‘But Pater can’t fight one little bit,’ Mullins repeated.
‘‘Twasn’t fighting. He just tried to murder every one.’ Stalky described the affair, and when he left Mullins went off to take counsel with the Head, who, out of a cloud of blue smoke, told him that all would yet be well.
‘Winton,’ said he, ‘is a little stiff in his moral joints. He’ll get over that. If he asks you whether to-day’s doings will count against him in his — ’
‘But you know it’s important to him, sir. His people aren’t — very well off,’ said Mullins.
‘That’s why I’m taking all this trouble. You must reassure him, Pot. I have overcrowded him with new experiences. Oh, by the way, has his Cap come?’
‘It came at dinner, sir.’ Mullins laughed.
Sure enough, when he waked at tea-time, Winton proposed to take Mullins all through every one of his day’s lapses from grace, and ‘Do you think it will count against me?’ said he.
‘Don’t you fuss so much about yourself and your silly career,’ said Mullins. ‘You’re all right. And oh — here’s your First Cap at last. Shove it up on the bracket and come on to tea.’
They met King on their way, stepping statelily and rubbing his hands. ‘I have applied,’ said he, ‘for the services of an additional sub-prefect in Carton’s unlamented absence. Your name, Winton, seems to have found favour with the powers that be, and — and all things considered — I am disposed to give my support to the nomination. You are therefore a quasi-lictor.’
‘Then it didn’t count against me,’ Winton gasped as soon as they were out of hearing.
A Captain of Games can jest with a sub-prefect publicly.
‘You utter ass!’ said Mullins, and caught him by the back of his stiff neck and ran him down to the hall where the sub-prefects, who sit below the salt, made him welcome with the economical bloater-paste of mid-term.
King and little Hartopp were sparring in the Reverend John Gillett’s study at 10 P.M. — classical versus modern as usual.
‘Character — proportion — background,’ snarled King. ‘That is the essence of the Humanities.’
‘Analects of Confucius,’ little Hartopp answered.
‘Time,’ said the Reverend John behind the soda-water. ‘You men oppress me. Hartopp, what did you say to Paddy in your dormitories to-night? Even you couldn’t have overlooked his face.’
‘But I did,’ said Hartopp calmly. ‘I wasn’t even humorous about it as some clerics might have been. I went straight through and said naught.’
‘Poor Paddy! Now, for my part,’ said King, ‘and you know I am not lavish in my praises, I consider Winton a first-class type; absolutely first-class.’
‘Ha-ardly,’ said the Reverend John. ‘First-class of the second class, I admit. The very best type of second class but’ — he shook his head — ’it should have been a rat. Pater’ll never be anything more than a Colonel of Engineers.’
‘What do you base that verdict on?’ said King stiffly.
‘He came to me after prayers — with all his conscience.’
‘Poor old Pater. Was it the mouse?’ said little Hartopp.
‘That, and what he called his uncontrollable temper, and his responsibilities as sub-prefect.’
‘And you?’
‘If we had had what is vulgarly called a pi-jaw he’d have had hysterics. So I recommended a dose of Epsom salts. He’ll take it, too — conscientiously. Don’t eat me, King. Perhaps, he’ll be a K.C.B.’
Ten o’clock struck and the Army class boys in the further studies coming to their houses after an hour’s extra work passed along the gravel path below. Some one was chanting, to the tune of ‘White sand and grey sand,’ Dis te minorem quod geris imperas. He stopped outside Mullins’ study. They heard Mullins’ window slide up and then Stalky’s voice:
‘Ah! Good-evening, Mullins, my barbarus tortor. We’re the waits. We have come to inquire after the local Berserk. Is he doin’ as well as can be expected in his new caree-ah?’
‘Better than you will, in a sec, Stalky,’ Mullins grunted.
‘Glad of that. We thought he’d like to know that Paddy has been carried to the sick-house in ravin’ delirium. They think it’s concussion of the brain.’
‘Why, he was all right at prayers,’ Winton began earnestly, and they heard a laugh in the background as Mullins slammed down the window.
‘‘Night, Regulus,’ Stalky sang out, and the light footsteps went on.
‘You see. It sticks. A little of it sticks among the barbarians,’ said King.
‘Amen,’ said the Reverend John. ‘Go to bed.’
A Translation
HORACE, Bk. V. Ode 3
There are whose study is of smells,
And to attentive schools rehearse
How something mixed with something else
Makes something worse.
Some cultivate in broths impure
The clients of our body — these,
Increasing without Venus, cure,
Or cause, disease.
Others the heated wheel extol,
And all its offspring, whose concern
Is how to make it farthest roll
And fastest turn.
Me, much incurious if the hour
Present, or to be paid for, brings
Me to Brundusium by the power
Of wheels or wings;
Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned
Life-long, save that by Pindar lit,
Such lore leaves cold: I am not turned
Aside to it
More than when, sunk in thought profound
Of what the unaltering Gods require,
My steward (friend but slave) brings round
Logs for my fire.
* * *
The Edge of the Evening
(1913)
Ah! What avails the classic bent,
And what the chosen word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme —
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?
‘Hi! Hi! Hold your horses! Stop!... Well! Well!’ A lean man in a sable-lined overcoat leaped from a private car and barred my way up Pall Mall. ‘You don’t know me? You’re excusable. I wasn’t wearing much of anything last time we met — in South Africa.’
The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw him once more in a sky-blue army shirt, behind barbed wire, among Dutch prisoners bathing at Simonstown, more than a dozen years ago. ‘Why, it’s Zigler — Laughton O. Zigler!’ I cried. ‘Well, I am glad to see you.’
‘The Captive’: Traffics and Discoveries.
‘Oh no! You don’t work any of your English on me. “So glad to see you, doncher know — an’ ta-ta!” Do you reside in this village?’
‘No. I’m up here buying stores.’
‘Then you take my automobile. Where to?... Oh, I know them! My Lord Marshalton is one of the Directors. Pigott, drive to the Army and Navy Cooperative Supply Association Limited, Victoria Street, Westminister.’
He settled himself on the deep dove-colour pneumatic cushions, and his smile was like the turning on of all the electrics. His teeth were whiter than the ivory fittings. He smelt of rare soap and cigarettes — such cigarettes as he handed me from a golden box with an automatic lighter. On my side of the car was a gold-mounted mirror, card and toilette case. I looked at him inquiringly.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘two years after I quit the Cape. She’s not an Ohio girl, though. She’s in the country now. Is that right? She’s at our little place in the country. We’ll go there as soon as you’re through with your grocery-list. Engagements? The only engagement you’ve got is to grab your grip — get your bag from your hotel, I mean — and come right along and meet her. You are the captive of my bow and spear now.’
‘I surrender,’ I said meekly. ‘Did the Zi
gler automatic gun do all this?’ I pointed to the car fittings.
‘Psha! Think of your rememberin’ that! Well, no. The Zigler is a great gun — the greatest ever — but life’s too short, an’ too interestin’, to squander on pushing her in military society. I’ve leased my rights in her to a Pennsylvanian-Transylvanian citizen full of mentality and moral uplift. If those things weigh with the Chancelleries of Europe, he will make good and — I shall be surprised. Excuse me!’
He bared his head as we passed the statue of the Great Queen outside Buckingham Palace.
‘A very great lady!’ said he. ‘I have enjoyed her hospitality. She represents one of the most wonderful institutions in the world. The next is the one we are going to. Mrs. Zigler uses ‘em, and they break her up every week on returned empties.’
‘Oh, you mean the Stores?’ I said.
‘Mrs. Zigler means it more. They are quite ambassadorial in their outlook. I guess I’ll wait outside and pray while you wrestle with ‘em.’
My business at the Stores finished, and my bag retrieved from the hotel, his moving palace slid us into the country.
‘I owe it to you,’ Zigler began as smoothly as the car, ‘to tell you what I am now. I represent the business end of the American Invasion. Not the blame cars themselves — I wouldn’t be found dead in one — but the tools that make ‘em. I am the Zigler Higher-Speed Tool and Lathe Trust. The Trust, sir, is entirely my own — in my own inventions. I am the Renzalaer ten-cylinder aërial — the lightest aeroplane-engine on the market — one price, one power, one guarantee. I am the Orlebar Paper-welt, Pulp-panel Company for aeroplane bodies; and I am the Rush Silencer for military aeroplanes — absolutely silent — which the Continent leases under royalty. With three exceptions, the British aren’t wise to it yet. That’s all I represent at present. You saw me take off my hat to your late Queen? I owe every cent I have to that great an’ good Lady. Yes, sir, I came out of Africa, after my eighteen months’ rest-cure and open-air treatment and sea-bathing, as her prisoner of war, like a giant refreshed. There wasn’t anything could hold me, when I’d got my hooks into it, after that experience. And to you as a representative British citizen, I say here and now that I regard you as the founder of the family fortune — Tommy’s and mine.’
‘But I only gave you some papers and tobacco.’
‘What more does any citizen need? The Cullinan diamond wouldn’t have helped me as much then; an’ — talking about South Africa, tell me — ’
We talked about South Africa till the car stopped at the Georgian lodge of a great park.
‘We’ll get out here. I want to show you a rather sightly view,’ said Zigler.
We walked, perhaps, half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake, entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of pheasants’ feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size that I had never seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian, except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away.
‘That’s where the old Marshalton race-course used to be,’ said Zigler. ‘That ice-house is called Flora’s Temple. Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Siddons an’ Taglioni an’ all that crowd used to act plays here for King George the Third. Wasn’t it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an’ the nobility sat in Flora’s Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They’re the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it’s a sightly view, ain’t it?’
The sunlight was leaving the park. I caught a glint of silver to the southward beyond the wooded ridge.
‘That’s the ocean — the Channel, I mean,’ said Zigler. ‘It’s twenty-three miles as a man flies. A sightly view, ain’t it?’
I looked at the severe yews, the dumb yelling mouths of the two statues, at the blue-green shadows on the unsunned grass, and at the still bright plain in front where some deer were feeding.
‘It’s a most dramatic contrast, but I think it would be better on a summer’s day,’ I said, and we went on, up one of the noiseless rides, a quarter of a mile at least, till we came to the porticoed front of an enormous Georgian pile. Four footmen revealed themselves in a hall hung with pictures.
‘I hired this off of my Lord Marshalton,’ Zigler explained, while they helped us out of our coats under the severe eyes of ruffed and periwigged ancestors. ‘Ya-as. They always look at me too, as if I’d blown in from the gutter. Which, of course, I have. That’s Mary, Lady Marshalton. Old man Joshua painted her. Do you see any likeness to my Lord Marshalton? Why, haven’t you ever met up with him? He was Captain Mankeltow — my Royal British Artillery captain that blew up my gun in the war, an’ then tried to bury me against my religious principles. Ya-as. His father died and he got the lordship. That was about all he got by the time that your British death-duties were through with him. So he said I’d oblige him by hiring his ranch. It’s a hell an’ a half of a proposition to handle, but Tommy — Mrs. Laughton — understands it. Come right in to the parlour and be very welcome.’
“The Captive”: Traffics and Discoveries.
He guided me, hand on shoulder, into a babble of high-pitched talk and laughter that filled a vast drawing-room. He introduced me as the founder of the family fortunes to a little, lithe, dark-eyed woman whose speech and greeting were of the soft-lipped South. She in turn presented me to her mother, a black-browed snowy-haired old lady with a cap of priceless Venetian point, hands that must have held many hearts in their time, and a dignity as unquestioned and unquestioning as an empress. She was, indeed, a Burton of Savannah, who, on their own ground, out-rank the Lees of Virginia. The rest of the company came from Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, with here and there a softening southern strain. A party of young folk popped corn beneath a mantelpiece surmounted by a Gainsborough. Two portly men, half hidden by a cased harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of some contract. A knot of matrons talked servants — Irish versus German — across the grand piano. A youth ravaged an old bookcase, while beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves, dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the shaded frame-light. In a corner half-a-dozen girls examined the glazed tables that held the decorations — English and foreign — of the late Lord Marshalton.
‘See heah! Would this be the Ordeh of the Gyartah?’ one said, pointing.
‘I presoom likely. No! The Garter has “Honey swore” — I know that much. This is “Tria juncta” something.’
‘Oh, what’s that cunning little copper cross with “For Valurr”?’ a third cried.
‘Say! Look at here!’ said the young man at the bookcase. ‘Here’s a first edition of Handley Cross and a Beewick’s Birds right next to it — just like so many best sellers. Look, Maidie!’
The girl beneath the picture half turned her body but not her eyes.
‘You don’t tell me!’ she said slowly. ‘Their women amounted to something after all.’
‘But Woman’s scope, and outlook was vurry limmutted in those days,’ one of the matrons put in, from the piano.
‘Limmutted? For her? If they whurr, I guess she was the limmut. Who was she? Peters, whurr’s the cat’log?’
A thin butler, in charge of two footmen removing the tea-batteries, slid to a table and handed her a blue-and-qilt book. He was button-holed by one of the men behind the harp, who wished to get a telephone call through to Edinburgh.
‘The local office shuts at six,’ said Peters. ‘But I can get through to’ — he named some town — ’in ten minutes, sir.’
‘That suits me. You’ll find me here when you’ve hitched up. Oh, say, Peters! We — Mister Olpherts an’ me — ain’t goin’ by that early morning train to-morrow — but the other one — on the other line — whatever they call
it.’
‘The nine twenty-seven, sir. Yes, sir. Early breakfast will be at half-past eight and the car will be at the door at nine.’
‘Peters!’ an imperious young voice called. ‘What’s the matteh with Lord Marshalton’s Ordeh of the Gyartah? We cyan’t find it anyweah.’
‘Well, miss, I have heard that that Order is usually returned to His Majesty on the death of the holder. Yes, miss.’ Then in a whisper to a footman, ‘More butter for the pop-corn in King Charles’s Corner.’ He stopped behind my chair. ‘Your room is Number Eleven, sir. May I trouble you for your keys?’
He left the room with a six-year-old maiden called Alice who had announced she would not go to bed ‘‘less Peter, Peter, Punkin-eater takes me — so there!’
He very kindly looked in on me for a moment as I was dressing for dinner. ‘Not at all, sir,’ he replied to some compliment I paid him. ‘I valeted the late Lord Marshalton for fifteen years. He was very abrupt in his movements, sir. As a rule I never received more than an hour’s notice of a journey. We used to go to Syria frequently. I have been twice to Babylon. Mr. and Mrs. Zigler’s requirements are, comparatively speaking, few.’
‘But the guests?’
‘Very little out of the ordinary as soon as one knows their ordinaries. Extremely simple, if I may say so, sir.’
I had the privilege of taking Mrs. Burton in to dinner, and was rewarded with an entirely new, and to me rather shocking view, of Abraham Lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. ‘My brother, suh,’ she said, ‘fell at Gettysburg in order that Armenians should colonise New England to-day. If I took any interest in any dam-Yankee outside of my son-in-law Laughton yondah, I should say that my brother’s death had been amply avenged.’
The man at her right took up the challenge, and the war spread. Her eyes twinkled over the flames she had lit.
‘Don’t these folk,’ she said a little later, ‘remind you of Arabs picnicking under the Pyramids?’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 494