Some time since, when I was better, more serious and earnest than I am now, I preachedajehadup and down those echoing corridors, and suggested the abolition of the India Office and the purchase of a four-pound-ten American revolving bookcase to hold all the documents on India that were of public value or could be comprehended by the public. Now I am more frivolous because I am dropping gently into that grave at Woking; and yet I believe in the bookcase. India is bowed down with too muchduftaras it is, and the House of Correction, Revision, Division and Supervision cannot do her much good. I saw a committee or a council file in the other day. Only one desirable tale came to me out of that office. If you've heard it before stop me. It began with a cutting from an obscure Welsh paper, I think. A man—a gardener—went mad, announced that Lord Cross was the Messiah and burned himself alive on a pile of garden refuse. That's the first part. I never could get at the second, but I am credibly informed that the work of the India Office stood still for three weeks, while the entire staff took council how to breakthe news to the Secretary of State. I believe it still remains unbroken.
Decidedly, leave in England is a disappointing thing. I've wandered into two stations since I wrote the last. Nothing but the labels on the bag remain—oh, and a memory of a weighing-in at an East End fishing club. That was an experience. I foregathered with a man on the top of a 'bus, and we became great friends because we both agreed that gorge-tackle for pike was only permissible in very weedy streams. He repeated his views, which were my views, nearly ten times, and in the evening invited me to this weighing-in, at, we'll say, rooms of the Lea and Chertsey Piscatorial Anglers' Benevolent Brotherhood. We assembled in a room at the top of a public-house, the walls ornamented with stuffed fish and water-birds, and the anglers came in by twos and threes, and I was introduced to all of 'em as "the gen'elman I met just now." This seemed to be good enough for all practical purposes. There were ten and fiveshilling prizes, and the affable and energetic clerk of the scales behaved as though he were weighing-in for the Lucknow races. The take of the day was one pound fifteen ounces of dace and roach, about twenty fingerlings, and the winner, who is in charge of a railway book-stall, described minutely how he had caught each fish. As a matter of fact, roach-fishing in the Lea and Thames is a fine art. Then there were drinks—modest little drinks—and they called upon me for a sentiment. You know how things go at the sergeants' messes and some of the lodges. In a moment of brilliant inspiration I gave "free fishing in the parks" and brought down the whole house. Sah! free fishing for coarse fish in the Serpentine and the Green Park water would hurt nobody and do a great deal of good to many. The stocking of the water—but what does this interest you? The Englishman moves slowly. He is just beginning to understand that it is not sufficient to set apart a certain amount of land for a lung of London and to turn people into it with "There, get along and play," unless he gives 'em something to play with. Thirty years hence he will almost allowcafésand hired bands in Hyde Park.
To return for a moment to the fish club. I got away at eleven, and in darkness and despair had to make my way west for leagues and leagues across London. I was on the Mile End Road at midnight and there lost myself, and learned something more about the policeman. He is haughty in the East and always afraid that he is being chaffed. I honestly only wanted sailing directions to get homeward. One policeman said: "Get along. You know your way as well as I do." And yet another: "You go back to the country where you comed from. You ain't doin' no good 'ere!" It was so deadly true that I couldn't answer back, and there wasn't an expensive cab handy to prove my virtue and respectability. Next time I visit the Lea and Chertsey Affabilities I'll find out something about trains. Meantime I keep holiday dolefully. There is not anybody to play with me. They have all gone away to their own places. Even the Infant, who isgenerally the idlest man in the world, writes me that he is helping to steer a ten-ton yacht in Scottish seas. When she heels over too much the Infant is driven to the O.P. side and she rights herself. The Infant's host says: "Isn't this bracing? Isn't this delightful?" And the Infant, who lives in dread of a chill bringing back his Indian fever, has to say "Ye-es," and pretend to despise overcoats.
Wallah! This is a cheerful world.
Rudyard Kipling.
FOOTNOTES:[21]The "Pioneer Mail," Vol. XVII, No. 40, Oct. 2, 1890, page 436.
FOOTNOTES:
[21]The "Pioneer Mail," Vol. XVII, No. 40, Oct. 2, 1890, page 436.
[21]The "Pioneer Mail," Vol. XVII, No. 40, Oct. 2, 1890, page 436.
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGE[22]
Thisis a slim, thin little story, but it serves to explain a great many things. I picked it up in a four-wheeler in the company of an eminent novelist, a pink-eyed young gentleman who lived on his income, and a gentleman who knew more than he ought; and I preserved it, thinking it would serve to interest you. It may be an old story, but the G.W.K.T.H.O., whom, for the sake of brevity, we will call Captain Kydd, declared that his best friend had heard it himself. Consequently, I doubted its newness more than ever. For when a man raises his voice and vows that the incident occurred opposite his own Club window, all the listening world know that they are about to hear what is vulgarly called a cracker. This rule holdsgood in London as well as in Lahore. When we left the house of the highly distinguished politician who had been entertaining us, we stepped into a London Particular, which has nothing whatever to do with the story, but was interesting from the little fact that we could not see our hands before our faces. The black, brutal fog had turned each gas-jet into a pin-prick of light, visible only at six inches range. There were no houses, there were no pavements. There were no points of the compass. There were only the eminent novelist, the young gentleman with the pink eyes, Captain Kydd and myself, holding each other's shoulders in the gloom of Tophet. Then the eminent novelist delivered himself of an epigram.
"Let's go home," said he.
"Let us try," said Captain Kydd, and incontinently fell down an area into somebody's kitchen yard and disappeared into chaos. When he had climbed out again we heard a something on wheels swearing even worse than Captain Kydd was, all among therailings of a square. So we shouted, and presently a four-wheeler drove gracefully on to the pavement.
"I'm trying to get 'ome," said the cabby. "But if you gents make it worth while ... though heaven knows 'ow we ever shall. Guess 'arf a crown apiece might ... and any'ow I won't promise anywheres in particular."
The cabby kept his word nobly. He did not find anywheres in particular, but he found several places. First he discovered a pavement kerb and drove pressing his wheel against it till we came to a lamp-post, and that we hit grievously. Then he came to what ought to have been a corner, but was a 'bus, and we embraced the thing amid terrific language. Then he sailed out into nothing at all—blank fog—and there he commended himself to heaven and his horse to the other place, while the eminent novelist put his head out of the window and gave directions. I begin to understand now why the eminent novelist's villains are so lifelike and his plots so obscure. He has a marvellous breadth of speech, but noingenuity in directing the course of events. We drove into the island of refuge near the Brompton Oratory just when he was telling the cabby to be sure and avoid the Regents' Park Canal.
Then we began to talk about the weather and Mister Gladstone. If an Englishman is unhappy he always talks about Mister Gladstone in terms of reproof. The eminent novelist was a socialistic-Neo-Plastic-Unionistic-Demagoglot Radical of the Extreme Left, and that is the latest novelty of the thing yet invented. He withdrew his head to answer Captain Kydd's arguments, which were forcible. "Well, you'll admit he's all sorts of a madman," said Captain Kydd sweetly.
"He's a saint," said the eminent novelist, "and he moves in an atmosphere that you and those like you cannot breathe."
"Yes, I always said it was a pretty thick fog. Now I know it's as thick as this one. I say, we're on the pavement again; we shall be in a shop in a minute," said Captain Kydd.
But I wanted to see the eminent novelistfight, so I reintroduced Mister Gladstone while the cab crawled up a wall.
"It's not exactly a wholesome atmosphere," said Captain Kydd when the novelist had finished speaking. "That reminds me of a story—perfectly true story. In the old days, before he went off his chump—"
"Yah-h-h!" said the eminent novelist, wrapping himself in his Inverness.
"—went off his nut, he used to consort a good deal with his friends on his own side—visit 'em, y' know, and deliver addresses out of their own bedroom windows, and steal their postcards, and generally be friendly. Well, one man he stayed with had a house, a country house, y' know, and in the garden there was a path which was supposed to divide Kent and Surrey or some counties. They led the old man forth for his walk, y' know, and followed him in gangs to hear that the weather was fine, and of course his host pointed out the path, the old man took in the situation, and put one I daresay they had strewn rose-leaves on it, or spread it with homespun trousers. Anyhow,one leg on one side of the path and the other on the other, and with one of those wonderful flashes of humour that come to him when he chooses to frisk among his friends, he said: 'Now I am in Kent and in Surrey at the same time.'"
Captain Kydd ceased speaking as the cab tried to force a way into the South Kensington Museum.
"Well, what's there in that?" said the eminent novelist.
"Oh, nothing much. Let's see how it goes afterwards. Mrs. Gladstone, who was close behind him, turned round and whispered to the hostess in an ecstatic shriek: 'Oh, Mrs. Whateverhernamewas, youwillplant a tree there, won't you?'"
"By Jove!" said the young gentleman with the pink eyes.
"I don't believe it," said the eminent novelist.
I said nothing, but it seemed very likely. Captain Kydd laughed: "Well, I don't consider that sort of atmosphere exactly wholesome, y' know."
And when the cab had landed us in the drinking-fountain in High Street, Kensington, and the horse fell down, and the cabby collected our half-crowns and gave us his beery blessing, and I had to grope my way home on foot, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be interested in that anecdote. As I have said, it explains a great deal more than appears at first sight.
FOOTNOTES:[22]"Turnovers," No. IX.
FOOTNOTES:
[22]"Turnovers," No. IX.
[22]"Turnovers," No. IX.
A DEATH IN THE CAMP[23]
Twoawful catastrophes have occurred. One Englishman in London is dead, and I have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends.
He was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an architect, and immensely respected. That was all I knew about him till I began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer them up and make them forget the fog.
"Hush!" said a man and his wife. "Don't you know he died yesterday of a sudden attack of pneumonia? Isn't it shocking?"
"Yes," said I vaguely. "Aw'fly shocking. Has he left his wife provided for?"
"Oh, he's very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. But just think—it was only in thenext street it happened!" Then I saw that their grief was not for Strangeways, deceased, but for themselves.
"How old was he?" I said.
"Nearly seventy, or maybe a little over."
"About time for a man to rationally expect such a thing as death," I thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple lived.
"Isn't it perfectly ghastly?" said the wife. "Mr. Strangeways died last night."
"So I heard," said I. "Well, he had lived his life."
"Yes, but it was such a shockingly short illness. Why, only three weeks ago he was walking about the street." And she looked nervously at her husband, as though she expected him to give up the ghost at any minute.
Then I gathered, with the knowledge of the length of his sickness, that her grief was not for the late Mr. Strangeways, and went away thinking over men and women I had known who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for even a week wherein to arrangetheir affairs, and who were anything but well off.
I passed on to a third house full of children, and the shadow of death hung over their heads, for father and mother were talking of Mr. Strangeway's "end." "Most shocking," said they. "It seems that his wife was in the next room when he was dying, and his only son called her, so she just had time to take him in her arms before he died. He was unconscious at the last. Wasn't it awful?"
When I went away from that house I thought of men and women without a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and without any money, who were anything but unconscious at the last, and who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for one glimpse at their mothers, their wives or their husbands. I reflected how these people died tended by hirelings and strangers, and I was not in the least ashamed to say that I laughed over Mr. Strangeways' death as I entered the house of a brother in his craft.
"Heard of Strangeways' death?" said he."Most hideous thing. Why, he had only a few days before got news of his designs being accepted by the Burgoyne Cathedral. If he had lived he would have been working out the details now—with me." And I saw that this man's fear also was not on account of Mr. Strangeways. And I thought of men and women who had died in the midst of wrecked work; then I sought a company of young men and heard them talk of the dead. "That's the second death among people I know within the year," said one. "Yes, the second death," said another.
I smiled a very large smile.
"And you know," said a third, who was the oldest of the party, "they've opened the new road by the head of Tresillion Road, and the wind blows straight across that level square from the Parks. Everything is changing about us."
"He was an old man," I said.
"Ye-es. More than middle-aged," said they.
"And he outlived his reputation?"
"Oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the Burgoyne Cathedral? Why, the very day he died...."
"Yes," said I. "He died at the end of a completed work—his design finished, his prize awarded?"
"Yes; but he didn't live to...."
"And his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?"
"Yes."
"And he was tended by his own kith and kin, dying with his head on his wife's breast, his hand in his only son's hand, without any thought of their possible poverty to vex him. Are these things so?"
"Ye-es," said they. "Wasn't it shocking?"
"Shocking?" I said. "Get out of this place. Go forth, run about and see what death really means. You have described such dying as a god might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of. Wait till you have seen men—strong men of thirty-five, with little children, die at two days' notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not once, but twentytimes; wait till you have seen the young girl die within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of his marriage; or the mother—sixty little minutes—before her son can come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed money from, and tested to the uttermost—till you dare not hope for the death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six months hence. Wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen him buried on the next. Then you can begin to whimper about loneliness and change and desolation." Here I foamed at the mouth.
"And do you mean to say," drawled a young gentleman, "that there is any society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?"
"I do," said I. "It's not society; it's life." And they laughed.
But this is the old tale of Pharaoh's chariot-wheel and flying-fish.
If I tell them yarns, they say: "How true! How true!" If I try to present the truth, they say: "What superb imagination!"
But you understand, don't you?
FOOTNOTES:[23]"Turnovers," No. IX.
FOOTNOTES:
[23]"Turnovers," No. IX.
[23]"Turnovers," No. IX.
A REALLY GOOD TIME[24]
Thereare times when one wants to get into pyjamas and stretch and loll, and explain things generally. This is one of those times. It is impossible to stand at ease in London, and the inhabitants are so abominably egotistical that one cannot shout "I, I, I" for two minutes without another man joining in with "Me, too!" Which things are an allegory.
The amusement began with a gentleman of infinite erudition offering to publish my autobiography. I was to write a string of legends—he would publish them; and would I forward a cheque for five guineas "to cover incidental expenses?" To him I explained that I wanted five guinea cheques myself very much indeed, and that, emboldened by his letter,which gave me a very fair insight into his character, I was even then maturinghisautobiography, which I hoped to publish before long with illustrations, and would he forward a cheque for five guineas "to cover incidental expenses?" This brought me an eight-page compilation of contumely. He was grieved to find that he had been mistaken in my character, which he had believed was, at least, elevated. He begged me to remember that the first letter had been written in the strictest confidence, and that if I notated one tittle of the said "repository" he would unkennel the bloodhounds of the law and hunt me down. An autobiography on the lines that I had "so flippantly proposed" was libel without benefit of authorship, and I had better lend him two guineas—I.O.U. enclosed—to salve his lacerated feelings. I replied that I had his autobiography by me in manuscript, and would post it to his address, V.P.P., two guineas and one-half. He evidently knew nothing about the V.P.P., and the correspondence stopped. It is really very hard for an Anglo-Indian to get alongin London. Besides, my autobiography is not a thing I should care to make public before extensive Bowdlerisation.
These things, however, only led up to much worse. I dare not grin over them unless I step aside Eastward. I wrote stories, all about little pieces of India, carefully arranged and expurgated for the English public. Then various people began to write about them. One gentleman pointed out that I had taken "the well-worn themes of passion, love, despair and fate," and, thanks to the "singular fascination" of my style had "wrought them into new and glowing fabricks instinct with the eternal vitality of the East." For three days after thischitI was almost too proud to speak to the housemaid with the fan-teeth (there is a story about her that I will tell another time). On the fourth day another gentleman made clear that that beautiful style was "tortuous, elaborated and inept," and it was only on account of the "newness of the subjects handled so crabbedly" that I "arrested the attention of the public for a day." Then I wept before thehousemaid, and she called me a "real gentleman" because I gave her a shilling.
Then I tried an all-round cannon—published one thing under one name and another under another, and sat still to watch. A gentleman, who also speaks with authority on Literature and Art, came to me and said: "I don't deny that there is a great deal of clever and superficial fooling in that last thing of yours in the—I've forgotten what it was called—but do you yourself think that you have that curious, subtle grip on and instinct of matters Oriental that that other man shows in his study of native life?" And he mentioned the name of my Other Self. I bowed my head, and my shoulders shook with repentance and grief. "No," said I. "It's so true," said he. "Yes," said I. "So feeling," said he. "Indeed it is," said I. "Such honest work, too!" said he. "Oh, awful!" said I. "Think it over," said he, "and try to follow his path." "I will," said I. And when he left I danced sarabands with the housemaid of the fan-teeth till she wanted to know whether I had bought "spirruts."
Then another man came along and sat on my sofa and hailed me as a brother. "And I know that we are kindred souls," said he, "because I feel sure that you have evolved all the dreamy mystery and curious brutality of the British soldier from the pure realm of fancy." "I did," I said. "If you went into a barrack-room you would see at once." "Faugh!" said he. "What have we to do with barrack-rooms? The pure air of fancy feeds us both; keep to that. If you are trammelled by the bitter,bornéetruth, you are lost. You die the death of Zola. Invention is the only test of creation." "Of course," said I. "Zola's a bold, bad man. Not a patch onyou." I hadn't caught his name, but I fancied that would prevent him flinging himself about on my sofa, which is a cheap one. "I don't say that altogether," he said. "He has his strong points. But he is deficient in imaginative constructiveness.You, I see from what you have said, will belong to the Neo-Gynekalistic school." I knew "Gyne" meant something about cow-killing, and was prepared to hedge when he said good-bye, andwrote an article about my ways and works, which brought another man to my door spouting foam.
"Great Landor's ghost!" he said. "What under the stars has possessed you to join the Gynekalistic lot?" "I haven't," I said. "I believe in municipal regulation of slaughter-houses, if there is a strong Deputy Commissioner to control the Muhammadan butchers, especially in the hot weather, but...." "This is madness," said he. "Your reputation is at stake. You must make it clear to the world that you have nothing whatever to do with the flatulent, unballasted fiction of...." "Do you suppose the world cares a tuppeny dam?" said I.
Then he raged afresh, and left me, pointing out that the Gynewallahs wrote about nothing but women—which seems rather an unlimited subject—and that I would die the death of a French author whose name I have forgotten. But it wasn't Zola this time.
I asked the housemaid what in the world the Gynekalisthenics were. "La, sir," said she,"it's only their way of being rude. That fat gentleman with the long hair tried to kiss me when I opened the door. I slapped his fat chops for him."
Now the crisis is at its height. All the entire round world, composed, as far as I can learn, of the Gynekalistic and the anti-Gynekalistic man, and two or three loafers, are trying to find out to what school I rightly belong. They seem to use what they are pleased to call my reputation as a bolster through which to stab at the foe. One gentleman is proving that I am a bit of a blackguard, probably reduced from the ranks, rather an impostor, and a considerable amount of plagiarist. The other man denies the reduction from the ranks, withholds judgment about the plagiarism, but would like, in the interest of the public—who are at present exclusively occupied with Barnum—to prove it true, and is convinced that my style is "hermaphroditic." I have all the money on the first man. He is on the eve of discovering that I stole a dead Tommy's diary just before I was drummed out of the servicefor desertion, and have lived on the proceeds ever since. "Doyewknow," as the Private Secretary said at Simla this year, "it's remarkably hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in England."
Shakl hai lekin ukl nahin hai!
FOOTNOTES:[24]"Turnovers," No. IX.
FOOTNOTES:
[24]"Turnovers," No. IX.
[24]"Turnovers," No. IX.
ON EXHIBITION[25]
Itmakes me blush pink all over to think about it, but, none the less, I have brought the tale to you, confident that you will understand. An invitation to tea arrived at my address. The English are very peculiar people about their tea. They don't seem to understand that it is a function at which any one who is passing down the Mall may present himself. They issue formal cards—just as if tea-drinking were like dancing. My invitation said that I was to tea from 4:30 till 6P.M., and there was never a word of lawn-tennis on the whole of the card. I knew the English were heavy eaters, but this amazed me. "What in the wide world," thought I, "will they find to do for an hour and a half? Perhaps they'll play games, asit's near Christmas time. They can't sit out in the verandah, andchabutrasare impossible."
Wherefore I went to this house prepared for anything. There was a fine show of damp wraps in the hall, and a cheerful babble of voices from the other side of the drawing-room door. The hostess ran at me, vehemently shouting: "Oh, I am so glad you have come. We were all talking about you." As the room was entirely filled with strangers, chiefly female, I reflected that they couldn't have said anything very bad. Then I was introduced to everybody, and some of the people were talking in couples, and didn't want to be interrupted in the least, and some were behind settees, and some were in difficulty with their tea-cups, and one and all had exactly the same name. That is the worst of a lisping hostess.
Almost before I had dropped the last limp hand, a burly ruffian, with a beard, rumbled in my ear: "I trust you were satisfied with my estimate of your powers in last week'sConcertina?"
Now I don't see theConcertinabecause it'stoo expensive, but I murmured: "Immense! immense! Most gratifying. Totally undeserved." And the ruffian said: "In a measure, yes. Not wholly. I flatter myself that——"
"Oh, not in the least," said I. "No sugar, thanks." This to the hostess, who was waving Sally Lunns under my nose. A female, who could not have been less than seven feet high, came on, half speed ahead, through the fog of the tea-steam, and docked herself on the sofa just like an Inman liner.
"Have you ever considered," said she, "the enormous moral responsibility that rests in the hands of one who has the gift of literary expression? In my own case—but you surely know my collaborator."
A much huger woman arrived, cast anchor, and docked herself on the other side of the sofa. She was the collaborator. Together they confided to me that they were desperately in earnest about the amelioration of something or other. Their collective grievance against me was that I was not in earnest.
"We have studied your works—all," said thefive-thousand-ton four-master, "and we cannot believe that you are in earnest." "Oh, no," I said hastily, "I never was." Then I saw that that was the wrong thing to say, for the eight-thousand-ton palace Cunarder signalled to the sister ship, saying: "You see, my estimate was correct."
"Now, my complaint against him is that he is too savagelyfarouche," said a weedy young gentleman with tow hair, who ate Sally Lunns like a workhouse orphan. "Faroucheriein his age is a fatal mistake."
I reflected a moment on the possibility of getting that young gentleman out into a large and dusty maidan and gentlychukkeringhim beforechota hazri. He looked too sleek to me as he then stood. But I said nothing, because a tiny-tiny woman with beady-black eyes shrilled: "I disagree with you entirely. He is too much bound by the tradition of the commonplace. I have seen in his later work signs that he is afraid of his public. You mustneverbe afraid of your public."
Then they began to discuss me as though Iwere dead and buried under the hearth-rug, and they talked of "tones" and "notes" and "lights" and "shades" and tendencies.
"And which of us do you think is correct in her estimate of your character?" said the tiny-tiny woman when they had made me out (a) a giddy Lothario; (b) a savage; (c) a pre-Rafaelite angel; (d) co-equal and co-eternal with half a dozen gentlemen whose names I had never heard; (e) flippant; (f) penetrated with pathos; (g) an open atheist; (h) a young man of the Roman Catholic faith with a mission in life.
I smiled idiotically, and said I really didn't know.
Then a man entered whom I knew, and I fled to him for comfort. "Have I missed the fun?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
I explained, snorting, what had befallen.
"Ay," said he quietly, "you didn't go the right way to work. You should have stood on the hearth-rug and fired off epigrams. That's what I did after I had writtenDownin the Doldrums, and was fed with crumpets in consequence."
A woman plumped down by my side and twisted her hands into knots, and hung her eyes over her cheek-bones. I thought it was too many muffins, till she said: "Tell me, oh, tell me, was such-and-such in such a one of your books—was hereal? Was hequitereal? Oh, how lovely! How sweet! How precious!" She alluded to that drunken ruffian Mulvaney, who would have driven her into fits had he ever set foot on her doorstep in the flesh. I caught the half of a wink in my friend's eye as he removed himself and left me alone to tell fibs about the evolution of Private Mulvaney. I said anything that came uppermost, and my answers grew so wild that the woman departed.
Then I heard the hostess whispering to a girl, a nice, round, healthy English maiden. "Go and talk to him," she said. "Talk to him about his books."
I gritted my teeth, and waited till the maiden was close at hand and about to begin. There was a lovely young man at the end of the roomsucking a stick, and I felt sure that the maiden would much have preferred talking to him. She smiled prefatorily.
"It's hot here," I said; "let's go over to the window"; and I plumped down on a three-seated settee, with my back to the young man, leaving only one place for the maiden. I was right. I signalled up the man who had writtenDown in the Doldrums, and talked to him as fast as I knew how. When he had to go, and the young man with him, the maiden became enthusiastic, not to say gushing. But I knew that those compliments were for value received. Then she explained that she was going out to India to stay with her married aunt, wherefore she became as a sister unto me on the spot. Her mamma did not seem to know much about Indian outfits, and I waxed eloquent on the subject.
"It's all nonsense," I said, "to fill your boxes with things that can be made just as well in the country. What you want are walking-dresses and dinner-dresses as good as ever you can get, and gloves tinned up, and odds andends of things generally. All the rest, unless you're extravagant, thedharzeecan make in the verandah. Take underclothing, for instance." I was conscious that my loud and cheerful voice was ploughing through one of those ghostly silences that sometimes fall upon a company. The English only wear their outsides in company. They have nothing to do with underclothing. I could feel that without being told. So the silence cut short the one matter in which I could really have been of use.
On the pavement my friend who wroteDown in the Doldrumswas waiting to walk home with me. "What in the world does it all mean?" I said. "Nothing," said he. "You've been asked there as a small deputy lion to roar in place of a much bigger man. You growled, though."
"I should have done much worse if I'd known," I grunted. "Ah," said he, "you haven't arrived at the real fun of the show. Wait till they've made you jump through hoops and your turn's over, and you can siton a sofa and watch the new men being brought up and put through their paces. You've nothing like that in India. How do you manage your parties?"
And I thought of smooth-cut lawns in the gloaming, and tables spread under mighty trees, and men and women, all intimately acquainted with each other, strolling about in the lightest of raiment, and the old dowagers criticising the badminton, and the young men in riding-boots making rude remarks about the claret cup, and the host circulating through the mob and saying: "Hah, Piggy," or Bobby or Flatnose, as the nickname might be, "have another peg," and the hostess soothing the bashful youngsters and talkingkhitmatgarswith the Judge's wife, and the last new bride hanging on her husband's arm and saying: "Isn't it almost time to go home, Dicky, dear?" and the little fat owls chuckling in thebougainvilleas, and the horses stamping and squealing in the carriage-drive, and everybody saying the most awful things about everybody else, but prepared to do anything for anybody elsejust the same; and I gulped a great gulp of sorrow and homesickness.
"You wouldn't understand," said I to my friend. "Let's go to a pot-house, where cabbies call, and drink something."
FOOTNOTES:[25]"Turnovers," No. IX.
FOOTNOTES:
[25]"Turnovers," No. IX.
[25]"Turnovers," No. IX.
THE THREE YOUNG MEN[26]
LONDON IN THE FOG
"Curiouserand curiouser," as Alice in Wonderland said when she found her neck beginning to grow. Each day under the smoke brings me new and generally unpleasant discoveries. The latest are most on my mind. I hasten to transfer them to yours.
At first, and several times afterwards, I very greatly desired to talk to a thirteen-two subaltern—not because he or I would have anything valuable to say to each other, but just because he was a subaltern. I wanted to know all about that evergreen polo-pony that "can turn on a sixpence," and the second-hand second charger that, by a series of perfectly unprecedented misfortunes, just failed to win the Calcutta Derby. Then, too, I wished to hear of many old friends across the sea, and who had got his company, and why and where the new Generals were going next cold weather, and how the Commander-in-Chief had been enlivening the Simla season. So I looked east and west, and north and south, but never a thirteen-two subaltern broke through the fog; except once—and he had grown a fifteen-one cot down, and wore a tall hat and frock coat, and was begging for coppers from the Horse-Guards. By the way, if you stand long enough between the mounted sentries—the men who look like reflectors stolen from Christmas trees—you will presently meet every human being you ever knew in India. When I am not happy—that is to say, once a day—I run off and play on the pavement in front of the Horse-Guards, and watch the expressions on the gentlemen's faces as they come out. But this is a digression.
After some days—I grew lonelier and lonelier every hour—I went away to the other endof the town, and catching a friend, said: "Lend me a man—a young man—to play with. I don't feel happy. I want rousing. I have liver." And the friend said: "Ah, yes, of course. What you want is congenial society, something that will stir you up—a fellow-mind. Now let me introduce you to a thoroughly nice young man. He's by way of being an ardent Neo-Alexandrine, and has written some charming papers on the 'Ethics of the Wood Pavement.'" Concealing my almost visible rapture, I murmured "Oh, bliss!" as they used to say at the Gaiety, and extended the hand of friendship to a young gentleman attired after the fashion of the Neo-Alexandrines, who appear to be a sub-caste of social priests. His hand was a limp hand, his face was very smooth because he had not yet had time to grow any hair, and he wore a cloak like a policeman's cloak, but much more so. On his finger was a cameo-ring about three inches wide, and round his neck, the weather being warm, was a fawn, olive and dead-leaf comforter of soft silk—the sort of thing anyright-minded man would give to his mother or his sister without being asked.
We looked at each other cautiously for some minutes. Then he said: "What do you think of the result of the Brighton election?" "Beautiful, beautiful," I said, watching his eye, which saddened. "One of the worst—that is, entirely the most absurdreductio ad absurdumof the principle of the narrow and narrow-minded majority imposing a will which is necessarily incult on a minority animated by...." I forget exactly what he said they were animated by, but it was something very fine.
"When I was at Oxford," he said, "Haward of Exeter"—he spoke as one speaks of Smith of Asia—"always inculcated at the Union——By the way, you do not know, I suppose, anything of the life at Oxford?" "No," I said, anxious to propitiate, "but I remember some boys once who seduced an ekka and a pony into a Major's tent at a camp of exercise, laced up the door, and let the Major fight it out with the horse." I told that little incident in my best style, and was three parts through itbefore I discovered that he was looking pained and shocked.
"That—ah—was not the side of Oxford that I had in mind when I was saying that Haward of Exeter——" And he explained all about Mr. Haward, who appeared to be a young gentleman, rising twenty-three, of wonderful mental attainments, and as pernicious a prig as I ever dreamed about. Mr. Haward had schemes for the better management of creation; my friend told me them all—social, political and economical.
Then, just as I was feeling faint and very much in need of a drink, he launched without warning upon the boundless seas of literature. He wished to know whether I had read the works of Messrs. Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget and Pierre Loti. This in the tone of a teacher of Euclid. I replied that all my French was confined to the Vie Parisienne and translations of Zola's novels with illustrations. Here we parted. London is very large, and I do not think we shall meet any more.
I thanked our Mutual Friend for his kindness, and asked for another young man to play with. This gentleman was even younger than the last, but quite as cocksure. He told me in the course of half a cigar that only men of mediocre calibre went into the army, which was a brutalising profession; that he suffered from nerves, and "an uncontrollable desire to walk up and down the room and sob" (that was too many cigarettes), and that he had never set foot out of England, but knew all about the world from his own theories. Thought Dickens coarse; Scott jingling and meretricious; and had not by any chance read the novels of Messrs. Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget and Pierre Loti.
Him I left quickly, but sorry that he could not do a six weeks' training with a Middlesex militia regiment, where he would really get something to sob for. The novel business interested me. I perceived that it was a fashion, like his tie and his collars, and I wanted to work it to the fountain-head. To this end I procured the whole Shibboleth from Guy de Maupassant even unto Pierre Loti by way ofBourget. Unwholesome was a mild term for these interesting books, which the young men assured me that they read for style. When a fat Major makes that remark in an Indian Club, everybody hoots and laughs. But you must not laugh overseas, especially at young gentlemen who have been to Oxford and listened to Mr. Haward of Exeter.
Then I was introduced to another young man who said he belonged to a movement called Toynbee Hall, where, I gathered, young gentlemen took an indecent interest in the affairs of another caste, whom, with rare tact, they called "the poor," and told them generally how to order their lives. Such was the manner and general aggressiveness of this third young gentleman, that if he had told me that coats were generally worn and good for the protection of the body, I should have paraded Bond Street in my shirt. What the poor thought of him I could not tell, but there is no room for it in this letter. He said that there was going to be an upheaval of the classes—the English are very funny about their castes. They don'tknow how to handle them one little bit, and never allow them to draw water or build huts in peace—and the entire social fabric was about to be remodelled on his recommendations, and the world would be generally altered past recognition. No, he had never seen anything of the world, but close acquaintance with authorities had enabled him to form dispassionate judgments on the subjects, and had I, by any chance, read the novels of Guy de Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Paul Bourget?
It was a mean thing to do, but I couldn't help it. I had read 'em. I put him on, so to speak, far back in Paul Bourget, who is a genial sort of writer. I pinned him to one book. He could not escape from Paul Bourget. He was fed with it till he confessed—and he had been quite ready to point out its beauties—that we could not take much interest in the theories put forward in that particular book. Then I said: "Get a dictionary and read him," which severed our budding friendship.
Thereafter I sought our Mutual Friend andwalked up and down his room sobbing, or words to that effect. "Good gracious!" said my friend. "Is that what's troubling you? Now, I hold the ravaging rights over half a dozen fields and a bit of a wood. You can pot rabbits there in the evenings sometimes, and anyway you get exercise. Come along."
So I went. I have not yet killed anything, but it seems wasteful to drive good powder and shot after poor little bunnies when there are so many other things in the world that would be better for an ounce and a half of number five at sixty yards—not enough to disable, but just sufficient to sting, and be pricked out with a penknife.
I should like to wield that penknife.