Rudyard Kipling - The Return of Imray

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information and to find out
how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Moira Foggerty. The Return of Imre by Rudyard Kipling.

(00:21):
The doors were wide, the story saith. Out of the
night came the patient Wraith. He might not speak, and
he could not stir a hair of the Baron's minivr.
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, he roved the castle
to seek his kin. And oh twas a piteous thing
to see the dumb ghost follow his enemy. The Baron

(00:46):
Imre achieved the impossible without warning, for no conceivable motive.
In his youth, at the threshold of his career, he
chose to disappear from the world, which is to say,
the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day
he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among
the billiard tables at his club. Upon a morning he

(01:08):
was not, and no manner of search could make sure
where he might be. He had stepped out of his place.
He had not appeared at his office at the proper time,
and his dogcart was not upon the public roads. For
these reasons, and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree,
the administration of the Indian Empire. That empire paused for

(01:30):
one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Mrey.
Pawns were dragged, wells were plumbed, Telegrams were dispatched down
the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town
twelve hundred miles away. But Imray was not at the
end of the drag ropes nor the telegraph wires. He
was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then

(01:53):
the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward because
it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a man,
became a mystery, such a thing as men talk over
at their tables in the club for a month and
then forget utterly. His guns, horses and carts were sold
to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether
absurd letter to his mother saying that Imray had unaccountably

(02:17):
disappeared and his bungalow stood empty. After three or four
months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
friend Strickland of the police saw fit to rent the
bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was
engaged to Miss Yugal, an affair which has been described
in another place. And while he was pursuing his investigations

(02:37):
into native life, his own life was sufficiently peculiar, and
men complained of his manners and customs. There was always
food in his house, but there were no regular times
for meals. He ate standing up and walking about whatever
he might find at the sideboard, and this is not
good for human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to

(02:58):
six rifles, three shot guns, five saddles, and a collection
of stiff jointed maschier rods, bigger and stronger than the
largest salmon rods. These occupied one half of his bungalow,
and the other half was given up to Strickland and
his dog, Tietienne, an enormous ramper slot who devoured daily
the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in

(03:20):
a language of her own, and whenever walking abroad she
saw things calculated to destroy the peace of her Majesty,
the Queen Empress. She returned to her master and laid information.
Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of
his labors was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people.
The natives believed that Tietienne was a familiar spirit and

(03:41):
treated her with a great reverence that is born of
hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set
apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket,
and a drinking trough, and if any one came into
Strickland's room at night, her custom was to knock down
the invader and give tongue till some one came with
a light. Strickland owes his life to her. When he

(04:02):
was on the frontier in search of a local murderer
who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much
farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietienne caught the man, and
he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between
his teeth, and after his record of iniquity was established
in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From
that date, Tietienne wore a collar of rough silver and

(04:24):
employed a monogram on her night blanket, and the blanket
was of double woven cashmere cloth. For she was a
delicate dog under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland,
And once when he was ill with fever, made great
trouble for the doctor's because she did not know how
to help her master, and would not allow another creature
to attempt. Aid Makarnacht of the Indian Medical Service beat

(04:48):
her over her head with a gun butt before she
could understand that she must give room for those who
could give Queenine. A short time after Strickland had taken
him raise bungalow. My business took me through that st
and naturally, the club quarters being full, I quartered myself
upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight roomed and
heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under

(05:11):
the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth which
looked just as neat as a whitewashed ceiling. The landlord
had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you
knew how Indian bungalows were built, you would never have
suspected that above the cloth lay the dark three cornered
cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside
of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, bats, ants

(05:31):
and foul things. Tietiennes met me in the veranda with
a bay like the boom of the bell of Saint Paul's,
putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was
glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to claw together
a sort of meal, which he called lunch, and immediately
after it was finished, went out about his business. I
was left alone with Tietiens and my own affairs. The

(05:54):
heat of the summer had broken up and turned to
the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion
in the heat, but the rain fell like ramrods on
the earth and flung up a blue mist when it
splashed back. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias,
and the mango trees in the garden stood still while
the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began

(06:15):
to sing among the allow hedges. A little before the
light failed, and when the rain was at its worst,
I sat in the back veranda and heard the water
roar from the eaves and scratched myself because I was
covered with a thing called prickly heat. Tietienn's came out
with me and put her head in my lap, and
was very sorrowful. So I gave her biscuits when tea

(06:36):
was ready, and I took tea in the back veranda
on account of the little coolness found there. The rooms
of the house were dark. Behind me, I could smell stricklands, saddleery,
and the oil on his guns, and I had no
desire to sit among these things. My own servant came
to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes
clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that

(06:57):
a gentleman had called and wished to see some one,
very much against my will, but only because of the
darkness of the rooms. I went into the naked drawing room,
telling my man to bring the lights. There might or
might not have been a caller waiting. It seemed to
me that I saw a figure by one of the windows,
but when the lights came there was nothing save the
spikes of the rain without and the smell of the

(07:19):
drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my servant
that he was no wiser than he ought to be,
and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietienne's
She had gone out into the wet, and I could
hardly coax her back to me, even with biscuits with
sugar tops. Strickland came home dripping wet just before dinner,
and the first thing he said was has any one called?

(07:42):
I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me
into the drawing room on a false alarm, or that
some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and, thinking
better of it, had fled after giving his name. Strickland
ordered dinner without comment, and since it was a real
dinner with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down at
nine o'clock. Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I

(08:04):
was tired too. Tietienn's, who had been lying underneath the table,
rose up and swung into the least exposed veranda as
soon as her master moved to his own room, which
was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietien's.
If a mere wife had wished to sleep out of
doors in that pelting rain, it would not have mattered.
But Tiechiens was a dog, and therefore the better animal.

(08:26):
I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her
with a whip. He smiled queerly as a man would
smile after telling some unpleasant domestic tragedy. She has done
this ever since I moved in here, said he let
her go. The dog was Strickland's dog, So I said nothing,
but I felt all that Strickland felt in being. Thus

(08:48):
made light of Tetien's encamped outside my bedroom window. And
storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch and
died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown
egg spatters a barn door, but the light was pale blue,
not yellow. And looking through my split bamboo blinds, I
could see the great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda,

(09:11):
the hackles a lift on her back, and her feet
anchored as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a
suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder,
I tried to sleep, but it seemed some one wanted
me very urgently. He whoever he was, was trying to
call me by name, but his voice was no more
than a husky whisper. The thunder ceased, and Tietiennes went

(09:35):
into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody
tried to open my door, walked about and about through
the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandahs. And
just when I was falling asleep, I fancied that I
heard wild hammering and clamoring above my head or on
the door. I ran into Strickland's room and asked him
whether he was ill and had been calling for me.

(09:58):
He was lying on his bed, half dressed, a pipe
in his mouth. I thought you'd come, He said, Have
I been walking around the house recently? I explained that
he had been tramping in the dining room and the
smoking room and two or three other places, and he
laughed and told me to go back to bed. I
went back to bed and slept till the morning. But

(10:19):
through all my mixed dreams I was sure I was
doing some one an injustice in not attending to his wants.
What those wants were, I could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt, fumbling, lurking, loitering,
someone was reproaching me for my slackness. And half awake,
I heard the howling of tiechiens in the garden and
the threshing of the rain. I lived in that house

(10:42):
for two days. Stricklum went to his office daily, leaving
me alone for eight wroughten hours, with Tiechen's for my
only companion. As long as the full light lasted, I
was comfortable, and so was Tiechien's. But in the twilight,
she and I moved into the barret back verandah and
cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house,
but none the less, it was much too fully occupied

(11:05):
by a tenant with whom I did not wish to interfere.
I never saw him, but I could see the curtains
between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through.
I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung
under a weight that had just quitted them. And I
could feel, when I went to get a book from
the dining room, that somebody was waiting in the shadows
of the front veranda till I should have gone away.

(11:27):
Chechens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the
darkened rooms with every hair erect and following the motions
of something that I could not see. She never entered
the rooms, but her eyes moved interestedly. That was quite sufficient.
Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and
make all light and habitable. Would she come in with

(11:47):
me and spend her time sitting on her haunches, watching
an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder.
Dogs are cheerful companions, I explained to Strickland gently as
might be, that I would go over to the club
and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,
was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did

(12:09):
not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He
heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily,
but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things.
Stay on, he said, and see what this thing means.
All you have talked about I have known since I
took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Chetien's has left me.

(12:30):
Are you going too? I had seen him through one
little affair connected with a heathen idol that had brought
me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I
had no desire to help him through further experiences. He
was a man to whom unpleasantness has arrived, as do
dinners to ordinary people. Therefore, I explained more clearly than
ever that I liked him immensely and would be happy

(12:52):
to see him in the daytime, but that I did
not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner,
when Chechens has gone out to life and the verandah
upon my soul. I don't wonder, said Strickland, with his
eyes on the ceiling cloth. Look at that. The tails
of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and
the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in

(13:14):
the lamp light. If you are afraid of snakes, of course,
said Strickland, I hate and fierce snakes, because if you
look into the eyes of any snake, you will see
that it knows all and more of the mystery of
man's fall, and that it feels all the contempt that
the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides
which its bite is generally fatal, and it twists up

(13:36):
trouser legs. You ought to get your thatch over hauled,
I said, give me a massier rod and we'll poke
em down. They'll hide among the roof beams. Said Strickland.
I can't stand snakes overhead. I'm going up into the roof.
If I shake him down, stand by with the cleaning
rod and break their backs. I was not anxious to

(13:57):
assist Strickland in his work, but I took the cleaning
rod and waited in the dining room while Strickland brought
a gardener's ladder from the verandah and set it against
the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves
up and disappeared. We could hear the dry, rushing scuttle
of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling cloth. Strickland
took a lamp with him while I tried to make

(14:19):
clear to him the danger of hunting roof snakes between
a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration
of property caused by ripping out ceiling claws. Nonsense, said Strickland.
They're sure to hide near the walls by the cloth.
The bricks are too cold for him, and the heat
of the room is just what they like. He put
his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped
it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound

(14:41):
of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening
into the dark of the angle of the roof beams.
I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I
had not the least knowledge of what might descend, HM,
said Strickland, and his voice rolled and jumbled in the roof.
There's room for another set of rooms up here, and
by jove, some one is occupying him Snakes, I said

(15:04):
from below. No, it's a buffalo. Hand me up the
lat two last joints of a masser rod and i'll
prodd it. It's lying on the main roof beam. I
handed up the rod. What a nest for owls and serpents?
No wonder the snakes live here, said Strickland, Climbing farther
into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with

(15:25):
the rod. Come out of that, whoever you are heads
below there, it's falling. I saw the ceiling cloth nearly
in the center of the room, bag with a shape
that was pressing it downwards and downwards toward the lighted
lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of
danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from
the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table,

(15:48):
something that I dared not look at till Strickland had
slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
He did not say much being a man of few words,
but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth
and threw it over the remnants on the table. It
strikes me, he said, putting down the lamp. Our friend
Imray has come back. Oh you would, would you? There

(16:11):
was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake
wriggled out to be back broken by the butt of
the massiur rod I was sufficiently sick to make no
remarks worth recording. Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks.
The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.
Is it Imrey, I said. Strickland turned back to the

(16:32):
cloth for a moment and looked. It is Imrey, he said,
And his throat is cut from ear to ear. Then
we spoke both together and to ourselves. That's why he
whispered about the house. Chiechen's in the garden began to
bay furiously. A little later, her great nose heaved open
the dining room door. She snuffed and was still. The

(16:57):
tattered ceiling cloth hung down almost to the level of
the table, and there was hardly room to move away
from the discovery. Chetens came in and sat down her
teeth bared under her lip and her fore paws planted.
She looked at Strickland. It's a bad business, old lady,
said he. Men don't climb up into the roofs of

(17:18):
their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the
ceiling cloth behind em. Let's think it out. Let's think
it out somewhere else. I said, excellent idea. Turn the
lamps out. We'll get into my room. I did not
turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first
and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me,

(17:38):
and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought I smoked
furiously because I was afraid. Imrey is back, said Strickland.
The question is who killed Imrey. Don't talk. I've a
notion of my own. When I took this bungalow, I
took over most of Imrey's servants. Imrey was guileless and inoffensive,

(18:02):
wasn't he? I agreed, though the heap under the cloth
had looked neither one thing nor the other. If I
call in all the servants, they will stand fast in
a crowd and lie like arians. What do you suggest
call him in? One by one. I said, they'll run
away and give the news to all their fellows, said Strickland.

(18:22):
We must segregate him. Do you suppose your servant knows
anything about it? He may for aught, I know, but
I don't think it's likely. He has only been here
two or three days, I answered, what's your notion? I
can't quite tell how the dickens did the man get
the wrong side of the ceiling cloth. There was a

(18:42):
heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. This showed that Baduhur Khan,
his body servant, had waked from sleep and wished to
put Strickland to bed. Come in, said Strickland. It's a
very warm night, isn't it. Bahadur Khan, a great green
turban six foot Mahammedan, said that it was a very
warm night, but that there was more rain pending, which,

(19:05):
by his Honor's favor, would bring relief to the country.
It will be so if God pleases, said Strickland, tugging
off his boots. It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan,
that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days, ever
since that time when thou first camest into my service.
What time was that? Has the heaven Born forgotten? It

(19:26):
was when Imre Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given,
and I even I came into the honored service of
the protector of the poor. And Imre Sahib went to Europe,
it is so said among those who were his servants,
And thou wilt take service with him when he returns assuredly, Sahib.
He was a good master and cherished his dependence. That

(19:48):
is true. I am very tired, but I go buckshooting tomorrow.
Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for
black buck. It is in the case yonder. The man
stooped over the case, handed barrel's stock and foreign to Strickland,
who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down
to the gun case, took a solid drawn cartridge and

(20:10):
slipped it into the breach of the three sixty express.
And Imre Sahib has gone to Europe secretly. That is
very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not? What do I
know of the ways of the white man heaven born?
Very little, truly, But thou shalt know more. Anon, It
has reached me that Imre Sahib has returned from his

(20:31):
so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in
the next room waiting his servant Sahib. The lamp light
slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled
themselves at Bahadur Khan's broad breast. Go and look, said Strickland.
Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go.
The man picked up a lamp and went into the

(20:53):
dining room, Strickland following and almost pushing him with the
muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at
the black depths behind the sailing cloth, at the writhing
snake under foot, and last, a gray glaze settling on
his face, at the thing under the tablecloth. Hast thou seen,
said Strickland, after a pause, I have seen I am

(21:16):
clay in the white man's hands. What does the presence do?
Hang thee within the month? What else for killing him?
Nay Sahib consider walking among us his servants. He cast
his eyes upon my child, who was four years old
him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of
the fever. My child, what said Emre Sahib? He said,

(21:41):
he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head.
Wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Emre Sahib in
the twilight, when he had come back from office and
was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof
beams and made all fast behind him. The heaven born
knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven.
Strickland looked at me above the rifle and said, in

(22:04):
the vernacular, thou art witness to the saying he has
killed Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of
the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him
very swiftly. I am trapped, he said, But the offense
was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child,
and I killed and hid him. Only such as are

(22:26):
served by devils, he glared at Tchiechien's, couched stolidly before him.
Only such could know what I did. It was clever,
But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with
a rope. Now thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly,
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by another,

(22:48):
and Tchiechiens sat wondrous still take him to the police station,
said Strickland. There is a case toward do I hang, then,
said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to acape, and keeping
his eyes on the ground. If the sun shines or
the water runs, yes, said Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back

(23:09):
one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen
waited further orders, go, said Strickland. Nay, but I go,
very swiftly, said Bahadur Khan. Look, I am even now
a dead man. He lifted his foot and to the
little toe there clung the head of the half killed snake,

(23:30):
firm fixed in the agony of death. I come of
land holding stock, said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood.
It were a disgrace to me to go to the
public scaffold. Therefore I take this way. Be it. Remember
that the Sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there
is an extra piece of soap in his wash basin.

(23:51):
My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why
should you seek to slay me with the rope? My
honor is saved, and and I die at the end
of an hour. He died as they die who are
bitten by the little brown karrit, and the policemen bore
him in the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places.

(24:13):
All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imre.
This said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed
is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that
man said? I heard, I answered, Imre made a mistake,
simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the
oriental and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur

(24:36):
Khan had been with him for four years, I shuddered.
My own servant had been with me for exactly that
length of time. When I went over to my own room,
I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head
on a penny, to pull off my boots. What has befallen?
Bahadur Khan said I. He was bitten by a snake
and died. The rest the Sahib knows, was the answer.

(25:01):
And how much of this matter hast thou known? As
much as might be gathered from one coming in in
the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib, let me pull
off those boots I had just settled to the sleep
of exhaustion. When I heard Strickland shouting from his side
of the house. Je Chen's has come back to her place,

(25:22):
and so she had. The great deerhound was couched stateily
on her own bedstead, on her own blanket, while in
the next room the idle, empty ceiling cloth waggled as
it trailed on the table. End of The Return of
Mre by Rudyard Kipling, recorded in Toronto, Ontario by Moyer Foggy,

(25:45):
October two thousand and six,