Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (567 page)

“Oh, he said all the proper things. Only I thought as this was England that they’d more or less have the hang of all the — general hang-together of my Idea. But I had to explain it from the beginning.”

“Ah! They’d probably mislaid the papers,” I said, and I told him the story of a three-million pound insurrection caused by a deputy Under-Secretary sitting upon a mass of green-labelled correspondence instead of reading it.

“I wonder it doesn’t happen every week,” the answered. “D’you mind my having the Agent-General to dinner again tonight? I’ll wire, and he can motor down.”

The Agent-General arrived two hours later, a patient and expostulating person, visibly torn between the pulling Devil of a rampant Colony, and the placid Baker of a largely uninterested England. But with Penfentenyou behind him he had worked; for he told us that Lord Lundie — the Law Lord was the final authority on the legal and constitutional aspects of the Great Idea, and to him it must be referred.

“Good Heavens alive!” thundered Penfentenyou. “I told you to get that settled last Christmas.”

“It was the middle of the house-party season,” said the Agent-General mildly. “Lord Lundie’s at Credence Green now — he spends his holidays there. It’s only forty miles off.”

“Shan’t I disturb his Holiness?” said Penfentenyou heavily. “Perhaps ‘my sort of questions,”‘ he snorted, “mayn’t be discussed except at midnight.”

“Oh, don’t be a child,” I said.

“What this country needs,” said Penfentenyou, “is — ” and for ten minutes he trumpeted rebellion.

“What you need is to pay for your own protection,” I cut in when he drew breath, and I showed him a yellowish paper, supplied gratis by Government, which is called Schedule D. To my merciless delight he had never seen the thing before, and I completed my victory over him and all the Colonies with a Brassey’s “Naval Annual” and a “Statesman’s Year Book.”

The Agent-General interposed with agent-generalities (but they were merely provocateurs) about Ties of Sentiment.

“They be blowed!” said Penfentenyou. “What’s the good of sentiment towards a Kindergarten?”

“Quite so. Ties of common funk are the things that bind us together; and the sooner you new nations realize it the better. What you need is an annual invasion. Then you’d grow up.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” said the Agent-General. “That’s what I am always trying to tell my people.”

“But, my dear fool,” Penfentenyou almost wept, “do you pretend that these banana-fingered amateurs at home are grown up?”

“You poor, serious, pagan man,” I retorted, “if you take ‘em that way, you’ll wreck your Great Idea.”

“Will you take him to Lord Lundie’s to-morrow?” said the Agent-General promptly.

“I suppose I must,” I said, “if you won’t.”

“Not me! I’m going home,” said the Agent-General, and departed. I am glad that I am no colony’s Agent-General.

Penfentenyou continued to argue about naval contributions till 1.15 A.M., though I was victor from the first.

At ten o’clock I got him and his correspondence into the motor, and he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over-night. I replied that I waited an apology. This he made excuse for renewed arguments, and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence of England.

For example we burst a tyre within a mile of Credence Green, and, to save time, walked into the beautifully kept little village. His eye was caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled “Calvinist Chapel,” before whose shuttered windows an Italian organ-grinder with a petticoated monkey was playing “Dolly Grey-”

“Yes. That’s it!” snapped the egoist. “That’s a parable of the general situation in England. And look at those brutes!” A huge household removals van was halted at a public-house. The men in charge were drinking beer from blue and white mugs. It seemed to me a pretty sight, but Penfentenyou said it represented Our National Attitude.

Lord Lundie’s summer resting-place we learned was a farm, a little out of the village, up a hill round which curled a high hedged road. Only an initiated few spend their holidays at Credence Green, and they have trained the householders to keep the place select. Penfentenyou made a grievance of this as we walked up the lane, followed at a distance by the organ-grinder.

“Suppose he is having a house-party,” he said: “Anything’s possible in this insane land.”

Just at that minute we found ourselves opposite an empty villa. Its roof was of black slate, with bright unweathered ridge-tiling; its walls were of blood-coloured brick, cornered and banded with vermiculated stucco work, and there was cobalt, magenta, and purest apple-green window-glass on either side of the front door. The whole was fenced from the road by a low, brick-pillared, flint wall, topped with a cast-iron Gothic rail, picked out in blue and gold.

Tight beds of geranium, calceolaria, and lobelia speckled the glass-plat, from whose centre rose one of the finest araucarias (its other name by the way is “monkey-puzzler”), that it has ever been my lot to see. It must have been full thirty feet high, and its foliage exquisitely answered the iron railings. Such bijou ne plus ultras, replete with all the amenities, do not, as I pointed out to Penfentenyou, transpire outside of England.

A hedge, swinging sharp right, flanked the garden, and above it on a slope of daisy-dotted meadows we could see Lord Lundie’s tiled and half-timbered summer farmhouse. Of a sudden we heard voices behind the tree — the fine full tones of the unembarrassed English, speaking to their equals — that tore through the hedge like sleet through rafters.

“That it is not called ‘monkey-puzzler’ for nothing, I willingly concede” — this was a rich and rolling note — ”but on the other hand — ”

“I submit, me lud, that the name implies that it might, could, would, or should be ascended by a monkey, and not that the ascent is a physical impossibility. I believe one of our South American spider monkeys wouldn’t hesitate... By Jove, it might be worth trying, if — ”

This was a crisper voice than the first. A third, higher-pitched, and full of pleasant affectations, broke in.

“Oh, practical men, there is no ape here. Why do you waste one of God’s own days on unprofitable discussion? Give me a match!”

“I’ve a good mind to make you demonstrate in your own person. Come on, Bubbles! We’ll make Jimmy climb!”

There was a sound of scuffling, broken by squeaks from Jimmy of the high voice. I turned back and drew Penfentenyou into the side of the flanking hedge. I remembered to have read in a society paper that Lord Lundie’s lesser name was “Bubbles.”

“What are they doing?” Penfentenyou said sharply. “Drunk?”

“Just playing! Superabundant vitality of the Race, you know. We’ll watch ‘em,” I answered. The noise ceased.

“My deliver,” Jimmy gasped. “The ram caught in the thicket, and — I’m the only one who can talk Neapolitan! Leggo my collar!” He cried aloud in a foreign tongue, and was answered from the gate.

“It’s the Calvinistic organ-grinder,” I whispered. I had already found a practicable break at the bottom of the hedge. “They’re going to try to make the monkey climb, I believe.”

“Here — let me look!” Penfentenyou flung himself down, and rooted till he too broke a peep-hole. We lay side by side commanding the entire garden at ten yards’ range.

“You know ‘em?” said Penfentenyou, as I made some noise or other.

“By sight only. The big fellow in flannels is Lord Lundie; the light-built one with the yellow beard painted his picture at the last Academy: He’s a swell R.A., James Loman.”

“And the brown chap with the hands?”

“Tomling, Sir Christopher Tomling, the South American engineer who built the — ”

“San Juan Viaduct. I know,” said Penfentenyou. “We ought to have had him with us.... Do you think a monkey would climb the tree?”

The organ-grinder at the gate fenced his beast with one arm as Jimmy-talked.

“Don’t show off your futile accomplishments,” said Lord Lundie. “Tell him it’s an experiment. Interest him!”

“Shut up, Bubbles. You aren’t in court,” Jimmy replied. “This needs delicacy. Giuseppe says — ”

“Interest the monkey,” the brown engineer interrupted. “He won’t climb for love. Cut up to the house and get some biscuits, Bubbles — sugar ones and an orange or two. No need to tell our womenfolk.”

The huge white figure lobbed off at a trot which would not have disgraced a boy of seventeen. I gathered from something Jimmy let fall that the three had been at Harrow together.

“That Tomling has a head on his Shoulders,” muttered Penfentenyou. “Pity we didn’t get him for the Colony. But the question is, will the monkey climb?”

“Be quick, Jimmy. Tell the man we’ll give him five bob for the loan of the beast. Now run the organ under the tree, and we’ll dress it when Bubbles comes back,” Sir Christopher cried.

“I’ve often wondered,” said Penfentenyou, “whether it would puzzle a monkey?” He had forgotten the needs of his Growing Nation, and was earnestly parting the white-thorn stems with his fingers.

   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Giuseppe and Jimmy did as they were told, the monkey following them with a wary and malignant eye.

“Here’s a discovery,” said Jimmy. “The singing part of this organ comes off the wheels.” He spoke volubly to the proprietor. “Oh, it’s so as Giuseppe can take it to his room o’ nights. And play it. D’you hear that? The organ-grinder, after his day’s crime, plays his accursed machine for love. For love, Chris! And Michael Angelo was one of ‘em!”

“Don’t jaw! Tell him to take the beast’s petticoat off,” said Sir Christopher Tomling.

Lord Lundie returned, very little winded, through a gap higher up the hedge.

“They’re all out, thank goodness!” he cried, “but I’ve raided what I could. Macrons glaces, candied fruit, and a bag of oranges.”

“Excellent!” said the world-renowned contractor.

“Jimmy, you’re the light-weight; jump up on the organ and impale these things on the leaves as I hand ‘em!”

“I see,” said Jimmy, capering like a springbuck. “Upward and onward, eh? First, he’ll reach out for — how infernal prickly these leaves are! — this biscuit. Next we’ll lure him on — (that’s about the reach of his arm) — with the marron glare, and then he’ll open out this orange. How human! How like your ignoble career, Bubbles!”

With care and elaboration they ornamented that tree’s lower branches with sugar-topped biscuits, oranges, bits of banana, and marrons glares till it looked very ape’s path to Paradise.

“Unchain the Gyascutis!” said Sir Christopher commandingly. Giuseppe placed the monkey atop of the organ, where the beast, misunderstanding, stood on his head.

“He’s throwing himself on the mercy of the Court, me lud,” said Jimmy. “No — now he’s interested. Now he’s reaching after higher things. What wouldn’t I give to have here” (he mentioned a name not unhonoured in British Art). “Ambition plucking apples of Sodom!” (the monkey had pricked himself and was swearing). “Genius hampered by Convention? Oh, there’s a whole bushelful of allegories in it!”

“Give him time. He’s balancing the probabilities,” said Lord Lundie.

The three closed round the monkey, — hanging on his every motion with an earnestness almost equal to ours. The great judge’s head — seamed and vertical forehead, iron mouth, and pike-like under-jaw, all set on that thick neck rising out of the white flannelled collar — was thrown against the puckered green silk of the organ-front as it might have been a cameo of Titus. Jimmy, with raised eyes and parted lips, fingered his grizzled chestnut beard, and I was near enough to-note, the capable beauty of his hands. Sir Christopher stood a little apart, his arms folded behind his back, one heavy brown boot thrust forward, chin in as curbed, and black eyebrows lowered to shade the keen eyes.

Giuseppe’s dark face between flashing earrings, a twisted rag of red and yellow silk round his throat, turned from the reaching yearning monkey to the pink and white biscuits spiked on the bronzed leafage. And upon them all fell the serious and workmanlike sun of an English summer forenoon.

“Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel!” said Lord Lundie suddenly in a voice that made me think of Black Caps. I do not know what the monkey thought, because at that instant he leaped off the organ and disappeared.

There was a clash of broken glass behind the tree.

The monkey’s face, distorted with passion, appeared at an upper window of the house, and a starred hole in the stained-glass window to the left of ‘the front door showed the first steps of his upward path.

“We’ve got to catch him,” cried Sir Christopher. “Come along!”

They pushed at the door, which was unlocked.

“Yes. But consider the ethics of the case,” said Jimmy. “Isn’t this burglary or something, Bubbles?”

“Settle that when he’s caught,” said Sir Christopher. “We’re responsible for the beast.”

A furious clanging of bells broke out of the empty house, followed by muffed gurglings and trumpetings.