Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (593 page)

Up to date Hugh has said nothing. He is running about playing with the bold, bad little boys, and Violet is sitting on a breakwater, trying to find out why things are as they are.

It’s a nice tale, and tales are scarce these days. Have you noticed how small and elemental is the stock of them at the world’s disposal? Men foregathered at that little seaside place, and, manlike, exchanged stories. They were all the same stories. One had heard ‘em in the East with Eastern variations, and in the West with Western extravagances tacked on. Only one thing seemed new, and it was merely a phrase used by a groom in speaking of an ill-conditioned horse: “No, sir; he’s not ill in a manner o’ speaking, but he’s so to speak generally unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing.”

I entrust this to you as a sacred gift. See that it takes root in the land. “Unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing.” Remember. It’s better than laboured explanations in the rains. And I fancy it’s raw.

And now. But I had nearly forgotten. We’re a nation of grumblers, and that’s why other people call Anglo-Indians bores. I write feelingly because M, just home on long leave, has for the second time sat on my devoted head for two hours simply and solely for the purpose of swearing at the Accountant- General. He has given me the whole history of his pay, prospects and promotion twice over, and in case I should misunderstand wants me to dine with him and hear it all for the third time. If Mwould leave the A.-G.

alone he is a delightful man, as we all know; but he’s loose in London now, button-holing English friends and quoting leave and pay- codes to them. He wants to see a Member of Parliament about something or other, and I believe he spends his nights rolled up in a’ rezai on the stairs of the India Office waiting to catch a secretary. I like the India Office. They are so beautifully casual and lazy, and their rooms look out over the Green Park, and they are never tired of admiring the view. Now and then a man comes in to report himself, and the secretaries and the under-secre- taries and the chaprassies play battledore and shuttlecock with him until they are tired.

Some time since, when I was better, more serious and earnest than I am now, I preached a jehad up and down those echoing corridors, and suggested the abolition of the India Office and the purchase of a four-pound-ten American revolving bookcase to hold all the documents on India that were of public value or could be comprehended by the public. Now I am more frivolous because I am dropping gently into that grave at Woking; and yet I believe in the bookcase. India is bowed down with too much duftar as it is, and the House of Correction, Revision, Division and Supervision cannot do her much good. I saw a committee or a council file in the other day. Only one desirable tale came to me out of that office. If you’ve heard it before stop me. It began with a cutting from an obscure Welsh paper, I think, A man — a gardener — went mad, announced that Lord Cross was the Messiah and burned himself alive on a pile of garden refuse. That’s the first part. I never could get at the second, but I am credibly informed that the work of the India Office stood still for three weeks, while the entire staff took council how to break the news to the Secretary of State. I believe it still remains unbroken.

******

Decidedly, leave in England is a disappointing thing. I’ve wandered into two stations since I wrote the last. Nothing but the labels on the bag remain — oh, and a memory of a weighing-in at an East End fishing club. That was an experience. I foregathered with a man on the top of a ‘bus, and we became great friends because we both agreed that gorge- tackle for pike was only permissible in very weedy streams. He repeated his views, which were my views, nearly ten times, and in the evening invited me to this weighing-in, at, we’ll say, rooms of the Lea and Chertsey Piscatorial Anglers’ Benevolent Brotherhood. We assembled in a room at the top of a public- house, the walls ornamented with stuffed fish and water-birds, and the anglers came in by twos and threes, and I was introduced to all of ‘em as “the gen’elman I met just now.” This seemed to be good enough for all practical purposes. There were ten and five shilling prizes, and the affable and energetic clerk of the scales behaved as though he were weighing-in for the Lucknow races. The take of the day was one pound fifteen ounces of dace and roach, about twenty fingerlings, and the winner, who is in charge of a railway bookstall, described minutely how he had caught each fish. As a matter of fact, roach-fishing in the Lea and Thames is a fine art. Then there were drinks — modest little drinks — and they called upon me for a sentiment. You know how things go at the sergeants’ messes and some of the lodges. In a moment of brilliant inspiration I gave “free fishing in the parks” and brought down the whole house. Sah! free fishing for coarse fish in the Serpentine and the Green Park water would hurt nobody and do a great deal of good to many. The stocking of the water — but what does this interest you? The Englishman moves slowly. He is just beginning to understand that it is not sufficient to set apart a certain amount of land for a lung of London and to turn people into it with “There, get along and play,” unless he gives ‘em something to play with. Thirty years hence he will almost allow cafcs and hired bands in Hyde Park.

To return for a moment to the fish club. I got away at eleven, and in darkness and despair had to make my way west for leagues and leagues across London. I was on the Mile End Road at midnight and there lost myself, and learned something more about the policeman. He is haughty in the East and always afraid that he is being chaffed. I honestly only wanted sailing directions to get homeward. One policeman said: “Get along. You know your way as well as I do.” And yet another: “You go back to the country where you corned from. You ain’t doin’ no good ‘ere!” It was so deadly true that I couldn’t answer back, and there wasn’t an expensive cab handy to prove my virtue and respectability. Next time I visit the Lea and Chertsey Affabilities I’ll find out something about trains. Meantime I keep holiday dolefully. There is not anybody to play with me. They have all gone away to their own places. Even the Infant, who is generally the idlest man in the world, writes me that he is helping to steer a ten-ton yacht in Scottish seas. When she heels over too much the Infant is driven to the O. P. side and she rights herself. The Infant’s host says: “Isn’t this bracing? Isn’t this delightful?” And the Infant, who lives in dread of a chill bringing back his Indian fever, has to say “Ye-es,” and pretend to despise overcoats. Wallah! This is a cheerful world.

Rudyard Kipling.

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGE

THIS is a slim, thin little story, but it serves to explain a great many things. I picked it up in a four-wheeler in the company of an eminent novelist, a pink-eyed young gentleman who lived on his income, and a gentleman who knew more than he ought; and I preserved it, thinking it would serve to interest you. It may be an old story, but the G.W.K.T.H.O., whom, for the sake of brevity, we will call Captain Kydd, declared that his best friend had heard it himself. Consequently, I doubted its newness more than ever. For when a man raises his voice and vows that the incident occurred opposite his own Club window, all the listening world know that they are about to hear what is vulgarly called a cracker. This rule holds good in London as well as in Lahore. When we left the house of the highly distinguished politician who had been entertaining us, we stepped into a London Particular, which has nothing whatever to do with the story, but was interesting from the little fact that we could not see our hands before our faces. The black, brutal fog had turned each gas-jet into a pin-prick of light, visible only at six inches range. There were no houses, there were no pavements. There were no points of the compass. There were only the eminent novelist, the young gentleman with the pink eyes, Captain Kydd and myself, holding each other’s shoulders in the gloom of Tophet. Then the eminent novelist delivered himself of an epigram.

“Let’s go home,” said he.

“Let us try,” said Captain Kydd, and incontinently fell down an area into somebody’s kitchen yard and disappeared into chaos. When he had climbed out again we heard a something on wheels swearing even worse than Captain Kydd was, all among the railings of a square. So.we shouted, and presently a four-wheeler drove gracefully on to the pavement.

“I’m trying to get ‘ome,” said the cabby. “But if you gents make it worth while . . . though heaven knows ‘ow we ever shall. Guess ‘arf a crown apiece might . . . and any’ow I won’t promise anywheres in particular.”

The cabby kept his word nobly. He did not find anywheres in particular, but he found several places. First he discovered a pavement kerb and drove pressing his wheel against it till we came to a lamp-post, and that we hit grievously. Then he came to what ought to have been a corner, but was a ‘bus, and we embraced the thing amid terrific language. Then he sailed out into nothing at all — blank fog — and there he commended himself to heaven and his horse to the other place, while the eminent novelist put his head out of the window and gave directions. I begin to understand now why the eminent novelist’s villains are so lifelike and his plots so obscure. He has a marvellous breadth of speech, but no ingenuity in directing the course of events. We drove into the island of refuge near the Bromp- ton Oratory just when he was telling the cabby to be sure and avoid the Regents’ Park Canal.

Then we began to talk about the weather and Mister Gladstone. If an Englishman is unhappy he always talks about Mister Gladstone in terms of reproof. The eminent novelist was a socialistic-Neo-Plastic-Unionistic- Demagoglot Radical of the Extreme Left, and that is the latest novelty of the thing yet invented. He withdrew his head to answer Captain Kydd’s arguments, which were forcible. “Well, you’ll admit he’s all sorts of a madman,” said Captain Kydd sweetly.

“He’s a saint,” said the eminent novelist, “and he moves in an atmosphere that you and those like you cannot breathe.”

“Yes, I always said it was a pretty thick fog. Now I know it’s as thick as this one. I say, we’re on the pavement again; we shall be in a shop in a minute,” said Captain Kydd.

But I wanted to see the eminent novelist fight, so I reintroduced Mister Gladstone while the cab crawled up a wall.

“It’s not exactly a wholesome atmosphere,” said Captain Kydd when the novelist had finished speaking. “That reminds me of a story — perfectly true story. In the old days, before he went off his chump — ”

“Yah-h-h!” said the eminent novelist, wrapping himself in his Inverness.

“ — went off his nut, he used to consort a good deal with his friends on his own side — visit ‘em, y’ know, and deliver addresses out of their own bedroom windows, and steal their postcards, and generally be friendly. Well, one man he stayed with had a house, a country house, y’ know, and in the garden there was a path which was supposed to divide Kent and Surrey or some counties. They led the old man forth for his walk, y’ know, and followed him in gangs to hear that the weather was fine, and of course his host pointed out the path, the old man took in the situation, and put one I daresay they had strewn rose-leaves on it, or spread it with homespun trousers. Anyhow, one leg on one side of the path and the other on the other, and with one of those wonderful flashes of humour that come to him when he chooses to frisk among his friends, he said: ‘Now I am in Kent and in Surrey at the same time.’ “

Captain Kydd ceased speaking as the cab tried to force a way into the South Kensington Museum.

“Well, what’s there in that?” said the eminent novelist.

“Oh, nothing much. Let’s see how it goes afterwards. Mrs. Gladstone, who was close behind him, turned round and whispered to the hostess in an ecstatic shriek: ‘Oh, Mrs. Whateverhernamewas, you will plant a tree there, won’t you?’ “

“By Jove!” said the young gentleman with the pink eyes.

“I don’t believe it,” said the eminent novelist.

I said nothing, but it seemed very likely. Captain Kydd laughed: “Well, I don’t consider that sort of atmosphere exactly wholesome, y’ know.”

And when the cab had landed us in the drinking-fountain in High Street, Kensington, and the horse fell down, and the cabby collected our half-crowns and gave us his beery blessing, and I had to grope my way home on foot, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be interested in that anecdote. As I have said, it explains a great deal more than appears at first sight.

A DEATH IN THE CAMP

TWO awful catastrophes have occurred. One Englishman in London is dead, and I have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends.

He was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an architect, and immensely respected. That was all I knew about him till I began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer them up and make them forget the fog.

“Hush!” said a man and his wife. “Don’t you know he died yesterday of a sudden attack of pneumonia? Isn’t it shocking?”

“Yes,” said I vaguely. “Aw’fly shocking. Has he left his wife provided for?”

“Oh, he’s very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. But just think — it was only in the next street it happened!” Then I saw that their grief was not for Strangeways, deceased, but for themselves.

“How old was he?” I said.

“Nearly seventy, or maybe a little over.”

“About time for a man to rationally expect such a thing as death,” I thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple lived.