Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition




Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the Heads of
Departments and Members of Council she knew, and the more she
thought the more she laughed, because her heart was in the game
and
it amused her. Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of
the appointments. There are some beautiful appointments in the
Civil List. Eventually, she decided that, though Tarrion was too
good for the Political Department, she had better begin by trying
to get him in there. What were her own plans to this end, does not
matter in the least, for Luck or Fate played into her hands, and
she had nothing to do but to watch the course of events and take
the credit of them.

All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through the
"Diplomatic Secrecy" craze. It wears off in time; but they all
catch it in the beginning, because they are new to the country.

The particular Viceroy who was suffering from the complaint just
then--this was a long time ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came
from
Canada, or Lord Ripon from the bosom of the English Church--had
it
very badly; and the result was that men who were new to keeping
official secrets went about looking unhappy; and the Viceroy
plumed
himself on the way in which he had instilled notions of reticence
into his Staff.

Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom of
committing
what they do to printed papers. These papers deal with all sorts
of things--from the payment of Rs. 200 to a "secret service"
native, up to rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of
Native
States, and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them
to put their houses in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or
filling offenders with pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of
that kind. Of course, these things could never be made public,
because Native Princes never err officially, and their States are,
officially, as well administered as Our territories. Also, the
private allowances to various queer people are not exactly matters
to put into newspapers, though they give quaint reading
sometimes.

When the Supreme Government is at Simla, these papers are
prepared
there, and go round to the people who ought to see them in office-
boxes or by post. The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy
quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent
despotism like Ours should never allow even little things, such as
appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper
time. He was always remarkable for his principles.

There was a very important batch of papers in preparation at that
time. It had to travel from one end of Simla to the other by hand.

It was not put into an official envelope, but a large, square,
pale-pink one; the matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper. It
was addressed to "The Head Clerk, etc., etc." Now, between "The
Head Clerk, etc., etc.," and "Mrs. Hauksbee" and a flourish, is no
very great difference if the address be written in a very bad hand,
as this was. The chaprassi who took the envelope was not more of
an idiot than most chaprassis. He merely forgot where this most
unofficial cover was to be delivered, and so asked the first
Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding down to
Annandale in a great hurry. The Englishman hardly looked, said:
"Hauksbee Sahib ki Mem," and went on. So did the chaprasss,
because that letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his
work over. There was no book to sign; he thrust the letter into
Mrs. Hauksbee's bearer's hands and went off to smoke with a
friend.

Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting some cut-out pattern things in
flimsy
paper from a friend. As soon as she got the big square packet,
therefore, she said, "Oh, the DEAR creature!" and tore it open with
a paper-knife, and all the MS. enclosures tumbled out on the floor.

Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said the batch was rather
important. That is quite enough for you to know. It referred to
some correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a
native
chief and two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she
read, for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great
Indian Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and paint,
and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid man. And Mrs.

Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was a little afraid at first, and
felt as if she had laid hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and
did not quite know what to do with it. There were remarks and
initials at the side of the papers; and some of the remarks were
rather more severe than the papers. The initials belonged to men
who are all dead or gone now; but they were great in their day.

Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought calmly as she read. Then the
value of her trove struck her, and she cast about for the best
method of using it. Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read
through
all the papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had
come
by them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the greatest woman on
earth.

Which I believe was true, or nearly so.

"The honest course is always the best," said Tarrion after an hour
and a half of study and conversation. "All things considered, the
Intelligence Branch is about my form. Either that or the Foreign
Office. I go to lay siege to the High Gods in their Temples."

He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head
of a strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest
man that the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an
appointment at Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence
of
this amused the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the
moment, he listened to the proposals of the audacious Tarrion.

"You have, I presume, some special qualifications, besides the gift
of self-assertion, for the claims you put forwards?" said the
Strong Man. "That, Sir," said Tarrion, "is for you to judge."
Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of the
more
important notes in the papers--slowly and one by one as a man
drops
chlorodyne into a glass. When he had reached the peremptory
order--
and it WAS a peremptory order--the Strong Man was troubled.

Tarrion wound up:--"And I fancy that special knowledge of this
kind
is at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign
Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a distingushed officer's
wife." That hit the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to
the Foreign Office had been by black favor, and he knew it. "I'll
see what I can do for you," said the Strong Man. "Many thanks,"
said Tarrion. Then he left, and the Strong Man departed to see
how
the appointment was to be blocked.

. . . . . . . . .

Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and
much telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important
one,
carrying only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the
Viceroy said, it was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had
to be maintained, and it was more than likely that a boy so well
supplied with special information would be worth translating. So
they translated him. They must have suspected him, though he
protested that his information was due to singular talents of his
own. Now, much of this story, including the after-history of the
missing envelope, you must fill in for yourself, because there are
reasons why it cannot be written. If you do not know about things
Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in, and you will say
it is impossible.

What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him
was:--"So,
this is the boy who 'rusked' the Government of India, is it?
Recollect, Sir, that is not done TWICE." So he must have known
something.

What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--"If
Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I
should be Viceroy of India in twenty years."

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with
tears in his eyes, was first:--"I told you so!" and next, to
herself:--"What fools men are!"

THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.

Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.

But, once in a way, there will come a day
When the colt must be taught to feel
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
and the sting of the rowelled steel.

Life's Handicap.

This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely
proud of it. Making a Tract is a Feat.

Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--
least of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's
throats. The Government sends out weird Civilians now and
again;
but McGoggin was the queerest exported for a long time. He was
clever--brilliantly clever--but his clevereness worked the wrong
way. Instead of keeping to the study of the vernaculars, he had
read some books written by a man called Comte, I think, and a
man
called Spencer, and a Professor Clifford. [You will find these
books in the Library.] They deal with people's insides from the
point of view of men who have no stomachs. There was no order
against his reading them; but his Mamma should have smacked
him.

They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with a
rarefied religion over and above his work. It was not much of a
creed. It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God
and no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the
good of Humanity.

One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful
than giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what
McGoggin said; but I suspect he had misread his primers.

I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town,
where there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all
shut in by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is
no one higher than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of
Works made everything. But in this country, where you really see
humanity--raw, brown, naked humanity--with nothing between it
and
the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth
underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come
back to
simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in
proving that there is no one in particular at the head of affairs.

For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant, the
Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above
the
Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of
the Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the
Empress be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for
her to be responsible to--the entire system of Our administration
must be wrong. Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men
are to
be excused. They are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually
"beany." When you take a gross, 'beany" horse to exercise, he
slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't see the horns.

But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get "beany" in
India. The climate and the work are against playing bricks with
words.

If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the
endings in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his
grandfathers on both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the
preaching strain came out in his mind. He wanted every one at the
Club to see that they had no souls too, and to help him to
eliminate his Creator. As a good many men told him, HE
undoubtedly
had no soul, because he was so young, but it did not follow that
his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether there was
another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
this. "But that is not the point--that is not the point!" Aurelian
used to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to
go to any particular place he might believe in. They christened
him the "Blastoderm"--he said he came from a family of that name
somewhere, in the pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter,
strove to choke him dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at
the
Club; besides being an offence to the older men. His Deputy
Commissioner, who was working on the Frontier when Aurelian
was
rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that, for a clever boy, Aurelian
was a very big idiot. And, you know, if he had gone on with his
work, he would have been caught up to the Secretariat in a few
years. He was just the type that goes there--all head, no physique
and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in McGoggin's
soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's. His
business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead
of devastating the Club with "isms."

He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men
too responsible and left too much to their honor. You can
sometimes ride an old horse in a halter; but never a colt.

McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of
his year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-
rupee cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause
of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and
fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his
ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the
rupee in June without suffering. But McGoggin was still
intellectually "beany" and proud of himself and his powers, and he
would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily.

"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam." McGoggin was a little chap.

One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been
meant
to embellish a Tract.

It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in
the dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue
clouds would let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away,
there was a faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains
breaking
over the river. One of the men heard it, got out of his chair,
listened, and said, naturally enough:--"Thank God!"

Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure
you it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric
phenomena of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore,
return
thanks to a Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"

"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and
throw
me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments." The
Blastoderm reached out to the table, took up one paper, and
jumped
as if something had stung him. Then he handed the paper over.

"As I was saying," he went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"

"Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile
Advertiser."

The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains.

We were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his
chair
and was fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more
slowly:--

"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red oak--amenable--cause--
retaining--shuttlecock--alone."

"Blastoderm's drunk," said one man. But the Blastoderm was not
drunk. He looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began
motioning
with his hands in the half light as the clouds closed overhead.

Then--with a scream:--

"What is it?--Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"

But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and--just as the lightning
shot two tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the
rain fell in quivering sheets--the Blastoderm was struck dumb. He
stood pawing and champing like a hard-held horse, and his eyes
were
full of terror.

The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard the story. "It's
aphasia," he said. "Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash
would
come." We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to
his quarters, and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to
make
him sleep.

Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like
all the arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only
once before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a
case. I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but
this sudden dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm
himself
might have said, due to "perfectly natural causes."

"He'll have to take leave after this," said the Doctor. "He won't
be fit for work for another three months. No; it isn't insanity or
anything like it. It's only complete loss of control over the
speech and memory. I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet,
though."

Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again. The first
question he asked was: "What was it?" The Doctor enlightened
him.

"But I can't understand it!" said the Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane;
but I can't be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can
I?"

"Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it,"
said the Doctor.

"But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm. "It was my
OWN mind and memory."

"I can't help it," said the Doctor; "there are a good many things
you can't understand; and, by the time you have put in my length of
service, you'll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in
this world."

The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could not understand it. He
went into the Hills in fear and trembling, wondering whether he
would be permitted to reach the end of any sentence he began.

This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. The legitimate
explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to
satisfy him. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother
wipes the milky lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly
afraid.

So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come
across
Aurelian McGoggin laying down the law on things Human--he
doesn't
seem to know as much as he used to about things Divine--put your
forefinger on your lip for a moment, and see what happens.

Don't blame me if he throws a glass at your head!

A GERM DESTROYER.

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.

As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of
State in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for
you.

This tale is a justifiable exception.

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new
Viceroy;
and each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private
Secretary, who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate
ordains. Fate looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big
and so helpless.

There was a Viceroy once, who brought out with him a turbulent
Private Secretary--a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid
passion for work. This Secretary was called Wonder--John Fennil
Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name--nothing but a string of
counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in
confidence, that he was the electro-plated figurehead of a golden
administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way
Wonder's
attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province
into his own hands. "When we are all cherubims together," said
His
Excellency once, my dear, good friend Wonder will head the
conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers or stealing
Peter's keys. THEN I shall report him."

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's
officiousness, other people said unpleasant things. Maybe the
Members of Council began it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that
there was "too much Wonder, and too little Viceroy," in that
regime. Wonder was always quoting "His Excellency." It was
"His
Excellency this," "His Excellency that," "In the opinion of His
Excellency," and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he did not heed.

He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his "dear, good
Wonder," they might be induced to leave the "Immemorial East" in
peace.

"No wise man has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the
blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the
former, and I do not believe in the latter."

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an
Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--
"Lie low."

That season, came up to Simla one of these crazy people with only
a
single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they
are
not nice to talk to. This man's name was Mellish, and he had lived
for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying
cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as
it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of
trees like a wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he
said, by "Mellish's Own Invincible Fumigatory"--a heavy violet-
black powder--"the result of fifteen years' scientific
investigation, Sir!"

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly,
especially about "conspiracies of monopolists;" they beat upon the
table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their
inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by
the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the
Hospital Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved
it, but it had something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and
what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the
Viceroy--
"Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir." So
Mellish
went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his
trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the
invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you
chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-
thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never "married."
They "contracted alliances." He himself was not paid. He
"received emoluments," and his journeys about the country were
"tours of observation." His business was to stir up the people in
Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench in a pond--and the
people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and
gasp:--
"This is Enlightenment and progress. Isn't it fine!" Then they
gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting
rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy." That was
one of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe
except that he was "one of those middle-class deities who seem
necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-
classes," and that, in all probability, he had "suggested,
designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in
Madras." Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had
experience of the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.

Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe and Mellish's was E. S. Mellish,
and they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that
looks after the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should
blunder
and drop the final "e;" that the Chaprassi should help him, and
that the note which ran: "Dear Mr. Mellish.--Can you set aside
your
other engagements and lunch with us at two to-morrow? His
Excellency has an hour at your disposal then," should be given to
Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept with pride and
delight, and at the appointed hour cantered off to Peterhoff, a big
paper-bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail pockets. He had
his chance, and he meant to make the most of it. Mellishe of
Madras had been so portentously solemn about his "conference,"
that
Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin--no A.-D. C.'s, no
Wonder,
no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he feared being
left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe of
Madras.

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he
amused
him. Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his
Fumigatory, and talked at random until tiffin was over and His
Excellency asked him to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with
Mellish
because he did not talk "shop."

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man;
beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years'

"scientific labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the
excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him
between
half-shut eyes and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but
it is an original animal." Mellish's hair was standing on end with
excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails
and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had
tipped
a bagful of his powder into the big silver ash-tray.

"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish. "Y' Excellency shall
judge for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honor."

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which
began
to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-
colored smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most
pungent and sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the
trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and
fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till
you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however,
was
used to it.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.