Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (777 page)

Whether the throat-closing brick fields by Lille, or her pavées

Endlessly ending in rain between beet and tobacco;

Or that wind we shave by — the brutal North-Easter.

Rasping the newly dunged Somme.

(Into your collars, my horses!) It is enough — it is France!

Whether the dappled Argonne, the cloud-shadows packing

Either horizon with ghosts; or exquisite, carven

Villages hewn from the cliff, the torrents behind them

Feeding their never-quenched lights.

(Look to your footing, my horses!) It is enough — it is France!

Whether that gale where Biscay jammed in the corner

Herds and heads her seas at the Landes, but defeated

Bellowing smokes along Spain, till the uttermost headlands

Make themselves dance in the mist.

(Breathe — breathe deeply, my horses!) It is enough — it is France!

Whether the broken, honey-hued, honey-combed limestone

Cream under white-hot sun; the rosemary bee-bloom

Sleepily noisy at noon and, somewhere to Southward.

Sleepily noisy, the Sea.

(Tes, it is warm here, my horses!) It is enough — it is France

Whether the Massif in Spring, the multiplied lacets

Hampered by slips or drifts; the gentians, under

Turbaned snow, pushing up the heaven of Summer

Though the stark moors lie black.

(Neigh through the icicled tunnels;) ‘It is enough — it is France!’

Hymn to Physical Pain

(Mr. C. R. Wilkett’s version)

DREAD Mother of Forgetfulness

  Who, when Thy reign begins.

Wipest away the Soul’s distress.

  And memory of her sins.

The trusty Worm that dieth not —

  The steadfast Fire also.

By Thy contrivance are forgot

  In a completer woe.

Thine are the lidless eyes of night

  That stare upon our tears.

Through certain hours which in our sight

  Exceed a thousand years:

Thine is the thickness of the Dark

  That presses in our pain.

As Thine the Dawn that bids us mark

  Life’s grinning face again.

Thine is the weariness outworn

  No promise shall relieve

That says at eve, ‘Would God ‘t were morn!’

  At morn, ‘Would God ‘t were eve!’

Ad when Thy tender mercies cease

  And life unvexed is due.

Instant upon the false release

  The Worm and Fire renew.

Wherefore we praise Thee in the deep.

  And on our beds we pray

For Thy return that Thou may’st keep

  The Pains of Hell at bay!

The Tender Achilles

ST. PEGGOTTY’S annual ‘Senior’ dinner drew Keede from his south- eastern suburbs to listen to the Head of his old Hospital reviewing work and casualties for the past year.

Barring a few guests — I was one of Keede’s — the company represented, as the Press said, all branches of the healing art, from authoritative specialists to rural G.P.’s, whose faces told that they worked their practices in light cars. But they all cheered Sir James Belton’s speech as though they were students again. Its opening dealt guardedly with the Great Search on which the Hospital teams were engaged in the newly endowed and extended biological laboratories; and he was sure that all who had the Search at heart would be glad to know that since their Mr. C.R. Wilkett had resumed his old post of bacteriologist, a certain amount of exploration of promising avenues had been initiated.

He then spoke of St. Peggotty’s more domestic concerns. There were esoteric allusions here; professional similes, anecdotes, nicknames, and reminiscences which set some of the whiter heads shouting. But he was not wholly inaudible till he expounded his well-known views on the Pharmacopoeia Britannica, and, incidentally, the ‘Galenical Physician,’ or General Practitioner. Then his hearers overbore him with yells of applause or dissent according to their specialities, and called upon him by the honoured name of Howlieglass, which he had borne when they walked the hospitals, till, at last, they all went home, merry and made young again by good wine and memories renewed.

Keede had discovered in an eminent guest, a friend and a colleague of the War, — a dryish, clean-looking man, who kindly included me in his invitation to come and smoke a pipe with him at his diggings. These proved to be a large, well-administered house in Wimpole Street. He took us to a room at the back of things, where we found the tray set and the fire in order. Keede formally introduced him once as Sir Thomas Horringe, who, he said, specialised in ‘tripe.’ Otherwise and always he called him ‘Scree.’

‘He’s all right,’ Keede explained. ‘He doesn’t know anything really, except how to climb Matterhorns. I only ask him in to please the heirs. He’s as ignorant as the rest of these knife wallahs.’

Sir Thomas said that the darkness of the surgeon was as electric light beside the mediaeval murk of the ‘medicine-man,’ or General Practitioner, and was beginning to tell me what Keede really did and prescribed when he was a sixpenny doctor at Lambeth; but broke off to tell him that, even if they were not too old to fight with siphons, the wife would notice the mess on the rugs next morning, and he would catch it.

Keede then advised me that all surgeon-specialists look on every case as a surgical — ’that is to say, a carpenter’s’ — job, whereas the G.P., who represents ‘the Galenical integrity of medicine — before these dam’ barbers wriggled into it’ — considers each patient as a human being.

‘In other words,’ he concluded, ‘medicine and surgery is the difference between the Priest and the pew-opener.’

Again the other dissented, and the two carried on some discussion they had begun at dinner about the Great Search, and whether Mr. C.R. Wilkett, whom they called ‘Wilkie’ or ‘Wilks,’ had hit on the right line. The only flaw in this person’s perfection, according to Sir Thomas, was that he had once inclined to ‘Maldoni’s theory of the causation of indeterminate growths,’ which heresy he had now abandoned.

‘But he has got imagination,’ Sir Thomas pointed out. ‘That’s what’ his coming back to St. Peggotty’s will give the whole team. Howlieglass never lost sight of him. He wanted to get him back to the bug-run; and he did.’

‘He’s the only man who’d have had the nerve to do it. He’s worthy to be a G.P.’

‘In the name of the College of Surgeons, ever so many thanks for the compliment, Robin,’ Sir Thomas laughed. ‘Never mind. We’ve got him again. Howlieglass wants his head, not his feet.’

‘Or, for that matter, his hands. ‘Rummy thing! You never find a man of his type who really loves a neat job.’ Keede made a suggestive motion of the right hand above the left.

‘Who is Wilkett?’ I demanded, for these two were taking him very seriously.

‘Just now? The best man in his line at St. Peggotty’s. What he’ll be in ten years’ time, the Lord only knows; but Howlieglass is betting on it.’

Keede interrupted the other for my benefit.

‘He’s bugs — agar-agar — guinea-pigs — slides — slices. The microbe- game.’

‘The Lancet’s right,’ Sir Thomas meditated aloud. ‘You G.P.’s ought to learn to read sometimes, and try to catch up with what’s being done.’

‘And leave you knife-wallahs to kill our patients? We daren’t gut ‘em and tell the widows they died of shock.’

Sir Thomas turned to me.

‘If you’ve had dealings with him, you’ll know what an impostor Keede is. He’s as good with the knife as — ’

‘Any other post-War assassin. But I don’t cut old ladies into bits because it didn’t kill youngsters in the pink of condition. I don’t pose as an expert because I had to take chances in the War. I don’t lecture and publish on insuff — ’

‘You’re right, Robin.’ Scree dropped a hand on his shoulder. ‘There has been a deal too much cut-and-thrust since the War. Specially among the youngsters.’

‘‘Glad some of you know that, at any rate. It’s the same between Doctor and Patient as it is between Man and Woman. Do you want to prove things to her, or do you want to keep her?’

‘There’s a middle way, though,’ Scree observed. ‘Howlieglass wanted to keep Wilkie, but he had to prove a few things to him first.’

‘Why on earth was Wilks sent to the Front at all? ‘Sheer waste!’ said Keede angrily.

‘We knew it. Howlieglass did his best to have him kept back, but Wilkie thought it was his duty.’

‘Lummy! As if any of us could get out of that!’ Keede snorted.

‘The “duty” notion was part of the imaginative equipment, of course,’ said Scree. ‘They used him at the base for a while. He was all right there, because he had time to think.’

‘That’s the research-temperament. But there’s a time for all things.’ Keede spoke severely.

‘I don’t say he was even second-class in his surgery,’ Scree went on,’ but what did that matter under the circumstances? Only, as you say, Robin, that type of mind wants absolute results, one way or the other; or else absolute accuracy. You don’t get either at a Clearing Station. You’ve got to acknowledge the facts of life and your own limitations. Ambitious men won’t do that till they are broke — like Wilkie was.’

‘What was his trouble?’ I demanded.

Scree hesitated for a definition. Keede supplied it.

‘Bleedin’ vanity,’ said he.

Scree nodded.

‘Lambeth has spoken. The way Howlieglass would put it is a shade more refined.’

‘Let’s have it!’ Keede cried; then, to me ‘Scree’s splendid as Howlieglass. Listen!’

Here Sir Thomas Horringe, whom few would suspect of parlour-tricks, gave a perfect rendering of the Head of St. Peggotty’s thus:

‘Gen-tel-men. In our Pro-fession we are none of us Jee-ho-vahs. Strange as it may seem, not an-y of us are Jee-ho-vahs.’

In the few precisely articulated words, one could see Sir James himself — his likeness in face and carriage to the hawk-headed Egyptian god, the mobile pursed lips, and the stillness of the wonderful hands at his sides.

‘I ought to know,’ said Scree, after our compliments. ‘I was his dresser...Yes, Wilkie was sent up to the dog-fight, and it was too much for him.’

‘Why?’ I said, foolishly enough.

‘Robin’ll tell,’ was the reply. ‘He had it.’

I waited on Keede, who delivered himself at some length; his half-shut eyes on the past.

‘When you are at the Front, you are either doing nothing or trying to do ten times more than you can. When you are, you store up impressions for future use. When you aren’t, they develop. Either way, God help you! A C.C.S. has to be near railhead, hasn’t it? — to evacuate ‘em. That means troops and dumps. That means bombing, don’t it?...The actual setting?...Oh! They take a couple of E.P. tents and join ‘em together, and floor ‘em with tarpaulins that have — been in use. Then they rig up a big acetylene over each operating table; your anaesthetist gets his dope and the pads ready; your nurses and orderlies stand by with the cutlery and odds and ends, and you’re ready for visitors. They’ve been tagged and labelled by some poor devil up under fire — I’ve been him, too! — and the Receiving Officer sends in the ones that look as if they had the best chance. About that time, Jerry drops an egg or so to steady your hand, and someone vomits.’

‘He does,’ said Scree.

‘Then your job begins. You’ve got to make up your mind what you are going to do, as soon as your man is on the table, because the others are waiting. Often, you lead off with a long break of identical gun- shot wounds in the head — shrapnel on tin-hats, advancing. Then the five-point-nines find ‘em, and it’s abdominals. You have to explore and act on your own judgment — one down, t’other come on — till you drop.

‘The longest single stretch I ever put in was three and a half days, four hours’ sleep each night, after Second Vermuizendaal in ‘16. The last thing I remember, before I rolled over behind the stores, was old “Duck” Ruthven sluicing off his fat arms in our tea-bucket, and quacking, “Fifteen minutes! My God! Fifteen minutes per capita!” He was the final London word in trephining, and he’d come out to show the young ‘uns how to do it. In his own theatre with his own troupe, he considered an hour and a quarter good going for one case; but Berkeley’s team, at the next table, had been polishing ‘em off four to the hour for five hours. Talking of Ruthven, did you hear what he said when the Aussies broke into the milliner’s shop at Amiens, just before Villers Bretonneux, and dressed ‘emselves lady-fashion all through? He had to cut three of ‘em out of their undies afterwards.’