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Title: Debits and Credits Author: Rudyard Kipling * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0603771h.html Edition: 1 Language: English Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit Date first posted: July 2006 Date most recently updated: July 2006 This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
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CONTENTS:
The Enemies to Each Other
The Changelings
Sea Constables: A Tale of '15
The Vineyard
"Banquet Night"
"In the Interests of the Brethren"
To the Companions (Horace, Ode 17, Bk. v)
The United Idolaters
The Centaurs
"Late Came the God"
The Wish House
Rahere
The Survival (Horace, Ode 22, Bk. v)
The Janeites
Jane's Marriage
The Portent (Horace, Ode 20, Bk. v)
The Prophet and the Country
Gow's Watch: Act IV, Sc. 4
The Bull That Thought
Alnaschar and the Oxen
Gipsy Vans
A Madonna of the Trenches
Gow's Watch: Act V. Sc. 3
The Birthright
The Propagation of Knowledge
A Legend of Truth
A Friend of the Family
We and They
On the Gate: A Tale of '16
The Supports
Untimely
The Eye of Allah
The Last Ode: Nov. 27, B.C. 8 (Horace, Ode 31, Bk.
v)
The Gardener
The Burden
IT is narrated (and God knows best the true state of the case) by Abu Ali Jafir Bin Yakub-ul-Isfahani that when, in His determinate Will, The Benefactor had decided to create the Greatest Substitute (Adam), He despatched, as is known, the faithful and the excellent Archangel Jibrail to gather from Earth clays, loams, and sands endowed with various colours and attributes, necessary for the substance of our pure Forefather's body. Receiving the Command and reaching the place, Jibrail put forth his hand to take them, but Earth shook and lamented and supplicated him. Then said Jibrail: 'Lie still and rejoice, for out of thee He will create that than which (there) is no handsomer thing-to wit a Successor and a Wearer of the Diadem over thee through the ages.' Earth said: 'I adjure thee to abstain from thy purpose, lest evil and condemnation of that person who is created out of me should later overtake him, and the Abiding (sorrow) be loosed upon my head. I have no power to resist the Will of the Most High, but I take refuge with Allah from thee.' So Jibrail was moved by the lamentations and helplessness of Earth, and returned to the Vestibule of the Glory with an empty hand.
After this, by the Permission, the Just and Terrible Archangel Michael next descended, and he, likewise, hearing and seeing the abjection of Earth, returned with an empty hand. Then was sent the Archangel Azrael, and when Earth had once again implored God, and once again cried out, he closed his hand upon her bosom and tore out the clays and sands necessary.
Upon his return to the Vestibule it was asked if Earth had again taken refuge with Allah or not? Azrael said: 'Yes.' It was answered 'If it took refuge with Me why didst thou not spare?' Azrael answered: 'Obedience (to Thee) was more obligatory than Pity (for it).' It was answered: 'Depart! I have made thee the Angel of Death to separate the souls from the bodies of men.' Azrael wept, saying: 'Thus shall all men hate me.' It was answered: 'Thou hast said that Obedience is more obligatory than Pity. Mix thou the clays and the sands and lay them to dry between Tayif and Mecca till the time appointed.' So, then, Azrael departed and did according to the Command. But in his haste he perceived not that he had torn out from Earth clays and minerals that had lain in her at war with each other since the first; nor did he withdraw them and set them aside. And in his grief that he should have been decreed the Separator of Companions, his tears mingled with them in the mixing, so that the substance of Adam's body was made unconformable and ill-assorted, pierced with burning drops, and at issue with itself before there was (cause of) strife.
This, then, lay out to dry for forty years between Tayif and Mecca and, through all that time, the Beneficence of the Almighty leavened it and rained upon it the Mercy and the Blessing, and the properties necessary to the adornment of the Successorship. In that period, too, it is narrated that the Angels passed to and fro above it, and among them Eblis the Accursed, who smote the predestined Creation while it was drying, and it rang hollow. Eblis then looked more closely and observing that of which it was composed to be diverse and ill-assorted and impregnated with bitter tears, he said: 'Doubt not I shall soon attain authority over this; and his ruin shall be easy.' (This, too, lay in the foreknowledge of The Endless.)
When time was that the chain of cause and effect should be surrendered to Man's will, and the vessels of desire and intention entrusted to his intelligence, and the tent of his body illuminated by the lamp of vitality, the Soul was despatched, by Command of the Almighty, with the Archangel Jibrail, towards that body. But the Soul being thin and subtle refused, at first, to enter the thick and diverse clays, saying: 'I have fear of that (which is) to be.' This it cried twice, till it received the Word: 'Enter unwillingly, and unwillingly depart.' Then only it entered. And when that agony was accomplished, the Word came: 'My Compassion exceedeth My Wrath.' It is narrated that these were the first words of which our pure Forefather had cognisance.
Afterwards, by the operation of the determinate Will, there arose in Adam a desire for a companion, and an intimate and a friend in the Garden of the Tree. It is narrated that he first took counsel of Earth (which had furnished) his body. Earth said: 'Forbear. Is it not enough that one should have dominion over me?' Adam answered: 'There is but one who is One in Earth or Heaven. All paired things point to the Unity, and my soul, which came not from thee, desires unutterably.' Earth said: 'Be content in innocence, and let thy body, which I gave unwillingly, return thus to (me) thy mother.' Adam said: 'I am motherless. What should I know?'
At that time came Eblis the Accursed who had long prepared an evil stratagem and a hateful device against our pure Forefather, being desirous of his damnation, and anxious to multiply causes and occasions thereto. He addressed first his detestable words to the Peacock among the birds of the Garden, saying: 'I have great amity towards thee because of thy beauty; but, through no fault of mine, I am forbidden the Garden. Hide me, then, among thy tail-feathers that I may enter it, and worship both thee and our Lord Adam, who is Master of thee.' The Peacock said: 'Not by any contrivance of mine shaft thou enter, lest a judgment fall on my beauty and my excellence. But there is in the Garden a Serpent of loathsome aspect who shall make thy path easy.' He then despatched the Serpent to the Gate and after conversation and by contrivance and a malign artifice, Eblis hid himself under the tongue of the Serpent, and was thus conveyed past the barrier. He then worshipped Adam and ceased not to counsel him to demand a companion and an intimate that the delights might be increased, and the succession assured to the Regency of Earth. For he foresaw that, among multitudes, many should come to him. Adam therefore made daily supplication for that blessing. It was answered him: 'How knowest thou if the gratification of thy desire be a blessing or a curse?' Adam said: 'By no means; but I will abide the chance.'
Then the somnolence fell upon him, as is narrated; and upon waking he beheld our Lady Eve (upon whom be the Mercy and the Forgiveness). Adam said: 'O my Lady and Light of my Universe, who art thou?' Eve said: 'O my Lord and Summit of my Contentment, who art thou?' Adam said: 'Of a surety I am thine.' Eve said: 'Of a surety I am throe.' Thus they ceased to inquire further into the matter, but were united, and became one flesh and one soul, and their felicity was beyond comparison or belief or imagination or apprehension.
Thereafter, it is narrated that Eblis the Stoned consorted with them secretly in the Garden, and the Peacock with him; and they jested and made mirth for our Lord Adam and his Lady Eve and propounded riddles and devised occasions for the stringing of the ornaments and the threading of subtleties. And upon a time when their felicity was at its height, and their happiness excessive, and their contentment expanded to the uttermost, Eblis said: 'O my Master and my Mistress, declare to us, if it pleases, some comparison or similitude that lies beyond the limits of possibility.' Adam said: 'This is easy. That the Sun should cease in Heaven or that the Rivers should dry in the Garden is beyond the limits of possibility.' And they laughed and agreed, and the Peacock said: 'O our Lady, tell us now something of a jest as unconceivable and as beyond belief as this saying of thy Lord.' Our Lady Eve then said: 'That my Lord should look upon me otherwise than is his custom is beyond this saying.' And when they had laughed abundantly, she said: 'O our Servitors, tell us now something that is further from possibility or belief than my saying.' Then the Peacock said: 'O our Lady Eve, except that thou shouldst look upon thy Lord otherwise than is thy custom, there is nothing further than thy saying from possibility or belief or imagination.' Then said Eblis: 'Except that the one of you should be made an enemy to the other, there is nothing, O my Lady, further than thy saying from possibility, or belief, or imagination, or apprehension.' And they laughed immoderately all four together in the Garden.
But when the Peacock had gone and Eblis had seemed to depart, our Lady Eve said to Adam 'My Lord and Disposer of my Soul, by what means did Eblis know our fear?' Adam said: '0 my Lady, what fear?' Eve said: 'The fear which was in our hearts from the first, that the one of us might be made an enemy to the other.' Then our pure Forefather bowed his head on her bosom and said: 'O Companion of my Heart, this has been my fear also from the first, but how didst thou know?' Eve said: 'Because I am thy flesh and thy soul. What shall we do?'
Thus, then, they came at moonrise to the Tree that had been forbidden to them, and Eblis lay asleep under it. But he waked merrily and said 'O my Master and my Mistress, this is the Tree of Eternity. By eating her fruit, felicity is established for ever among mankind; nor after eating it shall there be any change whatever in the disposition of the hearts of the eaters.'
Eve then put out her hand to the fruit, but Adam said: 'It is forbidden. Let us go.' Eve said: 'O my Lord and my Sustainer, upon my head be it, and upon the heads of my daughters after me. I will first taste of this Tree, and if misfortune fall on me, do thou intercede for me; or else eat likewise, so that eternal bliss may come to us together.'
Thus she ate, and he after her; and at once the ornaments of Paradise disappeared from round them, and they were delivered to shame and nudity and abjection. Then, as is narrated, Adam accused Eve in the Presence; but our Lady Eve (upon whom be the Pity and the Recompense) accepted (the blame of) all that had been done.
When the Serpent and the Peacock had each received their portion for their evil contrivances (for the punishment of Eblis was reserved) the Divine Decree of Expulsion was laid upon Adam and Eve in these words: 'Get ye down, the one of you an enemy to the other.' Adam said: 'But I have heard that Thy Compassion exceeds Thy Wrath.' It was answered: 'I have spoken. The Decree shall stand in the place of all curses.' So they went down, and the barriers of the Garden of the Tree were made fast behind them.
It is further recorded by the stringers of the pearls of words and the narrators of old, that when our pure Forefather the Lord Adam and his adorable consort Eve (upon whom be the Glory and the Sacrifice) were thus expelled, there was lamentation among the beasts in the Garden whom Adam had cherished and whom our Lady Eve had comforted. Of those unaffected there remained only the Mole, whose custom it was to burrow in earth and to avoid the light of the Sun. His nature was malignant and his body inconspicuous, but, by the Power of the Omnipotent, Whose Name be exalted, he was then adorned with eyes far-seeing both in the light and the darkness.
When the Mole heard the Divine Command of Expulsion, it entered his impure mind that he would extract profit and advancement from a secret observation and a hidden espial. So he followed our Forefather and his august consort, under the earth, and watched those two in their affliction and their abjection and their misery, and the Garden was without his presence for that time.
When his watch was complete and his observation certain, he turned him swiftly underneath the earth and came back saying to the Guardians of the Gate: 'Make room! I have a sure and a terrible report.' So his passage was permitted, and he lay till evening in the Garden. Then he said: 'Can the Accursed by any means escape the Decree?' It was answered: 'By no means can they escape or avoid.' Then the Mole said 'But I have seen that they have escaped.' It was answered: 'Declare thy observation.' The Mole said: 'The enemies to each other have altogether departed from Thy worship and Thy adoration. Nor are they in any sort enemies to each other, for they enjoy together the most perfect felicity, and moreover they have made them a new God.' It was answered: 'Declare the shape of the God.' The Mole said: 'Their God is of small stature, pinkish in colour, unclothed, fat and smiling. They lay it upon the grass and, filling its hands with flowers, worship it and desire no greater comfort.' It was answered: 'Declare the name of the God.' The Mole said: 'Its name is Quabil (Cain), and I testify upon a sure observation that it is their God and their Uniter and their Comforter.' It was answered: 'Why hast thou come to Us?' The Mole said: 'Through my zeal and my diligence; for honour and in hope of reward.' It was answered: 'Is this, then, the best that thou canst do with the eyes which We gave thee?' The Mole said: 'To the extreme of my ability!' It was answered: 'There is no need. Thou hast not added to their burden, but to thine own. Be darkened henceforward, upon earth and under earth. It is not good to spy upon any creature of God to whom alleviation is permitted.' So, then, the Mole's eyes were darkened and contracted, and his lot was made miserable upon and under the earth to this day.
But to those two, Adam and Eve, the alleviation was permitted, till Habil and Quabil and their sisters Labuda and Aqlemia had attained the age of maturity. Then there came to the Greatest Substitute and his Consort, from out of Kabul the Stony, that Peacock, by whose contrivance Eblis the Accursed had first obtained admission into the Garden of the Tree. And they made him welcome in all their ways and into all their imaginings; and he sustained them with false words and flagitious counsels, so that they considered and remembered their forfeited delights in the Garden both arrogantly and impenitently.
Then came the Word to the Archangel Jibrail the Faithful, saying: 'Follow those two with diligence, and interpose the shield of thy benevolence where it shall be necessary; for though We have surrendered them for awhile (to Eblis) they shall not achieve an irremediable destruction.' Jibrail therefore followed our First Substitute and the Lady Eve-upon whom is the Grace and a Forgetfulness-and kept watch upon them in all the lands appointed for their passage through the world. Nor did he hear any lamentations in their mouths for their sins. It is recorded that for an hundred years they were continuously upheld by the Peacock under the detestable power of Eblis the Stoned, who by means of magic multiplied the similitudes of meat and drink and rich raiment about them for their pleasure, and came daily to worship them as Gods. (This also lay in the predestined Will of the Inscrutable.) Further, in that age, their eyes were darkened and their minds were made turbid, and the faculty of laughter was removed from them. The Excellent Archangel Jibrail, when he perceived by observation that they had ceased to laugh, returned and bowed himself among the Servitors and cried: 'The last evil has fallen upon Thy creatures whom I guard! They have ceased to laugh and are made even with the ox and the camel.' It was answered: 'This also was foreseen. Keep watch.'
After yet another hundred years Eblis, whose doom is assured, came to worship Adam as was his custom and said: 'O my Lord and my Advancer and my Preceptor in Good and Evil, whom hast thou ever beheld in all thy world, wiser and more excellent than thyself?' Adam said: 'I have never seen such an one.' Eblis asked: 'Hast thou ever conceived of such an one?' Adam answered: 'Except in dreams I have never conceived of such an one.' Eblis then answered: 'Disregard dreams. They proceed from superfluity of meat. Stretch out thy hand upon the world which thou hast made and take possession.' So Adam took possession of the mountains which he had levelled and of the rivers which he had diverted and of the upper and lower Fires which he had made to speak and to work for him, and he named them as possessions for himself and his children for ever. After this, Eblis asked: 'O, my Upholder and Crown of my Belief, who has given thee these profitable things?' Adam said: 'By my Hand and my Head, I alone have given myself these things.' Eblis said: 'Praise we the Giver!' So, then, Adam praised himself in a loud voice, and built an Altar and a Mirror behind the Altar; and he ceased not to adore himself in the Mirror, and to extol himself daily before the Altar, by the name and under the attributes of the Almighty.
The historians assert that on such occasions it was the custom of the Peacock to expand his tail and stand beside our First Substitute and to minister to him with flatteries and adorations.
After yet another hundred years, the Omnipotent, Whose Name be exalted, put a bitter remorse into the bosom of the Peacock, and that bird closed his tail and wept upon the mountains of Serendib. Then said the Excellent and Faithful Archangel Jibrail: 'How has the Vengeance overtaken thee, O thou least desirable of fowl?' The Peacock said: 'Though I myself would by no means consent to convey Eblis into the Garden of the Tree, yet as is known to thee and to the All-Seeing, I referred him to the Serpent for a subtle device, by whose malice and beneath whose tongue did Eblis secretly enter that Garden. Wherefore did Allah change my attuned voice to a harsh cry and my beauteous legs to unseemly legs, and hurled me into the district of Kabul the Stony. Now I fear that He will also deprive me of my tail, which is the ornament of my days and the delight of my eye. For that cause and in that fear I am penitent, O Servant of God.' Jibrail then said: 'Penitence lies not in confession, but in restitution and visible amendment.' The Peacock said: 'Enlighten me in that path and prove my sincerity.' Jibrail said: 'I am troubled on account of Adam who, through the impure magic of Eblis, has departed from humility, and worships himself daily at an Altar and before a Mirror, in such and such a manner.' The Peacock said: 'O Courier of the Thrones, hast thou taken counsel of the Lady Eve?' Jibrail asked: 'For what reason?' The Peacock said: 'For the reason that when the Decree of Expulsion was issued against those two, it was said: "Get ye down, the one of you an enemy unto the other," and this is a sure word.' Jibrail answered: 'What will that profit?' The Peacock said: 'Let us exchange our shapes for a time and I will show thee that profit.'
Jibrail then exacted an oath from the Peacock that he would return him his shape at the expiration of a certain time without dishonour or fraud, and the exchange was effected, and Jibrail retired himself into the shape of the Peacock, and the Peacock lifted himself into the illustrious similitude of Jibrail and came to our Lady Eve and said: 'Who is God?' The Lady Eve answered him: 'His name is Adam.' The Peacock said: 'How is he God?' The Lady Eve answered: 'For that he knows both Good and Evil.' The Peacock asked: 'By what means attained he to that knowledge?' The Lady Eve answered: 'Of a truth it was I who brought it to him between my hands from off a Tree in the Garden.' The Peacock said: 'The greater then thy modesty and thy meekness, O my Lady Eve,' and he removed himself from her presence, and came again to Jibrail a little before the time of the evening prayer. He said to that excellent and trusty one: 'Continue, I pray, to serve in my shape at the time of the Worship at the Altar.' So Jibrail consented and preened himself and spread his tail and pecked between his claws, after the manner of created Peacocks, before the Altar until the entrance of our pure Forefather and his august consort. Then he perceived by observation that when Adam kneeled at the Mirror to adore himself the Lady Eve abode unwillingly, and in time she asked: 'Have I then no part in this worship?' Adam answered: 'A great and a redoubtable part bast thou, O my Lady, which is to praise and worship me constantly.' The Lady Eve said: 'But I weary of this worship. Except thou build me an Altar and make a Mirror to me also I will in no wise be present at this worship, nor in thy bed.' And she withdrew her presence. Adam then said to Jibrail whom he esteemed to be the Peacock: 'What shall we do? If I build not an Altar, the Woman who walks by my side will be a reproach to me by day and a penance by night, and peace will depart from the earth.' Jibrail answered, in the voice of the Peacock: 'For the sake of Peace on earth build her also an Altar.' So they built an Altar with a Mirror in all respects conformable to the Altar which Adam had made, and Adam made proclamation from the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth that there were now two Gods upon earth-the one Man, and the other Woman.
Then came the Peacock in the likeness of Jibrail to the Lady Eve and said: 'O Lady of Light, why is thy Altar upon the left hand and the Altar of my Lord upon the right?' The Lady Eve said: 'It is a remediable error,' and she remedied it with her own hands, and our pure Forefather fell into a great anger. Then entered Jibrail in the likeness of the Peacock and said to Adam: 'O my Lord and Very Interpreter, what has vexed thee?' Adam said: 'What shall we do? The Woman who sleeps in my bosom has changed the honourable places of the Altars, and if I suffer not the change she will weary me by night and day, and there will be no refreshment upon earth.' Jibrail said, speaking in the voice of the Peacock: 'For the sake of refreshment suffer the change.' So they worshipped at the changed Altars, the Altar to the Woman upon the right, and to the Man upon the left.
Then came the Peacock, in the similitude of Jibrail the Trusty One, to our Lady Eve and said: 'O Incomparable and All-Creating, art thou by chance the mother of Quabil and Habil (Cain and Abel)?' The Lady Eve answered: 'By no chance but by the immutable ordinance of Nature am I their Mother.' The Peacock said, in the voice of Jibrail: 'Will they become such as Adam?' The Lady Eve answered: 'Of a surety, and many more also.' The Peacock, as Jibrail, said: 'O Lady of Abundance, enlighten me now which is the greater, the mother or the child?' The Lady Eve answered: 'Of a surety, the mother.' The disguised Peacock then said: 'O my Lady, seeing that from thee alone proceed all the generations of Man who calls himself God, what need of any Altar to Man?' The Lady Eve answered: 'It is an error. Doubt not it shall be rectified,' and at the time of the Worship she smote down the left- hand Altar. Adam said: 'Why is this, O my Lady and my Co-equal?' The Lady Eve answered: 'Because it has been revealed that in Me is all excellence and increase, splendour, terror, and power. Bow down and worship.' Adam answered: 'O my Lady, but thou art Eve my mate and no sort of goddess whatever. This have I known from the beginning. Only for Peace' sake I suffered thee to build an Altar to thyself.' The Lady Eve answered: 'O my Lord, but thou art Adam my mate, and by many universes removed from any sort of Godhead, and this have I known from the first. Nor for the sake of any peace whatever will I cease to proclaim it.' She then proclaimed it aloud, and they reproached each other and disputed and betrayed their thoughts and their inmost knowledges until the Peacock lifted himself in haste from their presence and came to Jibrail and said: 'Let us return each to his own shape; for Enlightenment is at hand.'
So restitution was made without fraud or dishonour and they returned to the temple each in his proper shape with his attributes, and listened to the end of that conversation between the First Substitute and his august Consort who ceased not to reprehend each other upon all matters within their observation and their experience and their imagination.
When the steeds of recrimination had ceased to career across the plains of memory, and when the drum of evidence was no longer beaten by the drumstick of malevolence, and the bird of argument had taken refuge in the rocks of silence, the Excellent and Trustworthy Archangel Jibrail bowed himself before our pure Forefather and said: 'O my Lord and Fount of all Power and Wisdom, is it permitted to worship the Visible God?'
Then by the operation of the Mercy of Allah, the string was loosed in the throat of our First Substitute and the oppression was lifted from his lungs and he laughed without cessation and said: 'By Allah, I am no God but the mate of this most detestable Woman whom I love, and who is necessary to me beyond all the necessities.' But he ceased not to entertain Jibrail with tales of the follies and the unreasonableness of our Lady Eve till the night time.
The Peacock also bowed before the Lady Eve and said: 'Is it permitted to adore the Source and the Excellence?' and the string was loosened in the Lady Eve's throat and she laughed aloud and merrily and said: 'By Allah I am no goddess in any sort, but the mate of this mere Man whom, in spite of all, I love beyond and above my soul.' But she detained the Peacock with tales of the stupidity and the childishness of our pure Forefather till the Sun rose.
Then Adam entered, and the two looked upon each other laughing. Then said Adam: 'O my Lady and Crown of my Torments, is it peace between us?' And our Lady Eve answered: 'O my Lord and sole Cause of my Unreason, it is peace till the next time and the next occasion.' And Adam said: 'I accept, and I abide the chance.' Our Lady Eve said: 'O Man, wouldst thou have it otherwise upon any composition?' Adam said: 'O Woman, upon no composition would I have it otherwise-not even for the return to the Garden of the Tree; and this I swear on thy head and the heads of all who shall proceed from thee.' And Eve said: 'I also.' So they removed both Altars and laughed and built a new one between.
Then Jibrail and the Peacock departed and prostrated themselves before the Throne and told what had been said. It was answered: 'How left ye them?' They said: 'Before one Altar.' It was answered: 'What was written upon the Altar?' They said: 'The Decree of Expulsion as it was spoken-"Get ye down, the one of you an enemy unto the other."'
And it was answered: 'Enough! It shall stand in the place of both Our Curse and Our Blessing.'
(R.N.V.R.)
OR EVER the battered liners sank With their passengers to the dark. I was head of a Walworth Bank. And you were a grocer's clerk. I was a dealer in stocks and shares. And you in butters and teas. And we both abandoned our own affairs And took to the dreadful seas. Wet and worry about our ways- Panic, onset, and flight- Had us in charge for a thousand days And a thousand-year-long night. We saw more than the nights could hide- More than the waves could keep-- And--certain faces over the side Which do not go from our sleep. We were more tired than words can tell While the pied craft fled by. And the swinging mounds of the Western swell Hoisted us heavens-high... Now there is nothing-not even our rank- To witness what we have been; And I am returned to my Walworth Bank; And you to your margarine
THE head-waiter of the Carvoitz almost ran to meet Portson and his guests as they came up the steps from the palmcourt where the string band plays.
'Not seen you since-oh, ever so long,' he began. 'So glad to get your wire. Quite well-eh?'
'Fair to middling, Henri.' Portson shook hands with him. 'You're looking all right, too. Have you got us our table?'
Henri nodded toward a pink alcove, kept for mixed doubles, which discreetly commanded the main dining-room's glitter and blaze.
'Good man!' said Portson. 'Now, this is serious, Henri. We put ourselves unreservedly in your hands. We're weather-beaten mariners- though we don't look it, and we haven't eaten a Chrihristian meal in months. Have you thought of all that, Henri, mon ami?'
'The menu, I have compose it myself,' Henri answered with the gravity of a high priest.
It was more than a year since Portson-of Portson, Peake and Ensell, Stock and Share Brokers-had drawn Henri's attention to an apparently extinct Oil Company which, a little later, erupted profitably; and it may be that Henri prided himself on paying all debts in full.
The most recent foreign millionaire and the even more recent foreign actress at a table near the entrance clamoured for his attention while he convoyed the party to the pink alcove. With his own hands he turned out some befrilled electrics and lit four pale rose-candles.
'Bridal!' some one murmured. 'Quite bridal!'
'So glad you like. There is nothing too good.' Henri slid away, and the four men sat down. They had the coarse-grained complexions of men who habitually did themselves well, and an air, too, of recent, red- eyed dissipation. Maddingham, the eldest, was a thick-set middle-aged presence, with crisped grizzled hair, of the type that one associates with Board Meetings. He limped slightly. Tegg, who followed him, blinking, was neat, small, and sandy, of unmistakable Navy cut, but sheepish aspect. Winchmore, the youngest, was more on the lines of the conventional pre-war 'nut,' but his eyes were sunk in his head and his hands black-nailed and roughened. Portson, their host, with Vandyke beard and a comfortable little stomach, beamed upon them as they settled to their oysters.
'That's what I mean,' said the carrying voice of the foreign actress, whom Henri had just disabused of the idea that she had been promised the pink alcove. 'They ain't alive to the war yet. Now, what's the matter with those four dubs yonder joining the British Army or-or doing something?'
'Who's your friend?' Maddingham asked.
'I've forgotten her name for the minute,' Portson replied, 'but she's the latest thing in imported patriotic piece-goods. She sings "Sons of the Empire, Go Forward!" at the Palemseum. It makes the aunties weep.'
'That's Sidney Latter. She's not half bad.' Tegg reached for the vinegar. 'We ought to see her some night.'
'Yes. We've a lot of time for that sort of thing,' Maddingham grunted. 'I'll take your oysters, Portson, if you don't want 'em.'
'Cheer up, Papa Maddingham! 'Soon be dead!' Winchmore suggested.
Maddingham glared at him. 'If I'd had you with me for one week, Master Winchmore--'
'Not the least use,' the boy retorted. 'I've just been made a full- lootenant. I have indeed. I couldn't reconcile it with my conscience to take Etheldreda out any more as a plain sub. She's too flat in the floor.'
'Did you get those new washboards of yours fixed?' Tegg cut in.
'Don't talk shop already,' Portson protested. 'This is Vesiga soup. I don't know what he's arranged in the way of drinks.'
'Pol Roger '04,' said the waiter.
'Sound man, Henri,' said Winchmore. 'But,' he eyed the waiter doubtfully, 'I don't quite like...What's your alleged nationality?'
''Henri's nephew, monsieur,' the smiling waiter replied, and laid a gloved hand on the table. It creaked corkily at the wrist. 'Bethisy- sur-Oise,' he explained. 'My uncle he buy me all the hand for Christmas. It is good to hold plates only.'
'Oh! Sorry I spoke,' said Winchmore.
'Monsieur is right. But my uncle is very careful, even with neutrals.' He poured the champagne.
'Hold a minute,' Maddingham cried. 'First toast of obligation: For what we are going to receive, thank God and the British Navy.'
'Amen!' said the others with a nod toward Lieutenant Tegg, of the Royal Navy afloat, and, occasionally, of the Admiralty ashore.
'Next! "Damnation to all neutrals!"' Maddingham went on.
'Amen! Amen!' they answered between gulps that heralded the sole a la Colbert. Maddingham picked up the menu. 'Supreame of chicken,' he read loudly. 'Filet bearnaise, Woodcock and Richebourg '74, Peaches Melba, Croutes Baron. I couldn't have improved on it myself; though one might,' he went on-'one might have substituted quail en casserole for the woodcock.'
'Then there would have been no reason for the Burgundy,' said Tegg with equal gravity.
'You're right,' Maddingham replied.
The foreign actress shrugged her shoulders. 'What can you do with people like that?' she said to her companion. 'And yet I've been singing to 'em for a fortnight.'
'I left it all to Henri,' said Portson.
'My Gord!' the eavesdropping woman whispered. 'Get on to that! Ain't it typical? They leave everything to Henri in this country.'
'By the way,' Tegg asked Winchmore after the fish, 'where did you mount that one-pounder of yours after all?'
'Midships. Etheldreda won't carry more weight forward. She's wet enough as it is.'
'Why don't you apply for another craft?' Portson put in. 'There's a chap at Southampton just now, down with pneumonia and--'
'No, thank you. I know Etheldreda. She's nothing to write home about, but when she feels well she can shift a bit.'
Maddingham leaned across the table. 'If she does more than eleven in a flat calm,' said he, 'I'll-I'll give you Hilarity.'
''Wouldn't be found dead in Hilarity,' was Winchmore's grateful reply. 'You don't mean to say you've taken her into real wet water, Papa? Where did it happen?'
The other laughed. Maddingham's red face turned brick colour, and the veins on the cheekbones showed blue through a blurr of short bristles.
'He's been convoying neutrals-in a tactful manner,' Tegg chuckled.
Maddingham filled his glass and scowled at Tegg. 'Yes,' he said, 'and here's special damnation to me Lords of the Admiralty. A more muddle- headed set of brass-bound apes--'
'My! My! My!' Winchmore chirruped soothingly. 'It don't seem to have done you any good, Papa. Who were you conveyancing?'
Maddingham snapped out a ship's name and some details of her build.
'Oh, but that chap's a friend of mine!' cried Winchmore. 'I ran across him-the-not so long ago, hugging the Scotch coast-out of his course, he said, owing to foul weather and a new type of engine-a Diesel. That's him, ain't it-the complete neutral?' He mentioned an outstanding peculiarity of the ship's rig.
'Yes,' said Portson. 'Did you board him, Winchmore?'
'No. There'd been a bit of a blow the day before and old Ethel's only dinghy had dropped off the hooks. But he signalled me all his symptoms. He was as communicative as-as a lady in the Promenade. (Hold on, Nephew of my Uncle! I'm going to have some more of that Bearnaise fillet.) His smell attracted me. I chaperoned him for a couple of days.'
'Only two days. You hadn't anything to complain of,' said Maddingham wrathfully.
'I didn't complain. If he chose to hug things, 'twasn't any of my business. I'm not a Purity League. 'Didn't care what he hugged, so long as I could lie behind him and give him first chop at any mines that were going. I steered in his wake (I really can steer a bit now, Portson) and let him stink up the whole of the North Sea. I thought he might come in useful for bait. No Burgundy, thanks, Nephew of my Uncle. I'm sticking to the Jolly Roger.'
'Go on, then-before you're speechless. Was he any use as bait?' Tegg demanded.
'We never got a fair chance. As I told you, he hugged the coast till dark, and then he scraped round Gilarra Head and went up the bay nearly to the beach.'
''Lights out?' Maddingham asked.
Winchmore nodded. 'But I didn't worry about that. I was under his stern. As luck 'ud have it, there was a fishing-party in the bay, and we walked slam into the middle of 'em-a most ungodly collection of local talent. 'First thing I knew a steam-launch fell aboard us, and a boya nasty little Navy boy, Tegg-wanted to know what I was doing. I told him, and he cursed me for putting the fish down just as they were rising. Then the two of us (he was hanging on to my quarter with a boat-hook) drifted on to a steam trawler and our friend the Neutral and a ten-oared cutter full of the military, all mixed up. They were subs from the garrison out for a lark. Uncle Newt explained over the rail about the weather and his engine-troubles, but they were all so keen to carry on with their fishing, they didn't fuss. They told him to clear off.'
'Was there anything on the move round Gilarra at that time?' Tegg inquired.
'Oh, they spun me the usual yarns about the water being thick with 'em, and asked me to help; but I couldn't stop. The cutter's stern- sheets were piled up with mines, like lobster-pots, and from the way the soldiers handled 'em I thought I'd better get out. So did Uncle Newt. He didn't like it a bit. There were a couple of shots fired at something just as we cleared the Head, and one dropped rather close to him. (These duck-shoots in the dark are dam' dangerous, y 'know.) He lit up at once-tail-light, head-light, and side-lights. I had no more trouble with him the rest of the night.'
'But what about the report that you sawed off the steam-launch's boat- hook?' Tegg demanded suddenly.
'What! You don't mean to say that little beast of a snotty reported it? He was scratchin' poor old Ethel's paint to pieces. I never reported what he said to me. And he called me a damned amateur, too! Well! Well! War's war. I missed all that fishing-party that time. My orders were to follow Uncle Newt. So I followed-and poor Ethel without a dry rag on her.'
Winchmore refilled his glass.
'Well, don't get poetical,' said Portson. 'Let's have the rest of your trip.'
'There wasn't any rest,' Winchmore insisted pathetically. 'There was just good old Ethel with her engines missing like sin, and Uncle Newt thumping and stinking half a mile ahead of us, and me eating bread and Worcester sauce. I do when I feel that way. Besides, I wanted to go back and join the fishing-party. Just before dark I made out Cordeilia-that Southampton ketch that old Jarrott fitted with oil auxiliaries for a family cruiser last summer. She's a beamy bus, but she can roll, and she was doing an honest thirty degrees each way when I overhauled her. I asked Jarrott if he was busy. He said he wasn't. But he was. He's like me and Nelson when there's any sea on.'
'But Jarrott's a Quaker. 'Has been for generations. Why does he go to war?' said Maddingham.
'If it comes to that,' Portson said, 'why do any of us?'
'Jarrott's a mine-sweeper,' Winchmore replied with deep feeling. 'The Quaker religion (I'm not a Quaker, but I'm much more religious than any of you chaps give me credit for) has decided that mine-sweeping is life-saving. Consequently'-he dwelt a little on the word-'the profession is crowded with Quakers-specially off Scarborough. 'See? Owin' to the purity of their lives, they "all go to Heaven when they die-Roll, Jordan, Roll! "'
'Disgustin',' said the actress audibly as she drew on her gloves. Winchmore looked at her with delight. 'That's a peach-Melba, too,' he said.
'And David Jarrott's a mine-sweeper,' Maddingham mused aloud. 'So you turned our Neutral over to him, Winchmore, did you?'
'Yes, I did. It was the end of my beat-I wish I didn't feel so sleepy- and I explained the whole situation to Jarrott, over the rail. 'Gave him all my silly instructions-those latest ones, y'know. I told him to do nothing to imperil existing political relations. I told him to exercise tact. I-I told him that in my capac'ty as Actin' Lootenant, you see. Jarrott's only a Lootenant-Commander-at fifty-four, too! Yes, I handed my Uncle Newt over to Jarrott to chaperone, and I went back to my-I can say it perfectly-pis-ca-to-rial party in the bay. Now I'm going to have a nap. In ten minutes I shall be on deck again. This is my first civilised dinner in nine weeks, so I don't apologise.'
He pushed his plate away, dropped his chin on his palm and closed his eyes.
'Lyndnoch and Jarrott's Bank, established 1793,' said Maddingham half to himself. 'I've seen old Jarrott in Cowes week bullied by his skipper and steward till he had to sneak ashore to sleep. And now he's out mine-sweeping with Cordelia! What's happened to his-I shall forget my own name next-Belfast-built two-hundred tonner?'
'Goneril,' said Portson. 'He turned her over to the Service in October. She's-she was Culana.'
'She was Culana, was she? My God! I never knew that. Where did it happen?'
'Off the same old Irish corner I was watching last month. My young cousin was in her; so was one of the Raikes boys. A whole nest of mines, laid between patrols.'
'I've heard there's some dirty work going on there now,' Maddingham half whispered.
'You needn't tell me that,' Portson returned. 'But one gets a little back now and again.'
'What are you two talking about?' said Tegg, who seemed to be dozing too.
'Culana,' Portson answered as he lit a cigarette.
'Yes, that was rather a pity. But...What about this Newt of ours?'
'I took her over from Jarrott next day-off Margate,' said Portson. 'Jarrott wanted to get back to his mine-sweeping.'
'Every man to his taste,' said Maddingham. 'That never appealed to me. Had they detailed you specially to look after the Newt?'
'Me among others,' Portson admitted. 'I was going down Channel when I got my orders, and so I went on with him. Jarrott had been tremendously interested in his course up to date-specially off the Wash. He'd charted it very carefully and he said he was going back to find out what some of the kinks and curves meant. Has he found out, Tegg?'
Tegg thought for a moment. 'Cordelia was all right up to six o'clock yesterday evening,' he said.
''Glad of that. Then I did what Winchmore did. I lay behind this stout fellow and saw him well into the open.'
'Did you say anything to him?' Tegg asked.
'Not a thing. He kept moving all the time.'
''See anything?' Tegg continued.
'No. He didn't seem to be in demand anywhere in the Channel, and, when I'd got him on the edge of soundings, I dropped him-as per your esteemed orders.'
Tegg nodded again and murmured some apology.
'Where did you pick him up, Maddingham?' Portson went on.
Maddingham snorted.
'Well north and west of where you left him heading up the Irish Channel and stinking like a taxi. I hadn't had my breakfast. My cook was seasick; so were four of my hands.'
'I can see that meeting. Did you give him a gun across the bows?' Tegg asked.
'No, no. Not that time. I signalled him to heave to. He had his papers ready before I came over the side. You see,' Maddingham said pleadingly, 'I'm new to this business. Perhaps I wasn't as polite to him as I should have been if I'd had my breakfast.'
'He deposed that Maddingham came alongside swearing like a bargee,' said Tegg.
'Not in the least. This is what happened.' Maddingham turned to Portson. 'I asked him where he was bound for and he told me-Antigua.'
'Hi! Wake up, Winchmore. You're missing something.' Portson nudged Winchmore, who was slanting sideways in his chair.
'Right! All right! I'm awake,' said Winchmore stickily. 'I heard every word.'
Maddingham went on. 'I told him that this wasn't his way to Antigua--'
'Antigua. Antigua!' Winchmore finished rubbing his eyes. '"There was a young bride of Antigua--"'
'Hsh! Hsh!' said Portson and Tegg warningly.
'Why? It's the proper one. "Who said to her spouse, 'What a pig you are!'"'
'Ass!' Maddingham growled and continued: 'He told me that he'd been knocked out of his reckoning by foul weather and engine-trouble, owing to experimenting with a new type of Diesel engine. He was perfectly frank about it.'
'So he was with me,' said Winchmore. 'Just like a real lady. I hope you were a real gentleman, Papa.'
'I asked him what he'd got. He didn't object. He had some fifty thousand gallon of oil for his new Diesel engine, and the rest was coal. He said he needed the oil to get to Antigua with, he was taking the coal as ballast, and he was coming back, so he told me, with coconuts. When he'd quite finished, I said: "What sort of damned idiot do you take me for?" He said: "I haven't decided yet!" Then I said he'd better come into port with me, and we'd arrive at a decision. He said that his papers were in perfect order and that my instructions- mine, please!-were not to imperil political relations. I hadn't received these asinine instructions, so I took the liberty of contradicting him-perfectly politely, as I told them at the Inquiry afterward. He was a small-boned man with a grey beard, in a glengarry, and he picked his teeth a lot. He said: "The last time I met you, Mister Maddingham, you were going to Carlsbad, and you told me all about your blood-pressures in the wagon-lit before we tossed for upper berth. Don't you think you are a little old to buccaneer about the sea this way?" I couldn't recall his face-he must have been some fellow that I'd travelled with some time or other. I told him I wasn't doing this for amusement-it was business. Then I ordered him into port. He said: "S'pose I don't go?" I said: "Then I'll sink you." Isn't it extraordinary how natural it all seems after a few weeks? If any one had told me when I commissioned Hilarity last summer what I'd be doing this spring I'd-I'd...God! It is mad, isn't it?'
'Quite,' said Portson. 'But not bad fun.'
'Not at all, but that's what makes it all the madder. Well, he didn't argue any more. He warned me I'd be hauled over the coals for what I'd done, and I warned him to keep two cables ahead of me and not to yaw.'
'Jaw?' said Winchmore sleepily.
'No. Yaw;' Maddingham snarled. 'Not to look as if he even wanted to yaw. I warned him that, if he did, I'd loose off into him, end-on. But I was absolutely polite about it. 'Give you my word, Tegg.'
'I believe you. Oh, I believe you,' Tegg replied.
'Well, so I took him into port-and that was where I first ran across our Master Tegg. He represented the Admiralty on that beach.'
The small blinking man nodded. 'The Admiralty had that honour,' he said graciously.
Maddingham turned to the others angrily. 'I'd been rather patting myself on the back for what I'd done, you know. Instead of which, they held a court-martial--'
'We called it an Inquiry,' Tegg interjected.
'You weren't in the dock. They held a court-martial on me to find out how often I'd sworn at the poor injured Neutral, and whether I'd given him hot-water bottles and tucked him up at night. It's all very fine to laugh, but they treated me like a pickpocket. There were two fat- headed civilian judges and that blackguard Tegg in the conspiracy. A cursed lawyer defended my Neutral and he made fun of me. He dragged in everything the Neutral had told him about my blood-pressures on the Carlsbad trip. And that's what you get for trying to serve your country in your old age!' Maddingham emptied and refilled his glass.
'We did give you rather a grilling,' said Tegg placidly. 'It's the national sense of fair play.'
'I could have stood it all if it hadn't been for the Neutral. We dined at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect the Law of Nations!'
'And we respected 'em,' said Tegg. 'His papers were perfectly correct; the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political relations. I told Maddingham so at the hotel and he--'
Again Maddingham turned to the others. 'I couldn't make up my mind about Tegg at the Inquiry,' he explained. 'He had the air of a decent sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.'
'I was,' Tegg returned. 'I had been ordered to change into that rig. So I changed.'
Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and laughed.
'I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,' he stammered, 'but I'd blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in time of war, and I'd given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put before me as a business proposition I might have done better.'
'I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,' said Tegg. 'I never dreamed you took it seriously.'
'Well, I've been trained to look on the law as serious. I've had to pay for some of it in my time, you know.'
'I'm sorry,' said Tegg. 'We were obliged to let that oily beggar go- for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was given, his duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.'
'Naturally,' Portson observed. 'That being the Neutral's declared destination. And what did Maddingham do? Shut up, Maddingham!'
Said Tegg, with downcast eyes: 'Maddingham took my hand and squeezed it; he looked lovingly into my eyes (he did!); he turned plumcolour, and he said: "I will" just like a bride groom at the altar. It makes me feel shy to think of it even now. I didn't see him after that till the evening when Hilarity was pulling out of the Basin, and Maddingham was cursing the tug-master.'
'I was in a hurry,' said Maddingham. 'I wanted to get to the Narrows and wait for my Neutral there. I dropped down to Biller and Grove's yard that tide (they've done all my work for years) and I jammed Hilarity into the creek behind their slip, so the Newt didn't spot me when he came down the river. Then I pulled out and followed him over the Bar. He stood nor-west at once. I let him go till we were well out of sight of land. Then I overhauled him, gave him a gun across the bows and ran alongside. I'd just had my lunch, and I wasn't going to lose my temper this time. I said: "Excuse me, but I understand you are bound for Antigua?" He was, he said, and as he seemed a little nervous about my falling aboard him in that swell, I gave Hilarity another sheer in-she's as handy as a launch-and I said: "May I suggest that this is not the course for Antigua?" By that time he had his fenders overside, and all hands yelling at me to keep away. I snatched Hilarity out and began edging in again. He said: "I'm trying a sample of inferior oil that I have my doubts about. If it works all right I shall lay my course for Antigua, but it will take some time to test the stuff and adjust the engines to it." I said: "Very good, let me know if I can be of any service," and I offered him Hilarity again once or twice-he didn't want her-and then I dropped behind and let him go on. Wasn't that proper, Portson?'
Portson nodded. 'I know that game of yours with Hilarity,' he said. 'How the deuce do you do it? My nerve always goes at close quarters in any sea.'
'It's only a little trick of steering,' Maddingham replied with a simper of vanity. 'You can almost shave with her when she feels like it. I had to do it again that same evening, to establish a moral ascendancy. He wasn't showing any lights, and I nearly tripped over him. He was a scared Neutral for three minutes, but I got a little of my own back for that damned court-martial. But I was perfectly polite. I apologised profusely. I didn't even ask him to show his lights.'
'But did he?' said Winchmore.
'He did-every one; and a flare now and then,' Maddingham replied. 'He held north all that night, with a falling barometer and a rising wind and all the other filthy things. Gad, how I hated him! Next morning we got it, good and tight from the nor-nor-west out of the Atlantic, off Carso Head. He dodged into a squall, and then he went about. We weren't a mile behind, but it was as thick as a wall. When it cleared, and I couldn't see him ahead of me, I went about too, and followed the rain. I picked him up five miles down wind, legging it for all he was worth to the south'ard-nine knots, I should think. Hilarity doesn't like a following sea. We got pooped a bit, too, but by noon we'd struggled back to where we ought to have been-two cables astern of him. Then he began to signal, but his flags being end-on to us, of course, we had to creep up on his beam-well abeam-to read 'em. That didn't restore his morale either. He made out he'd been compelled to put back by stress of weather before completing his oil tests. I made back I was sorry to hear it, but would be greatly interested in the results. Then I turned in (I'd been up all night) and my lootenant took on. He was a widower (by the way) of the name of Sherrin, aged forty-seven. He'd run a girls' school at Weston-super-Mare after he'd left the Service in 'ninety-five, and he believed the English were the Lost Tribes.'
'What about the Germans?' said Portson.
'Oh, they'd been misled by Austria, who was the Beast with Horns in Revelations. Otherwise he was rather a dull dog. He set the tops'ls in his watch. Hilarity won't steer under any canvas, so we rather sported round our friend that afternoon, I believe. When I came up after dinner, she was biting his behind, first one side, then the other. Let's see-that would be about thirty miles east-sou-east of Harry Island. We were running as near as nothing south. The wind had dropped, and there was a useful cross-rip coming up from the south- east. I took the wheel and, the way I nursed him from starboard, he had to take the sea over his port bow. I had my sciatica on me- buccaneering's no game for a middleaged man-but I gave that fellow sprudel! By Jove; I washed him out! He stood it as long as he could, and then he made a bolt for Harry Island. I had to ride in his pocket most of the way there because I didn't know that coast. We had charts, but Sherrin never understood 'em, and I couldn't leave the wheel. So we rubbed along together, and about midnight this Newt dodged in over the tail of Harry Shoals and anchored, if you please, in the lee of the Double Ricks. It was dead calm there, except for the swell, but there wasn't much room to manoeuvre in, and I wasn't going to anchor. It looked too like a submarine rendezvous. But first, I came alongside and asked him what his trouble was. He told me he had overheated his something-or-other bulb. I've never been shipmates with Diesel engines, but I took his word for it, and I said I 'ud stand by till it cooled. Then he told me to go to hell.'
'If you were inside the Double Ricks in the dark, you were practically there,' said Portson.
'That's what I thought. I was on the bridge, rabid with sciatica, going round and round like a circus-horse in about three acres of water, and wondering when I'd hit something. Ridiculous position. Sherrin saw it. He saved me. He said it was an ideal place for submarine attacks, and we'd better begin to repel 'em at once. As I said, I couldn't leave the wheel, so Sherrin fought the ship-both quick-firers and the maxims. He tipped 'em well down into the sea or well up at the Ricks as we went round and round. We made rather a row; and the row the gulls made when we woke 'em was absolutely terrifying. 'Give you my word!'
'And then?' said Winchmore.
'I kept on running in circles through this ghastly din. I took one sheer over toward his stern-I thought I'd cut it too fine, but we missed it by inches. Then I heard his capstan busy, and in another three minutes his anchor was up. He didn't wait to stow. He hustled out as he was-bulb or no bulb. He passed within ten feet of us (I was waiting to fall in behind him) and he shouted over the rail: "You think you've got patriotism. All you've got is uric acid and rotten spite!" I expect he was a little bored. I waited till we had cleared Harry Shoals before I went below, and then I slept till 9 a.m. He was heading north this time, and after I'd had breakfast and a smoke I ran alongside and asked him where he was bound for now. He was wrapped in a comforter, evidently suffering from a bad cold. I couldn't quite catch what he said, but I let him croak for a few minutes and fell back. At 9 a.m. he turned round and headed south (I was getting to know the Irish Channel by then) and I followed. There was no particular sea on. It was a little chilly, but as he didn't hug the coast I hadn't to take the wheel. I stayed below most of the night and let Sherrin suffer. Well, Mr. Newt kept up this game all the next day, dodging up and down the Irish Channel. And it was infernally dull. He threw up the sponge off Cloone Harbour. That was on Friday morning. He signalled: "Developed defects in engine-room. Antigua trip abandoned." Then he ran into Cloone and tied up at Brady's Wharf. You know you can't repair a dinghy at Cloone! I followed, of course, and berthed behind him. After lunch I thought I'd pay him a call. I wanted to look at his engines. I don't understand Diesels, but Hyslop, my engineer, said they must have gone round 'em with a hammer, for they were pretty badly smashed up. Besides that, they had offered all their oil to the Admiralty agent there, and it was being shifted to a tug when I went aboard him. So I'd done my job. I was just going back to Hilarity when his steward said he'd like to see me. He was lying in his cabin breathing pretty loud-wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out like a rabbit's. He offered me drinks. I couldn't accept 'em, of course. Then he said: "Well, Mr. Maddingham, I'm all in." I said I was glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of the question, Hilarity being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn't see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed rather afraid of dying (it's no game for a middle-aged man, of course) and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer. I explained to him-perfectly politely-that I wasn't in this job for fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua, and now that he wasn't going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us, that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn't that perfectly correct?) He said: "But that finishes me, too. I can't get any doctor in this Godforsaken hole. I made sure you'd treat me properly as soon as I surrendered." I said there wasn't any question of surrender. If he'd been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though I certainly shouldn't have gone a yard out of my course to land him anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral- altogether outside the game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it. He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich man-a million and a quarter, he said-and he wanted to redraft his will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position just now-only they weren't rich. He changed his tack then and appealed to me on the grounds of our common humanity. "Why, if you leave me now, Mr. Maddingham," he said, "you condemn me to death, just as surely as if you hanged me."'
'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!"'
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!
'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!'
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.'
As far as I could make out in the humiliating darkness, we wandered up a mews and into a courtyard. Mr. Burges piloted me, murmuring apologies for everything in advance.
'You mustn't expect--' he was still saying when we stumbled up a porch and entered a carefully decorated ante-room hung round with Masonic prints. I noticed Peter Gilkes and Barton Wilson, fathers of 'Emulation' working, in the place of honour; Kneller's Christopher Wren; Dunkerley, with his own Fitz-George book-plate below and the bend sinister on the Royal Arms; Hogarth's caricature of Wilkes, also his disreputable 'Night'; and a beautifully framed set of Grand Masters, from Anthony Sayer down.
'Are these another hobby of yours?' I asked.
'Not this time,' Mr. Burges smiled. 'We have to thank Brother Lemming for them.' He introduced me to the senior partner of Lemming and Orton, whose little shop is hard to find, but whose words and cheques in the matter of prints are widely circulated.
'The frames are the best part of 'em,' said Brother Lemming after my compliments. 'There are some more in the Lodge Room. Come and look. We've got the big Desaguliers there that nearly went to Iowa.'
I had never seen a Lodge Room better fitted. From mosaicked floor to appropriate ceiling, from curtain to pillar, implements to seats, seats to lights, and little carved music-loft at one end, every detail was perfect in particular kind and general design. I said what I thought of them all, many times over.
'I told you I was a Ritualist,' said Mr. Burges. 'Look at those carved corn-sheaves and grapes on the back of these Wardens' chairs. That's the old tradition-before Masonic furnishers spoilt it. I picked up that pair in Stepney ten years ago-the same time I got the gavel.' It was of ancient, yellowed ivory, cut all in one piece out of some tremendous tusk. 'That came from the Gold Coast,' he said. 'It belonged to a Military Lodge there in 1794. You can see the inscription.'
'If it's a fair question,' I began, 'how much--'
'It stood us,' said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, 'an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even with what Brother Anstruther-he was our contractor-cheated himself out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I don't understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we've put in-oh, quite another little sum. Now we'll go to the examination-room and take on the Brethren.'
He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry). A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. 'That's only the head of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,' said an officer of the Lodge.
Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: 'Don't be surprised. They come all shapes.'
'Shapes' was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all head-bandages-escaped from an Officers' Hospital, Pentonville way. He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the signs. The next-a New Zealander from Taranaki-reversed the process, for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him.
'I don't blame yer,' he gulped at last. 'I wouldn't pass my own self on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I've had any religion, it's been all the religion I've had. For God's sake, let me sit in Lodge again, Brother!'
When the examinations were ended, a Lodge Officer came round with our aprons-no tinsel or silver-gilt confections, but heavily-corded silk with tassels and-where a man could prove he was entitled to them- levels, of decent plate. Some one in front of me tightened a belt on a stiffly silent person in civil clothes with dischargebadge. ''Strewth! This is comfort again,' I heard him say. The companion nodded. The man went on suddenly: 'Here! What're you doing? Leave off! You promised not to Chuck it!' and dabbed at his companion's streaming eyes.
'Let him leak,' said an Australian signaller. 'Can't you see how happy the beggar is?'
It appeared that the silent Brother was a 'shell-shocker' whom Brother Lemming had passed, on the guarantee of his friend and-what moved Lemming more-the threat that, were he refused, he would have fits from pure disappointment. So the 'shocker' went happily and silently among Brethren evidently accustomed to these displays.
We fell in, two by two, according to tradition, fifty of us at least, and were played into Lodge by what I thought was an harmonium, but which I discovered to be an organ of repute. It took time to settle us down, for ten or twelve were cripples and had to be helped into long or easy chairs. I sat between a one-footed R.A.M.C. Corporal and a Captain of Territorials, who, he told me, had 'had a brawl' with a bomb, which had bent him in two directions. 'But that's first-class Bach the organist is giving us now,' he said delightedly. 'I'd like to know him. I used to be a piano-thumper of sorts.'
'I'll introduce you after Lodge,' said one of the regular Brethren behind us-a plump, torpedo-bearded man, who turned out to be a doctor. 'After all, there's nobody to touch Bach, is there?' Those two plunged at once into musical talk, which to outsiders is as fascinating as trigonometry.
Now a Lodge of Instruction is mainly a parade-ground for Ritual. It cannot initiate or confer degrees, but is limited to rehearsals and lectures. Worshipful Brother Burges, resplendent in Solomon's Chair (I found out later where that, too, had been picked up), briefly told the Visiting Brethren how welcome they were and always would be, and asked them to vote what ceremony should be rendered for their instruction.
When the decision was announced he wanted to know whether any Visiting Brothers would take the duties of Lodge Officers. They protested bashfully that they were too rusty. 'The very reason why,' said Brother Surges, while the organ Bached softly. My musical Captain wriggled in his chair.
'One moment, Worshipful Sir.' The plump Doctor rose. 'We have here a musician for whom place and opportunity are needed. Only,' he went on colloquially, 'those organ-loft steps are a bit steep.'
'How much,' said Brother Burges with the solemnity of an initiation, 'does our Brother weigh?'
'Very little over eight stone,' said the Brother. 'Weighed this morning, Worshipful Sir.'
The Past District Grand Officer, who was also a Battery-Sergeant- Major, waddled across, lifted the slight weight in his arms and bore it to the loft, where, the regular organist pumping, it played joyously as a soul caught up to Heaven by surprise.
When the visitors had been coaxed to supply the necessary officers, a ceremony was rehearsed. Brother Burges forbade the regular members to prompt. The visitors had to work entirely by themselves, but, on the Battery-Sergeant-Major taking a hand, he was ruled out as of too exalted rank. They floundered badly after that support was withdrawn.
The one-footed R.A.M.C. on my right chuckled.
'D'you like it?' said the Doctor to him.
'Do I? It's Heaven to me, sittin' in Lodge again. It's all comin' back now, watching their mistakes. I haven't much religion, but all I had I learnt in Lodge.' Recognising me, he flushed a little as one does when one says a thing twice over in another's hearing. 'Yes, "veiled in all'gory and illustrated in symbols"-the Fatherhood of God, an' the Brotherhood of Man; an' what more in Hell do you want?...Look at 'em!' He broke off giggling. 'See! See! They've tied the whole thing into knots. I could ha' done it better myself-my one foot in France. Yes, I should think they ought to do it again!'
The new organist covered the little confusion that had arisen with what sounded like the wings of angels.
When the amateurs, rather red and hot, had finished, they demanded an exhibition-working of their bungled ceremony by Regular Brethren of the Lodge. Then I realised for the first time what word-and-gesture- perfect Ritual can be brought to mean. We all applauded, the one- footed Corporal most of all.
'We are rather proud of our working, and this is an audience worth playing up to,' the Doctor said.
Next the Master delivered a little lecture on the meanings of some pictured symbols and diagrams. His theme was a well-worn one, but his deep holding voice made it fresh.
'Marvellous how these old copybook-headings persist,' the Doctor said.
'That's all right!' the one-footed man spoke cautiously out of the side of his mouth like a boy in form. 'But they're the kind o' copybook-headin's we shall find burnin' round our bunks in Hell. Believe me-ee! I've broke enough of 'em to know. Now, hsh!' He leaned forward, drinking it all in.
Presently Brother Burges touched on a point which had given rise to some diversity of Ritual. He asked for information. 'Well, in Jamaica, Worshipful Sir,' a Visiting Brother began, and explained how they worked that detail in his parts. Another and another joined in from different quarters of the Lodge (and the world), and when they were well warmed the Doctor sidled softly round the walls and, over our shoulders, passed us cigarettes.
'A shocking innovation,' he said, as he returned to the Captain- musician's vacant seat on my left. 'But men can't really talk without tobacco, and we're only a Lodge of Instruction.'
'An' I've learned more in one evenin' here than ten years.' The one- footed man turned round for an instant from a dark, sour-looking Yeoman in spurs who was laying down the law on Dutch Ritual. The blue haze and the talk increased, while the organ from the loft blessed us all.
'But this is delightful,' said I to the Doctor. 'How did it all happen?'
'Brother Burges started it. He used to talk to the men who dropped into his shop when the war began. He told us sleepy old chaps in Lodge that what men wanted more than anything else was Lodges where they could sit-just sit and be happy like we are now. He was right too. We're learning things in the war. A man's Lodge means more to him than people imagine. As our friend on your right said just now, very often Masonry's the only practical creed we've ever listened to since we were children. Platitudes or no platitudes, it squares with what everybody knows ought to be done.' He sighed. 'And if this war hasn't brought home the Brotherhood of Man to us all, I'm-a Hun!'
'How did you get your visitors?' I went on.
'Oh, I told a few fellows in hospital near here, at Burgess suggestion, that we had a Lodge of Instruction and they'd be welcome. And they came. And they told their friends. And they came! That was two years ago-and now we've Lodge of Instruction two nights a week, and a matinee nearly every Tuesday and Friday for the men who can't get evening leave. Yes, it's all very curious. I'd no notion what the Craft meant-and means-till this war.'
'Nor I, till this evening,' I replied.
'Yet it's quite natural if you think. Here's London-all England-packed with the Craft from all over the world, and nowhere for them to go. Why, our weekly visiting attendance for the last four months averaged just under a hundred and forty. Divide by four-call it thirty-five Visiting Brethren a time. Our record's seventy-one, but we have packed in as many as eighty-four at Banquets. You can see for yourself what a potty little hole we are!'
'Banquets too!' I cried. 'It must cost like anything. May the Visiting Brethren--'
The Doctor-his name was Keede-laughed. 'No, a Visiting Brother may not.'
'But when a man has had an evening like this, he wants to--'
'That's what they all say. That makes our difficulty. They do exactly what you were going to suggest, and they're offended if we don't take it.'
'Don't you?' I asked.
'My dear man-what does it come to? They can't all stay to Banquet. Say one hundred suppers a week-fifteen quid-sixty a month-seven hundred and twenty a year. How much are Lemming and Orton worth? And Ellis and McKnight-that long big man over yonder-the provision dealers? How much d'you suppose could Burges write a cheque for and not feel?'Tisn't as if he had to save for any one now. I assure you we have no scruple in calling on the Visiting Brethren when we want anything. We couldn't do the work otherwise. Have you noticed how the Lodge is kept-brass-work, jewels, furniture, and so on?'
'I have indeed,' I said. 'It's like a ship. You could eat your dinner off the floor.'
'Well, come here on a bye-day and you'll often find half-a-dozen Brethren, with eight legs between 'em, polishing and ronuking and sweeping everything they can get at. I cured a shell-shocker this spring by giving him our jewels to look after. He pretty well polished the numbers off 'em, but-it kept him from fighting Huns in his sleep. And when we need Masters to take our duties-two matinees a week is rather a tax-we've the choice of P.M.'s from all over the world. The Dominions are much keener on Ritual than an average English Lodge. Besides that--Oh, we're going to adjourn. Listen to the greetings. They'll be interesting.'
The crack of the great gavel brought us to our feet, after some surging and plunging among the cripples. Then the Battery-Sergeant- Major, in a trained voice, delivered hearty and fraternal greetings to 'Faith and Works' from his tropical District and Lodge. The others followed, with out order, in every tone between a grunt and a squeak. I heard 'Hauraki,' 'Inyanga-Umbezi,' 'Aloha,' 'Southern Lights' (from somewhere Punta Arenas way), 'Lodge of Rough Ashlars' (and that Newfoundland Naval Brother looked it), two or three Stars of something or other, half-a-dozen cardinal virtues, variously arranged, hailing from Klondyke to Kalgoorlie, one Military Lodge on one of the fronts, thrown in with a severe Scots burr by my friend of the head-bandages, and the rest as mixed as the Empire itself. Just at the end there was a little stir. The silent Brother had begun to make noises; his companion tried to soothe him.
'Let him be! Let him be!' the Doctor called professionally. The man jerked and mouthed, and at last mumbled something unintelligible even to his friend, but a small dark P.M. pushed forward importantly.
'It iss all right,' he said. 'He wants to say--' he spat out some yard-long Welsh name, adding, 'That means Pembroke Docks, Worshipful Sir. We haf good Masons in Wales, too.' The silent man nodded approval.
'Yes,' said the Doctor, quite unmoved. 'It happens that way sometimes. Hespere panta fereis, isn't it? The Star brings 'em all home. I must get a note of that fellow's case after Lodge. I saw you didn't care for music,' he went on, 'but I'm afraid you'll have to put up with a little more. It's a paraphrase from Micah. Our organist arranged it. We sing it antiphonally, as a sort of dismissal.'
Even I could appreciate what followed. The singing seemed confined to half-a-dozen trained voices answering each other till the last line, when the full Lodge came in. I give it as I heard it:
'We have showed thee, O Man. What is good. What doth the Lord require of us? Or Conscience' self desire of us? But to do justly- But to love mercy. And to walk humbly with our God. As every Mason should.'
Then we were played and sung out to the quaint tune of the 'Entered Apprentices' Song.' I noticed that the regular Brethren of the Lodge did not begin to take off their regalia till the lines
'Great Kings, Dukes, and Lords Have laid down their swords.' They moved into the ante-room, now set for the Banquet, on the verse 'Antiquity's pride We have on our side. Which maketh men just in their station.'
The Brother (a big-boned clergyman) that I found myself next to at table told me the custom was 'a fond thing vainly invented' on the strength of some old legend. He laid down that Masonry should be regarded as an 'intellectual abstraction.' An Officer of Engineers disagreed with him, and told us how in Flanders, a year before, some ten or twelve Brethren held Lodge in what was left of a Church. Save for the Emblems of Mortality and plenty of rough ashlars, there was no furniture.
'I warrant you weren't a bit the worse for that,' said the Clergyman. 'The idea should be enough without trappings.'
'But it wasn't,' said the other. 'We took a lot of trouble to make our regalia out of camouflage-stuff that we'd pinched, and we manufactured our jewels from old metal. I've got the set now. It kept us happy for weeks.'
'Ye were absolutely irregular an' unauthorised. Whaur was your Warrant?' said the Brother from the Military Lodge. 'Grand Lodge ought to take steps against--'
'If Grand Lodge had any sense,' a private three places up our table broke in, 'it 'ud warrant travelling Lodges at the front and attach first-class lecturers to 'em.'
'Wad ye confer degrees promiscuously?' said the scandalised Scot.
'Every time a man asked, of course. You'd have half the Army in.'
The speaker played with the idea for a little while, and proved that, on the lowest scale of fees, Grand Lodge would get huge revenues.
'I believe,' said the Engineer Officer thoughtfully, 'I could design a complete travelling Lodge outfit under forty pounds weight.'
'Ye're wrong. I'll prove it. We've tried ourselves,' said the Military Lodge man; and they went at it together across the table, each with his own note-book.
The 'Banquet' was simplicity itself. Many of us ate in haste so as to get back to barracks or hospitals, but now and again a Brother came in from the outer darkness to fill a chair and empty a plate. These were Brethren who had been there before and needed no examination.
One man lurched in-helmet, Flanders mud, accoutrements and all-fresh from the leave-train.
''Got two hours to wait for my train,' he explained. 'I remembered your night, though. My God, this is good!'
'What is your train and from what station?' said the Clergyman precisely. 'Very well. What will you have to eat?'
'Anything. Everything. I've thrown up a month's rations in the Channel.'
He stoked himself for ten minutes without a word. Then, without a word, his face fell forward. The Clergyman had him by one already limp arm and steered him to a couch, where ho dropped and snored. No one took the trouble to turn round.
'Is that usual too?' I asked.
'Why not?' said the Clergyman. 'I'm on duty to-night to wake them for their trains. They do not respect the Cloth on those occasions.' He turned his broad back on me and continued his discussion with a Brother from Aberdeen by way of Mitylene where, in the intervals of mine-sweeping, he had evolved a complete theory of the Revelation of St. John the Divine in the Island of Patmos.
I fell into the hands of a Sergeant-Instructor of Machine Guns-by profession a designer of ladies' dresses. He told me that Englishwomen as a class 'lose on their corsets what they make on their clothes,' and that 'Satan himself can't save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.' Here, to my grief, he was buttonholed by a zealous Lieutenant of his own branch, and became a Sergeant again all in one click.
I drifted back and forth, studying the prints on the walls and the Masonic collection in the cases, while I listened to the inconceivable talk all round me. Little by little the company thinned, till at last there were only a dozen or so of us left. We gathered at the end of a table near the fire, the night-bird from Flanders trumpeting lustily into the hollow of his helmet, which some one had tipped over his face.
'And how did it go with you?' said the Doctor.
'It was like a new world,' I answered.
'That's what it is really.' Brother Burges returned the gold pince-nez to their case and reshipped his silver spectacles. 'Or that's what it might be made with a little trouble. When I think of the possibilities of the Craft at this juncture I wonder--' He stared into the fire.
'I wonder, too,' said the Sergeant-Major slowly, 'but-on the whole-I'm inclined to agree with you. We could do much with Masonry.'
'As an aid-as an aid-not as a substitute for Religion,' the Clergyman snapped.
'Oh, Lord! Can't we give Religion a rest for a bit?' the Doctor muttered. 'It hasn't done so-I beg your pardon all round.'
The Clergyman was bristling. 'Kamerad!' the wise Sergeant-Major went on, both hands up. 'Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as an average plan of life. What I've seen at the front makes me sure of it.'
Brother Burges came out of his muse. 'There ought to be a dozen- twenty-other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn't the young men join? They practise what we're always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what we can. What's the use of old Masons if they can't give a little help along their own lines?'
'Exactly,' said the Sergeant-Major, turning on the Doctor. 'And what's the darn use of a Brother if he isn't allowed to help?'
'Have it your own way then,' said the Doctor testily. He had evidently been approached before. He took something the Sergeant-Major handed to him and pocketed it with a nod. 'I was wrong,' he said to me, 'when I boasted of our independence. They get round us sometimes. This,' he slapped his pocket, 'will give a banquet on Tuesday. We don't usually feed at matinees. It will be a surprise. By the way, try another sandwich. The ham are best.' He pushed me a plate.
'They are,' I said. 'I've only had five or six. I've been looking for them.'
''Glad you like them,' said Brother Lemming. 'Fed him myself, cured him myself-at my little place in Berkshire. His name was Charlemagne. By the way, Doc, am I to keep another one for next month?'
'Of course,' said the Doctor with his mouth full. 'A little fatter than this chap, please. And don't forget your promise about the pickled nasturtiums. They're appreciated.' Brother Lemming nodded above the pipe he had lit as we began a second supper. Suddenly the Clergyman, after a glance at the clock, scooped up half-a-dozen sandwiches from under my nose, put them into an oiled paper bag, and advanced cautiously towards the sleeper on the couch.
'They wake rough sometimes,' said the Doctor. 'Nerves, y'know.' The Clergyman tip-toed directly behind the man's head, and at arm's length rapped on the dome of the helmet. The man woke in one vivid streak, as the Clergyman stepped back, and grabbed for a rifle that was not there.
'You've barely half an hour to catch your train.' The Clergyman passed him the sandwiches. 'Come along.'
'You're uncommonly kind and I'm very grateful,' said the man, wriggling into his stiff straps. He followed his guide into the darkness after saluting.
'Who's that?' said Lemming.
'Can't say,' the Doctor returned indifferently. 'He's been here before. He's evidently a P.M. of sorts.'
'Well! Well!' said Brother Burges, whose eyelids were drooping. 'We must all do what we can. Isn't it almost time to lock up?'
'I wonder,' said I, as we helped each other into our coats, 'what would happen if Grand Lodge knew about all this.'
'About what?' Lemming turned on me quickly.
'A Lodge of Instruction open three nights and two afternoons a week- and running a lodging-house as well. It's all very nice, but it doesn't strike me somehow as regulation.'
'The point hasn't been raised yet,' said Lemming. 'We'll settle it after the war. Meantime we shall go on.'
'There ought to be scores of them,' Brother Burges repeated as we went out of the door. 'All London's full of the Craft, and no places for them to meet in. Think of the possibilities of it! Think what could have been done by Masonry through Masonry for all the world. I hope I'm not censorious, but it sometimes crosses my mind that Grand Lodge may have thrown away its chance in the war almost as much as the Church has.'
'Lucky for you the Padre is taking that chap to King's Cross,' said Brother Lemming, 'or he'd be down your throat. What really troubles him is our legal position under Masonic Law. I think he'll inform on us one of these days. Well, good night, all.' The Doctor and Lemming turned off together.
'Yes,' said Brother Burges, slipping his arm into mine. 'Almost as much as the Church has. But perhaps I'm too much of a Ritualist.'
I said nothing. I was speculating how soon I could steal a march on the Clergyman and inform against 'Faith and Works No. 5837 E.C.'
HOW comes it that, at even-tide. When level beams should show most truth. Man, failing, takes unfailing pride In memories of his frolic youth? Venus and Liber fill their hour; The games engage, the law-courts prove; Till hardened life breeds love of power Or Avarice, Age's final love. Yet at the end, these comfort not-- Nor any triumph Fate decrees- Compared with glorious, unforgot-- ten innocent enormities Of frontless days before the beard. When, instant on the casual jest. The God Himself of Mirth appeared And snatched us to His heaving breast. And we-not caring who He was But certain He would come again-- Accepted all He brought to pass As Gods accept the lives of men... Then He withdrew from sight and speech. Nor left a shrine. How comes it now. While Charon's keel grates on the beach. He calls so clear: 'Rememberest thou?'?
HIS name was Brownell and his reign was brief. He came from the Central Anglican Scholastic Agency, a soured, clever, reddish man picked up by the Head at the very last moment of the summer holidays in default of Macrea (of Macrea's House) who wired from Switzerland that he had smashed a knee mountaineering, and would not be available that term.
Looking back at the affair, one sees that the Head should have warned Mr. Brownell of the College's outstanding peculiarity, instead of leaving him to discover it for himself the first day of the term, when he went for a walk to the beach, and saw 'Potiphar' Mullins, Head of Games, smoking without conceal on the sands. 'Pot,' having the whole of the Autumn Football challenges, acceptances, and Fifteen reconstructions to work out, did not at first comprehend Mr. Brownell's shrill cry of: 'You're smoking! You're smoking, sir!' but he removed his pipe, and answered, placably enough: 'The Army Class is allowed to smoke, sir.'
Mr. Brownell replied: 'Preposterous!'
Pot, seeing that this new person was uninformed, suggested that he should refer to the Head.
'You may be sure I shall-sure I shall, sir! Then we shall see!'
Mr. Brownell and his umbrella scudded off, and Pot returned to his match-plannings. Anon, he observed, much as the Almighty might observe black-beetles, two small figures coming over the Pebble-ridge a few hundred yards to his right. They were a Major and his Minor, the latter a new boy and, as such, entitled to his brother's countenance for exactly three days-after which he would fend for himself. Pot waited till they were well out on the great stretch of mother-o'pearl sands; then caused his ground-ash to describe a magnificent whirl of command in the air.
'Come on,' said the Major. 'Run!'
'What for?' said the Minor, who had noticed nothing.
''Cause we're wanted. Leg it!'
'Oh, I can do that,' the Minor replied and, at the end of the sprint, fetched up a couple of yards ahead of his brother, and much less winded.
'Your Minor?' said Pot, looking over them, seawards.
'Yes, Mullins,' the Major replied.
'All right. Cut along!' They cut on the word.
'Hi! Fludd Major! Come back!'
Back fled the elder.
'Your wind's bad. Too fat. You grunt like a pig. 'Mustn't do it! Understand? Go away!'
'What was all that for?' the Minor asked on the Major's return.
'To see if we could run, you fool!'
'Well, I ran faster than you, anyhow,' was the scandalous retort.
'Look here, Har-Minor, if you go on talking like this, you'll get yourself kicked all round Coll. An' you mustn't stand like you did when a Prefect's talkin' to you.'
The Minor's eyes opened with awe. 'I thought it was only one of the masters,' said he.
'Masters! It was Mullins-Head o' Games. You are a putrid young ass!'
By what seemed pure chance, Mr. Brownell ran into the School Chaplain, the Reverend John Gillett, beating up against the soft September rain that no native ever troubled to wear a coat for.
'I was trying to catch you after lunch,' the latter began. 'I wanted to show you our objects of local interest.'
'Thank you! I've seen all I want,' Mr. Brownell answered., Gillett, is there anything about me which suggests the Congenital Dupe?'
'It's early to say, yet,' the Chaplain answered. 'Who've you been meeting?'
'A youth called Mullets, I believe.' And, indeed, there was Potiphar, ground-ash, pipe, and all, quarter-decking serenely below the Pebbleridge.
'Oh! I see. Old Pot-our Head of Games.'
'He was smoking. He's smoking now! Before those two little boys, too!' Mr. Brownell panted. 'He had the audacity to tell me that--'
'Yes,' the Reverend John cut in. 'The Army Class is allowed to smoke- not in their studies, of course, but within limits, out of doors. You see, we have to compete against the Crammers' establishments, where smoking's usual.'
This was true! Of the only school in England was this the cold truth, and for the reason given, in that unprogressive age.
'Good Heavens!' said Mr. Brownell to the gulls and the gray sea. 'And I was never warned!'
'The Head is a little forgetful. I ought to have--But it's all right,' the Chaplain added soothingly. 'Pot won't-er-give you away.'
Mr. Brownell, who knew what smoking led to, testified out of his twelve years' experience of what he called the Animal Boy. He left little unexplored or unexplained.
'There may be something in what you say,' the Reverend John assented. 'But as a matter of fact, their actual smoking doesn't amount to much. They talk a great deal about their brands of tobacco. Practically, it makes them rather keen on putting down smoking among the juniors-as an encroachment on their privilege, you see. They lick 'em twice as hard for it as we'd dare to.'
'Lick!' Mr. Brownell cried. 'One expels! One expels! I know the end of these practices.' He told his companion, in detail, with anecdotes and inferences, a great deal more about the Animal Boy.
'Ah!' said the Reverend John to himself. 'You'll leave at the end of the term; but you'll have a deuce of a time first.' Aloud: 'We-ell, I suppose no one can be sure of any school's tendency at any given moment, but, personally, I should incline to believe that we're reasonably free from the-er-monastic microbes of-er-older institutions.'
'But a school's a school. You can't get out of that! It's preposterous! You must admit that,' Mr. Brownell insisted.
They were within hail of Pot by now, and the Reverend John asked him how Affairs of State stood.
'All right, thank you, sir. How are you, sir?'
'Loungin' round and sufferin', my son. What about the dates of the Exeter and Tiverton matches?'
'As late in the term as we can get 'em, don't you think, sir?'
'Quite! Specially Blundell's. They're our dearest foe,' he explained to the frozen Mr. Brownell. 'Aren't we rather light in the scrum just now, Mullins?'
''Fraid so, sir: but Packman's playin' forward this term.'
'At last!' cried the Reverend John. (Packman was Pot's second-in- command, who considered himself a heaven-born half-back, but Pot had been working on him diplomatically. 'He'll be a pillar, at any rate. Lend me one of your fuzees, please. I've only got matches.'
Mr. Brownell was unused to this sort of talk. 'A bad beginning to a bad business,' he muttered as they returned to College.
Pot finished out his meditations; from time to time rubbing up the gloss on his new seven-and-sixpenny silver-mounted, rather hot, myall- wood pipe, with its very thin crust in the bowl.
As the Studies brought back brackets and pictures for their walls, so did they bring odds and ends of speech-theatre, opera, and music-hall gags-from the great holiday world; some of which stuck for a term, and others were discarded. Number Five was unpacking, when Dick Four (King's House) of the red nose and dramatic instincts, who with Pussy and Tertius inhabited the study below, loafed up and asked them 'how their symptoms seemed to segashuate.' They said nothing at the time, for they knew Dick had a giddy uncle who took him to the Pavilion and the Cri, and all would be explained later. But, before they met again, Beetle came across two fags at war in a box-room, one of whom cried to the other 'Turn me loose, or I'll knock the natal stuffin' out of you.' Beetle demanded why he, being offal, presumed to use this strange speech. The fag said it came out of a new book about rabbits and foxes and turtles and niggers, which was in his locker. (Uncle Remus was a popular holiday gift-book in Shotover's year: when Cetewayo lived in the Melbury Road, Arabi Pasha in Egypt, and Spofforth on the Oval.) Beetle had it out and read for some time, standing by the window, ere he carried it off to Number Five and began at once to give a wonderful story of a Tar Baby. Stalky tore it from him because he sputtered incoherently; McTurk, for the same cause, wrenching it from Stalky. There was no prep that night. The book was amazing, and full of quotations that one could hurl like javelins. When they came down to prayers, Stalky, to show he was abreast of the latest movement, pounded on the door of Dick Four's study shouting a couplet that pleased him:
'Ti-yi! Tungalee!
I eat um pea! I pick um pea!'
Upon which Dick Four, hornpiping and squinting, and not at all unlike a bull-frog, came out and answered from the bottom of his belly, whence he could produce incredible noises
'Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
I'm right at home, my joy, my joy!--'
The chants seemed to answer the ends of their being created for the moment. They all sang them the whole way up the corridor, and, after prayers, bore the burdens dispersedly to their several dormitories, where they found many who knew the book of the words, but who, boylike, had waited for a lead ere giving tongue. In a short time the College was as severely infected with Uncle Remus as it had been with Pinafore and Patience. King realised it specially because he was running Macrea's House in addition to his own and, Dick Four said, was telling his new charges what he thought of his 'esteemed colleague's' methods of House-control.
The Reverend John was talking to the Head in the tatter's study, perhaps a fortnight later.
'If you'd only wired me,' he said. 'I could have dug up something that might have tided us over. This man's dangerous.'
'Mea culpa!' the Head replied. 'I had so much on hand. Our Governing Council alone--But what do We make of him?'
'Trust Youth! We call him "Mister."
'"Mister Brownell"?'
'Just "Mister." It took Us three days to plumb his soul.'
'And he doesn't approve of Our institutions? You say he is On the Track-eh? He suspects the worst?'
The School Chaplain nodded.
'We-ell. I should say that that was the one tendency we had not developed. Setting aside we haven't even a curtain in a dormitory, let alone a lock to any form-room door-there has to be tradition in these things.'
'So I believe. So, indeed, one knows. And-'tisn't as if I ever preached on personal purity either.'
The Head laughed. 'No, or you'd join Brownell at term-end. By the way, what's this new line of Patristic discourse you're giving us in church? I found myself listening to some of it last Sunday.'
'Oh! My early Christianity sermons? I bought a dozen ready made in Town just before I came down. Some one who knows his Gibbon must have done 'em. Aren't they good?' The Reverend John, who was no hand at written work, beamed self-approvingly. There was a knock and Pot entered.
The weather had defeated him, at last. All footer-grounds, he reported, were unplayable, and must be rested. His idea, to keep things going, was Big and Little Side Paper-chases thrice a week. For the juniors, a shortish course on the Burrows, which he intended to oversee personally the first few times, while Packman lunged Big Side across the inland and upland ploughs, for proper sweats. There was some question of bounds that he asked authority to vary; and, would the Head please say which afternoons would interfere least with the Army Class, Extra Tuition.
As to bounds, the Head left those, as usual, entirely to Pot. The Reverend John volunteered to shift one of his extra-Tu classes from four to five p.m. till after prayers-nine to ten. The whole question was settled in five minutes.
'We hate paper-chases, don't we, Pot?' the Headmaster asked as the Head of Games rose.
'Yes, sir, but it keeps 'em in training. Good night, sir.'
'To go back--' drawled the Head when the door was well shut. 'No-o. I do not think so!...Ye-es! He'll leave at the end of the term... A-aah! How does it go? "Don't 'spute wid de squinch-owl. Jam de shovel in de fier." Have you come across that extraordinary book, by the way?'
'Oh, yes. We've got it badly too. It has some sort of elemental appeal, I suppose.'
Here Mr. King came in with a neat little scheme for the reorganisation of certain details in Macrea's House, where he had detected reprehensible laxities. The Head sighed. The Reverend John only heard the beginnings of it. Then he slid out softly. He remembered he had not written to Macrea for quite a long time.
The first Big Side Paper-chase, in blinding wet, was as vile as even the groaning and bemired Beetle had prophesied. But Dick Four had managed to run his own line when it skirted Bideford, and turned up at the Lavatories half an hour late cherishing a movable tumour beneath his sweater.
'Ingle-go-jang!' he chanted, and slipped out a warm but coy land- tortoise.
'My Sacred Hat!' cried Stalky. 'Brer Terrapin! Where you catchee? What you makee-do aveck?'
This was Stalky's notion of how they talked in Uncle Remus; and he spake no other tongue for weeks.
'I don't know yet; but I had to get him. 'Man with a barrow full of 'em in Bridge Street. 'Gave me my choice for a bob. Leave him alone, you owl! He won't swim where you've been washing your filthy self! "I'm right at home, my joy, my joy."' Dick's nose shone like Bardolph's as he bubbled in the bath.
Just before tea-time, he,' Pussy,' and Tertius broke in upon Number Five, processionally, singing:
'Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
I'm right at home, my joy, my joy!
Ingle-go-jang, my joy.'
Brer Terrapin, painted or and sable-King's House-colours-swung by a neatly contrived belly-band from the end of a broken jumping-pole. They thought rather well of taking him in to tea. They called at one or two studies on the way, and were warmly welcomed; but when they reached the still shut doors of the dining-hall (Richards, ex-Petty Officer, R.N., was always unpunctual-but they needn't have called him 'Stinking Jim ') the whole school shouted approval. After the meal, Brer Terrapin was borne the round of the form-rooms from Number One to Number Twelve, in an unbroken roar of homage.
'To-morrow,' Dick Four announced, 'we'll sacrifice to him. Fags in blazin' paper-baskets!' and with thundering 'Ingle-go fangs' the Idol retired to its shrine.
It had been a satisfactory performance. Little Hartopp, surprised labelling 'rocks' in Number Twelve, which held the Natural History Museum, had laughed consumedly; and the Reverend John, just before prep, complimented Dick that he had not a single dissenter to his following. In this respect the affair was an advance on Byzantium and Alexandria which, of course, were torn by rival sects led by militant Bishops or zealous heathen. Vide, (Beetle,) Hypatia, and (if Dick Four ever listened, instead of privily swotting up his Euclid, in Church) the Reverend John's own sermons. Mr. King, who had heard the noise but had not appeared, made no comment till dinner, when he told the Common Room ceiling that he entertained the lowest opinion of Uncle Remus's buffoonery, but opined that it might interest certain types of intellect. Little Hartopp, School Librarian, who had, by special request, laid in an extra copy of the book, differed acridly. He had, he said, heard or overheard every salient line of Uncle Remus quoted, appositely too, by boys whom he would not have credited with intellectual interests. Mr. King repeated that he was wearied by the senseless and childish repetitions of immature minds. He recalled the Patience epidemic. Mr. Prout did not care for Uncle Remus-the dialect put him off-but he thought the Houses were getting a bit out of hand. There was nothing one could lay hold of, of course-'As yet,' Mr. Brownell interjected darkly. 'But this larking about in form-rooms,' he added, had potentialities which, if he knew anything of the Animal Boy, would develop-or had developed.'
'I shouldn't wonder,' said the Reverend John. 'This is the first time to my knowledge that Stalky has ever played second-fiddle to any one. Brer Terrapin was entirely Dick Four's notion. By the way, he was painted your House-colours, King.'
'Was he?' said King artlessly. 'I have always held that our Dickson Quartus had the rudiments of imagination. We will look into it-look into it.'
'In our loathsome calling, more things are done by judicious letting alone than by any other,' the Reverend John grunted.
'I can't subscribe to that,' said Mr. Prout. 'You haven't a House,' and for once Mr. King backed Prout.
'Thank Heaven I haven't! Or I should be like you two. Leave 'em alone! Leave 'em alone! Haven't you ever seen puppies fighting over a slipper for hours?'
'Yes, but Gillett admits that Dickson Quartus was the only begetter of this manifestation. I wasn't aware that the-er-Testacean had been tricked out in my colours,' said King.
And at that very hour, Number Five Study-'prep' thrown to the winds- were toiling inspiredly at a Tar Baby made up of Beetle's sweater, and half-a-dozen lavatory-towels; a condemned cretonne curtain and, ditto, baize table-cloth for 'natal stuffin''; an ancient, but air-tight puntabout-ball for the head; all three play-box ropes for bindings; and most of Richards' weekly blacking-allowance for Prout's House's boots, to give tone to the whole.
'Gummy!' said Beetle when their curtain-pole had been taken down and Tar Baby hitched to the end of it by a loop in its voluptuous back. 'It looks pretty average indecent, somehow.'
'You can use it this way, too,' Turkey demonstrated, handling the curtain-pole like a flail 'Now, shove it in the fireplace to dry an' we'll wash up.'
'But-but,' said Stalky, fascinated by the unspeakable front and behind of the black and bulging horror. 'How come he lookee so hellish?'
'Dead easy! If you do anything with your whole heart, Ruskin says, you always pull off something dam'-fine. Brer Terrapin's only a natural animal; but Tar Baby's Art,' McTurk explained.
'I see! "If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line." Well, Tar Baby's the filthiest thing I've ever seen in my life,' Stalky concluded. 'King'll be rabid.'
The United Idolaters set forth, side by side, at five o'clock next afternoon; Brer Terrapin, wide awake, and swimming hard into nothing; Tar Baby lurching from side to side with a lascivious abandon that made Foxy, the School Sergeant, taking defaulters' drill in the Corridor, squawk like an outraged hen. And when they ceremoniously saluted each other, like aristocratic heads on revolutionary pikes, it beat the previous day's performance out of sight and mind. The very fags, offered up, till the bottoms of the paper-baskets carried away, as heave-offerings before them, fell over each other for the honour; and House by House, when the news spread, dropped its doings, and followed the Mysteries-not without song...
Some say it was a fag of Prout's who appealed for rescue from Brer Terrapin to Tar Baby; others, that the introits to the respective creeds ('Ingle-go-jang,'-'Ti-yi-Tungalee!') carried in themselves the seeds of dissent. At any rate, the cleavage developed as swiftly as in a new religion, and by tea-time, when they were fairly hoarse, the rolling world was rent to the death between Ingles versus Tungles, and Brer Terrapin had swept out Number Eleven form-room to the War-cry: 'Here I come a-bulgin' and a-bilin'.' Prep stopped further developments, but they agreed that, as a recreation for wet autumn evenings, the jape was unequalled, and called for its repetition on Saturday.
That was a brilliant evening, too. Both sides went into prayers practically re-dressing themselves. There was a smell of singed fag down the lines and a watery eye or so; but nothing to which the most fastidious could have objected. The Reverend John hinted something about roof-lifting noises.
'Oh, no, Padre, Sahib. We were only billin' an' cooin' a bit,' Stalky explained. 'We haven't really begun. There's goin' to be a tug-o'-war next Saturday with Miss Meadow's bed-cord--'
'"Which in dem days would ha' hilt a mule,"' the Reverend John quoted. 'Well, I've got to be impartial. I wish you both good luck.'
The week, with its three paper-chases, passed uneventfully, but for a certain amount of raiding and reprisals on new lines that might have warned them they were playing with fire. The Juniors had learned to use the sacred war-chants as signals of distress; oppressed Ingles squealing for aid against oppressing Tungles, and vice versa; so that one never knew when a peaceful form-room would flare up in song and slaughter. But not a soul dreamed, for a moment, that that Saturday's jape would develop into-what it did! They were rigidly punctilious about the ritual; exquisitely careful as to the weights on Miss Meadow's bed-cord, kindly lent by Richards, who said he knew nothing about mules, but guaranteed it would hold a barge's crew; and if Dick Four chose to caparison himself as Archimandrite of Joppa, black as burned cork could make him, why, Stalky, in a nightgown kilted up beneath his sweater, was equally the Pope Symmachus, just converted from heathendom but given to alarming relapses.
It began after tea--say 6.50 p.m. It got into its stride by 7.30 when Turkey, with pillows bound round the ends of forms, invented the Royal Battering-Ram Corps. It grew and-it grew till a quarter to nine when the Prefects, most of whom had fought on one side or the other, thought it time to stop and went in with ground-ashes and the bare hand for ten minutes,...
Honours for the action were not awarded by the Head till Monday morning when he dealt out one dozen lickings to selected seniors, eight 'millies' (one thousand), fourteen 'usuals' (five hundred lines), minor impositions past count, and a stoppage of pocket-money on a scale and for a length of time unprecedented in modern history.
He said the College was within an ace of being burned to the ground when the gas jet in Number Eleven form-room-where they tried to burn Tar Baby, fallen for the moment into the hands of the enemy-was wrenched off, and the lit gas spouted all over the ceiling till some one plugged the pipe with dormitory soap. He said that nothing save his consideration for their future careers kept him from expelling the wanton ruffians who had noosed all the desks in Number Twelve and swept them up in one crackling mound, barring a couple that had pitch- poled through the window. This, again, had been no man's design but the inspiration of necessity when Tar Baby's bodyguard, surrounded but defiant, was only rescued at the last minute by Turkey's immortal flank-attack with the battering-rams that carried away the door of Number Nine. He said that the same remarks applied to the fireplace and mantelpiece in Number Seven which everybody had seen fall out of the wall of their own motion after Brer Terrapin had hitched Miss Meadow's bed-cord to the bars of the grate.
He said much more, too; but as King pointed out in Common Room that evening, his canings were inept, he had not confiscated the Idols and, above all, had not castigated, as King would have castigated, the disgusting childishness of all concerned.
'Well,' said Little Hartopp. 'I saw the Prefects choking them off as we came into prayers. You've reason to reckon that in the scale of suffering.'
'And more than half the damage was done under your banner, King,' the Reverend John added.
'That doesn't affect my judgment; though, as a matter of fact, I believe Brer Terrapin triumphed over Tar Baby all along the line. Didn't he, I rout?'
'It didn t seem to me a fitting time to ask. The Tar Babies were handicapped, of course, by not being able to-ah-tackle a live animal.'
'I confess,' Mr. Brownell volunteered, 'it was the studious perversity of certain aspects of the orgy which impressed me. And yet, what can one exp--'
'How do you mean?' King demanded. 'Dickson Quartus may be eccentric, but--'
'I was alluding to the vile and calculated indecency of that black doll.'
Mr. Brownell had passed Tar Baby going d