On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head high among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell in the air — the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but seldom — a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of a truckload of lamps, and set them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of the population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel. I abode in obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse’s bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was the providential fly coming back, and for a moment I wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to revisit his practice.
“Get away; you’re drunk,” said the driver.
“I’m not,” said the navvy. “I’ve been waitin’ ‘ere hours and hours. Come out, you beggar inside there!”
“Go on, driver,” said a voice I did not know — a crisp, clear, English voice.
“All right,” said the navvy. “You wouldn’t ‘ear me when I was polite. Now will you come?”
There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different service of song.
“Come on, you bloomin’ body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did you?” roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly, inarticulate with rage.
“Ere’s a man murderin’ the Squire,” the driver shouted, and fell from his box upon the navvy’s neck.
To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch, but it was the three third-class tickets who attached themselves to his legs and freed the captive.
“Send for a constable! lock him up!” said that man, adjusting his collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the key, while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.
Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper nobly. Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one porter counted the damage in a loud voice, and the others, arming themselves with agricultural implements from the station garden, kept up a ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of the gaol. He answered little to the point, so far as they could understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded, he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It fell on the metals and went out. With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in all, followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor’s deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal exhibition, and — we heard the whistle of the seven forty-five down.
They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered over broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of it, and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and heads were out all along the carriages as I found me a seat.
“What is the row?” said a young man, as I entered. “‘Man drunk?”
“Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble those of Asiatic cholera than anything else,” I answered, slowly and judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme of things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that war.
He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: “Can I be of any service? I’m a doctor.”
From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing “Another bloomin’ doctor!”
And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by the road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is immortal and master of his fate.
THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
Girls and boys, come out to play
The moon is shining as bright as day!
Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows out in the street!
Up the ladder and down the wall —
A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one heard, for his nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a gardener among the laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way, and hurried to soothe him. He was her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.
“What was it, then? What was it, then? There’s nothing to frighten him, Georgie dear.”
“It was — it was a policeman! He was on the Down — I saw him! He came in. Jane said he would.”
“Policemen don’t come into houses, dearie. Turn over, and take my hand.”
“I saw him — on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand, Harper?”
The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing of sleep before she stole out.
“Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about policemen?”
“I haven’t told him anything.”
“You have. He’s been dreaming about them.”
“We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this morning. P’r’aps that’s what put it into his head.”
“Oh! Now you aren’t going to frighten the child into fits with your silly tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you again,” etc.
* * *
A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a new power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to him to carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he was delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head just as surprising as though he were listening to it “all new from the beginning.” There was a prince in that tale, and he killed dragons, but only for one night. Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince, pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see, he could not tell any one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales faded gradually into dreamland, where adventures were so many that he could not recall the half of them. They all began in the same way, or, as Georgie explained to the shadows of the night-light, there was “the same starting-off place” — a pile of brushwood stacked somewhere near a beach; and round this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys and girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and overthrown so long as he remembered it was only a dream. He could never hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real, and instead of pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the multiplication-table up to four times six.
The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she always applauded Georgie’
s valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his life — Annie and Louise, pronounced “Annieanlouise.” When the dreams swamped the stories, she would change into one of the little girls round the brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he sank: “Poor Annieanlouise! She’ll be sorry for me now!” But “Annieanlouise,” walking slowly on the beach, called, “‘Ha! ha!’ said the duck, laughing,” which to a waking mind might not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and must have been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly wicked.
* * *
The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old, to a place called “Oxford-on-a-visit. “Here were huge buildings surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above all, something called the “buttery,” which Georgie was dying to see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him if he would like some, bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all round the clock, so he took what “buttery” gave him, and would have taken some brown liquid called “auditale” but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of a thing called “Pepper’s Ghost.” This was intensely thrilling. People’s heads came off and flew all over the stage, and skeletons danced bone by bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a man of the worst, waved his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass voice (Georgie had never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows unspeakable. Some grown-up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made with mirrors, and that there was no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know what illusions were, but he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass with the ivory handle on his mother’s dressing-table. Therefore the “grown-up” was “just saying things” after the distressing custom of “grown-ups,” and Georgie cast about for amusement between scenes. Next to him sat a little girl dressed all in black, her hair combed off her forehead exactly like the girl in the book called “Alice in Wonderland,” which had been given him on his last birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, and Georgie looked at her. There seemed to be no need of any further introduction.
“I’ve got a cut on my thumb,” said he. It was the first work of his first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most valuable possession.
“I’m tho thorry!” she lisped. “Let me look pleathe.”
“There’s a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it’s all raw under,” Georgie answered, complying.
“Dothent it hurt?” — her grey eyes were full of pity and interest.
“Awf’ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.”
“It lookth very horrid. I’m tho thorry!” She put a forefinger to his hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.
Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely. “You mustn’t talk to strange little girls, Master Georgie.”
“She isn’t strange. She’s very nice. I like her, an’ I’ve showed her my new cut.”
“The idea! You change places with me.”
She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view, while the grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.
“I am not afraid, truly,” said the boy, wriggling in despair; “but why don’t you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provost of Oriel?”
Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in his presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with flatteries. This grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper was singing again, and the deep, ringing voice, the red fire, and the misty, waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the little girl who had been so kind about his cut. When the performance was ended she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return. He spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl’s lisp. That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise in her place. So it was perfectly right and natural that when he came to the brushwood-pile he should find her waiting for him, her hair combed off her forehead more like Alice in Wonderland than ever, and the races and adventures began.
Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming. Georgie won his growth and chest measurement, and a few other things which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his “second-fifteen” cap at foot-ball, enjoyed the dignity of a study with two companions in it, and began to look forward to office as a sub-prefect. At last he blossomed into full glory as head of the school, ex-officio captain of the games; head of his house, where he and his lieutenants preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring up among the touchy Sixth — and intimate friend and ally of the Head himself. When he stepped forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and black stockings of the First Fifteen, the new match-ball under his arm, and his old and frayed cap at the back of his head, the small fry of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped, and the “new caps” of the team talked to him ostentatiously, that the world might see. And so, in summer, when he came back to the pavilion after a slow but eminently safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing or, as once happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just the same, and women-folk who had come to look at the match looked at Cottar — Cottar, major; “that’s Cottar!” Above all, he was responsible for that thing called the tone of the school, and few realise with what passionate devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work. Home was a faraway country, full of ponies and fishing and shooting, and men-visitors who interfered with one’s plans; but school was the real world, where things of vital importance happened, and crises arose that must be dealt with promptly and quietly. Not for nothing was it written, “Let the Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm,” and Georgie was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended. Behind him, but not too near, was the wise and temperate Head, now suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now counselling the mildness of the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints than by any direct word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who can handle the one will assuredly in time control the other.
For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions, but rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities, and to enter the army direct, without the help of the expensive London crammer, under whose roof young blood learns too much. Cottar, major, went the way of hundreds before him. The Head gave him six months’ final polish, taught him what kind of answers best please a certain kind of examiners, and handed him over to the properly constituted authorities, who passed him into Sandhurst. Here he had sense enough to see that he was in the Lower Third once more, and behaved with respect toward his seniors, till they in turn respected him, and he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat in authority over mixed peoples with all the v
ices of men and boys combined. His reward was another string of athletic cups, a good-conduct sword, and, at last, Her Majesty’s commission as a subaltern in a first-class line regiment. He did not know that he bore with him from school and college a character worth much fine gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly. He had plenty of money of his own; his training had set the public school mask upon his face, and had taught him how many were the “things no fellow can do.” By virtue of the same training he kept his pores open and his mouth shut.
The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where he tasted utter loneliness in subaltern’s quarters, — one room and one bullock-trunk, — and, with his mess, learned the new life from the beginning. But there were horses in the land-ponies at reasonable price; there was polo for such as could afford it; there were the disreputable remnants of a pack of hounds; and Cottar worried his way along without too much despair. It dawned on him that a regiment in India was nearer the chance of active service than he had conceived, and that a man might as well study his profession. A major of the new school backed this idea with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated a library of military works, and read and argued and disputed far into the nights. But the adjutant said the old thing: “Get to know your men, young un, and they ‘ll follow you anywhere. That’s all you want — know your men.” Cottar thought he knew them fairly well at cricket and the regimental sports, but he never realised the true inwardness of them till he was sent off with a detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud fort near a rushing river which was spanned by a bridge of boats. When the floods came they went forth and hunted strayed pontoons along the banks. Otherwise there was nothing to do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled. They were a sickly crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst men. Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then sent down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 330