Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (756 page)

‘Enthroned above Caesar and Judge of the Earth! We wait on Thy coming — oh tarry not long! As the Kings of the Sunrise Drew sword at Thy Birth. So we arm in this midnight of insult and wrong!’

‘Yes — and if one of their fish-stalls is bumped over by a camel — it’s my fault!’ said Valens. ‘Now they’ve started it!’

Sure enough, voices on the outskirts broke into ‘Pickled Fish,’ but before Valens could speak, they were suppressed by someone crying:

‘Quiet there, or you’ll get your pickle before your fish.’

It was close on twilight when a cry rose from within the packed Church, and its congregation breasted out into the crowd. They all talked about the new orders for their love-feasts, most of them agreeing that they were sensible and easy. They agreed, too, that Petrus (Paulus did not seem to have taken much part in the debate) had spoken like one inspired, and they were all extremely proud of being Christians. Some of them began to link arms across the alley, and strike into the ‘Enthroned above Caesar’ chorus.

‘And this, I think,’ Valens called to the young Commandant of the Mounted Patrol, ‘is where we’ll begin to steer ‘em home. Oh! And “Let night also have her well-earned hymn,” as Uncle ‘ud say.’

There filed out from behind the Little Circus four blaring trumpets, a standard, and a dozen Mounted Police. Their wise little grey Arabs sidled, passaged, shouldered, and nosed softly into the mob, as though they wanted petting, while the trumpets deafened the narrow street. An open square, near by, eased the pressure before long. Here the Patrol broke into fours, and gridironed it, saluting the images of the Gods at each corner and in the centre. People stopped, as usual, to watch how cleverly the incense was cast down over the withers into the spouting cressets; children reached up to pat horses which they said they knew; family groups re-found each other in the smoky dusk; hawkers offered cooked suppers; and soon the crowd melted into the main traffic avenues. Valens went over to the Church porch, where Petrus and Paulus waited between his lictors.

‘That was well done,’ Paulus began.

‘How’s the fever?’ Valens asked.

‘I was spared for to-day. I think, too, that by The Blessing we have carried our point.’

‘Good hearing! My uncle bids me say you are welcome at his house.’

‘That is always a command,’ said Paulus, with a quick down-country gesture. ‘Now that this day’s burden is lifted, it will be a delight.’

Petrus joined up like a weary ox. Valens greeted him, but he did not answer.

‘Leave him alone,’ Paulus whispered. ‘The virtue has gone out of me — him — for the while.’ His own face looked pale and drawn.

The street was empty, and Valens took a short cut through an alley, where light ladies leaned out of windows and laughed. The three strolled easily together, the lictors behind them, and far off they heard the trumpets of the Night Horse saluting some statue of a Caesar, which marked the end of their round. Paulus was telling Valens how the whole Roman Empire would be changed by what the Christians had agreed to about their love-feasts, when an impudent little Jew boy stole up behind them, playing ‘Pickled Fish’ on some sort of desert bag-pipe.

‘Can’t you stop that young pest, one of you?’ Valens asked laughing. ‘You shan’t be mocked on this great night of yours, Paulus.’

The lictors turned back a few paces, and shook a torch at the brat, but he retreated and drew them on. Then they heard Paulus shout, and when they hurried back, found Valens prostrate and coughing — his blood on the fringe of the kneeling Paul’s robe. Petrus stooped, waving a helpless hand above them.

‘Someone ran out from behind that well-head. He stabbed him as he ran, and ran on. Listen!’ said Paulus.

But there was not even the echo of a footfall for clue, and the Jew boy had vanished like a bat. Said Valens from the ground

‘Home! Quick! I have it!’

They tore a shutter out of a shop-front, lifted and carried him, while Paulus walked beside. They set him down in the lighted inner courtyard of the Prefect’s house, and a lictor hurried for the Prefect’s physician.

Paulus watched the boy’s face, and, as Valens shivered a little, called to the girl to fetch last night’s fur rug. She brought it, laid the head on her breast, and cast herself beside Valens.

‘It isn’t bad. It doesn’t bleed much. So it can’t be bad — can it?’ she repeated. Valens’ smile reassured her, till the Prefect came and recognised the deadly upward thrust under the ribs. He turned on the Hebrews.

‘To-morrow you will look for where your Church stood,’ said he.

Valens lifted the hand that the girl was not kissing.

‘No — no!’ he gasped. ‘The Cilician did it! For his brother! He said it.’

‘The Cilician you let go to save these Christians because I — ?’ Valens signed to his uncle that it was so, while the girl begged him to steal strength from her till the doctor should come.

‘Forgive me,’ said Serga to Paulus. ‘None the less I wish your God in Hades once for all...But what am I to write his mother? Can’t either of you two talking creatures tell me what I’m to tell his mother?’

‘What has she to do with him?’ the slave-girl cried. ‘He is mine — mine! I testify before all Gods that he bought me! I am his. He is mine.’

‘We can deal with the Cilician and his friends later,’ said one of the lictors. ‘ But what now?’

For some reason, the man, though used to butcher-work, looked at Petrus.

‘Give him drink and wait,’ said Petrus. ‘I have — seen such a wound.’ Valens drank and a shade of colour came to him. He motioned the Prefect to stoop.

‘What is it? Dearest of lives, what troubles?’

‘The Cilician and his friends...Don’t be hard on them...They get worked up...They don’t know what they are doing... Promise!’

‘This is not I, child. It is the Law.’

‘‘No odds. You’re Father’s brother...Men make laws — not Gods... . Promise!...It’s finished with me.’

Valens’ head eased back on its yearning pillow.

Petrus stood like one in a trance. The tremor left his face as he repeated

‘“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Heard you that, Paulus? He, a heathen and an idolator, said it!’

‘I heard. What hinders now that we should baptize him?’ Paulus answered promptly.

Petrus stared at him as though he had come up out of the sea.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘It is the little maker of tents...And what does he now — command?’

Paulus repeated the suggestion.

Painfully, that other raised the palsied hand that he had once held up in a hall to deny a charge.

‘Quiet!’ said he. ‘Think you that one who has spoken Those Words needs such as we are to certify him to any God?’

Paulus cowered before the unknown colleague, vast and commanding, revealed after all these years.

‘As you please — as you please,’ he stammered, overlooking the blasphemy. ‘Moreover there is the concubine.’

The girl did not heed, for the brow beneath her lips was chilling, even as she called on her God who had bought her at a price that he should not die but live.

The Disciple

HE that hath a Gospel.

  To loose upon Mankind.

Though he serve it utterly —

  Body, soul, and mind —

Though he go to Calvary

  Daily for its gain —

It is His Disciple

  Shall make his labour vain.

He that bath a Gospel.

  For all earth to own —

Though he etch it on the steel.

  Or carve it on the stone —

Not to be misdoubted

  Through the after-days —

It is His Disciple

  Shall read it many ways.

It is His Disciple

  (Ere Those Bones are dust)

Who shall change the Charter

  Who shall split the Trust —

Amplify distinctions.

  Rationalise the Claim.

Preaching that the Master

  Would have done the same.

It is His Disciple

  Who shall tell us how

Much the Master would have scrapped

  Had he lived till now —

What he would have modified

  Of what he said before —

It is His Disciple

  Shall do this and more...

He that hath a Gospel

  Whereby Heaven is won

(Carpenter, or Cameleer.

  Or Maya’s dreaming son).

Many swords shall pierce Him.

  Mingling blood with gall;

But His Own Disciple

  Shall wound Him worst of all!

The Playmate

SHE is not Folly — that I know.

Her steadfast eyelids tell me so

When, at the hour the lights divide.

She steals as summonsed to my side.

When, finger on the pursèd lip;

In secret, mirthful fellowship

She, heralding new framed delights.

Breathes, ‘This shall be a Night of Nights!’

Then out of Time and out of Space.

Is built an Hour and a Place

Where all an earnest, baffled Earth

Blunders and trips to make us mirth;

Where, from the trivial flux of Things.

Rise unconceived miscarryings

Outrageous but immortal, shown.

Of Her great love, to me alone...

She is not Wisdom but, may be.

Wiser than all the Norms is She

And more than Wisdom I prefer

To wait on Her, — to wait on Her!

Aunt Ellen

A PRUDENT man, working from the North to London, along the Eastern Counties, provides himself with friends from whom he can get food and lodging.

Miss Gillon, whom all her world calls ‘Aunt Ellen,’ gave me lunch at her house near Grantham. She wished to send an eiderdown quilt to an old family servant at Hammersmith. Surely I remembered Prescott from past ages? To-morrow would be Prescott’s birthday. The quilt had been delayed for repairs. A man would not know, of course, how tender eiderdown quilts were. Should I be in London that evening? Then, in the morning, would I take the quilt round to Prescott’s address? Prescott would be so pleased! And surprised, too; for there were some little birthday remembrances from herself and from Saunders wrapped up in the quilt.

Saunders, Prescott’s successor, went upstairs and returned, her mouth full of knotted strings, clasping an outsized pasteboard coffin. The eiderdown, a loudly-patterned affair, was rolled into bolster form, bound in two places with broad puce ribbons, and coaxed into it. Saunders wove lashings over all and I carried it out and up-ended it beside my steering-wheel.

Going down the drive I could scarcely squint round the corner of the thing, and at the turn into the road, it lurched into my eye. So I declutched it, and tied it to the back of the two-seater. True, I made most of the knots with my gloves on, but, to compensate, I wove Saunders’ reef-points into the rear of the car as carefully as the pendulous oriole stays her nest.

Then I went on to dine at a seat of learning where I was due to pick up a friend — Henry Brankes Lettcombe, O.B.E. — once a Colonel of Territorials — whose mission, in peace, was the regeneration of our native cinema industry. He was a man of many hopes, which translated themselves into prospectuses that faded beneath the acid breath of finance. Sometimes I wrote the prospectuses, because he promised me that, when his ship came in, he would produce the supreme film of the world — the ‘Life of St. Paul.’ He said it would be easier than falling off a log, once he had launched his Pan-Imperial Life-Visions’ Association.

He had said I should find him at St. Martin’s College, which lies in a rather congested quarter of a University town. I always look on my mudguards as hostages to Fortune; yet even I was a little piqued at the waywardness of the traffic. It was composed of the hatless young, in flannel trousers and vivid blazers, who came and went and stopped without warning, in every manner of machine. They were as genial as those should be whose fathers pay all their bills. Only one, a thick- set youth in a canoe-ended natural wood sporting machine, rammed me on the starboard quarter and declared it was my fault.