The Rupa Book of Heartwarming & The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories Read online

  THE RUPA BOOK

  OF

  HEARTWARMING STORIES

  By the same author:

  Angry River

  A Little Night Music

  A Long Walk for Bina

  Hanuman to the Rescue

  Ghost Stories from the Raj

  Strange Men, Strange Places

  The India I Love

  Tales and Legends from India

  The Blue Umbrella

  Ruskin Bond's Children's Omnibus

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-I

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-II

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-III

  Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories

  The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure

  The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond's Himalayan Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories

  The Rupa Laughter Omnibus

  The Rupa Book of Scary Stories

  The Rupa Book of Haunted Houses

  The Rupa Book of Travellers' Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories

  The Rupa Book of Nightmare Tales

  The Rupa Book of Shikar Stories

  The Rupa Book of Love Stories

  The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories

  The Rupa Book of Heartwarming Stories

  The Rupa Book of Thrills and Spills

  THE RUPA BOOK

  OF

  HEARTWARMING STORIES

  Edited by

  RUSKIN BOND

  Published by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2005

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Edition copyright © Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2005

  Introduction copyright © Ruskin Bond 2005

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-81-291-1597-3

  Third impression 2014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  My Date with Graybeard

  Robin Collins

  The Big Drum

  William Gerhardi

  That Which Remained

  Bartimeus

  The Last Leaf

  O. Henry

  My Friend, the Mouse

  Robert Fontaine

  Primula

  Geoffrey Moss

  The Beggar

  Anton Chekhov

  Without a Title

  Anton Chekhov

  Orange Blossoms (A Story from Sri Lanka)

  J.A.R. Grenier

  The Tree Lover

  Ruskin Bond

  A Cricket Match of Long Ago

  Edmund Blunden

  The Little Ghost

  Hugh Walpole

  The Tale of a Child

  Josef Bard

  Prisoner of the Sand

  Antoine De Saint Exupery

  A Journey with Dickens

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

  INTRODUCTION

  This is the fifteenth anthology I have compiled and edited for Rupa. It has been a stimulating experience, presenting to my readers the work of outstanding writers—some great, others unjustly neglected or forgotten. For this collection I have selected stories that warm the heart, restore one's faith in the goodness of human nature, and capture something of the joy of being alive.

  Kind readers are always suggesting titles for my books. Someone suggested that I call this one Kofta Curry for the Soul while a young reader from the South came up with Aloo Bonda for Everyone. Both appetising titles but eventually I settled for plain and simple Heartwarming Stories—for that is what they truly are…

  And these are stories that you can turn to, again and again, as one turns to a favourite piece of music or a much-loved picture. I have read several of them twice over, and my pleasure does not diminish. Familiarity breeds affection!

  I keep returning to the 'Bartimeus' story, 'That Which Remained'. It always moves me, especially that last scene when all seems hopeless until three softly spoken words change everything. 'Bartimeus,' wrote almost entirely about sailors and the sea. Unlike most modern writers, he was a shy man who shunned personal publicity, and he adopted a pen-name to conceal his real identity. It took me some time to discover his true persona: he was Paymaster Commander L.A. de Costa Ricci. Rather a handful, that name! He was wise to assume a nom-de-plume.

  Another shy, retiring writer was William Sydney Porter, who took the pen-name O. Henry. He, more than any short story writer, was responsible for that 'twist in the tail', a technique taken up by many later writers.

  O. Henry was familiar with the joys and sorrows of ordinary people striving to succeed, or simply to survive, in the big cities of America. His stories have certainly survived, although he wrote many of them for newspapers and magazines. Never in robust health, he died at the age of 43, a jest on his lips. 'Don't turn down the light,' he said to those beside his bed; and then added the words of a popular song, 'I'm afraid to go home in the dark.'

  Ghosts in fiction are usually evil, malignant spirits, harbingers of doom, and it is difficult to write a successful story about a harmless, ineffective ghost. But Hugh Walpole did just that. Apart from being a brilliant writer—and you must read his novel Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill to find him at his best—he was a man of a sweet and gentle disposition, and this is reflected in his story of a little ghost who needed protection.

  Edmund Blunder was best known as a poet, but his first love was cricket. In 'A Cricket Match of Long Ago' he captures the atmosphere of a game of cricket in a peaceful English village between the Wars. But more than the cricket, it's the quaint assemblage of characters who make for a memorable occasion.

  No anthology of heartwarming tales would be complete without a couple of stories from the pen of Anton Chekhov, truly the grand master of the short story. All his stories are written with compassion and a delight in the incongruities of human behaviour.

  We have gone through some famous names, but I have to confess that I had never heard of Josef Bard until I discovered his wonderful story, 'The Tale of a Child,' in an old anthology. Bard was born in Budapest, and wrote in French, English and Hungarian. This short classic was written in English. It captures perfectly the mood, behaviour and dreams of three adolescent boys who go swimming in the Danube even though, like many of our rivers today, it 'stinks'!

  Robert Nathan was best known for his autobiographical novel, The Happy Time, which describes the life and times of a French Canadian family at the turn of the last century. It was turned into a successful play and a film. 'My Friend the Mouse' is an extract from this warm and charming book.

  And that brings us to Antoine Saint-Exupery's 'Prisoner of the Sand', which I was tempted to re-title 'The Gift of Water'. But you cannot tamper with a work of art, and that is what this story is—personal experience transformed into a literary tour-de-force. Saint-Exupery has been called the Joseph Conrad of the air; and like Conrad, his skills as a pilot and as a writer were combined with a profound concern for man's destiny. Born in 1900, he became a full-fledged pilot at the age of twenty-on
e. He published his first book when he was twenty-six. His most memorable works were Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars. In the summer of 1944, while returning from a reconnaissance flight pursued by German planes, he disappeared over the Mediterranean.

  In this intense but poetic narration of his struggle for survival after a plane crash in the desert, Saint Exupery expresses his affection for all mankind and his joy in the gift of life.

  'Water, thou has no taste, no colour, no odour; cannot be defined; art relished while ever mysterious…. Of the riches that exist in this world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate—thou so pure within the bowels of the earth!'

  Reading these stories again has been a moving experience for me, as I hope it will be for you, dear reader.

  Ruskin Bond

  15 April, 2005

  MY DATE WITH GRAYBEARD

  ROBIN COLLINS

  When I was a boy in Natal, South Africa, the farmers of the district organised a hunt each year in the Umzimkulu valley, using a hundred native beaters and their dogs. A variety of wildlife finds refuge in the valley—monkeys, baboons and an occasional leopard—but the creature most sought after is the wily gray bushbuck. With his speed and cunning, his ferocity when wounded or cornered, he is a quarry worthy of any hunter's gun.

  There was one buck we called Graybeard, a magnificent old-timer who year after year survived the hunt. I was ten years old when I had my first glimpse of him, stepping proudly across a small clearing. His horns were long and sharp. His fur was a deep gray mottled with white. It was every hunter's desire to kill him, and from that day I could think of little else. I somehow felt that my initiation into manhood would consist of claiming Graybeard for my own.

  My father had insisted that I wait unit I was fourteen before I could go hunting, so I spent the next three years in a fever of anxiety, fearful that some other hunter would shoot my buck. But Graybeard survived. Once he followed silently behind a younger buck and, as it fell under a blast of shot, he jumped the clearing before the hunter could reload. Once he used a pair of legally protected does to shield him past the line of fire.

  The third year the hunters chose their gun stations between the cliffs and the river so cunningly that it seemed as if no game could slip through. After the native beaters dispersed into the bush I heard their excited cries as they sighted Graybeard. I was perched on the cliffs, and from my vantage point I watched him run from their dogs straight toward the concealed hunters. I clenched my fists as I waited for the shot which would rob me of him. Then suddenly he turned, scattered the pursuing dogs and made straight for the line of beaters, who hurled their spears and knobbed throwing sticks at him. Just when I feared he had been struck down, I heard the yelping dogs pursuing him into the bush behind the beaters, and I realised that he had broken through to safety.

  That evening the farmers could talk of nothing except how Graybeard had escaped into the bush for another year. I smiled, for next year I would be old enough to take my place in the line of guns.

  All through that year I cherished one bright vision—the picture of myself, a skinny boy of fourteen, standing astride the magnificent creature. When my father offered me my first shotgun I rejected the light 20-gauge which would have suited my frail build and chose instead a heavy 12-gauge so that I could have a weapon worthy of Graybeard. On the day of the hunt I wanted to rush straight to the valley at dawn, but my father forced me to eat breakfast. 'Graybeard will still be there,' he said pushing me down in my chair.

  In the gray light of early morning we congregated in the valley. The beaters were dispatched to the top end and we hunters drew lots for positions. The best positions were close to the cliffs, because bushbucks tend to climb in their effort to escape the pursuing dogs. To my bitter disappointment I drew a position down near the river. Then I heard my father, who had drawn a good stand, say, 'I'll change with my boy. I'd like him to have a good place for his first hunt.' As he walked past me he patted my shoulder. 'See that you get the old one,' he whispered with a smile.

  I scrambled up the steep slope, determined to outdistance the others and find the best possible place of concealment. I selected an outcrop of broken boulders, well screened by bush, which gave me a line of fire across a small clearing. For a long while there was no sound. Then came the shouts of the beaters, the sound of sticks beaten against trees and the yelping of dogs.

  First came a doe, blundering past me in panic-stricken flight, then a young buck. I let him pass. Graybeard might be following, and I was determined not to betray my position. But there was no further movement, and I wondered if Graybeard had crossed lower down. Then a trembling of the brush caught my eye. Not ten yards from me, Graybeard stepped to the edge of the trees, silently inspecting the clearing. I had only to lower the muzzle slightly to cover him. The ambition of my youthful life was at the point of achievement. Graybeard stood motionless before me. I had only to pull the trigger to bring him down.

  Yet something made me hold my fire. The buck had turned his head now, and his great ears twitched to catch the baying of the dogs. His moist nose trembled, and his eyes, softly luminous, alert without being fearful, seemed to stare right at me. There was pride and dignity in every line of his body, and I knew suddenly that I could not destroy him. For several breathless moments he remained where he was, and then a vagary of the breeze carried my man-smell to him. In two huge leaps he crossed the clearing and was gone. I stayed where I was, silent and enraptured.

  When the drive was over, my father came up the slope. I unloaded my gun and pushed the shells back into the loops on my belt. My father's quick eye took in the details of the stand I had occupied and the full belt of cartridges. 'No luck?' he asked.

  I shook my head.

  'That's funny,' he said. 'The boys sighted Graybeard coming in this direction, and none of the other guns saw him.'

  I looked down at the ground. My reticence must have aroused his suspicions, for he walked across the clearing and paused beside the deep imprints the buck had made in the mist earth as he jumped. I walked away, unable to face the condemnation which I imagined on my father's face.

  As we drove home, the thought of old Graybeard gathering his does together for another year of safety gave me a thrill of pleasure. But my father's silence had put a constraint upon us. Finally he asked. 'What happened, son?'

  Shyly, stumblingly, I tried to tell him. I described Graybeard as I had seen him—majestic and fearless. I tried to explain why, when the moment had come to fire. I knew I could not buy the hunter's badge at the price of so much splendour.

  My father was silent for a moment and then he said slowly, 'You've learned something today, son—something that many men live a lifetime without knowing.' He put an arm around my shoulders. 'You've learned compassion,' he said softly.

  THE BIG DRUM

  WILLIAM GERHARDI

  The brass band played Im Kopfle zwei Augle, and it seemed to her that the souls of these men were like notes of this music, crying for something elusive, for something in vain. To blare forth one's love on a brass trumpet! An earnest of one's high endeavour fallen short through the inadequate matter of brass; but withal in these abortive notes one felt the presence of the heights the instrument would reach, alas, if it but could!

  It touched her to the heart. She would have liked her Otto to play the trumpet instead of the big drum. It seemed more romantic. Otto was not a bit romantic. He was a soldier all right, but he looked more like a man who had started life as a shoemaker's apprentice, had grown old, and was still a shoemaker's apprentice.

  The band played well—a compact synthetic body—but Otto was a forlorn figure who watched the proceedings with sustained and patient interest and was suffered by them, every now and then, to raise his drumstick and give a solitary, judicious 'Bang!' And he—a tall gaunt man—seemed as though he were ashamed of his small part.

  And as she watched him she felt a pang of pity for herself: wedded to him, she would be forgotten, while life, i
ndifferent, strode by; and no one in the world would care whether she had her share of happiness before she died. And the music brought this out acutely, as if along the hard stone-paved indifference of life it dragged, dragged on excruciatingly its living bleeding soul. It spoke of loneliness, of laughter, of the pathos, pity and futility of life.

  She watched them. The bayonets at their side. The military badges of rank. The hard discipline. And the music seemed to say, 'Stop! What are you doing? Why are you doing this?' And thoughts flowed into her mind. Of soldiers dreaming on a Sunday afternoon.

  A fierce old corporal, of whom everyone was afraid, talking to her of children and of daisies. Soldiers who, too, had dreams in long waves—of what? She did not know—but not this. And the men who stood up and blew the brass trumpets seemed to say, and the shining trumpets themselves seemed to say: 'We were not born for the Army; we were born for something better—though heaven only knows what it is!'

  That was so. Undeniably so. Yet she wished it were otherwise. It helped to make allowances for Otto. Whatever else he lacked, it made her think at least he had a soul. But to be wedded for life to the big drum! She did not fancy the idea. It didn't seem a proper career.

  But Otto showed no sing of wanting to 'get on'—even in the orchestra. The most exasperating thing about it all was that Otto showed no sign of even trying! She had asked him if he would not, in time, 'move on' and take over—say, the double-bass: He did not seem to think it either feasible or necessary. Or necessary! He had been with the big drum for close on twelve years. 'It's a good drum,' he had said. And that was all.

  There was no… 'go' in him. That was it: no go. It was no use denying it. As she watched him—gaunt and spectacled—she wished Otto were more of a man and less of an old maid. The conductor, a boozer with a fat red face full of pimples, some dead and dried up, others still flourishing, was a gallant—every inch a man.

  He had the elasticity and suppleness and military alertness of the continental military man. She could not tell his rank from the stripes on his sleeves, but thought he must be a major. His heels were high and tipped with indiarubber, and so were straight and smart, but his trousers lacked the foot-strap to keep them in position—poor dilapidated Austrian Army! How low it had sunk! Nevertheless they were tight and narrow and showed off the major's calves to advantage. He wore a pince-nez, but a rimless kind, through which gazed a pair of not altogether innocent eyes. But a man and a leader of men.