The Light That Failed. Rudyard Kipling
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Dick had not miscounted the tale.
‘Yes, he’s eaten two.’
‘Horrid little beast! Then they’ll joggle about inside him and blow up, and serve him right… Oh, Dick! have I killed you?’
Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie could not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking smoke separated her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone off in his face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees beside him, crying, ‘Dick, you aren’t hurt, are you? I didn’t mean it.’
‘Of course you didn’t, said Dick, coming out of the smoke and wiping his cheek. ‘But you nearly blinded me. That powder stuff stings awfully.’ A neat little splash of gray led on a stone showed where the bullet had gone. Maisie began to whimper.
‘Don’t,’ said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself. ‘I’m not a bit hurt.’
‘No, but I might have killed you,’ protested Maisie, the corners of her mouth drooping. ‘What should I have done then?’
‘Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.’ Dick grinned at the thought; then, softening, ‘Please don’t worry about it. Besides, we are wasting time.
We’ve got to get back to tea. I’ll take the revolver for a bit.’
Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick’s indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the breakwater. ‘Got it at last!’ he exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew from the wood.
‘Let me try,’ said Maisie, imperiously. ‘I’m all right now.’
They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook itself to pieces, and Amomma the outcast – because he might blow up at any moment – browsed in the background and wondered why stones were thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool which was commanded by the seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat down together before this new target.
‘Next holidays,’ said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver kicked wildly in his hand, ‘we’ll get another pistol, – central fire, – that will carry farther.’
‘There won’t b any next holidays for me,’ said Maisie. ‘I’m going away.’
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I’ve got to be educated somewhere, – in France, perhaps, – I don’t know where; but I shall be glad to go away.’
‘I shan’t like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie, is it really true you’re going? Then these holidays will be the last I shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I wish – ’
The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow sea-poppy nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats and the milk-white sea beyond.
‘I wish,’ she said, after a pause, ‘that I could see you again sometime.
You wish that, too?’
‘Yes, but it would have been better if – if – you had – shot straight over there – down by the breakwater.’
Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the boy who only ten days before had decorated Amomma’s horns with cut-paper ham-frills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among the public ways! Then she dropped her eyes: this was not the boy.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said reprovingly, and with swift instinct attacked the side-issue. ‘How selfish you are! Just think what I should have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I’m quite miserable enough already.’
‘Why? Because you’re going away from Mrs. Jennett?’
‘No.’
‘From me, then?’
No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He felt, though he did not know, all that the past four years had been to him, and this the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put his feelings in words.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘Maisie, you must know. I’m not supposing.’
‘Let’s go home,’ said Maisie, weakly.
But Dick was not minded to retreat.
‘I can’t say things,’ he pleaded, ‘and I’m awfully sorry for teasing you about Amomma the other day. It’s all different now, Maisie, can’t you see? And you might have told me that you were going, instead of leaving me to find out.’
‘You didn’t. I did tell. Oh, Dick, what’s the use of worrying?’
‘There isn’t any; but we’ve been together years and years, and I didn’t know how much I cared.’
‘I don’t believe you ever did care.’
‘No, I didn’t; but I do, – I care awfully now, Maisie,’ he gulped, – ‘Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.’
‘I do, indeed I do; but it won’t be any use.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am going away.’
‘Yes, but if you promise before you go. Only say – will you?’ A second ‘darling’ came to his lips more easily than the first. There were few endearments in Dick’s home or school life; he had to find them by instinct. Dick caught the little hand blackened with the escaped gas of the revolver.
‘I promise,’ she said solemnly; ‘but if I care there is no need for promising.’
‘And do you care?’ For the first time in the past few minutes their eyes met and spoke for them who had no skill in speech…
‘Oh, Dick, don’t! Please don’t! It was all right when we said good-morning; but now it’s all different!’ Amomma looked on from afar.
He had seen his property quarrel frequently, but he had never seen kisses exchanged before. The yellow sea-poppy was wiser, and nodded its head approvingly. Considered as a kiss, that was a failure, but since it was the first, other than those demanded by duty, in all the world that either had ever given or taken, it opened to them new worlds, and every one of them glorious, so that they were lifted above the consideration of any worlds at all, especially those in which tea is necessary, and sat still, holding each other’s hands and saying not a word.
‘You can’t forget now,’ said Dick, at last. There was that on his cheek that stung more than gunpowder.
‘I shouldn’t have forgotten anyhow,’ said Maisie, and they looked at each other and saw that each was changed from the companion of an hour ago to a wonder and a mystery they could not understand. The sun began to set, and a night-wind thrashed along the bents of the foreshore.
‘We shall be awfully late for tea,’ said Maisie. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Let’s use the rest of the cartridges first,’ said Dick; and he helped Maisie down the slope of the fort to the sea, – a descent that she was quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie took the grimy hand. Dick bent forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand away, and Dick blushed.
‘It’s very pretty,’ he said.
‘Pooh!’ said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity. She stood close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far across the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned into a wrathful red disc. The light held Dick’s attention for a moment, and as he raised his revolver there fell upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in that he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for him for an indefinite length of time till such date as – A gust of the growing wind drove the girl’s