Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 502
‘Well, this is a — sweet — mess,’ said Miss Sperrit in shortest skirts and heaviest riding-boots. ‘I had to come down and have a look at it. “The old mayor climbed the belfry tower.” ‘Been up all night nursing your family?’
‘Nearly that! Isn’t it cheerful?’ He pointed through the door to the stairs with small twig-drift on the last three treads.
‘It’s a record, though,’ said she, and hummed to herself:
‘That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.’
‘You’re always singing that, aren’t you?’ Midmore said suddenly as she passed into the parlour where slimy chairs had been stranded at all angles.
‘Am I? Now I come to think of it I believe I do. They say I always hum when I ride. Have you noticed it?’
‘Of course I have. I notice every — ’
‘Oh,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘We had it for the village cantata last winter — ”The Brides of Enderby.”‘
‘No! “High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire.”‘ For some reason Midmore spoke sharply.
‘Just like that.’ She pointed to the befouled walls. ‘I say.... Let’s get this furniture a little straight.... You know it too?’
‘Every word, since you sang it of course.’
‘When?’
‘The first night I ever came down. You rode past the drawing-room window in the dark singing it — ”And sweeter woman — ”‘
‘I thought the house was empty then. Your aunt always let us use that short cut. Ha-hadn’t we better get this out into the passage? It’ll all have to come out anyhow. You take the other side.’ They began to lift a heavyish table. Their words came jerkily between gasps and their faces were as white as — a newly washed and very hungry pig.
‘Look out!’ Midmore shouted. His legs were whirled from under him, as the table, grunting madly, careened and knocked the girl out of sight.
The wild boar of Asia could not have cut down a couple more scientifically, but this little pig lacked his ancestor’s nerve and fled shrieking over their bodies.
‘Are you hurt, darling?’ was Midmore’s first word, and ‘No — I’m only winded — dear,’ was Miss Sperrit’s, as he lifted her out of her corner, her hat over one eye and her right cheek a smear of mud.
They fed him a little later on some chicken-feed that they found in Sidney’s quiet barn, a pail of buttermilk out of the dairy, and a quantity of onions from a shelf in the back-kitchen.
‘Seed-onions, most likely,’ said Connie. ‘You’ll hear about this.’
‘What does it matter? They ought to have been gilded. We must buy him.’
‘And keep him as long as he lives,’ she agreed. ‘But I think I ought to go home now. You see, when I came out I didn’t expect ... Did you?’
‘No! Yes.... It had to come.... But if any one had told me an hour ago!... Sidney’s unspeakable parlour — and the mud on the carpet.’
‘Oh, I say! Is my cheek clean now?’
‘Not quite. Lend me your hanky again a minute, darling.... What a purler you came!’
‘You can’t talk. ‘Remember when your chin hit that table and you said “blast”! I was just going to laugh.’
‘You didn’t laugh when I picked you up. You were going “oo-oo-oo” like a little owl.’
‘My dear child — ’
‘Say that again!’
‘My dear child. (Do you really like it? I keep it for my best friends.) My dee-ar child, I thought I was going to be sick there and then. He knocked every ounce of wind out of me — the angel! But I must really go.’
They set off together, very careful not to join hands or take arms.
‘Not across the fields,’ said Midmore at the stile. ‘Come round by — by your own place.’
She flushed indignantly.
‘It will be yours in a little time,’ he went on, shaken with his own audacity.
‘Not so much of your little times, if you please!’ She shied like a colt across the road; then instantly, like a colt, her eyes lit with new curiosity as she came in sight of the drive-gates.
‘And not quite so much of your airs and graces, Madam,’ Midmore returned, ‘or I won’t let you use our drive as a short cut any more.’
‘Oh, I’ll be good. I’ll be good.’ Her voice changed suddenly. ‘I swear I’ll try to be good, dear. I’m not much of a thing at the best. What made you....’
‘I’m worse — worse! Miles and oceans worse. But what does it matter now?’
They halted beside the gate-pillars.
‘I see!’ she said, looking up the sodden carriage sweep to the front door porch where Rhoda was slapping a wet mat to and fro. ‘I see.... Now, I really must go home. No! Don’t you come. I must speak to Mother first all by myself.’
He watched her up the hill till she was out of sight.
* * *
THE FLOODS
The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,
The valley brooks they roar aloud —
Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The first wood down is sere and small,
From the hills, the brishings off the hills;
And then come by the bats and all
We cut last year in the hills;
And then the roots we tried to cleave
But found too tough and had to leave —
Polting through the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The eye shall look, the ear shall hark
To the hills, the doings in the hills,
And rivers mating in the dark
With tokens from the hills.
Now what is weak will surely go,
And what is strong must prove it so.
Stand fast in the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The floods they shall not be afraid —
Nor the hills above ‘em, nor the hills —
Of any fence which man has made
Betwixt him and the hills.
The waters shall not reckon twice
For any work of man’s device,
But bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The floods shall sweep corruption clean —
By the hills, the blessing of the hills —
That more the meadows may be green
New-amended from the hills.
The crops and cattle shall increase,
Nor little children shall not cease —
Go — plough the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
* * *
THE FABULISTS
When all the world would have a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom friend to any crowd,
Men write in fable, as old Æsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.
When desperate Folly daily laboureth
To work confusion upon all we have,
When diligent Sloth demandeth Freedom’s death,
And banded Fear commandeth Honour’s grave —
Even in that certain hour before the fall
Unless men please they are not heard at all.
Needs must all please, yet some not all for need
Needs must all toil, yet some not all for gain,
But that men taking pleasure may take heed,
Whom present toil shall snatch from later pain.
Thus some have toiled but their reward was small
Since, though they pleased, they were not heard at all.
This was the lock that lay upon our lips,
This was the yoke that we have undergone,
Denying us all pleasant fellowships
As in our time and generation.
Our pleasures unpursued age past recall.
And for our pains — we are not heard at all.
What man hears aught except the groaning guns?
What man heeds aught save what each instant brings?
When each man’s life all imaged life outruns,
What man shall pleasure in imaginings?
So it hath fallen, as it was bound to fall,
We are not, nor we were not, heard at all.
* * *
The Vortex
(August 1914)
‘Thy Lord spoke by inspiration to the Bee.’
AL KORAN.
I have, to my grief and loss, suppressed several notable stories of my friend, the Hon. A.M. Penfentenyou, once Minister of Woods and Waysides in De Thouar’s first administration; later, Premier in all but name of one of Our great and growing Dominions; and now, as always, the idol of his own Province, which is two and one-half the size of England.
See ‘The Puzzler,’ Actions and Reactions.
For this reason I hold myself at liberty to deal with some portion of the truth concerning Penfentenyou’s latest visit to Our shores. He arrived at my house by car, on a hot summer day, in a white waistcoat and spats, sweeping black frock-coat and glistening top-hat — a little rounded, perhaps, at the edges, but agile as ever in mind and body.
‘What is the trouble now?’ I asked, for the last time we had met, Penfentenyou was floating a three-million pound loan for his beloved but unscrupulous Province, and I did not wish to entertain any more of his financial friends.
‘We,’ Penfentenyou replied ambassadorially, ‘have come to have a Voice in Your Councils. By the way, the Voice is coming down on the evening train with my Agent-General. I thought you wouldn’t mind if I invited ‘em. You know We’re going to share Your burdens henceforward. You’d better get into training.’
‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘What’s the Voice like?’
‘He’s in earnest,’ said Penfentenyou. ‘He’s got It, and he’s got It bad. He’ll give It to you,’ he said.
‘What’s his name?’
‘We call him all sorts of names, but I think you’d better call him Mr. Lingnam. You won’t have to do it more than once.’
‘What’s he suffering from?’
‘The Empire. He’s pretty nearly cured us all of Imperialism at home. P’raps he’ll cure you.’
‘Very good. What am I to do with him?’
‘Don’t you worry,’ said Penfentenyou. ‘He’ll do it.’
And when Mr. Lingnam appeared half-an-hour later with the Agent-General for Penfentenyou’s Dominion, he did just that.
He advanced across the lawn eloquent as all the tides. He said he had been observing to the Agent-General that it was both politically immoral and strategically unsound that forty-four million people should bear the entire weight of the defences of Our mighty Empire, but, as he had observed (here the Agent-General evaporated), we stood now upon the threshold of a new era in which the self-governing and self-respecting (bis) Dominions would rightly and righteously, as co-partners in Empery, shoulder their share of any burden which the Pan-Imperial Council of the Future should allot. The Agent-General was already arranging for drinks with Penfentenyou at the other end of the garden. Mr. Lingnam swept me on to the most remote bench and settled to his theme.
We dined at eight. At nine Mr. Lingnam was only drawing abreast of things Imperial. At ten the Agent-General, who earns his salary, was shamelessly dozing on the sofa. At eleven he and Penfentenyou went to bed. At midnight Mr. Lingnam brought down his big-bellied despatch box with the newspaper clippings and set to federating the Empire in earnest. I remember that he had three alternative plans. As a dealer in words, I plumped for the resonant third — ’Reciprocally co-ordinated Senatorial Hegemony’ — which he then elaborated in detail for three-quarters of an hour. At half-past one he urged me to have faith and to remember that nothing mattered except the Idea. Then he retired to his room, accompanied by one glass of cold water, and I went into the dawn-lit garden and prayed to any Power that might be off duty for the blood of Mr. Lingnam, Penfentenyou, and the Agent-General.
To me, as I have often observed elsewhere, the hour of earliest dawn is fortunate, and the wind that runs before it has ever been my most comfortable counsellor.
‘Wait!’ it said, all among the night’s expectant rosebuds. ‘To-morrow is also a day. Wait upon the Event!’
I went to bed so at peace with God and Man and Guest that when I waked I visited Mr. Lingnam in pyjamas, and he talked to me Pan-Imperially for half-an-hour before his bath. Later, the Agent-General said he had letters to write, and Penfentenyou invented a Cabinet crisis in his adored Dominion which would keep him busy with codes and cables all the forenoon. But I said firmly, ‘Mr. Lingnam wishes to see a little of the country round here. You are coming with us in your own car.’
‘It’s a hired one,’ Penfentenyou objected.
‘Yes. Paid for by me as a taxpayer,’ I replied.
‘And yours has a top, and the weather looks thundery,’ said the Agent-General. ‘Ours hasn’t a wind-screen. Even our goggles were hired.’
‘I’ll lend you goggles,’ I said. ‘My car is under repairs.’
The hireling who had looked to be returned to London spat and growled on the drive. She was an open car, capable of some eighteen miles on the flat, with tetanic gears and a perpetual palsy.
‘It won’t make the least difference,’ sighed the Agent-General. ‘He’ll only raise his voice. He did it all the way coming down.’
‘I say,’ said Penfentenyou suspiciously, ‘what are you doing all this for?’
‘Love of the Empire,’ I answered, as Mr. Lingnam tripped up in dust-coat and binoculars. ‘Now, Mr. Lingnam will tell us exactly what he wants to see. He probably knows more about England than the rest of us put together.’
‘I read it up yesterday,’ said Mr. Lingnam simply. While we stowed the lunch-basket (one can never make too sure with a hired car) he outlined a very pretty and instructive little day’s run.
‘You’ll drive, of course?’ said Penfentenyou to him. ‘It’s the only thing you know anything about.’
This astonished me, for your greater Federationists are rarely mechanicians, but Mr. Lingnam said he would prefer to be inside for the present and enjoy our conversation.
Well settled on the back seat, he did not once lift his eyes to the mellow landscape around him, or throw a word at the life of the English road which to me is one renewed and unreasoned orgy of delight. The mustard-coloured scouts of the Automobile Association; their natural enemies, the unjust police; our natural enemies, the deliberate market-day cattle, broadside-on at all corners, the bicycling butcher-boy a furlong behind; road-engines that pulled giddy-go-rounds, rifle galleries, and swings, and sucked snortingly from wayside ponds in defiance of the notice-board; traction-engines, their trailers piled high with road metal; uniformed village nurses, one per seven statute miles, flitting by on their wheels; governess-carts full of pink children jogging unconcernedly past roaring, brazen touring-cars; the wayside rector with virgins in attendance, their faces screwed up against our dust; motor-bicycles of every shape charging down at every angle; red flags of rifle-ranges; detachments of dusty-putteed Territorials; coveys of flagrant children playing in mid-street, and the wise, educated English dog safe and quite silent on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked — we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him — and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire — and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted the Tregonwell Arms on the borders of the New Forest with nine’ — it should have been ten — ’versions of a single income of two hundred pounds’ placing the imaginary person in — but I could not recall the list of towns further than ‘London, Paris, Bagdad, and Spitsbergen.’ This last I must have murmured aloud, for the Agent-General suddenly became human and went on: ‘Bussorah, Heligoland, and the Scilly Islands — ’
‘What?’ growled Penfentenyou.
‘Nothing,’ said the Agent-General, squeezing my hand affectionately. ‘Only we have just found out that we are brothers.’
‘Exactly,’ said Mr. Lingnam. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to lead up to. We’re all brothers. D’you realise that fifteen years ago such a conversation as we’re having would have been unthinkable? The Empire wouldn’t have been ripe for it. To go back, even ten years — ’
‘I’ve got it,’ cried the Agent-General. ‘“Brighton, Cincinnati, and Nijni-Novgorod!” God bless R.L.S.! Go on, Uncle Joseph. I can endure much now.’
Mr. Lingnam went on like our shandrydan, slowly and loudly. He admitted that a man obsessed with a Central Idea — and, after all, the only thing that mattered was the Idea — might become a bore, but the World’s Work, he pointed out, had been done by bores. So he laid his bones down to that work till we abandoned ourselves to the passage of time and the Mercy of Allah, Who Alone closes the Mouths of His Prophets. And we wasted more than fifty miles of summer’s vivid own England upon him the while.
About two o’clock we topped Sumtner Rising and looked down on the village of Sumtner Barton, which lies just across a single railway line, spanned by a red brick bridge. The thick, thunderous June airs brought us gusts of melody from a giddy-go-round steam-organ in full blast near the pond on the village green. Drums, too, thumped and banners waved and regalia flashed at the far end of the broad village street. Mr. Lingnam asked why.
‘Nothing Imperial, I’m afraid. It looks like a Foresters’ Fête — one of our big Mutual Benefit Societies,’ I explained.
‘The Idea only needs to be co-ordinated to Imperial scale — ’ he began.
