He settled himself
comfortably
on Torpenhow's table and turned over the
pages.
pages.
Kipling - Poems
Didn't you see the look in his eyes when he talked about
her? He's as restless as a swallow in autumn. "
"Yes; but did he go alone? "
"I don't know, and I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the
go-fever upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There's no
mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call
upon him now. "
"It might be his salvation," Torpenhow said.
"Perhaps--if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour. "
Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai knew
well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of
moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the
others, of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the
Nilghai's body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he
fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the
Nilghai's career that were unseemly,--his marriages with many African
princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to
the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his
interview (and his fears) with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained
execution-ground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into
the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to
time had added rhymed descriptions, and the whole was a curious piece of
art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the book which
being interpreted means "naked," that it would be wrong to draw the
Nilghai with any clothes on, under any circumstances. Consequently the
last sketch, representing that much-enduring man calling on the War
Office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate.
He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhow's table and turned over the
pages.
"What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai! " he said.
"There's a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that's
more than life-like. 'The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the
Mahdieh'--that was founded on fact, eh? "
"It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie come
into the Saga yet? "
"No; the Binkie-boy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats.
Let's see. Here you are as a stained-glass saint in a church. Deuced
decorative lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being
handed down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in
rare and curious facsimiles at ten guineas each. What shall I try this
time? The domestic life of the Nilghai? "
"Hasn't got any. "
"The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then.
her? He's as restless as a swallow in autumn. "
"Yes; but did he go alone? "
"I don't know, and I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the
go-fever upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There's no
mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call
upon him now. "
"It might be his salvation," Torpenhow said.
"Perhaps--if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour. "
Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai knew
well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of
moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the
others, of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the
Nilghai's body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he
fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the
Nilghai's career that were unseemly,--his marriages with many African
princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to
the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his
interview (and his fears) with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained
execution-ground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into
the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to
time had added rhymed descriptions, and the whole was a curious piece of
art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the book which
being interpreted means "naked," that it would be wrong to draw the
Nilghai with any clothes on, under any circumstances. Consequently the
last sketch, representing that much-enduring man calling on the War
Office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate.
He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhow's table and turned over the
pages.
"What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai! " he said.
"There's a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that's
more than life-like. 'The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the
Mahdieh'--that was founded on fact, eh? "
"It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie come
into the Saga yet? "
"No; the Binkie-boy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats.
Let's see. Here you are as a stained-glass saint in a church. Deuced
decorative lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being
handed down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in
rare and curious facsimiles at ten guineas each. What shall I try this
time? The domestic life of the Nilghai? "
"Hasn't got any. "
"The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then.
