Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) by Rudyard Kipling Read Free Book Online Page B

That’s settled. Now swear.’
    ‘Don’t know, said Dick. ‘I’ve been trying to make myself angry, but I can’t, you’re so abominably reasonable. There will be a row on Dickenson’s Weekly, I fancy.’
    ‘Why the Dickenson do you want to work on a weekly paper? It’s slow bleeding of power.’
    ‘It brings in the very desirable dollars,’ said Dick, his hands in his pockets.
    Torpenhow watched him with large contempt. ‘Why, I thought it was a man!’ said he. ‘It’s a child.’
    ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Dick, wheeling quickly. ‘You’ve no notion of what the certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly.
    Nothing will pay me for some of my life’s joys; on that Chinese pig-boat, for instance, when we ate bread and jam for every meal, because Ho-Wang wouldn’t allow us anything better, and it all tasted of pig, — Chinese pig. I’ve worked for this, I’ve sweated and I’ve starved for this, line on line and month after month. And now I’ve got it I am going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay — they’ve no knowledge.’
    ‘What does Your Majesty please to want? You can’t smoke more than you do; you won’t drink; you’re a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark, by the look of you. You wouldn’t keep a horse the other day when I suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to suppose that theatres and all the live things you can by thereabouts mean Life.
    What earthly need have you for money?’
    ‘It’s there, bless its golden heart,’ said Dick. ‘It’s there all the time.
    Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack ‘em with. I haven’t yet found the nut I wish to crack, but I’m keeping my teeth filed.
    Perhaps some day you and I will go for a walk round the wide earth.’
    ‘With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with? You would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn’t go. I don’t care to profit by the price of a man’s soul, — for that’s what it would mean.
    Dick, it’s no use arguing. You’re a fool.’
    ‘Don’t see it. When I was on that Chinese pig-boat, our captain got credit for saving about twenty-five thousand very seasick little pigs, when our old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timber-junk. Now, taking those pigs as a parallel —  — ’
    ‘Oh, confound your parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul, you always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren’t the British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go out for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him your diggings?’
    ‘Surely.’ And Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the rapidly gathering London fog.
    Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the staircase. He was the chiefest, as he was the youngest, of the war correspondents, and his experiences dated from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the craft than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed as he entered.
    ‘Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are always screeching. You’ve heard about Dick’s luck?’
    ‘Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn’t he? I hope you keep him properly humble. He wants suppressing from time to time.’
    ‘He does. He’s beginning to take liberties with what he thinks is his reputation.’
    ‘Already! By Jove, he has cheek! I don’t know about his reputation, but he’ll come a cropper if he tries that sort of thing.’
    ‘So I told him. I don’t think he believes it.’
    ‘They never do when they first start off. What’s that wreck on the ground there?’
    ‘Specimen of his latest impertinence.’