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THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

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Rudyard Kipling

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

eBook ( Feb. 3, 2020)
“There won’t be 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 some where, — 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 v/as picking grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope of 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 th^ 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 accurately 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 proimse 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 took the little hand blackened with the escaped gas of the revolver.
“I promise,” she said solemnly; “but if I care there is no need of promising. ’ '
“And you do 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
Pages
271

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