Free Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling Page A

everything. He wrote about ‘disgrace which he was unable to bear’ – ‘indelible shame’ – ‘criminal folly’ – ‘wasted life’, and so on; besides a lot of private things to his father and mother much too sacred to put into print. The letter to the girl at Home was the most pitiful of all; and I choked as I read it. The Major made no attempt to keep dry-eyed. I respected him for that. He read and rocked himself to and fro, and simply cried like a woman without caring to hide it. The letters were so dreary and hopeless and touching. We forgot all about The Boy’s follies, and only thought of the poor Thing on the bed and the scrawled sheets in our hands. It was utterly impossible to let the letters go Home. They would have broken his father’s heart and killed his mother after killing her belief in her son.
    At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said, ‘Nice sort of thing to spring on an English family! What shall we do?’
    I said, knowing what the Major had brought me out for – ‘The Boy died of cholera. We were with him at the time. We can’t commit ourselves to half-measures. Come along.’
    Then began one of the most grimly comic scenes I have ever taken part in – the concoction of a big, written lie, bolstered with evidence, to soothe The Boy’s people at Home. I began the rough draft of the letter, the Major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered up all the stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in the fireplace. It was a hot, still evening when we began, and the lamp burned very badly. In due course I made the draft to my satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy was the pattern of all virtues, beloved by his regiment, with everypromise of a great career before him, and so on; how we had helped him through the sickness – it was no time for little lies you will understand – and how he had died without pain. I choked while I was putting down these things and thinking of the poor people who would read them. Then I laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, and the laughter mixed itself up with the choke – and the Major said that we both wanted drinks.
    I am afraid to say how much whisky we drank before the letter was finished. It had not the least effect on us. Then we took off The Boy’s watch, locket, and ring.
    Lastly, the Major said, ‘We must send a lock of hair too. A woman values that.’
    But there were reasons why we could not find a lock fit to send. The Boy was black-haired, and so was the Major, luckily. I cut off a piece of the Major’s hair above the temple with a knife, and put it into the packet we were making. The laughing-fit and the chokes got hold of me again, and I had to stop. The Major was nearly as bad; and we both knew that the worst part of the work was to come.
    We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, seals, ring, letter, and lock of hair with The Boy’s sealing-wax and The Boy’s seal.
    Then the Major said, ‘For God’s sake let’s get outside – away from the room – and think!’
    We went outside, and walked on the banks of the Canal for an hour, eating and drinking what we had with us, until the moon rose. I know now exactly how a murderer feels. Finally, we forced ourselves back to the room with the lamp and the Other Thing in it, and began to take up the next piece of work. I am not going to write about this. It was too horrible. We burned the bedstead and dropped the ashes into the Canal; we took up the matting of the room and treated that in the same way. I went off to a village and borrowed two big hoes – I did not want the villagers to help – while the Major arranged – the other matters. It took us four hours’ hard work to make the grave. As we worked, we argued out whether it was right to say as much as we remembered of the Burial of the Dead. We compromised things by saying the Lord’s