The Return of Imray - Rudyard Kipling

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Return of Mrey by Rudyard Kipling. 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 minevrer, speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
he roved the castle to seek his kin. And oh

(00:23):
twas a piteous thing to see the dumb ghost follow
his enemy. The Baron Mrey 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.

(00:45):
Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in
great evidence among the billiard tables at his club. Upon
a morning he 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 dog cart was
not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because

(01:07):
he was hampering in a microscopical degree, the administration of
the Indian Empire, that empire paused for one microscopical moment
to make inquiry into the fate of Imrey. Pawns were dragged,
wells were plumbed, Telegrams were dispatched down the lines of
railways and to the nearest seaport town twelve hundred miles away.

(01:29):
But Imre was not at the end of the drag
ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his
place knew him no more. Then 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,

(01:52):
horses and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His
superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his mother
saying that Imre had unaccountably 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

(02:14):
was before he was engaged to Miss Jugal, an affair
which has been described in another place, and while he
was pursuing his investigations 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

(02:34):
walking about whatever he might find at the sideboard, and
this is not good for human beings. His domestic equipment
was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five saddles, and
a collection of stiff jointed mashier rods, bigger and stronger
than the largest salmon rods. These occupied one half of
his bungalow, and the other half was given up to

(02:55):
Strickland and his dog, Tietienne, an enormous ramper slut who
devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to
Strickland in 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

(03:17):
his labors was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people.
The natives believed that Tietienne was a familiar spirit and
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

(03:39):
down the invader and give tongue till some one came
with a light. Strickland owes his life to her. When
he 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

(04:01):
established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged.
From that date, Tietienne wore a collar of rough silver
and 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,

(04:21):
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 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

(04:43):
that station, 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 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

(05:04):
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 and foul things. Tietienns 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

(05:24):
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 heat of the summer had broken up and turned
to the warm damp of the rains. There was no
motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like

(05:45):
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 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 verandah and heard

(06:07):
the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because
I was covered with a thing called prickly heat. Tietienne's
came out with me and put her head in my lap,
and was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when
tea was ready, and I took tea in the back verandah.
On account of the little coolness found there. The rooms
of the house were dark. Behind me, I could smell

(06:29):
strickland 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 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

(06:49):
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 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

(07:11):
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 anyone called. 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

(07:33):
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 was tired too. Tietiennes, who had
been lying underneath the table, rose up and swung into

(07:54):
the least exposed veranda. As soon as her master moved
to his own room, which was next to the stately chamber,
set up heart for Tiechien's. If a mere wife had
wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain,
it would not have mattered. But Tiechen's was a dog,
and therefore the better animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting
to see him flay her with a whip. He smiled

(08:15):
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 made light of Tetien's
encamped outside my bedroom window. And storm after storm came up,

(08:39):
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 verandah, the hackles a
lift on her back, and her feet anchored as tensely

(08:59):
as the dr 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 thunders ceased, and Tietyennes went into the garden and

(09:20):
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 a 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. He was lying on his bed,

(09:43):
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.

(10:03):
But 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 Tietienn's in the garden and the threshing

(10:23):
of the rain. I lived in that house for two days.
Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for
eight wroughten hours, with Tietiens 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 back verandah and cuddled each other for company.

(10:45):
We were alone in the house, but none the less,
it was much too fully occupied 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 bamboo 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

(11:05):
somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda
till I should have gone away. 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

(11:27):
servant came to turn the lamps and make all light
and habitable would she come in with 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

(11:51):
with his guns and rods, but I did 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. Chechiens has left me.

(12:14):
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

(12:36):
to see him in the daytime, but that I did
not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner,
when Chechen's has gone out to lie in the verandah
upon my soul. I don't wonder said Strickland, with his
eyes on the ceiling cloth. Look at that. The tales
of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and
the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in

(12:58):
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 trouser legs.

(13:23):
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 assist
Strickland in his work, but I took the cleaning rod

(13:44):
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 clear
to him the danger of hunting roof snakes between a

(14:05):
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

(14:25):
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, hum
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

(14:48):
from below. No, it's a buffalo. Hand me up the
last two last joints of a massir 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

(15:09):
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,

(15:32):
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

(15:55):
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, Imre, i said Strickland turned back to the

(16:16):
cloth for a moment and looked. It is Imre, 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

(16:41):
tattered ceiling cloth hung down almost to the level of
the table, and there was hardly room to move away
from the discovery. Chechens 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

(17:02):
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,

(17:23):
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. Imre was guileless and inoffensive,

(17:46):
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.

(18:06):
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

(18:26):
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 Mahommedan, said that it was a very
warm night, but that there was more rain pending, which,

(18:49):
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, Badur 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

(19:10):
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

(19:32):
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

(19:54):
slipped it into the breach of the three sixty express.
And Imre Sahib has gone to yu up 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

(20:15):
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

(20:37):
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

(21:00):
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 em Re Sahib? He said he

(21:26):
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 born.
Strickland looked at me above the rifle and said, in

(21:48):
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 served by devils,

(22:12):
He glared at Tietien'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,

(22:32):
and Tietiens sat wondrous still. Take him to the police station,
said Strickland. There is a case toward do I hang? Then,
said Bahudur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping
his eyes on the ground. If the sun shines or
the water runs, yes, said Strickland. Bahudur Khan stepped back

(22:53):
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, firm fixed

(23:15):
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. My child was bewitched,

(23:36):
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 Carit and the policemen bore him and the thing
under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed

(23:58):
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, imrey made a mistake, simply and solely through
not knowing the nature of the oriental and the coincidence

(24:18):
of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur 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

(24:38):
said I. He was bitten by a snake and died.
The rest the Sahib knows, was the answer. 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

(25:00):
I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house.
Chechen's has come back to her place, 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.

(25:21):
End of The Return of Mre by Rudyard Kipling