Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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For many reasons, to be explained later, the people concerned
objected to the Bill. The Native Member in Council knew as
much
about Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross. He had said in
Calcutta that "the Bill was entirely in accord with the desires of
that large and important class, the cultivators;" and so on, and so
on. The Legal Member's knowledge of natives was limited to
English-
speaking Durbaris, and his own red chaprassis, the Sub-Montane
Tracts concerned no one in particular, the Deputy Commissioners
were
a good deal too driven to make representations, and the measure
was
one which dealt with small landholders only. Nevertheless, the
Legal Member prayed that it might be correct, for he was a
nervously
conscientious man. He did not know that no man can tell what
natives think unless he mixes with them with the varnish off. And
not always then. But he did the best he knew. And the measure
came
up to the Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods
patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played
with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and listened,
as a child listens to all the stray talk about this new freak of the
Lat Sahib's.

One day there was a dinner-party, at the house of Tods' Mamma,
and
the Legal Member came. Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till
he
heard the bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee. Then he
paddled out in his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night-
suit, and took refuge by the side of his father, knowing that he
would not be sent back. "See the miseries of having a family!"
said
Tods' father, giving Tods three prunes, some water in a glass that
had been used for claret, and telling him to sit still. Tods sucked
the prunes slowly, knowing that he would have to go when they
were
finished, and sipped the pink water like a man of the world, as he
listened to the conversation. Presently, the Legal Member, talking
"shop," to the Head of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full
name--"The Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment."
Tods
caught the one native word, and lifting up his small voice said:--
"Oh, I know ALL about that! Has it been murramutted yet,
Councillor
Sahib?"

"How much?" said the Legal Member.

"Murramutted--mended.--Put theek, you know--made nice to
please
Ditta Mull!"

The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to Tods.

"What do you know about Ryotwari, little man?" he said.

"I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know ALL about it. Ditta
Mull, and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and--oh, lakhs of my friends
tell me about it in the bazars when I talk to them."

"Oh, they do--do they? What do they say, Tods?"

Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing-gown and
said:--
"I must fink."

The Legal Member waited patiently. Then Tods, with infinite
compassion:

"You don't speak my talk, do you, Councillor Sahib?"

"No; I am sorry to say I do not," said the Legal' Member.

"Very well," said Tods. "I must fink in English."

He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very
slowly,
translating in his mind from the vernacular to English, as many
Anglo-Indian children do. You must remember that the Legal
Member
helped him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was not
equal to
the sustained flight of oratory that follows.

"Ditta Mull says:--'This thing is the talk of a child, and was made
up by fools.' But I don't think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib,"
said Todds, hastily. "You caught my goat. This is what Ditta Mull
says:--'I am not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child?
I can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good. If I am
a fool, the sin is upon my own head. For five years I take my
ground for which I have saved money, and a wife I take too, and a
little son is born.' Ditta Mull has one daughter now, but he SAYS
he will have a son, soon. And he says: 'At the end of five years,
by this new bundobust, I must go. If I do not go, I must get fresh
seals and takkus-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the
harvest, and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but to go
twice
is Jehannum.' That is QUITE true," explained Tods, gravely. "All
my friends say so. And Ditta Mull says:--'Always fresh takkus and
paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts every five
years or else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want to go? Am
I
fool? If I am a fool and do not know, after forty years, good land
when I see it, let me die! But if the new bundobust says for
FIFTEEN years, then it is good and wise. My little son is a man,
and I am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, paying
only once for the takkus-stamps on the papers, and his little son is
born, and at the end of fifteen years is a man too. But what profit
is there in five years and fresh papers? Nothing but dikh, trouble,
dikh. We are not young men who take these lands, but old
ones--not
jais, but tradesmen with a little money--and for fifteen years we
shall have peace. Nor are we children that the Sirkar should treat
us so."

Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening. The
Legal Member said to Tods: "Is that all?"

"All I can remember," said Tods. "But you should see Ditta Mull's
big monkey. It's just like a Councillor Sahib."

"Tods! Go to bed," said his father.

Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed.

The Legal Member brought his hand down on the table with a
crash--
"By Jove!" said the Legal Member, "I believe the boy is right. The
short tenure IS the weak point."

He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was
obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play with a bunnia's
monkey, by way of getting understanding; but he did better. He
made
inquiries, always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not
the hybrid, University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and,
little by little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure
concerned most intimately to give in their views, which squared
very
closely with Tods' evidence.

So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was
filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent
very
little except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the
thought from him as illiberal. He was a most Liberal Man.

After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got
the Bill recast in the tenure clause, and if Tods' Mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of
fruit and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that
crowded
the verandah. Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees
before the Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little life
of him Tods could not understand why.

In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft
of the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and,
opposite
the twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by
the
Legal Member, are the words "Tods' Amendment."

IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.

"Stopped in the straight when the race was his own!
Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!"
"Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden,
What did he carry and how was he ridden?
Maybe they used him too much at the start;
Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart."
Life's Handicap.

When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on
the
Senior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all
the jest left out. This is that tale:

Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by
landlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so
nearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was
just the least little bit in the world below it. This happened a
month before he came out to India, and five days after his one-and-
twentieth birthday. The girl was nineteen--six years older than
Dicky in the things of this world, that is to say--and, for the
time, twice as foolish as he.

Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing more fatally
easy than marriage before the Registrar. The ceremony costs less
than fifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking into a pawn-
shop. After the declarations of residence have been put in, four
minutes will cover the rest of the proceedings--fees, attestation,
and all. Then the Registrar slides the blotting-pad over the names,
and says grimly, with his pen between his teeth:--"Now you're man
and wife;" and the couple walk out into the street, feeling as if
something were horribly illegal somewhere.

But that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his undoing just as
thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" curse from the altar-
rails, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice that
breathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off. In this manner was Dicky
Hatt kidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he had
received an appointment in India which carried a magnificent
salary
from the Home point of view. The marriage was to be kept secret
for
a year. Then Mrs. Dicky Hatt was to come out and the rest of life
was to be a glorious golden mist. That was how they sketched it
under the Addison Road Station lamps; and, after one short month,
came Gravesend and Dicky steaming out to his new life, and the
girl
crying in a thirty-shillings a week bed-and-living room, in a back
street off Montpelier Square near the Knightsbridge Barracks.

But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land, where "men"
of
twenty-one were reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was
expensive. The salary that loomed so large six thousand miles
away
did not go far. Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and
remitted more than the fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square. One
hundred and thirty-five rupees out of three hundred and thirty is
not much to live on; but it was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt
could exist forever on the 20 pounds held back by Dicky, from his
outfit allowance. Dicky saw this, and remitted at once; always
remembering that Rs. 700 were to be paid, twelve months later, for
a
first-class passage out for a lady. When you add to these trifling
details the natural instincts of a boy beginning a new life in a new
country and longing to go about and enjoy himself, and the
necessity
for grappling with strange work--which, properly speaking, should
take up a boy's undivided attention--you will see that Dicky started
handicapped. He saw it himself for a breath or two; but he did not
guess the full beauty of his future.

As the hot weather began, the shackles settled on him and ate into
his flesh. First would come letters--big, crossed, seven sheet
letters--from his wife, telling him how she longed to see him, and
what a Heaven upon earth would be their property when they met.

Then some boy of the chummery wherein Dicky lodged would
pound on
the door of his bare little room, and tell him to come out and look
at a pony--the very thing to suit him. Dicky could not afford
ponies. He had to explain this. Dicky could not afford living in
the chummery, modest as it was. He had to explain this before he
moved to a single room next the office where he worked all day.
He
kept house on a green oil-cloth table-cover, one chair, one
charpoy,
one photograph, one tooth-glass, very strong and thick, a seven-
rupee eight-anna filter, and messing by contract at thirty-seven
rupees a month. Which last item was extortion. He had no
punkah,
for a punkah costs fifteen rupees a month; but he slept on the roof
of the office with all his wife's letters under his pillow. Now and
again he was asked out to dinner where he got both a punkah and
an
iced drink. But this was seldom, for people objected to
recognizing
a boy who had evidently the instincts of a Scotch tallow-chandler,
and who lived in such a nasty fashion. Dicky could not subscribe
to
any amusement, so he found no amusement except the pleasure of
turning over his Bank-book and reading what it said about "loans
on
approved security." That cost nothing. He remitted through a
Bombay Bank, by the way, and the Station knew nothing of his
private
affairs.

Every month he sent Home all he could possibly spare for his
wife--
and for another reason which was expected to explain itself shortly
and would require more money.

About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the nervous, haunting
fear
that besets married men when they are out of sorts. He had no
pension to look to. What if he should die suddenly, and leave his
wife unprovided for? The thought used to lay hold of him in the
still, hot nights on the roof, till the shaking of his heart made
him think that he was going to die then and there of heart-disease.

Now this is a frame of mind which no boy has a right to know. It
is
a strong man's trouble; but, coming when it did, it nearly drove
poor punkah-less, perspiring Dicky Hatt mad. He could tell no one
about it.

A certain amount of "screw" is as necessary for a man as for a
billiard-ball. It makes them both do wonderful things. Dicky
needed money badly, and he worked for it like a horse. But,
naturally, the men who owned him knew that a boy can live very
comfortably on a certain income--pay in India is a matter of age,
not merit, you see, and if their particular boy wished to work like
two boys, Business forbid that they should stop him! But Business
forbid that they should give him an increase of pay at his present
ridiculously immature age! So Dicky won certain rises of salary--
ample for a boy--not enough for a wife and child--certainly too
little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he and Mrs. Hatt
had
discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with this he was forced
to be content.

Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in Home drafts and
the
crushing Exchange, and the tone of the Home letters changed and
grew
querulous. "Why wouldn't Dicky have his wife and the baby out?
Surely he had a salary--a fine salary--and it was too bad of him to
enjoy himself in India. But would he--could he--make the next
draft
a little more elastic?" Here followed a list of baby's kit, as long
as a Parsee's bill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his wife and
the little son he had never seen--which, again, is a feeling no boy
is entitled to--enlarged the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half-
man letters, saying that life was not so enjoyable after all and
would the little wife wait yet a little longer? But the little
wife, however much she approved of money, objected to waiting,
and
there was a strange, hard sort of ring in her letters that Dicky
didn't understand. How could he, poor boy?

Later on still--just as Dicky had been told--apropos of another
youngster who had "made a fool of himself," as the saying is--that
matrimony would not only ruin his further chances of
advancement,
but would lose him his present appointment--came the news that
the
baby, his own little, little son, had died, and, behind this, forty
lines of an angry woman's scrawl, saying that death might have
been
averted if certain things, all costing money, had been done, or if
the mother and the baby had been with Dicky. The letter struck at
Dicky's naked heart; but, not being officially entitled to a baby,
he could show no sign of trouble.

How Dicky won through the next four months, and what hope he
kept
alight to force him into his work, no one dare say. He pounded on,
the seven-hundred-rupee passage as far away as ever, and his style
of living unchanged, except when he launched into a new filter.

There was the strain of his office-work, and the strain of his
remittances, and the knowledge of his boy's death, which touched
the
boy more, perhaps, than it would have touched a man; and, beyond
all, the enduring strain of his daily life. Gray-headed seniors,
who approved of his thrift and his fashion of denying himself
everything pleasant, reminded him of the old saw that says:

"If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art,
He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart."

And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every trouble that a
man
is permitted to know, had to laugh and agree; with the last line of
his balanced Bank-book jingling in his head day and night.

But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. There
arrived
a letter from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others if
Dicky had only known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone
with a handsomer man than you." It was a rather curious
production,
without stops, something like this:--"She was not going to wait
forever and the baby was dead and Dicky was only a boy and he
would
never set eyes on her again and why hadn't he waved his
handkerchief
to her when he left Gravesend and God was her judge she was a
wicked
woman but Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India and this
other
man loved the ground she trod on and would Dicky ever forgive
her
for she would never forgive Dicky; and there was no address to
write
to."

Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky
discovered exactly how an injured husband feels--again, not at all
the knowledge to which a boy is entitled--for his mind went back
to
his wife as he remembered her in the thirty-shilling "suite" in
Montpelier Square, when the dawn of his last morning in England
was
breaking, and she was crying in the bed. Whereat he rolled about
on
his bed and bit his fingers. He never stopped to think whether, if
he had met Mrs. Hatt after those two years, he would have
discovered
that he and she had grown quite different and new persons. This,
theoretically, he ought to have done. He spent the night after the
English Mail came in rather severe pain.

Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to work. He argued that
he had missed the pleasure of youth. He was tired, and he had
tasted all the sorrow in life before three-and-twenty. His Honor
was gone--that was the man; and now he, too, would go to the
Devil--
that was the boy in him. So he put his head down on the green oil-
cloth table-cover, and wept before resigning his post, and all it
offered.

But the reward of his services came. He was given three days to
reconsider himself, and the Head of the establishment, after some
telegraphings, said that it was a most unusual step, but, in view of
the ability that Mr. Hatt had displayed at such and such a time, at
such and such junctures, he was in a position to offer him an
infinitely superior post--first on probation, and later, in the
natural course of things, on confirmation. "And how much does
the
post carry?" said Dicky. "Six hundred and fifty rupees," said the
Head slowly, expecting to see the young man sink with gratitude
and
joy.

And it came then! The seven hundred rupee passage, and enough
to
have saved the wife, and the little son, and to have allowed of
assured and open marriage, came then. Dicky burst into a roar of
laughter--laughter he could not check--nasty, jangling merriment
that seemed as if it would go on forever. When he had recovered
himself he said, quite seriously:--"I'm tired of work. I'm an old
man now. It's about time I retired. And I will."

"The boy's mad!" said the Head.

I think he was right; but Dicky Hatt never reappeared to settle the
question.

PIG.

Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather
Ride, follow the fox if you can!
But, for pleasure and profit together,
Allow me the hunting of Man,--
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.

The Old Shikarri.

I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a
twist in his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by
whom
Nafferton was nearly slain. There may have been other causes of
offence; the horse was the official stalking-horse. Nafferton was
very angry; but Pinecoffin laughed and said that he had never
guaranteed the beast's manners. Nafferton laughed, too, though he
vowed that he would write off his fall against Pinecoffin if he
waited five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyond Skipton will
forgive
an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a South Devon man is
as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their names that
Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin. He was a peculiar
man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new
and
fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from
Mithankot to
Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the
Punjab, a
large province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had
no
intention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups,"
in
the shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making
their
lives a burden to them.

Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special
work
after their first hot weather in the country. The boys with
digestions hope to write their names large on the Frontier and
struggle for dreary places like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones
climb into the Secretariat. Which is very bad for the liver.

Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins
or Persian poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find
that
the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and
calls them to "develop the resources of the Province." These men
are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to their class. He knew a
great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and temporary
wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too much
rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All the
Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took
back her own again. Unfortunately--most unfortunately for
Pinecoffin--he was a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Nafferton
watched him, and thought about the horse. Nafferton said:--"See
me
chase that boy till he drops!" I said:--"You can't get your knife
into an Assistant Commissioner." Nafferton told me that I did not
understand the administration of the Province.

Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural
and general information side, and will supply a moderately
respectable man with all sorts of "economic statistics," if he
speaks to it prettily. For instance, you are interested in gold-
washing in the sands of the Sutlej. You pull the string, and find
that it wakes up half a dozen Departments, and finally
communicates,
say, with a friend of yours in the Telegraph, who once wrote some
notes on the customs of the gold-washers when he was on
construction-work in their part of the Empire. He may or may not
be
pleased at being ordered to write out everything he knows for your
benefit. This depends on his temperament. The bigger man you
are,
the more information and the greater trouble can you raise.

Nafferton was not a big man; but he had the reputation of being
very
earnest." An "earnest" man can do much with a Government.
There
was an earnest man who once nearly wrecked . . . but all India
knows
THAT story. I am not sure what real "earnestness" is. A very fair
imitation can be manufactured by neglecting to dress decently, by
mooning about in a dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking
office-work
home after staying in office till seven, and by receiving crowds of
native gentlemen on Sundays. That is one sort of "earnestness."

Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his earnestness,
and
for a string that would communicate with Pinecoffin. He found
both.

They were Pig. Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig.
He
informed the Government that he had a scheme whereby a very
large
percentage of the British Army in India could be fed, at a very
large saving, on Pig. Then he hinted that Pinecoffin might supply
him with the "varied information necessary to the proper inception
of the scheme." So the Government wrote on the back of the
letter:--
"Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin to furnish Mr. Nafferton with any
information in his power." Government is very prone to writing
things on the backs of letters which, later, lead to trouble and
confusion.

Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he knew that
Pinecoffin would flounce into the trap. Pinecoffin was delighted
at
being consulted about Pig. The Indian Pig is not exactly an
important factor in agricultural life; but Nafferton explained to
Pinecoffin that there was room for improvement, and
corresponded
direct with that young man.

You may think that there is not much to be evolved from Pig. It all
depends how you set to work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and
wishing to do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the
Primitive Pig, the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig.

Nafferton filed that information--twenty-seven foolscap
sheets--and
wanted to know about the distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and
how it stood the Plains in the hot weather. From this point
onwards, remember that I am giving you only the barest outlines of
the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, of the web that Nafferton
spun round Pinecoffin.

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