Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (677 page)

She slipped up to the house to get it. When she came through the rain, the eyes in the head were alive with expectation. The mouth even tried to smile. But at sight of the revolver its corners went down just like Edna Gerritt’s. A tear trickled from one eye, and the head rolled from shoulder to shoulder as though trying to point out something.

‘Cassée. Tout cassée,’ it whimpered.

‘What do you say?’ said Mary disgustedly, keeping well to one side, though only the head moved.

‘Cassée,’ it repeated. ‘Che me rends. Le médicin! Toctor!’

‘Nein!’ said she, bringing all her small German to bear with the big pistol. ‘Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn.’

The head was still. Mary’s hand dropped. She had been careful to keep her finger off the trigger for fear of accidents. After a few moments’ waiting, she returned to the destructor, where the flames were falling, and churned up Wynn’s charring books with the poker. Again the head groaned for the doctor.

‘Stop that!’ said Mary, and stamped her foot. ‘Stop that, you bloody pagan!’

The words came quite smoothly and naturally. They were Wynn’s own words, and Wynn was a gentleman who for no consideration on earth would have torn little Edna into those vividly coloured strips and strings. But this thing hunched under the oak-tree had done that thing. It was no question of reading horrors out of newspapers to Miss Fowler. Mary had seen it with her own eyes on the ‘Royal Oak’ kitchen table. She must not allow her mind to dwell upon it. Now Wynn was dead, and everything connected with him was lumping and rustling and tinkling under her busy poker into red black dust and grey leaves of ash. The thing beneath the oak would die too. Mary had seen death more than once. She came of a family that had a knack of dying under, as she told Miss Fowler, ‘most distressing circumstances.’ She would stay where she was till she was entirely satisfied that It was dead — dead as dear papa in the late ‘eighties; aunt Mary in eighty-nine; mamma in ‘ninety-one; cousin Dick in ninety-five; Lady McCausland’s housemaid in ‘ninety-nine; Lady McCausland’s sister in nineteen hundred and one; Wynn buried five days ago; and Edna Gerritt still waiting for decent earth to hide her. As she thought — her underlip caught up by one faded canine, brows knit and nostrils wide — she wielded the poker with lunges that jarred the grating at the bottom, and careful scrapes round the brick-work above. She looked at her wrist-watch. It was getting on to half-past four, and the rain was coming down in earnest. Tea would be at five. If It did not die before that time, she would be soaked and would have to change. Meantime, and this occupied her, Wynn’s things were burning well in spite of the hissing wet, though now and again a book-back with a quite distinguishable title would be heaved up out of the mass. The exercise of stoking had given her a glow which seemed to reach to the marrow of her bones. She hummed — Mary never had a voice — to herself. She had never believed in all those advanced views — though Miss Fowler herself leaned a little that way — of woman’s work in the world; but now she saw there was much to be said for them. This, for instance, was
her
work — work which no man, least of all Dr. Hennis, would ever have done. A man, at such a crisis, would be what Wynn called a ‘sportsman’; would leave everything to fetch help, and would certainly bring It into the house. Now a woman’s business was to make a happy home for — for a husband and children. Failing these — it was not a thing one should allow one’s mind to dwell upon — but —

‘Stop it!’ Mary cried once more across the shadows. ‘Nein, I tell you! Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn.’

But
it was a fact. A woman who had missed these things could still be useful — more useful than a man in certain respects. She thumped like a pavior through the settling ashes at the secret thrill of it. The rain was damping the fire, but she could feel — it was too dark to see — that her work was done. There was a dull red glow at the bottom of the destructor, not enough to char the wooden lid if she slipped it half over against the driving wet. This arranged, she leaned on the poker and waited, while an increasing rapture laid hold on her. She ceased to think. She gave herself up to feel. Her long pleasure was broken by a sound that she had waited for in agony several times in her life. She leaned forward and listened, smiling. There could be no mistake. She closed her eyes and drank it in. Once it ceased abruptly.

‘Go on,’ she murmured, half aloud. ‘That isn’t the end.’

Then the end came very distinctly in a lull between two rain-gusts. Mary Postgate drew her breath short between her teeth and shivered from head to foot. ‘
That’s
all right,’ said she contentedly, and went up to the house, where she scandalised the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea, and came down looking, as Miss Fowler said when she saw her lying all relaxed on the other sofa, ‘quite handsome!’

THE BEGINNINGS

It was not part of their blood,

It came to them very late

With long arrears to make good,

When the English began to hate.

They were not easily moved,

They were icy willing to wait

Till every count should be proved,

Ere the English began to hate.

Their voices were even and low,

Their eyes were level and straight.

There was neither sign nor show,

When the English began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd,

It was not taught by the State.

No man spoke it aloud,

When the English began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred,

It will not swiftly abate,

Through the chill years ahead,

When Time shall count from the date

That the English began to hate.

LAND AND SEA TALES FOR SCOUTS AND GUIDES

CONTENTS

Winning the Victoria Cross

The Way that He Took

An Unqualified Pilot

His Gift

The Master-Cook

“Stalky”

The Hour of the Angel

The Last Lap

The Parable of Boy Jones

A Departure

The Bold ‘Prentice

The Nurses

The Son of His Father

An English School

A Counting-Out Song

PREFACE

TO ALL
to whom this little book may come —
    Health for yourselves and those you hold most dear!
Content abroad, and happiness at home,
    And — one grand secret in your private ear: —
    
Nations have passed away and left no traces,
And History gives the naked cause of it —
    One single, simple reason in all cases;
They fell because their peoples were not fit.

Now, though your Body be mis-shapen, blind,
    Lame, feverish, lacking substance, power or skill,
Certain it is that men can school the Mind
    To school the sickliest Body to her will —
    As many have done, whose glory blazes still
Like mighty flames in meanest lanterns lit:
    Wherefore, we pray the crippled, weak and ill —
Be fit — be fit! In mind at first be fit!

And, though your Spirit seem uncouth or small,
    Stubborn as clay or shifting as the sand,
Strengthen the Body, and the Body shall
    Strengthen the Spirit till she take command;
    As a bold rider brings his horse in hand
At the tall fence, with voice and heel and bit,
    And leaps while all the field are at a stand.
Be fit — be fit! In body next be fit!

        Nothing on earth — no Arts, no Gifts, nor Graces —
            No Fame, no Wealth — outweighs the want of it.
        This is the Law which every law embraces —
            Be fit — be fit! In mind and body befit!

The even heart that seldom slurs its beat —
    The cool head weighing what that heart desires —
The measuring eye that guides the hands and feet —
    The Soul unbroken when the Body tires —
    These are the things our weary world requires
Far more than superfluities of wit;
    Wherefore we pray you, sons of generous sires,
Be fit — be fit! For Honour’s sake be fit.

        There is one lesson at all Times and Places —
            One changeless Truth on all things changing writ,
        For boys and girls, men, women, nations, races —
            Be fit — be fit! And once again, be fit!

Winning the Victoria Cross

THE HISTORY
of the Victoria Cross has been told so often that it is only necessary to say that the Order was created by Queen Victoria on January 29th, 1856, in the year of the peace with Russia, when the new racing Cunard paddle-steamer
Persia
of three thousand tons was making thirteen knots between England and America, and all the world wondered at the advance of civilization and progress.

Any rank of the English Army, Navy, Reserve or Volunteer forces, from a duke to a negro, can wear on his left breast the little ugly bronze Maltese cross with the crowned lion atop and the inscription “For Valour” below, if he has only “performed some signal act of valour” or devotion to his country “in the presence of the enemy.” Nothing else makes any difference; for it is explicitly laid down in the warrant that “neither rank, nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other circumstance whatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery, shall be held to establish a sufficient claim to this Order.”

There are many kinds of bravery, and if one looks through the records of the four hundred and eleven men, living and dead, that have held the Victoria Cross before the Great War, one finds instances of every imaginable variety of heroism.

There is bravery in the early morning, when it takes great courage even to leave warm blankets, let alone walk into dirt, cold and death; on foot and on horse; empty or fed; sick or well; coolness of brain that thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all through the long, murderous day bravery of the mind that makes the jerking nerves hold still and do nothing except show a good example ; sheer reckless strength that hacks through a crowd of amazed men and comes out grinning on the other side; enduring spirit that wears through a long siege, never losing heart or manners or temper; quick, flashing bravery that heaves a lighted shell overboard or rushes the stockade while others are gaping at it; and the calculated craftsmanship that camps alone before the angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, and cleanly and methodically wipes out every soul in it.

Before the Great War, England dealt with many different peoples, and, generally speaking, all of them, Zulu, Malay, Maori, Burman, Boer, the little hillsman of the North-east Indian Frontier, Afreedi, Pathan, Biluch, the Arab of East Africa and the Sudanese of the North of Africa and the rest, played a thoroughly good game. For this we owe them many thanks; since they showed us every variety of climate and almost every variety of attack, from long-range fire to hand-to-hand scrimmage; except, of course, the ordered movements of Continental armies and the scientific ruin of towns. . . . That came later and on the largest scale.

It is rather the fashion to look down on these little wars and to call them “military promenades” and so forth, but in reality no enemy can do much more than poison your wells, rush your camp, ambuscade you, kill you with his climate, fight you body to body, make you build your own means of communication under his fire, and horribly cut up your wounded. He may do this on a large or small scale, but the value of the teaching is the same.

It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs that many of the first Crosses were won; and some of the records for the far-away Crimea and the Indian Mutiny are well worth remembering, if only to show that valour never varies.