Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (704 page)

‘This is interesting,’ Portson murmured. ‘I never imagined you in this light before, Maddingham.’

‘I was surprised at myself-’give you my word. But I was perfectly polite. I said to him: “Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to death just as surely as if you’d drowned ‘em.” “Ah, but I didn’t,” he said. “That ought to count in my favour.” “That was no thanks to you,” I said. “You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.” “I didn’t imagine you’d take it as seriously as all that,” he said-and he said it quite seriously, too. “Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win anyway.” I said: “Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is business. I can do nothing for you.”‘

‘You got that a bit mixed, I think,’ said Tegg critically.

‘He saw what I was driving at,’ Maddingham replied, ‘and he was the only one that mattered for the moment. “Then I’m a dead man, Mr. Maddingham,” he said. “That’s your business,” I said. “Good afternoon.” And I went out.’

‘And?’ said Winchmore, after some silence.

‘He died. I saw his flag half-masted next morning.’

There was another silence. Henri looked in at the alcove and smiled. Maddingham beckoned to him.

‘But why didn’t you lend him a hand to settle his private affairs?’ said Portson.

‘Because I wasn’t acting in my private capacity. I’d been on the bridge for three nights and — ’ Maddingham pulled out his watch-’this time to-morrow I shall be there again-confound it! Has my car come, Henri?’

‘Yes, Sare Francis. I am sorry.’ They all complimented Henri on the dinner, and when the compliments were paid he expressed himself still their debtor. So did the nephew.

‘Are you coming with me, Portson?’ said Maddingham as he rose heavily.

‘No. I’m for Southampton, worse luck! My car ought to be here, too.’

‘I’m for Euston and the frigid calculating North,’ said Winchmore with a shudder. ‘One common taxi, please, Henri.’

Tegg smiled. ‘I’m supposed to sleep in just now, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to come with you as far as Gravesend, Maddingham.’

‘Delighted. There’s a glass all round left still,’ said Maddingham. ‘Here’s luck! The usual, I suppose? “Damnation to all neutrals!”‘

The Vineyard

AT the eleventh hour he came.

But his wages were the same

As ours who all day long had trod

The wine-press of the Wrath of God.

When he shouldered through the lines

Of our cropped and mangled vines.

His unjaded eye could scan

How each hour had marked its man.

(Children of the morning — tide

With the hosts of noon had died;

And our noon contingents lay

Dead with twilight’s spent array.)

Since his back had felt no load

Virtue still in him abode;

So he swiftly made his own

Those last spoils we had not won.

We went home, delivered thence.

Grudging him no recompense

Till he portioned praise or blame

To our works before he came.

Till he showed us for our good —

Deaf to mirth, and blind to scorn-

How we might have best withstood

Burdens that he had not borne!

‘Banquet Night’

‘ONCE in so often,’ King Solomon said.

  Watching his quarrymen drill the stone.

‘We will club our garlic and wine and bread

  And banquet together beneath my Throne

And all the Brethren shall come to that mess

As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less.

‘Send a swift shallop to Hiram of Tyre.

  Felling and floating our beautiful trees.

Say that the Brethren and I desire

  Talk with our Brethren who use the seas.

And we shall be happy to meet them at mess

As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less.

‘Carry this message to Hiram Abif-

  Excellent Master of forge and mine: —

I and the Brethren would like it if

  He and the Brethren will come to dine

(Garments from Bozrah or morning-dress)

As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less.

‘God gave the Hyssop and Cedar their place-

  Also the Bramble, the Fig and the Thorn —

But that is no reason to black a man’s face

  Because he is not what he hasn’t been born.

And, as touching the Temple, I hold and profess

We are Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less.’

So it was ordered and so it was done.

  And the hewers of wood and the Masons of Mark.

With foc’sle hands of the Sidon run

  And Navy Lords from the Royal Ark.

Came and sat down and were merry at mess

As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less.

The Quarries are hotter than Hiram’s forge.

  No one is safe from the dog-whips’ reach.

It’s mostly snowing up Lebanon gorge.

  And it’s always blowing off Joppa beach;

But once in so often, the messenger brings

Solomon’s mandate: ‘Forget these things!

Brother to Beggars and Fellow to Kings.

Companion of Princes-forget these things!

Fellow-Craftsman, forget these things!’

‘In the Interests of the Brethren’

I WAS buying a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. ‘The colour is in the feeding,’ said he. ‘Unless you know how to feed ‘em, it goes. Canaries are one of our hobbies.’

He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I recognised, turned, and nodded.

‘I took your advice about the canary,’ I said.

‘Did you? Good!’ he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder, and was parted from me by the crowd.

A few years ago I turned into a tobacconist’s to have a badly stopped pipe cleaned out.

‘Well! Well! And how did the canary do?’ said the man behind the counter. We shook hands, and ‘What’s your name?’ we both asked together.

His name was Lewis Holroyd Burges, of ‘Burges and Son,’ as I might have seen above the door-but Son had been killed in Egypt. His hair was whiter than it had been, and the eyes were sunk a little.

‘Well! Well! To think,’ said he, ‘of one man in all these millions turning up in this curious way, when there’s so many who don’t turn up at all-eh?’ (It was then that he told me of Son Lewis’s death and why the boy had been christened Lewis.) ‘Yes. There’s not much left for middle-aged people just at present. Even one’s hobbies — We used to fish together. And the same with canaries! We used to breed ‘em for colour-deep orange was our speciality. That’s why I spoke to you, if you remember; but I’ve sold all my birds. Well! Well! And now we must locate your trouble.’

He bent over my erring pipe and dealt with it skilfully as a surgeon. A soldier came in, spoke in an undertone, received a reply, and went out.

‘Many of my clients are soldiers nowadays, and a number of ‘em belong to the Craft,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘It breaks my heart to give them the tobaccos they ask for. On the other hand, not one man in five thousand has a tobacco-palate. Preference, yes. Palate, no. Here’s your pipe, again. It deserves better treatment than it’s had. There’s a procedure, a ritual, in all things. Any time you’re passing by again, I assure you, you will be welcome. I’ve one or two odds and ends that may interest you.’

I left the shop with the rarest of all feelings on me-the sensation which is only youth’s right-that I might have made a friend. A little distance from the door I was accosted by a wounded man who asked for ‘Burges’s.’ The place seemed to be known in the neighbourhood.

I found my way to it again, and often after that, but it was not till my third visit that I discovered Mr. Burges held a half interest in Ackerman and Pernit’s, the great cigar-importers, which had come to him through an uncle whose children now lived almost in the Cromwell Road, and said that the uncle had been on the Stock Exchange.

‘I’m a shopkeeper by instinct,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘I like the ritual of handling things. The shop has done me well. I like to do well by the shop.’

It had been established by his grandfather in 1827, but the fittings and appointments must have been at least half a century older. The brown and red tobacco — and snuff-jars, with Crowns, Garters, and names of forgotten mixtures in gold leaf; the polished ‘Oronoque’ tobacco- barrels on which favoured customers sat; the cherry-black mahogany counter, the delicately moulded shelves, the reeded cigar-cabinets, the German-silver-mounted scales, and the Dutch brass roll — and cake- cutter, were things to covet.

‘They aren’t so bad,’ he admitted. ‘That large Bristol jar hasn’t any duplicate to my knowledge. Those eight snuff-jars on the third shelf- they’re Dollin’s ware; he used to work for Wimble in Seventeen-Forty- are absolutely unique. Is there any one in the trade now could tell you what “Romano’s Hollande” was? Or “Scholten’s”? Here’s a snuff-mull of George the First’s time; and here’s a Louis Quinze-what am I talking of? Treize, Treize, of course-grater for making bran-snuff. They were regular tools of the shop in my grandfather’s day. And who on earth to leave ‘em to outside the British Museum now, I can’t think!’

His pipes-I would this were a tale for virtuosi-his amazing collection of pipes was kept in the parlour, and this gave me the privilege of making his wife’s acquaintance. One morning, as I was looking covetously at a jacaranda-wood ‘cigarro’-not cigar-cabinet with silver lock-plates and drawer-knobs of Spanish work, a wounded Canadian came into the shop and disturbed our happy little committee.

‘Say,’ he began loudly, ‘are you the right place?’

‘Who sent you?’ Mr. Burges demanded.

‘A man from Messines. But that ain’t the point! I’ve got no certificates, nor papers nothin’, you understand. I left my Lodge owin’ ‘em seventeen dollars back-dues. But this man at Messines told me it wouldn’t make any odds with you.’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘We meet to-night at 7 p.m.’

The man’s face fell a yard. ‘Hell!’ said he. ‘But I’m in hospital-I can’t get leaf.’

‘And Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 p.m.,’ Mr. Burges added promptly. ‘You’ll have to be proved, of course.’

‘Guess I can get by that all right,’ was the cheery reply. ‘Toosday, then.’ He limped off, beaming.

‘Who might that be?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know any more than you do-except he must be a Brother. London’s full of Masons now. Well! Well! We must do what we can these days. If you’ll come to tea this evening, I’ll take you on to Lodge afterwards. It’s a Lodge of Instruction.’

‘Delighted. Which is your Lodge?’ I said, for up till then he had not given me its name.

‘“Faith and Works 5837”-the third Saturday of every month. Our Lodge of Instruction meets nominally every Thursday, but we sit oftener than that now because there are so many Visiting Brothers in town. ‘Here another customer entered, and I went away much interested in the range of Brother Burgess hobbies.

At tea-time he was dressed as for Church, and wore gold pince-nez in lieu of the silver spectacles. I blessed my stars that I had thought to change into decent clothes.

‘Yes, we owe that much to the Craft,’ he assented. ‘All Ritual is fortifying. Ritual’s a natural necessity for mankind. The more things are upset, the more they fly to it. I abhor slovenly Ritual anywhere. By the way, would you mind assisting at the examinations, if there are many Visiting Brothers to-night? You’ll find some of ‘em very rusty, but-it’s the Spirit, not the Letter, that giveth life. The question of Visiting Brethren is an important one. There are so many of them in London now, you see; and so few places where they can meet.’

‘You dear thing!’ said Mrs. Burges, and handed him his locked and initialed apron-case.

‘Our Lodge is only just round the corner,’ he went on. ‘You mustn’t be too critical of our appurtenances. The place was a garage once.’