Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work
then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden
brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew,
marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into
confusion past all hope of mending. Next morning I came upon
Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had
wrought.

Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with
him
for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish using bad
language the while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at
effacing
every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with
a tearful apologetic face that he said, "Talaam Tahib," when I
came
home from the office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din
informing Muhammad Din that by my singular favor he was
permitted to
disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and
fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse
the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his
humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always
fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by
the
bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and
feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls--always alone and always
crooning to himself.

A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of
his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build
something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor
was I disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour,
and his crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in
dust. It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was
two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace
was
never completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-
drive, and no "Talaam Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown
accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next
day,
Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever
and needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left
Imam Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it,
I
met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din,
accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in
a
white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din.

ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS.

If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care
that you do not fall in.
Hindu Proverb.

Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things
that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his
career, is an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important
and business-like, and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a
touch of liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn over
his lost love, and be very happy in a tender, twilight fashion.

Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him. It was
four years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it.

She had married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning,
she had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything
more
than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in
his welfare." This startlingly new and original remark gave
Hannasyde something to think over for two years; and his own
vanity
filled in the other twenty-four months. Hannasyde was quite
different from Phil Garron, but, none the less, had several points
in common with that far too lucky man.

He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a
well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the
using. It brought him happily through the Simla season.
Hannasyde
was not lovely. There was a crudity in his manners, and a
roughness
in the way in which he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not
attract the other sex to him. Even if he had cast about for their
favor, which he did not. He kept his wounded heart all to himself
for a while.

Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope
from
the Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing
up
the hill, one September morning between calling hours, when a
'rickshaw came down in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living,
breathing image of the girl who had made him so happily unhappy.

Hannasyde leaned against the railing and gasped. He wanted to
run
downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went
forward with most of his blood in his temples. It was impossible,
for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl
he had known. She was, he discovered later, the wife of a man
from
Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she
had
come up to Simla early in the season for the good of her health.

She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of
the season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla again,
her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde,
raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel
with himself for one measured hour. What he decided upon was
this;
and you must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for
the
old love, and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and
enjoy himself, affected the decision. Mrs. Landys-Haggert would
never in all human likelihood cross his path again. So whatever he
did didn't much matter. She was marvellously like the girl who
"took a deep interest" and the rest of the formula. All things
considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of Mrs.

Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a very little time--to
make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again. Every one is
more or less mad on one point. Hannasyde's particular monomania
was
his old love, Alice Chisane.

He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as
much
as he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to
interviews, the facilities which Simla offers are startling. There
are garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons
at Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides
rides and walks, which are matters of private arrangement.

Hannasyde had started with the intention of seeing a likeness, and
he ended by doing much more. He wanted to be deceived, he
meant to
be deceived, and he deceived himself very thoroughly. Not only
were
the face and figure, the face and figure of Alice Chisane, but the
voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so were the turns
of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of gait
and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the same. The
turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes at the end
of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over the saddle
to
hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most marvellous
of
all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next room, while
Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note for
note,
with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--"Poor
Wandering One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for
Hannasyde
in the dusk of an English drawing-room. In the actual woman
herself--in the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she
and Alice Chisane being cast in different moulds. But all that
Hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was this
maddening
and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner. He was
bent
on making a fool of himself that way; and he was in no sort
disappointed.

Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always
pleasant to
any sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of
the
world, could make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.

He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man
habitually--to meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes.

Anything she told him to do was law; and he was, there could be
no
doubting it, fond of her company so long as she talked to him, and
kept on talking about trivialities. But when she launched into
expression of her personal views and her wrongs, those small
social
differences that make the spice of Simla life, Hannasyde was
neither
pleased nor interested. He didn't want to know anything about
Mrs.

Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in the past--she had travelled
nearly all over the world, and could talk cleverly--he wanted the
likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and her voice in his ears.

Anything outside that, reminding him of another personality jarred,
and he showed that it did.

Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert
turned
on him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. "Mr.

Hannasyde," said she, "will you be good enough to explain why
you
have appointed yourself my special cavalier servente? I don't
understand it. But I am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that
you don't care the least little bit in the world for ME." This
seems to support, by the way, the theory that no man can act or tell
lies to a woman without being found out. Hannasyde was taken
off
his guard. His defence never was a strong one, because he was
always thinking of himself, and he blurted out, before he knew
what
he was saying, this inexpedient answer:--"No more I do."

The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Landys-
Haggert laugh. Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's
lucid explanation, Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of
scorn in her voice:--"So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to
hang the rags of your tattered affections on, am I?"

Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted
himself generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane,
which
was unsatisfactory. Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that
Mrs.

Haggert had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde.

Only . . . . only no woman likes being made love through instead of
to--specially on behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing.

Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular
exhibition of himself. He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in
the arid wastes of Simla.

When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place
and Mrs.

Haggert to hers. "It was like making love to a ghost," said
Hannasyde to himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my
work." But he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-
Chisane ghost; and he could not be certain whether it was Haggert
or
Chisane that made up the greater part of the pretty phantom.

. . . . . . . . .

He got understanding a month later.

A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a
heartless Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to
the
other. You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy
till he or she dies. There was a case once--but that's another
story.

Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the
Frontier at
two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step,
from Dindigul to his station. He dropped Mrs. Haggert at
Lucknow,
to stay with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the
Chutter Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home
a
little comfortable. Lucknow was Hannasyde's station, and Mrs.

Haggert stayed a week there. Hannasyde went to meet her. And
the
train came in, he discovered which he had been thinking of for the
past month. The unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. The
Lucknow week, with two dances, and an unlimited quantity of
rides
together, clinched matters; and Hannasyde found himself pacing
this
circle of thought:--He adored Alice Chisane--at least he HAD
adored
her. AND he admired Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like
Alice
Chisane. BUT Mrs. Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice
Chisane, being a thousand times more adorable. NOW Alice
Chisane
was "the bride of another," and so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a
good and honest wife too. THEREFORE, he, Hannasyde, was . . . .

here he called himself several hard names, and wished that he had
been wise in the beginning.

Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind,
she
alone knows. He seemed to take an unqualified interest in
everything connected with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-
Chisane likeness, and he said one or two things which, if Alice
Chisane had been still betrothed to him, could scarcely have been
excused, even on the grounds of the likeness. But Mrs. Haggert
turned the remarks aside, and spent a long time in making
Hannasyde
see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been to him because of
her
strange resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde groaned in his
saddle and said, "Yes, indeed," and busied himself with
preparations
for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and miserable.

The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her
off
at the Railway Station. She was very grateful for his kindness and
the trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and
sympathetically
as one who knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And
Hannasyde abused the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the
people on the platform, and prayed that the roof might fall in and
slay him.

As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of
the
window to say goodbye:--"On second thoughts au revoir, Mr.

Hannasyde. I go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you
in
Town."

Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly:--"I
hope to Heaven I shall never see your face again!"

And Mrs. Haggert understood.

WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE.

I closed and drew for my love's sake,
That now is false to me,
And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss,
And set Dumeny free.

And ever they give me praise and gold,
And ever I moan my loss,
For I struck the blow for my false love's sake,
And not for the men at the Moss.

Tarrant Moss.

One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of
atmosphere in the painter's sense. There are no half-tints worth
noticing. Men stand out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone
them down, and nothing to scale them against. They do their
work,
and grow to think that there is nothing but their work, and nothing
like their work, and that they are the real pivots on which the
administration turns. Here is an instance of this feeling. A half-
caste clerk was ruling forms in a Pay Office. He said to me:--"Do
you know what would happen if I added or took away one single
line
on this sheet?" Then, with the air of a conspirator:--"It would
disorganize the whole of the Treasury payments throughout the
whole
of the Presidency Circle! Think of that?"

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own
particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and
kill
themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when
the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils
through a district of five thousand square miles.

There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had
grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by
irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge
only
the Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news
abroad. This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth,
in
those days, to say:--"Wressley knows more about the Central
Indian
States than any living man." If you did not say this, you were
considered one of mean undertanding.

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-
tribal complications across the Border is of more use; but in
Wressley's time, much attention was paid to the Central Indian
States. They were called "foci" and "factors," and all manner of
imposing names.

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. When
Wressley
lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
of
Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were
"assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political
contingencies." In most big undertakings, one or two men do the
work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations
begin to fall.

Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm,
and, to
keep him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he
was
made much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was.

He did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but
what
he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite
so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of India
as Wressley of the Foreign Office. There might be other good
men,
but the known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley
of the
Foreign Office. We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly
when to "gentle" a fractious big man and to hearten up a collar-
galled little one, and so keep all his team level. He conveyed to
Wressley the impression which I have just set down; and even
tough
men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy's praise. There was a
case once--but that is another story.

All India knew Wressley's name and office--it was in Thacker and
Spink's Directory--but who he was personally, or what he did, or
what his special merits were, not fifty men knew or cared. His
work
filled all his time, and he found no leisure to cultivate
acquaintances beyond those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots
in
their 'scutcheons. Wressley would have made a very good Clerk in
the Herald's College had he not been a Bengal Civilian.

Upon a day, between office and office, great trouble came to
Wressley--overwhelmed him, knocked him down, and left him
gasping as
though he had been a little school-boy. Without reason, against
prudence, and at a moment's notice, he fell in love with a
frivolous, golden-haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall on
a
high, rough waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap crammed over her
eyes. Her name was Venner--Tillie Venner--and she was
delightful.

She took Wressley's heart at a hand-gallop, and Wressley found
that
it was not good for man to live alone; even with half the Foreign
Office Records in his presses.

Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was slightly ridiculous.

He did his best to interest the girl in himself--that is to say, his
work--and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear
interested in what, behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's
Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one
little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have
married on that sort of error before now.

Providence, however, had care of Wressley. He was immensely
struck
with Miss Venner's intelligence. He would have been more
impressed
had he heard her private and confidential accounts of his calls. He
held peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls. He said that the
best work of a man's career should be laid reverently at their feet.

Ruskin writes something like this somewhere, I think; but in
ordinary life a few kisses are better and save time.

About a month after he had lost his heart to Miss Venner, and had
been doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his
"Native Rule in Central India" struck Wressley and filled him with
joy. It was, as he sketched it, a great thing--the work of his
life--a really comprehensive survey of a most fascinating subject--
to be written with all the special and laboriously acquired
knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office--a gift fit for an
Empress.

He told Miss Venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped,
on
his return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance. Would
she wait? Certainly she would. Wressley drew seventeen hundred
rupees a month. She would wait a year for that. Her mamma
would
help her to wait.

So Wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents,
about a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to
Central India with his notion hot in his head. He began his book in
the land he was writing of. Too much official correspondence had
made him a frigid workman, and he must have guessed that he
needed
the white light of local color on his palette. This is a dangerous
paint for amateurs to play with.

Heavens, how that man worked! He caught his Rajahs, analyzed
his
Rajahs, and traced them up into the mists of Time and beyond,
with
their queens and their concubines. He dated and cross-dated,
pedigreed and triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove,
strung, sorted, selected, inferred, calendared and counter-
calendared for ten hours a day. And, because this sudden and new
light of Love was upon him, he turned those dry bones of history
and
dirty records of misdeeds into things to weep or to laugh over as he
pleased. His heart and soul were at the end of his pen, and they
got into the link. He was dowered with sympathy, insight, humor
and
style for two hundred and thirty days and nights; and his book was
a
Book. He had his vast special knowledge with him, so to speak;
but
the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry and the power of
the output, were beyond all special knowledge. But I doubt
whether
he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may have lost
some happiness. He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for himself.

Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.

Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in India where
every one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven,
by
the women who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to
take
up points alone. A good man once started, goes forward; but an
average man, so soon as the woman loses interest in his success as
a
tribute to her power, comes back to the battalion and is no more
heard of.

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, blushing and
stammering, presented it to Miss Venner. She read a little of it.

I give her review verbatim:--"Oh, your book? It's all about those
how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it."

. . . . . . . . .

Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,--I am not
exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl. All that he could
say feebly was:--"But, but it's my magnum opus! The work of my
life." Miss Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but
she
knew that Captain Kerrington had won three races at the last
Gymkhana. Wressley didn't press her to wait for him any longer.
He
had sense enough for that.

Then came the reaction after the year's strain, and Wressley went
back to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling,
gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would have been dear at
three
hundred rupees a month. He abided by Miss Venner's review.
Which
proves that the inspiration in the book was purely temporary and
unconnected with himself. Nevertheless, he had no right to sink,
in
a hill-tarn, five packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense
from
Bombay, of the best book of Indian history ever written.

When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I was turning
over his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of "Native
Rule in Central India"--the copy that Miss Venner could not
understand. I read it, sitting on his mule-trucks, as long as the
light lasted, and offered him his own price for it. He looked over
my shoulder for a few pages and said to himself drearily:--"Now,
how
in the world did I come to write such damned good stuff as that?"
Then to me:--"Take it and keep it. Write one of your
penny-farthing
yarns about its birth. Perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may
have been ordained to that end."

Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office was once,
struck
me as about the bitterest thing that I had ever heard a man say of
his own work.

BY WORD OF MOUTH.

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
I shall but love you more,
Who from Death's house returning, give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
Shadow Houses.

This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are
made, and
where the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long
enough in this country to know that it is best to know nothing, and
can only write the story as it happened.

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him
"Dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He
was a good Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even
with
our Deputy Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and
the
tact of a horse. He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking
as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "Squash"
Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief's daughter by
mistake. But that is another story.

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