Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (715 page)

Worshipful Brother Burges, from the floor of the Lodge, called us all from Labour to Refreshment. Humberstall hove himself up-so very a cart-horse of a man one almost expected to hear the harness creak on his back-and descended the steps.

He said he could not stay for tea because he had promised his mother to come home for it, and she would most probably be waiting for him now at the Lodge door.

‘One or other of ‘em always comes for ‘im. He’s apt to miss ‘is gears sometimes,’ Anthony explained to me, as we followed.

‘Goes on a bust, d’you mean?’

‘‘Im! He’s no more touched liquor than ‘e ‘as women since ‘e was born. No, ‘e’s liable to a sort o’ quiet fits, like. They came on after the dump blew up at Eatables. But for them, ‘e’d ha’ been Battery Sergeant-Major.’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I couldn’t make out why he took on as mess-waiter when he got back to his guns. That explains things a bit.’

‘‘Is sister told me the dump goin’ up knocked all ‘is Gunnery instruction clean out of ‘im. The only thing ‘e stuck to was to get back to ‘is old crowd. Gawd knows ‘ow ‘e worked it, but ‘e did. He fair deserted out of England to ‘em, she says; an’ when they saw the state ‘e was in, they ‘adn’t the ‘eart to send ‘im back or into ‘ospital. They kep’ ‘im for a mascot, as you might say. That’s all dead-true. ‘Is sister told me so. But I can’t guarantee that Janeite business, excep’ ‘e never told a lie since ‘e was six. ‘Is sister told me so. What do you think?’

‘He isn’t likely to have made it up out of his own head,’ I replied.

‘But people don’t get so crazy-fond o’ books as all that, do they?’E’s made ‘is sister try to read ‘em. She’d do anythin’ to please him. But, as I keep tellin’ ‘er, so’d ‘is mother. D’you ‘appen to know anything about Jane?’

‘I believe Jane was a bit of a match-maker in a quiet way when she was alive, and I know all her books are full of match-making,’ I said. ‘You’d better look out.’

‘Oh, that’s as good as settled,’ Anthony replied, blushing.

Jane’s Marriage

JANE went to Paradise:

  That was only fair.

Good Sir Walter followed her.

  And armed her up the stair.

Henry and Tobias.

  And Miguel of Spain.

Stood with Shakespeare at the top

  To welcome Jane.

Then the Three Archangels

  Offered out of hand

Anything in Heaven’s gift

  That she might command.

Azrael’s eyes upon her.

  Raphael’s wings above.

Michael’s sword against her heart.

  Jane said: ‘Love.’

Instantly the under-

  standing Seraphim

Laid their fingers on their lips

    And went to look for him.

Stole across the Zodiac.

Harnessed Charles’s Wain.

And whispered round the Nebulae —

  ‘Who loved Jane?’

In a private limbo

  Where none had thought to look.

Sat a Hampshire gentleman

  Reading of a book.

It was called Persuasion.

  And it told the plain

Story of the love between

  Him and Jane.

He heard the question

  Circle Heaven through —

Closed the book and answered:

  ‘I did-and do!’

Quietly but speedily

  (As Captain Wentworth moved)

Entered into Paradise

  The man Jane loved!

The Portent

Horace Ode 20, Bk. V.

OH, late withdrawn from human-kind

  And following dreams we never knew

Varus, what dream has Fate assigned

  To trouble you?

Such virtue as commends the law

  Of Virtue to the vulgar horde

Suffices not. You needs must draw

  A righteous sword;

And, flagrant in well-doing, smite

  The priests of Bacchus at their fane.

Lest any worshipper invite

  The God again.

Whence public strife and naked crime

  And-deadlier than the cup you shun —

A people schooled to mock, in time.

  All law-not one.

Cease, then, to fashion State-made sin.

  Nor give thy children cause to doubt

That Virtue springs from iron within —

  Not lead without.

The Prophet and the Country

NORTH of London stretches a country called ‘The Midlands,’ filled with brick cities, all absolutely alike, but populated by natives who, through heredity, have learned not only to distinguish between them but even between the different houses; so that at meals and at evening multitudes return, without confusion or scandal, each to the proper place.

Last summer, desperate need forced me to cross that area, and I fell into a motor-licence ‘control’ which began in a market-town filled with unherded beeves carrying red numbered tickets on their rumps. An English-speaking policeman inspected my licence on a bridge, while the cattle blundered and blew round the car. A native in plain clothes lolled out an enormous mulberry-coloured tongue, with which he licked a numbered label, precisely like one of those on the behinds of the bullocks, and made to dab it on my wind-screen. I protested. ‘But it will save you trouble,’ he said. ‘You’re liable to be held up for your licence from now on. This is your protection. Everybody does it.’

‘Oh! If that’s the case — ’ I began weakly.

He slapped it on the glass and I went forward — the man was right-all the cars I met were ‘protected’ as mine was-till I reached some county or other which marked the limit of the witch-doctoring, and entered, at twilight, a large-featured land where the Great North Road ran, bordered by wide way-wastes, between clumps of old timber.

Here the car, without warning, sobbed and stopped. One does not expect the make-and-break of the magneto-that tiny two-inch spring of finest steel-to fracture; and by the time we had found the trouble, night shut down on us. A rounded pile of woods ahead took one sudden star to its forehead and faded out; the way-waste melted into the darker velvet of the hedge; another star reflected itself in the glassy black of the bitumened road; and a weak moon struggled up out of a mist- patch from a valley. Our lights painted the grass unearthly greens, and the treeboles bone-white. A church clock struck eleven, as I curled up in the front seat and awaited the progress of Time and Things, with some notion of picking up a tow towards morning. It was long since I had spent a night in the open, and the hour worked on me. Time was when such nights, and the winds that heralded their dawns, had been fortunate and blessed; but those Gates, I thought, were for ever shut...

I diagnosed it as a baker’s van on a Ford chassis, lit with unusual extravagance. It pulled up and asked what the trouble might be. The first sentence sufficed, even had my lights not revealed the full hairless face, the horn-rimmed spectacles, the hooded boots below, and the soft hat, fashioned on no block known to the Eastern trade, above, the yellow raincoat. I explained the situation. The resources of Mr. Henry Ford’s machines did not run to spare parts of my car’s type, but-it was a beautiful night for camping-out. He himself was independent of hotels. His outfit was a caravan hired these months past for tours of Great Britain. He had been alone since his wife died, of duodenal ulcer, five years ago. Comparative Ethnology was his present study. No, not a professor, nor, indeed, ever at any College, but a ‘realtor’-a dealer in real estate in a suburb of the great and cultured centre of Omaha, Nebraska. Had I ever heard of it? I had once visited the very place and there had met an unforgettable funeral- furnisher; but I found myself (under influence of the night and my Demon) denying all knowledge of the United States. I had, I said, never left my native land; but the passion of my life had ever been the study of the fortunes and future of the U.S.A.; and to this end I had joined three Societies, each of which regularly sent me all its publications.

He jerked her on to the grass beside my car, where our mingled lights slashed across the trunks of a little wood; and I was invited into his pitch-pine-lined caravan, with its overpowering electric installation, its flap-table, typewriter, drawers and lockers below the bunk. Then he spoke, every word well-relished between massy dentures; the inky- rimmed spectacles obscuring the eyes, and the face as expressionless as the unrelated voice.

He spoke in capital letters, a few of which I have preserved, on our National Spirit, which, he had sensed, was Homogeneous and in Ethical Contact throughout-Unconscious but Vitally Existent. That was his Estimate of our Racial Complex. It was an Asset, but a Democracy postulating genuine Ideals should be more multitudinously-minded and diverse in Outlook. I assented to everything in a voice that would have drawn confidences from pillar-boxes.

He next touched on the Collective Outlook of Democracy, and thence glanced at Herd Impulse, and the counter-balancing necessity for Individual Self-Expression. Here he began to search his pockets, sighing heavily from time to time.

‘Before my wife died, sir, I was rated a one-hundred-per-cent. American. I am now-but...Have you ever in Our Literature read a book called The Man Without a Country? I’m him!’ He still rummaged, but there was a sawing noise behind the face.

‘And you may say, first and last, drink did it!’ he added. The noise resumed. Evidently he was laughing, so I laughed too. After all, if a man must drink, what better lair than a caravan? At his next words I repented.

‘On my return back home after her burial, I first received my Primal Urge towards Self-Expression. Till then I had never realised myself...Ah!’

He had found it at last in a breast pocket-a lank and knotty cigar.

‘And what, sir, is your genuine Opinion of Prohibition?’ he asked when the butt had been moistened to his liking.

‘Oh!-er! It’s a-a gallant adventure!’ I babbled, for somehow I had tuned myself to listen-in to tales of other things. He turned towards me slowly.

‘The Revelation qua Prohibition that came to me on my return back home from her funeral was not along those lines. This is the Platform I stood on.’ I became, thenceforward, one of vast crowds being addressed from that Platform.

‘There are Races, sir, which have been secluded since their origin from the microbes-the necessary and beneficent microbes-of Civ’lisation. Once those microbes are introdooced to ‘em, those races re-act precisely in proportion to their previous immunity or Racial Virginity. Measles, which I’ve had twice and never laid by for, are as fatal to the Papuan as pneumonic plague to the White. Alcohol, for them, is disaster, degeneration, and death. Why? You can’t get ahead of Cause and Effect. Protect any race from its natural and God-given bacteria and you automatically create the culture for its decay, when that protection is removed. That, sir, is my Thesis.’

The unlit cigar between his lips circled slowly, but I had no desire to laugh.

‘The virgin Red Indian fell for the Firewater of the Paleface as soon as it was presented to him. For Firewater, sir, he parted with his lands, his integrity, an’ his future. What is he now? An Ethnological Survival under State Protection. You get me? Immunise, or virg’nise, the Cit’zen of the United States to alcohol, an’ you as surely redooce him to the mental status an’ outlook of that Redskin. That is the Ne- mee-sis of Prohibition. And the Process has begun, sir. Haven’t you noticed it already’-he gulped-’among Our People?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Men don’t always act as they preach, of course.’

‘You won’t abrade my National Complex. What’s the worst you’ve seen in connection with Our People-and Rum?’ The round lenses were full on me. I chanced it.

‘I’ve seen one of ‘em on a cross-Channel boat, talking Prohibition in the bar-pretty full. He had three drinks while I listened.’

‘I thought you said you’d never quit England?’ he replied.

‘Oh, we don’t count France,’ I amended hastily.

‘Then was you ever at Monte Carlo? No? Well, I was-this spring. One of our tourist steamers unloaded three hundred of ‘em at the port o’ Veel Franshe; and they went off to Monte Carlo to dine. I saw ‘em, sir, come out of the dinner-hall of that vast Hotel opp’site the Cassino there, not drunk, but all-all havin’ drink taken. In that hotel lounge after that meal, I saw an elderly cit’zen up an’ kiss eight women, none of ‘em specially young, sittin’ in a circle on the settees; the rest of his crowd applaudin’. Folk just shrugged their shoulders, and the French nigger on the door, I heard him say: “It’s only the Yanks tankin’ up.” It galled me. As a one-hundred-per-cent. American, it galled me unspeakably. And you’ve observed the same thing durin’ the last few years?’