you, one time and another since you came. We thank you kindly, the man added. Are you the son that was in America? She asked. Yes, ma'am. On my uncle's farm in Connecticut he was what they call Roadmaster there. Whereabouts in Connecticut, asked George over her shoulder. Beeringholler was the name. I was there six years with my uncle. How small the world is, Sophie cried, why all my mother's people come from Beeringholler. There must be some there still. The Lashmars, did you ever hear of them? I remember hearing that name, seems to me, he answered, but his face was blank as the back of his paid. A little before dusk, a woman in gray, striding like a foot soldier and bearing on her arm a long pole, crushed through the orchard calling for food. George, upon whom the unannounced English worked mysteriously, fled to the parlor, but Mrs. Cloak came forward beaming. Sophie could not escape. We've only just heard of it, said the stranger turning on her. I've been out with the other hounds all day. It was a splendidly sporting thing. Did you, uh, kill? said Sophie. She knew from books she could not go far wrong here. Yes, a dry-bitch. Seventeen pounds, was the answer. A splendidly sporting thing of you to do, poor old Eagledon. Oh, that! said Sophie, enlightened. If there had been any people at Pardons it would never have happened. It have been looked after, but what can you expect from a parcel of London solicitors? Mrs. Cloak murmured something. No, I'm soaked from the knees down. If I hang about I shall get chilled. A cup of tea, Mrs. Cloak, and I can eat one of your sandwiches as I go. She wiped her weather-worn face with a green and yellow silk hunger-chiff. Yes, my lady, Mrs. Cloak run and returned swiftly. Our land marches with pardons for a mile on the south, she explained, waving the full cup, but one has quite enough to do with one's own people without poaching. Still, if I'd known, I'd have sent Dora, of course. Have you seen her this afternoon, Mrs. Cloak? No? I wonder whether that girl did sprain her ankle. Thank you. It was a formidable hang of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloak presented. As I was saying, Pardons is a scandal. Letting people die like dogs, there ought to be people there who do their duty. You've done yours, though there wasn't the faintest call upon you. Good night. Tell Dora if she comes, I've gone on. She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie reeled breathlessly to the parlor to shake the shaking George. Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind? Why didn't you come out and do your duty? Because I should have burst. Did you see the mud on its cheek? He said. Once, I daren't look again. Who is she? God! A local deity, then. Anyway, she's another of the things you're expected to know by instinct. Mrs. Cloak, shocked at their levity, told them that it was Lady Conant, wife of Sir Walter Conant, Baronet, a large land-holder in the neighborhood, and, if not God, at least his visible providence. George made her talk of that family for an hour. Laughter, said Sophie afterward in their own room, is the mark of the savage. Why couldn't you control your emotions? It's all real to her. It's all real to me. That's my trouble. He answered in an altered tone. Anyway, it's real enough to mark time with. Don't you think so? What do you mean? She asked quickly, though she knew his voice. That I'm better. I'm well enough to kick. What at? This? He waved his hand around the one room. I must have something to play with till I'm fit for work again. Oh! She sat on the bed before with her hands clasped. I wonder if it's good for you. We've been better here than anywhere, he went on slowly. One could always sell it again. She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled. The only thing that worries me is what happened this morning. I want to know how you feel about it. If it's on your nerves in the list, we can have the old farm at the back of the house pulled down, or perhaps it has spoiled the notion for you? Pull it down! She cried. You've no business faculty. Why, that's where we could leave while we're putting the big house in order. It's almost under the same roof. No. What happened this morning seemed to be more of a... of a leading than anything else. There ought to be people at Pardons. Lady Conan's quite right. I was thinking more of the woods and the roads. I could double the value of the place in six months. What do they want for it? Look at her head and her loosened hair fell glowingly about her cheeks. Seventy-five thousand dollars. They'll take sixty-eight. Less than half what we paid for our old yacht when we married, and we didn't have a good time in her. You were... Well, I discovered I was too much of an American to be content to be a rich man's son. You aren't blaming me for that? Oh, no. Only it was a very business-like honeymoon. How far are you along with the deal, George? I can mail the deposit on the purchase money tomorrow morning, and we can have the thing completed in a fortnight or three weeks, if you say so. Friar's pardon. Friar's pardon. Self enchanted rapturously. Her dark grey eyes big with delight. All the farms. Gale and sleigh. Burned house. Rockets. The home farm. And griffons. Sure you've got them all? Sure, he smiled. And the woods. High pardons wood. Lower pardons. Saddens. Dattons shore. Rubens gill. Max's gill. And both Fiok hungers. Sure you've got them all? Every last stick. Why, you know them as well as I do, he laughed. They say there's five thousand. A thousand pounds worth of lumber. Timber, they call it, in the hungers alone. Mrs. Cloak's oven must be mended first thing, and the kitchen roof. I think I'll have all this whitewashed. Sophie broke in, pointing to the ceiling. The whole place is a scandal. Lady Conant is quite right. George, when did you begin to fall in love with the house? In the green room, that first day, I did. I'm not in love with it. One must do something to mark time till one's fit for work. Or when we stood under the oaks and the door opened. Oh, ought I to go to poor Eagleton's funeral? She sighed with utter happiness. Wouldn't they call it a liberty now? Said he. But I liked him. But you didn't own him at the date of his death. That wouldn't keep me away. Only they made such a fuss about the watching. She caught her breath. It might be ostentatious from that point of view, too. Oh, George! She reached for his hand. We're too little orphans moving in worlds not realized, and we shall make some bad breaks, but we're going to have the time of our lives. We'll run up to London to-morrow and see if we can hurry those English law solicitors. I want to get to work. They went. They suffered many things, ere they returned across the fields in a fly one Saturday night, nursing a two-by-two-and-a-half box of deeds and maps, lawful owners of fires pardon, and the five-decade farms they're with. I do most sincerely open trust you'll be happy, madam," Mrs. Cloak gasped, when she was told the news by the kitchen fire. Goodness! It isn't a marriage, Sophie exclaimed a little odd. For to them the joke, which to an American means work, was only just beginning. If it stuck in a proper spirit, Mrs. Cloak's eye turned toward her oven. Send and have that mended to-morrow, Sophie whispered. We couldn't help noticing, said Cloak slowly, from the times you walked there that you and your lady was joined to it, but I don't know, as we ever precisely thought. His wife's glance checked him. That we were that sort of people, said George. We aren't sure if it ourselves yet. Perhaps, said Cloak, robbing his knees, just for the sake of saying something, perhaps you'll park it? What's that? said George. Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill. He jerked a thumb to westward. That Mr. Sungris bought. It was four farms, and Mr. Sungris made a fine park of them, with a herd of fallen deer. Then it wouldn't be friars pardon, said Sophie, would it? I don't know, as I've ever heard pardons, was ever anything but wheat and wool. Only some gentlemen say that parks are less trouble than tenants. He laughed nervously. But the gentry, of course, they keep on pretty much as they were used to. I see, said Sophie. How did Mr. Sungris make his money? I never rightly heard. It was pepperon spices, or it may have been gloves. No, gloves were so original, at least, at Marley End. Spices was Mr. Sungris. He's a Brazilian gentleman, very sunburnt like. Be sure one thing. You won't have any trouble, said Mrs. Cloak, just before they went to bed. Now, the news of the purchase was told to Mr. and Mrs. Cloak alone, at eight p.m. of a Saturday. None left the farm till they set out for church next morning. Yet, when they reached the church and were about to sleep aside into their usual seats, a little beyond the font, where they could see the red furred tails of the red robes, woggle, and twisted ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a cloak on either flank, and yet they had not walked with the cloaks, upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle under the pulpit. This, his side reproachfully, is the pardon's pew, and shut them in. They could see little more than the choir boys but to the roots of the hair of their necks they fell the congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look. When the wicked man turned it away, the strong, ellen voice of the priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof, and the loneliness unfelt before swam their hearts as they searched for places in the unfamiliar Church of England service. The Lord's prayer, Our Father, which art set the seal on that desolation, Sophie found herself thinking how, in other lands, their purchase would long air these, have been discussed from every point of view in a dozen prints, forgetting that George, for months, had not been allowed to glance at those black and bellowing headlines. Here was nothing but silence, not even hostility. The game was up to them. The other players hid their cards and waited, suspense she felt was in the air, and when her sight cleared, she saw indeed a murall tublet of a footless bird brooding upon the caravan motto, Wait a while, wait a while. At the litany George had trouble with an unstable hussock and drew the sleep of carpet under the pew-seat. Sophie pushed her hand back also and shut her eyes against a burning that felt like tears. When she opened them she was looking at her mother's maiden name, fairly carved on a blue flag stone on the pew floor. Helen Lushmar died in 1796 at the age of 27. She nudged George and pointed, sheltered as they kneeled. They looked for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab was blank. Ever hear of her, he whispered, never knew any of us came from here, coincidence, perhaps, but it makes me feel better, and she smiled and winked away a tear on her luscious, and took his hand while they prayed for all women laboring of child, not in the pearls of childbirth. And the sparrows, who had found their way through the guards behind the glass windows, chirped above the faded guilt and alabaster family tree of the conons. The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle. After service its inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so as to block effectively a person with a large family who chomped in the rear. Spices, I think, said Sophie, deeply delighted as the sangress closed up after the conons. Let them get away, George. But when they came out, many folk whose eyes were one, still lingered by the lich gate. I want to see if any more lushmars are buried here, said Sophie. Not now, this seems to be show day. Come home quickly, he replied. Families, the cloaks a little apart, opened to let them through. The men saluted with jerky nods, the women with remnants of curtsy. Only Eagledon's son, his mother on his arm, lifted his hat as Sophie passed. Your people, said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her ear. I suppose so, said Sophie, blushing, for they were within two yards of her. But it was not a question. Then that child looked as if it were mums. You ought to tell the mother she shouldn't have wrought it to church. I can't live a behind my lady, the woman said. She'd set the house afire in a minute. She's not forward with the matches. End you more, the dear. Has Dr. Dulles seen her? Not yet, my lady. He must. You can't get away, of course. Hmm, my idiotic maid is coming in for her teeth tomorrow at twelve. She shall pick her up next day, isn't it? At eleven. Yes, thank you very much, my lady. I oughtn't to have done it, said Lady Conant apologetically, but there has been no one at Pardons for so long that you'll forgive my poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us? The wicker usually comes, too. I don't use the horses on a Sunday. She glanced at the Brazilian silver-plated chariot. It's only a mile across the fields. You... You're very kind, said Sophie, hating herself because her lips trembled. My dear, the compelling tone dropped to a soothing gurgle. Do you suppose they don't know how it feels to come to a strange county? Country, I should say, away from one's own people. When I first left the Shires... I'm Shropshire, you know. I cried for a day and a night. But fretting doesn't make loneliness any better. Oh, here's Dora. She did sprain her leg that day. I must lame as the tree still, said the tall maiden, frankly. You ought to go out with the Otterhounds, Mrs. Chopin. I believe they're drawing your water next week. Sir Walter had already let off George, and the wicker came up on the other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the swift procession or the leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in low-voiced eddies that had the village for their centre. Sophie heard the wicker and Sir Walter address her husband lightly as Chopin. She also remembered many women known in her previous life who habitually addressed her husband as Mr. Sachin one. After lunch, Lady Conant talked to her explicitly of maternity as that is achieved in cottages and farmhouses, remote from aid, and of the duty there, too, of the Mistress of Pardons. A gate in a beach hedge reached across triple lawns, let them out before tea time on the south side of the land. I want your hand, please, said Sophie as soon as they were safe among the beach bowls and the lowless hollies. Do you remember the old maid in Providence and the guitar who heard the commissary swear and hardly reckoned herself a maiden lady afterwards? Because I'm a relative of hers, Lady Conant is... Did you find out anything about the Lashmores? He interrupted. I didn't ask. I'm going to write to Aunt Sydney about it first. Oh, Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought some land from some Lashmores a few years ago. I found it was at the beginning of last century. What did you say? I said, really, how interesting. Like that. I'm not going to push myself forward. I've been hearing about Mrs. Sankris's effort in that direction, and you? I couldn't see you behind the flowers. Was it very deep watered deer? George moped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures. Oh, no, dead easy, he answered. I've bought friars pardon to prevent their walters bird-strain. A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded almost under their feet. Sophie jammed. That's one of them, said George calmly. Well, your nerves are better at any rate, said she. Did you tell him you'd bought the thing to play with? No, that was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad break, I think. I said I couldn't see why hiring land to man to farm wasn't as much a business proposition as anything else. And what did they say? They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They don't waste their smiles. Do you see that truck by Galansty? They looked down from the edge of the hunger over a cup like hollow. People by two's and three's under a Sunday best filed slowly along the paths that connected farm to farm. I've never seen so many on our land before, said Sophie. Why is it? To show us we mustn't shut up their rights away. Those cow tracks we've been using cross lots, said Sophie forcibly. Yes, any one of them would cost us two thousand pounds each in legal expenses to close. But we don't want to, she said. The whole community would fight if we did. But it's our land. We can do what we like. It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to it, and it belongs to the people. Our people, they call them. I've been to lunch with the English, too. They passed slowly from one bracken dotted filth to the next, flushed with bride of ownership, plotting alterations and restorations at each turn, halting in their trucks to argue, spreading a part to embrace, to views at once or closing in to consider one. Couples moved out of their way but smiled uncoveredly. We shall make some bad breaks, he said at last. Together, though, you won't let anyone else in, will you? Accept the contractors. This syndicate handles this proposition by its little loan. But you might fill the want of someone, she insisted. I shall, but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's going to be good fun. Please, God, she answered flushing and cried to herself as they went back to tea. It's worth it, oh, it's worth it. The repairing and moving in Friar's pardon was business of the most varied in searching but all done English fashion without friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Glow from the wastes of their farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests reaching out on every side. I ain't saying anything against Londoners, said the cloak, self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer, head of the immigration bureau and superintendent of woods and forests. But your own people won't go about to make more than a fair profit out of you. How is one to know? said George. Five years from now, or so on, maybe you'll be looking over your first year's account and, knowing what you'll know then, you'll say well, Billy Beartup, or old cloak as it might be, did me proper when I was new. No one likes to have that sort of thing laid up against him. I think I see, said George, but five years is a long time to look ahead. I doubt if that oak, Billy Beartup throwed in Rubensgill, will be fit for her drawing-room floor in less than seven. Cloak drolled. Yes, that's my work, said Sophie. Billy Beartup of Griffins, a woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of marriage, had laid his road axe at her feet a month before, sorry if I've committed you to another eternity. And we shan't ever know where we've gone wrong with your new carriage-drive before that time, either, said Cloak, ever anxious to keep the balance true, with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour. The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The carriage-road winding up the hill was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none-too-sunny soul of scheme winch, the Carter. But young Gagelden was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains. You lift her like that, and you tip her like that, he explained to the gang. My uncle, he was road-mossering Connecticut. Are they roads yonder? said Schim, sitting under the laurels. No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call them. They'd suit you, Schim. Why? said the unconscious Schim, because you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a Saturday, was the answer. I didn't last time, neither, Schim roared. After the loud laugh, old Wyburn of Gale suddenly piped feebly. Well, dirt or no dirt, there's no denying, Choppy knows a good job when he sees it. He don't build one day, and destroy the next, like that nega-sangress. She's the one that knows her own mind, said Pinky, brother to scheme winch, and a Napoleon among carters, who had helped to bring the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains. She had owed to, said Igelden, wow, Buller. She's a Lashmar, they never was double-thinking. Wow, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle, said Schim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts. The others look at him scornfully. Schim was always a day behind the fair. Igelden rested from his labours. She's a Lashmar, right enough. I started up to write to my uncle at once, the month after she said her folks came from Veeringholler. Were there roads? Schim interrupted, but none laughed. My uncle, he married an American woman for his second, and she took it up like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar place. For they sold to conons. She ain't no two-tailed Lashmar, nor any of the crayford lot. Her folk came out of the ground here, neither chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to America. I've got it all written down by my uncle's woman in eighteen hundred and nothing. My uncle says they're all slow begetters like. Would they be gentry yonder now? Schim asked. Nah, there's no gentry in America. No matter how long you're there, it's against their law. There's only rich and poor allowed. They've been lawyers and such like over yonder for a hundred years, but she's a Lashmar for all that. What's a hundred years? said Wyburn, who had since seventy-eight of them. And they write, too, from yonder. My uncle's woman writes that you can still tell them by a head mark. Their hair's foxy red still, and they throw out when they walk. He's in towed, trades like a gypsy, but you watch and you'll see her throw out like a colt. Your trace once taking up. Pinky's large ears had caught the sound of voices, and broke through the laurels, the men were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet. She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Eagleton, for her Aunt Sidney of Meriden, a budged and certificated daughter of the Revolution to boot, answered her inquiries with a two-page discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of a village improvement society, of which she was president, and a demand for an overdue subscription circle. Sophie burnt it all in the Orpheus and Eurydice Crate, and kept her own council. What I want to know, said George when spring was coming, and the gardens needed thought, is who will ever pay me for my labor? I've put in at least half a million dollars' worth already. Sure, you're not taking too much out of yourself, his wife asked. Oh no, I haven't been conscious of myself all winter. He looked at his brown English and smiled. It's all behind me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all that, those months before we sailed. Don't. Oh, don't! She cried. But I must go back one day. You don't want to keep me out of business always, or do you? He ended with a nervous laugh. Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash of old Eagleton's cutting from the whole rack. Aren't you overdoing it too? You look a little tired, he said. You make me tired. I'm going to Rockets to see Mrs. Cloak about Mary. This was the sister of the telegraphist promoted to be so inc-mated pardons. Coming? I am due at Burnhouse to see about the new well. By the way, there's a sore throat at Gale-Anstey. That's my province, don't interfere. The wire-born children always have sore throats. They do it for jujubes. Keep away from Gale-Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloak O2 have told me. These people don't tell. Haven't you learned that yet? But I'll obey, my lord. See you later. She set off a foot for within the three main roads that bounded the blunt triangle of the estate. Even by night one could scarcely hear the cards on them. Wheels were not used except for farm work. The footpath served all other purposes. And, though at first they had planned improvements, they had soon fallen in with the customs of their hidden kingdom and moved about the soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and shore as freely as the rabbits. Indeed, for the most part, Sophie walked bareheaded beneath her helmet of chestnut hair, but she had been plagued of laid by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloak, who asked some questions. How it came about, Sophie never knew, but after a while behold, Mrs. Cloak's arm was about her waist, and her head was on that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door. My dear, my dear, the elder woman almost soaked, and you mean to tell me you're never suspicious? Why? Why? Where was you ever taught anything at all? Of course it is. It's what we've been only waiting for, all of us. Time and again, I've said to Lady. She checked herself. Now we shall be as we should be. But, but, but, Sophie whimpered, and to see you building your nest so busy, pianos and books, and never thinking of a nursery. No more, I did. Sophie sat bolt upright and began to laugh. Time enough yet? The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad knee, but they must be strange-minded folk over yonder with you. Have you thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear, my dear, never mind, she'll be happy where she knows. It is God's work, and we was only waiting for it, for you've never failed in your duty yet. It ain't your way. What did you say about my Mary's doings? Mrs. Cloak's face hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie's forehead. If any of your girls thinks to behave arbitrary now, I'll, but they want, my dear. I'll see they do their duty, too. Be sure you'll have no trouble. When Sophie walked back across the fields, heaven and earth changed about her as on the day of old Eagledon's death. For an instant she thought of the wide turn of the staircase and the new ivory-white pain that no coffin-corner could scar, but presently the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment that made her real. She leaned against one of their new gates and looked over their lands for some other stay. Well, she said resoundly, half-allowed, we must try to make him feel that he isn't a third in our party, and turned the corner that looked over Friar's pardon giddy, sick, and faint. All of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she had never seen it before, low-fronted, brood-winged ampoule prepared by course of generations for all such things, as it had steadied her when it layed thus late, so now that it had meaning from their few months of life within, it soothed and promised good. She went alone and quickly into the hall and kissed either doorpost, whispering Be good to me, you know, you've never failed in your duty yet. When the mutter was explained to George he would have sailed at once to their own land, but this Sophie forbade. I don't want science, she said. I just want to be loved and there isn't time for that at home. Besides, she added looking out of the window, it would be desertion. George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friar pardon to the telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone, three-quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Wire Barn and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the next parish, said he when the line was being run. There's an old illum right in our road, shall I throw her? Two till parish folk, neither grace nor good luck. God help them. All the Wire Barn shouted the local proverb from three poles down the line. We ain't going to lay any axe iron to coffin wood here. Not still we know where we are yet a while. Swing round her, swing round. To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line across the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Well, why skim winch, who came to his cottage under datten shore most musically drunk at ten forty-five p.m. of every Saturday night as his father had done before him, sang no more at the bottom of the garden steps where Sophie always feared he would break his neck. The path was undoubtedly an ancient right of way and at ten forty-five p.m. on Saturdays, skim remembered it was his duty to posterity to keep it open. The first cloak spoke to him once. She spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sawing made at Pardons and to Mary's new friend, the five-foot-seven imported London housemaid who taught Mary to trim hats and found the county dollish. But there was no noise. At no time was there any noise and when Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had signified a wish dat way. Then they appeared to protest that all was well with them and their children, their chickens, their roofs, their water supply and their sons in the police or their railway service. But don't you find it dull, dear, said George, loyally doing his best not to worry as the months went by. I've been so busy putting my house in order I haven't had time to think, said she. Do you? No, no. If I could only be sure of you. She turned on the green drawing room's couch. It was empire, not hepple-wide, after all. And they decide a list of linen blankets. It has changed everything, hasn't it? She whispered. Oh, lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore and missed our first real summer together. No, thank you, my lord. But we're absolutely alone. Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy? Don't you worry. I like it. Like it to the marrow of my little bones. You don't realize what her house means to a woman. We thought we were living in it last year, but we hadn't begun to. Don't you rejoice in your study, George? I prefer being here with you. He sat down on the floor by the couch and took her hand. Seven, she said, as the French clock struck. Here, before last, you'd just be coming back from business. He winced at the recollection, then laughed. Business. I've been at work ten solid hours today. Where did you lunch? With a convent? No, at Dutton's shore, sitting on a log, with my fitness swamp. But we found out where the old spring is, and we're going to pipe it down to Gel-Anstey next year. I'll come and see to-morrow. I'll please open the door, dear. I want to look down the passage. Isn't that corner by the stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in? She looked through half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale-green, all steeped in liquid gold. There's a step out of Jane Elf's bedroom, she went on. And his first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn't wonder if those people hadn't put it there on purpose. George, will it make any odds to you if he's a girl? He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was his wife, not the child. Then you're the only person who thinks so, she laughed. Don't be silly, dear. It's expected. I know. It's my duty. I shan't be able to look her people in the face if I fail. What concern is it of theirs confundum? You'll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs. Cloak says, so I'm provided for. Shall you ever begin to understand these people? I shan't. And we bought it for fun. For fun, he groaned. And here we are held up for goodness knows how long. Were you thinking of selling it? He did not answer. Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin she demanded? This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman, a widow for choice, who, on Sophie's death, was guilefully to marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year. George, being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing. Taking her up again, he asked anxiously, I only want to say that I should hate anyone who bought pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we've put into it of our two selves. At least a couple of million dollars I know I could have made, he broke off. The beasts she went on that be sure to build a red brick lodge at the gates and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave instructions in your will that he is never to do that, George, won't you? He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time to dress. Then he muttered, What the devil's use is a man's country to him when he can't do business in it? Prior's pardons stood faithful to his tradition, at the appointed time was born not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, but a godling. In beauty it was manifest, excellent eras, as in wisdom confucius, an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companionships, and an interpreter of destiny. This last George did not realize till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shore a few days after the event. My dear fellow, she cried and slapped him heartily on the back. I can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all right. There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at pardons. Now, where the deuce is it? She felt largely in her leather bound skirt and drew out a small silver mag. I sent a note to your wife about it but my silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a trump. Give her my love. She marched off amid her guard of grave ear-dales. The mag was worn and dented. Above the twined initials G. L. was the crest of a footless bird and the moto wait a while, wait a while. That's the other end of the riddle, Sophie whispered when he saw her that evening. Read her note. The English write beautiful notes. The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. I have said nothing. We cannot, of course, look on him as a little stranger and so I am sending him the old Lushmore christening mag. It has been with us since Gregory Lushmore, your great-grandmother's brother, George stared at his wife. Go on, she twinkled from the pillows. Mother's brother sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that time but nothing survives except the old cradle which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order for you. I hope little George Lushmore he will be too, won't he, will leave to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mag. Affectionately yours, Alice Conant. P.S. How quiet you've kept about it all. Well, I'm Don't swear, said Sophie but for the infant mind but how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the Lushmores? You know the only time to young Iggleton at Rockets when Iggleton died your great-grandmother's brother she traced the whole connection more than your aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean about her keeping quiet? Sophie's eyes sparkled. I've thought that out too. We've got back at the English at last. Can't you see that she thought that we thought my mother's being a Lushmore was one of those things we'd expect the English to find out for themselves and that's impressed her? She turned the mag in her wide hands and sighed happily. Wait a while, wait a while. That's not a bad motto, George. It's been worth it. But still, I don't quite see. I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part of a deep-lead scheme to be near our ancestors. They'd understand that and look how they've accepted as all of them. Are we so undesirable in ourselves? George grunted. Be just, my lord, that wretched, sangrous man has twice our money. Can you see Mark Conan slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jackfull. The poor beast doesn't exist. Do you think it's that, then? He looked toward the cot by the fire where the godling snorted. The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloak what every Lushmore calls, that's nicer than tips, every time a Lushmit is born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much expected of me. Entered here Mrs. Cloak and Hank worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shown. Oh, now Lady Conan scented. It'll be all proper, ma'am, want it? George, of course, he'd have to be. But seeing what he is, we was hoping, all your people was hoping, Lushmore too, and that would just round it out. A very handsome mag, quite unique. I should imagine. Wait a while, wait a while. That's true with the Lushmores I've heard. Very slow to fill their houses they are. Most like Master George won't open his nursery till his thirties. Poor lamb, cried Sophie. But how did you know my folk were Lushmores? Mrs. Cloak thought deeply. I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I have a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Eagleton when you were the trockets. That may have been what gave us an inkling. And so it came out one thing in the way of talk leading to another, and those American people at Viering Holler was very obliging with news, I'm told, ma'am. Great Scott, said George under his breath, and this is the simple peasant. Yes, Miss Cloak went on. And Cloak was only wondering this afternoon your pillow slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that away. Just for the sake of saying something whether you wouldn't think well now of getting the Lushmores farms back, sir. They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come catering across as more. Cloak, he would be glad to show you over any day. But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he? We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but with cold contempt I think that trained nurse is just coming up from her dinner, so I'm afraid we'll have to ask you, sir. Now, Master George, ay, wake a little minute, Lummy. A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the gale-unsty woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmore Chopin wanted all the blue bells on God's earth that day to eat, and Sophia adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove. So business was delayed. Here's the place," said his father at last, among the water for get-me-nots. But were the Jews or the large poles cloaked, I told you to have them down here already. We'll get them down, if you say so. Cloak answered, with the thrust of the underlip they both knew. But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tuck here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half a dozen two-by-four bits would be ample. I don't know nothing about that, said Cloak, and I have nothing to say against large. If you want to make a temporary job of it I ain't here to tell you what isn't so, sir. And you can't say I ever come creeping up on you or trying to lead you further in than you set out. A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mad off and got mad and waited. All I say is that you can put up large and make a temporary job of it and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as I've ever drawed. You put a meaner and it's over your mind for good and all. To other way, I don't say it ain't right. I'm only just saying what I think. But to other way, he'll no sooner be married and I'll have it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words but you can't get out of that. No, said George after a pause. I've been realising that for some time. Make it oak, then. We can't get out of it. End of Section 1 Section 2 of Actions and Reactions This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclair, Northern Ireland. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling Chapter 2 The Recall I am the land of their fathers. In me the virtue stays. I will bring back my children after certain days. Under their feet, in the grasses my clinging magic runs. They shall return as strangers. They shall remain as sons. Over their heads in the branches of their new-bought ancient trees I weave an incantation and draw them to my knees. Scent of smoke in the evening smell of rain in the night. The hours, the days and the sea-sons order this shows are right. Till I make the meaning of all my thousand years till I fill their hearts with knowledge while I fill their eyes with tears. End of Section 2 Recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclair, Northern Ireland. Section 3 of Actions and Reactions This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling. Garm, a hostage. One night a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Myanmar to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the infantry barracks, a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, I had mine, so I told him to go home before anyone caught him, but he fell under the pole and I heard voices of a military guard in search of someone. The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend's sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant who did not know us quite so well. Three days later, my friend came to call and at his heels, slobbered and fond one of the finest bull terriers of the old fashion breed, two parts bull and one terrier that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white with a fawn colored saddle just behind his neck and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year and Vixen, my own fox terrier, knew him too but did not approve. Ease for you, said my friend, but he did not look as though he liked parting with him. Nonsense, that dog's worth more than most things, I said. Ease that and more. Tension. The dog rose on his hind legs and stood up right for a four minute. Eyes right. He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl and held up one leg. Part of the trick, said his owner, you're going to die now. Dig yourself your little grave and shut your little eye. Still limping the dog, hobbled to the garden edge, dug a hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured he jumped out wagging his tail and whining for applause. He was put through half a dozen other times. How he would hold a man safe. I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth bared ready to spring. And how he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot, took a piece of blue ruled canteen paper from his helmet, handed it to me and ran away while the dog looked after him and howled. Sir, I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the best I know for I made him myself, and he is as good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me for I'm not going to take him, if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him back anymore. I have kept his name back so you can call him anything and he will answer. But please do not give him back. He can kill a man as easy as anything but please do not give him too much meat. He knows more than a man. Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull terriers despairing cry, and I was annoyed for I knew that a man who cares for a dog is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than fermanous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders, and uncleaned by the law of Moses and Muhammad, but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year, a free thing tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise. A patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul who knows your moods before you know them yourself is not a dog under any ruling. I had Vixen who was all my dog to me, and I felt what my friend must have felt at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen yelling with jealousy flew at him. Had she been of his own sex he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides laid his heavy head on my knee and howled anew. I meant to dine at the club that night when his darkness drew in and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing. I felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone. So we fed it home, Vixen on one side and the stranger dog on the other, she watching his every mouthful and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners which were much better than hers. It was Vixen's custom until the weather grew hot to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian. And when morning came I would always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed purposefully, every hair up one eye on the stranger who had dropped on a mat in a helpless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several times to show her little airs and graces and struck up her usual whiny sing-song before slumber. The stranger dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand and he elected instantly my wrist was between Vixen's teeth and her warning hour set as plainly as speech that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite. I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely and said, Vixen, if you do that again you'll be put into the veranda. Now remember. She understood perfectly but the minute I released her she mouthed my right wrist once more and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog's tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way. I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit. She hated that and yelled and as I had promised set her out in the veranda with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then she used coarse language, not to me but to the bull terrier till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house drying every door. Then she went off to the stables embarked as though someone were stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers. Last she returned her snuffing. Yoke said I'll be good, let me in and I'll be good. She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quiet I whispered to the other dog you can lie on the foot of the bed. The bull jumped up at once and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning and they had early breakfast with me bite for bite till the horse came round and we went for a ride. I don't think the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with excitement and Vixen as usual squealed and scuttered and scooted and took charge of the procession. There was one corner of a village nearby which we generally passed with caution because all the yellow pariah dogs of the place gathered about it. They were half wild starving beasts and though other cowards yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an English dog. I kept a whip with a long lash for them. That morning they attacked Vixen who perhaps of design had moved from beyond my horse's shadow. The bull was plowing along in the dust fifty yards behind rolling in his run and smiling as bull terriers will. I heard Vixen squeal half a dozen of the curves closed in on her. A white street came up behind me. A cloud of dust rose near Vixen and when it cleared I saw one tall pariah with his back broken and the bull wrenching another to earth. Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip and the bull paddled back smiling more than ever covered with the blood of his enemies. That decided me to call him Garen of the bloody breast who was a great person in his time or a garm for short. So leaning forward I told him what his temporary name would be. He looked up and repeated it and then raced away. I shouted, Garen, he stopped raced back and came up to ask my will. Then I saw that my soldier friend was right and that that dog knew and was worth more than a man. At the end of the ride I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated go away and get washed, I said. Garen understood some part of it and Vixen interpreted the rest and the two trotted off together soberly. When I went to the back Vixen had been washed snowy white and was very proud of herself but the dog boy would not touch Garen on any account unless I stood by. So I waited while he was being scrubbed and Garen with the soap creaming on the top of his broad head looked at me to make sure that this was what I expected him to endure. He knew perfectly that the dog boy was only obeying orders. Another time I said to the dog boy you will wash the great dog with Vixen when I send them home. Does he know? said the dog boy who understood the ways of dogs. Garen I said another time you will be washed with Vixen. I knew that Garen understood indeed next washing day when Vixen as usual fled under my bed. Garen stared at the doubtful dog boy in the veranda stalked to the place where he had been washed last time and stood rigid in the tub. But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three would drive off in the morning at half past eight and come home at six or later. Vixen knowing the routine of it went to sleep under my table. But the confinement ate into Garen's soul. He generally sat on the veranda looking out on the mall and well I knew what he expected. Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the fort and Garen rolled forth to inspect them or an officer in uniform entered into the office and it was pitiful to see poor Garen's welcome to the cloth, not the man. He would leap at him and sniff and bark joyously then run to the door back again. One afternoon I heard him bay with a full throat a thing I had never heard before and he disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end and the Garen that met me was a joyous dog. He would open twice or thrice a week for a month. I pretended not to notice but Garen knew and Vixen knew he would glide homewards from the office about four o'clock as though he were only going to look at the scenery and this he did so quietly that but for Vixen I should not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort just loud enough to call my attention to the flight. Garen might go out 40 times in the day but Vixen would never stir but when he slunk off to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own tongue that was the one sign she made to prove that Garen did not altogether belong to the family. They were the best of friends at all times but Vixen explained that I was never to forget Garen did not love me as she loved me. I never expected it the dog was not my dog could never be my dog my master who tramped eight miles a day to see him so it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all one afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog cart Garm had gone before and wrote over to Ken Tonlence to find another friend of mine who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog's master I explained the whole case and wound up with and now standing in my garden crying over his dog they're both unhappy unhappy there's no sense in the little man anymore but is his fit what is his fit he travels 50 miles a week to see the brute and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road and I'm as unhappy as he is make him take the dog back it's his penance he set himself I told him by way of a joke after you'd run over him so convenient that night when he was drunk I said as a Catholic he'd do penance off he went with that fit in his little head and a dose of fever and nothing would suit but given you the dog as a hostage hostage for what I don't want hostages from Stanley for his good behavior he's keeping straight now the way it's no pleasure to associate with him has he taken the pledge if it was only that I need not care he can take the pledge for three months and off he says he'll never see the dog again and so mark you he'll keep straight forever more ye know his fits well this is one of them how's the dog taking it like a man he's the best dog in India can't you make Stanley take him back I can do no more than I've done but ye know his fits he's just doing his penance what will he do when he goes to the hills the doctors put him on the list it is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort they miss the society of the barracks down below and do their best to come back or to avoid going I felt that this move would bring matters to a head so I left Terence hopefully though he called after me he won't take the dog sore you can lay your months pay on that I never pretended to understand private or Ferris and so I did the next best thing I left him alone that some of the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the hills early because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good their route lay south to a place called Umballa 120 miles or more then they would turn east and march up into the hills to Khosali or Dagshai or Sabathu I dined with the officers the night before they left they were marching at five in the morning it was midnight when I drove into my garden and surprised a white figure flying over the wall that man said my butler has been here since nine making talk to that dog he is quite mad I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before and because the dog boy told me that if I told him to go away that great dog would immediately slay me he did not wish to speak to the protector of the poor and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink Khadir Baksh said I that was well done for the dog would surely have killed me but I do not think the white soldier will come anymore Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams once he sprang up with a clear ringing bark and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl and dreamed he was with his master again and I nearly cried it was all Stanley's silly fault the first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks on the Amritsar road and ten miles distant from my house by a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the club cooking on the line of march is always bad and there I met him he was a particular friend of mine and I knew that he knew how to love a dog properly his pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the hills for his health and there it was still April the round brown brute puffed and panted in the club veranda as though he would burst its amazing said the officer what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks there's a man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to Kantonman's to pay a debt he'd forgotten I was so taken by the idea I let him go off in an echo as pleased his punch ten miles to pay a debt wonder what it was really if you'll drive me home I think I can show you I said so he went over to my house and his dog cart with the retriever and on the way I told him the story of garham I was wondering where that brute had gone to he's the best dog in the regiment said my friend I offered the little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago but he's a hostage you say for Stanley's good conduct Stanley's one of the best men I have when he chooses that's the reason why I said a second rate man wouldn't have taken things to heart as he has done we drove in quietly at the far end of the garden and crept round the house there was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees where I knew garham kept his bones even vixen was not allowed to sit near it in the full indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog by all man we could not help hearing Stanley's voice for evings say don't get bit and go mad by any measly pie dog but you can look after yourself all man you don't get drunk and run about it in your friends you take your bones and you eat your biscuit and you kills your enemy like a gentleman I'm going away don't I'll I'm going off to Kasali where I won't see you no more I could hear him holding garms as the dog threw it up to the stars you'll stay here and behave and and I'll go away and try to behave and I don't know how to leave you I don't know I think this is damn silly said the officer patting his foolish fobzy old retriever he called to the private who leaped to his feet marched forward and saluted you here said the officer turning away his head yes sir but I'm just going back I shall be leaving here at 11 in my cart you come with me I can't have sick men running about all over the place report yourself at 11 here we did not say much when we went indoors but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever's ears he was a disgraceful overfed doormat of a dog and when he waddled off to my cookhouse to be fed I had a brilliant idea at 11 o'clock that officer's dog was nowhere to be found and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made he called and shouted and grew angry and hunted through my garden for half an hour then I said he's sure to turn up in the morning send a man in by rail and I'll find the beast and return him beast said the officer I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know it's all very fine for you to talk your dogs here so she was under my feet and had she been missing food and wages would have stopped in my house and she would have returned but some people grew fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip my friend had to drive away at last with Stanley in the back seat and then the dog boy said to me what kind of animal is Bullen Sahib's dog look at him I went to the boy's hut and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up he must have heard his master calling for 20 minutes but had not even heard the story scornfully he is a Paniarcooter, a Spaniel he never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called now Vixen Baba would have jumped through the window and that great dog would have slain me with his muzzle mouth it is true that there are many kinds of dogs next evening who should turn up but Stanley the officer had sent him back 14 miles by rail with a note begging me to return the retriever if I had found him a huge reward the last train to camp left at half past 10 and Stanley stayed till 10 talking to Garm I argued and then treated and even threatened to shoot the bull terrier but the little man was as firm as a rock though I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could hope to see his man and followed Stanley like a shadow the retriever said nothing but licked his lips after his meal without so much the same thank you to the disgusted dog boy so that last meeting was over and I felt as wretched as Garm who moaned in his sleep all night when we went to the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen and dropped flat till it was time to go home there was no more running out into the verandas no sneaking away for a stolen talks with Stanley as the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart but sat at my side on the seat Vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow and Garm hugging the left handrail here Vixen was ever in great form she had to attend to all the moving traffic such as bullock carts that blocked the way and camels and lead ponies as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust she never yapped for yapping sake but her shrill high bark was known all along the mall and other men's terriers were up high and bullock drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road with a grin but Garm cared for none of these things his big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut there was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief we called him Bob the librarian because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves and in hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper files Bob was a well meaning idiot but Garm did not encourage him he would slide his head around the door panting rats come along Garm and Garm would shift one for a paw over the other and curl himself round leaving Bob to whine at a most uninterested back the office was nearly as cheerful as a tune in those days once and only once did I see Garm at all contented with his surroundings he had gone for an unauthorized walk with Vixen early one Sunday morning and a very young and foolish man his battery had just moved to that part of the world tried to steal them both Vixen of course knew better than to take food from soldiers and besides she had just finished her breakfast so she trotted back with a large piece of the mutton that they issued to our troops laid it down on my veranda and looked up to see what I thought I asked her where Garm was and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way about a mile up the road sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees Garm was in front of him looking rather pleased when the man moved leg or hand Garm buried his teeth in silence a broken string hung from his collar and the other half of it lay all warm in the artillery man's still hand he explained to me keeping his eyes straight in front of him that he had met this dog he called him awful names walking alone and was going to take him to the fort for a masterless pariah I said that Garm did not seem to meet much of a pariah but that he had better take him to the fort if he thought best he said he did not care to do so I told him to go to the fort alone he said he did not want to go at that hour but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the dog I instructed Garm to take him to the fort and Garm marched him solemnly up to the gate one mile and a half under a hot sun and I told the quarter guard what had happened but the young artillery man was more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh several regiments he was told had tried to steal Garm in their time that month the hot weather shut down in earnest and the dog slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed every morning as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in and every morning the man filled the bath for a second time I said to him fill a small tub especially for the dogs nay said he's smiling it is not their custom they would not understand besides the big bath gives them more space the punka koolies who pulled the punkas day and night came to know Garm intimately he noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call out to the koolie and bid him pull with a long stroke if the man still slept I would wake him up he discovered too that it was a good thing to lie in the wave of air under the punka maybe Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks at any rate when the punka stopped Garm would first growl and cock his eye at the rope and if that did not wake the man it nearly always did he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper's ear Fixin was a clever little dog but she could never connect the punka and the koolie so Garm gave me grateful hours of cool sleep but he was utterly wretched as a human being and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it and were envious if I moved from one room to another Garan followed if my pen stopped scratching Garm's head was thrust into my hand if I turned half awake on the pillow Garm was up and at my side for he knew that I was his only link with his master and day and night and night and day his eyes asked one question when is this going to end living with the dog as I did never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather till one day at the club a man said that dog of yours will die in a week or two he's a shadow then I dosed Garan with iron and quinine which he hated and I felt very anxious he lost his appetite and Fixin was allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes even that did not make him swallow and we held a consultation on him of the best man doctor in the place a lady doctor who cured the sick wives of kings and the deputy inspector general of the veterinary service of all India they pronounced upon his symptoms and I told them historian Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand he's dying of a broken heart said the lady doctor suddenly upon my word said the deputy inspector general I believe Mrs. McCrae is perfectly right as usual the best man doctor in the place wrote a prescription and the veterinary deputy inspector general went over afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog proportions and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited it was a strong tonic and it put the dear boy on his feet for a week or two then he lost flesh again I asked the man I knew to take him up to the hills with him when he went and the man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage Garan took in the situation at one red glance the hair rose along his back he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I've ever heard in the jaws of a dog I shouted to my friend to get away at once and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garan laid his head on my knee and whined so I knew his answer and devoted myself to getting Stanley's address in the hills my turn to go to the cool came late in August we were allowed 30 days holiday in a year if no one fell sick and we took it as we could be spared my chief and Bob the librarian had their holiday first and when they were gone I made a calendar as I always did and hung it up at the head of my cot tearing off one day at a time till they returned Vixen had gone up to the hills with me five times before and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as I did Garam I said we're going back to Stanley at Kassali Kassali Stanley Stanley Kassali and I repeated it 20 times it was not Kassali really but another place still I remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the last night and I dared not change the name then Garan began to tremble then he barked and then he leaped up at me frisking and wagging his tail not now I said holding at my hand when I say go we'll go Garm I pulled out the little blanket coat and spike collar that Vixen always wore up in the hills to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards and I let the two smell them and talk it over what they said of course I do not know but it made a new dog of Garm his eyes were bright and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him he ate his food and he killed his rats for the next three weeks and when he began to whine I had only to say Stanley Kassali Kassali Stanley to wake him up I wish I had thought of it before my chief came back all brown with living in the open air and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains that same afternoon we three and Garm began to pack for our month's holiday Vixen rolling in and out of the bullet trunk twenty times a minute and Garm grinning all over and thumping on the floor with his tail Vixen knew the routine of traveling as well as she knew my office work she went to the station singing songs on the front seat of the carriage while Garan sat with me she hurried into the railway carriage saw Kadir make up my bed for the night got her drink of water and curled up her hatched eye on the tumult of the platform Garan followed her the crowd gave him a lane all through himself and sat down on the pillows with his eyes blazing and his tail a haze behind him we came to Mbala in the hot misty dawn four or five men who had been working hard for eleven months shouting for our dales the two horse traveling carriages that were to take us up to Kalka at the foot of the hills it was all new to Garm he did not understand the carriages where you lay at full length on your bedding the Vixen knew and hopped into her place at once Garan following the Kalka road before the railway was built was about forty seven miles long and the horses were changed every eight miles most of them jibbed and kicked and plunged but they had to go and they went rather better than usual for Grom's deep bay in their rear it was a river to be forwarded and four bullocks pulled the carriage and Vixen stuck her head out of the valley fell into the water while she gave directions Garan was silent and curious and rather needed reassuring about Stanley and Kansali so we rode barking and yelping into Kalka for lunch and Garm ate enough for two after Kalka the road wound among the hills and we took a curicle with half broken ponies which were changed every six miles no one dreamed of a railroad to similar in those days where it was seven thousand feet up in the air the road was more than fifty miles long and the regulation pace was just as fast as the ponies could go here again Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other jumped into the back seat and shouted a cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of Kalka and she whined for her coat wisely fearing a chill on the liver I'd had one made for Garm too and as we climbed to the fresh breezes I put it on and Garm chewed it uncomprehendingly but I think he was grateful ha-ya-ya-ya-ya Vixen as we shot round the curves to-to-toot went the driver's bugle at the dangerous places and yow-yow, Bay Garm, Kadir Bach sat on the front seat and smiled even he was glad to get away from the heat of the planes that stood in the haze behind us now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again and he would say what's it like below and I would shout hotter than cinders what's it like up above and he would shout back just perfect in a way we would go Kadir Bach said over his shoulder here is Solon and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee Solon is an unpleasant little cantanmen but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy it is all bare and windy and one generally stops at a rest house nearby for something to eat I got out and took both dogs with me while Kadir Bach made tea a soldier told us we should find Stanley out there nodding his head towards a bare bleak hill when we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley who had given me all this trouble sitting on a rock with his face in his hands and his overcoat hanging loose about him I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man crumpled up and thinking on the great gray hillside here Garm left me he departed without a word and so far as I could see without moving his legs he flew through the air bodily and I heard the whack of him Stanley knocking the little man clean over they rolled on the ground together shouting and yelping and hugging I could not see which was dog and which was man till Stanley got up and whimpered he told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals and was very weak he looked all he said but even while I watched both man and dog plumped out to their natural sizes precisely as dried apples swell in water Garan was on his shoulder and his breast and feet all at the same time so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garan gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm he did not say anything that I could understand except that he had fancied he was going to die but that now he was quite well and that he was not going to give up Garan any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub then he said he felt hungry and thirsty and happy he went down to tea at the rest house where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam and beer and cold mutton and pickles when Garm wasn't climbing over him the night went on Garm saw how it was at once he said goodbye to me three times giving me both paws went after another and leaping on to my shoulder he further escorted us singing hozanas at the top of his voice a mile down the road then he raced back to his own master Vixen never opened her mouth but when the cold twilight came and we could see the lights of Simla across the hills she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster I unbuttoned it and tucked her inside then she gave a contented little sniff and fell fast asleep her head on my breast and we bundled out at Simla to the four happiest people in all the world that night end of section three section four of actions and reactions this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Josh Kibbe actions and reactions by Rudyard Kipling the power of the dog there was sorrow enough in the natural way for men and women to fill our day but when we are certain of sorrow in store why do we always arrange for more brothers and sisters I bid you beware of giving your heart to a dog to tear buy a pup and your money will buy love unflinching that cannot lie perfect passion and worship fed by kicking the ribs or pat on the head nevertheless it is hardly fair to risk your heart for a dog to tear when the 14 years which nature permits are closing in asthma or tumor or fits and the vets unspoken prescription runs to lethal chambers or loaded guns then you will find it's your own affair but you've given your heart to a dog to tear when the body that lived at your single will when the whimper of welcome is stilled how still when the spirit that answered your every mood when wherever it goes for good you will discover how much you care and will give your heart to a dog to tear we've sorrow enough in the natural way when it comes to burying Christian clay our loves are not given but only lint at the compound interest of scent per scent though it is not always the case I believe that the longer we've kept him the more do we grieve for when debts are payable right or wrong a short time loan is as bad as a long so why in heaven where we are there should we give our hearts to a dog to tear end of section 4