Kipling Debits and Credits

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5080-7799-2
Verlag: Charles River Editors
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 358 Seiten

Rudyard Kipling was a prolific British writer and poet.  Kipling's children fiction, specifically The Jungle Books and Just So Stories, are some of the most famous in English literature.  This edition of Debits and Credits includes a table of contents.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kipling, Rudyard

Leseproben

SEA CONSTABLES: A TALE OF ‘15
.................. THE HEAD-WAITER OF THE CARVOITZ almost ran to meet Portson and his guests as they came up the steps from the palmcourt where the string band plays. ‘Not seen you since-oh, ever so long,’ he began. ‘So glad to get your wire. Quite well-eh?’ ‘Fair to middling, Henri.’ Portson shook hands with him. ‘You’re looking all right, too. Have you got us our table?’ Henri nodded toward a pink alcove, kept for mixed doubles, which discreetly commanded the main dining-room’s glitter and blaze. ‘Good man!’ said Portson. ‘Now, this is serious, Henri. We put ourselves unreservedly in your hands. We’re weather-beaten mariners- though we don’t look it, and we haven’t eaten a Chrihristian meal in months. Have you thought of all that, Henri, mon ami?’ ‘The menu, I have compose it myself,’ Henri answered with the gravity of a high priest. It was more than a year since Portson-of Portson, Peake and Ensell, Stock and Share Brokers-had drawn Henri’s attention to an apparently extinct Oil Company which, a little later, erupted profitably; and it may be that Henri prided himself on paying all debts in full. The most recent foreign millionaire and the even more recent foreign actress at a table near the entrance clamoured for his attention while he convoyed the party to the pink alcove. With his own hands he turned out some befrilled electrics and lit four pale rose-candles. ‘Bridal!’ some one murmured. ‘Quite bridal!’ ‘So glad you like. There is nothing too good.’ Henri slid away, and the four men sat down. They had the coarse-grained complexions of men who habitually did themselves well, and an air, too, of recent, red- eyed dissipation. Maddingham, the eldest, was a thick-set middle-aged presence, with crisped grizzled hair, of the type that one associates with Board Meetings. He limped slightly. Tegg, who followed him, blinking, was neat, small, and sandy, of unmistakable Navy cut, but sheepish aspect. Winchmore, the youngest, was more on the lines of the conventional pre-war ‘nut,’ but his eyes were sunk in his head and his hands black-nailed and roughened. Portson, their host, with Vandyke beard and a comfortable little stomach, beamed upon them as they settled to their oysters. ‘That’s what I mean,’ said the carrying voice of the foreign actress, whom Henri had just disabused of the idea that she had been promised the pink alcove. ‘They ain’t alive to the war yet. Now, what’s the matter with those four dubs yonder joining the British Army or-or doing something?’ ‘Who’s your friend?’ Maddingham asked. ‘I’ve forgotten her name for the minute,’ Portson replied, ‘but she’s the latest thing in imported patriotic piece-goods. She sings “Sons of the Empire, Go Forward!” at the Palemseum. It makes the aunties weep.’ ‘That’s Sidney Latter. She’s not half bad.’ Tegg reached for the vinegar. ‘We ought to see her some night.’ ‘Yes. We’ve a lot of time for that sort of thing,’ Maddingham grunted. ‘I’ll take your oysters, Portson, if you don’t want ‘em.’ ‘Cheer up, Papa Maddingham! ‘Soon be dead!’ Winchmore suggested. Maddingham glared at him. ‘If I’d had you with me for one week, Master Winchmore—’ ‘Not the least use,’ the boy retorted. ‘I’ve just been made a full- lootenant. I have indeed. I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience to take Etheldreda out any more as a plain sub. She’s too flat in the floor.’ ‘Did you get those new washboards of yours fixed?’ Tegg cut in. ‘Don’t talk shop already,’ Portson protested. ‘This is Vesiga soup. I don’t know what he’s arranged in the way of drinks.’ ‘Pol Roger ‘04,’ said the waiter. ‘Sound man, Henri,’ said Winchmore. ‘But,’ he eyed the waiter doubtfully, ‘I don’t quite like...What’s your alleged nationality?’ ‘’Henri’s nephew, monsieur,’ the smiling waiter replied, and laid a gloved hand on the table. It creaked corkily at the wrist. ‘Bethisy- sur-Oise,’ he explained. ‘My uncle he buy me all the hand for Christmas. It is good to hold plates only.’ ‘Oh! Sorry I spoke,’ said Winchmore. ‘Monsieur is right. But my uncle is very careful, even with neutrals.’ He poured the champagne. ‘Hold a minute,’ Maddingham cried. ‘First toast of obligation: For what we are going to receive, thank God and the British Navy.’ ‘Amen!’ said the others with a nod toward Lieutenant Tegg, of the Royal Navy afloat, and, occasionally, of the Admiralty ashore. ‘Next! “Damnation to all neutrals!"‘ Maddingham went on. ‘Amen! Amen!’ they answered between gulps that heralded the sole a la Colbert. Maddingham picked up the menu. ‘Supreame of chicken,’ he read loudly. ‘Filet bearnaise, Woodcock and Richebourg ‘74, Peaches Melba, Croutes Baron. I couldn’t have improved on it myself; though one might,’ he went on-’one might have substituted quail en casserole for the woodcock.’ ‘Then there would have been no reason for the Burgundy,’ said Tegg with equal gravity. ‘You’re right,’ Maddingham replied. The foreign actress shrugged her shoulders. ‘What can you do with people like that?’ she said to her companion. ‘And yet I’ve been singing to ‘em for a fortnight.’ ‘I left it all to Henri,’ said Portson. ‘My Gord!’ the eavesdropping woman whispered. ‘Get on to that! Ain’t it typical? They leave everything to Henri in this country.’ ‘By the way,’ Tegg asked Winchmore after the fish, ‘where did you mount that one-pounder of yours after all?’ ‘Midships. Etheldreda won’t carry more weight forward. She’s wet enough as it is.’ ‘Why don’t you apply for another craft?’ Portson put in. ‘There’s a chap at Southampton just now, down with pneumonia and—’ ‘No, thank you. I know Etheldreda. She’s nothing to write home about, but when she feels well she can shift a bit.’ Maddingham leaned across the table. ‘If she does more than eleven in a flat calm,’ said he, ‘I’ll-I’ll give you Hilarity.’ ‘’Wouldn’t be found dead in Hilarity,’ was Winchmore’s grateful reply. ‘You don’t mean to say you’ve taken her into real wet water, Papa? Where did it happen?’ The other laughed. Maddingham’s red face turned brick colour, and the veins on the cheekbones showed blue through a blurr of short bristles. ‘He’s been convoying neutrals-in a tactful manner,’ Tegg chuckled. Maddingham filled his glass and scowled at Tegg. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and here’s special damnation to me Lords of the Admiralty. A more muddle- headed set of brass-bound apes—’ ‘My! My! My!’ Winchmore chirruped soothingly. ‘It don’t seem to have done you any good, Papa. Who were you conveyancing?’ Maddingham snapped out a ship’s name and some details of her build. ‘Oh, but that chap’s a friend of mine!’ cried Winchmore. ‘I ran across him-the-not so long ago, hugging the Scotch coast-out of his course, he said, owing to foul weather and a new type of engine-a Diesel. That’s him, ain’t it-the complete neutral?’ He mentioned an outstanding peculiarity of the ship’s rig. ‘Yes,’ said Portson. ‘Did you board him, Winchmore?’ ‘No. There’d been a bit of a blow the day before and old Ethel’s only dinghy had dropped off the hooks. But he signalled me all his symptoms. He was as communicative as-as a lady in the Promenade. (Hold on, Nephew of my Uncle! I’m going to have some more of that Bearnaise fillet.) His smell attracted me. I chaperoned him for a couple of days.’ ‘Only two days. You hadn’t anything to complain of,’ said Maddingham wrathfully. ‘I didn’t complain. If he chose to hug things, ‘twasn’t any of my business. I’m not a Purity League. ‘Didn’t care what he hugged, so long as I could lie behind him and give him first chop at any mines that were going. I steered in his wake (I really can steer a bit now, Portson) and let him...