Man; and, when the chill and cough following the exposure of that
evening, allowed her abroad, she never by word or sign alluded to having
met me by the Tonga Office. Perhaps she never knew.
She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shocking bad saddle,
looking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner every
minute. Two years afterward, she went Home, and died--at Bournemouth, I
think.
Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about “my
poor dear wife.” He always set great store on speaking his mind, did
Schreiderling!
CONSEQUENCES.
Rosicrucian subtleties
In the Orient had rise;
Ye may find their teachers still
Under Jacatala's Hill.
Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus,
Read what Flood the Seeker tells us
Of the Dominant that runs
Through the cycles of the Suns--
Read my story last and see
Luna at her apogee.
There are yearly appointments, and two-yearly appointments, and
five-yearly appointments at Simla, and there are, or used to be,
permanent appointments, whereon you stayed up for the term of your
natural life and secured red cheeks and a nice income. Of course, you
could descend in the cold weather; for Simla is rather dull then.
Tarrion came from goodness knows where--all away and away in some
forsaken part of Central India, where they call Pachmari a “Sanitarium,”
and drive behind trotting bullocks, I believe. He belonged to a
regiment; but what he really wanted to do was to escape from his
regiment and live in Simla forever and ever. He had no preference for
anything in particular, beyond a good horse and a nice partner. He
thought he could do everything well; which is a beautiful belief when
you hold it with all your heart. He was clever in many ways, and good to
look at, and always made people round him comfortable--even in Central
India.
So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever and amusing, he
gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive everything
but stupidity. Once he did her great service by changing the date on an
invitation-card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished to attend,
but couldn't because she had quarrelled with the A.-D.-C., who took
care, being a mean man, to invite her to a small dance on the 6th
instead of the big Ball of the 26th. It was a very clever piece of
forgery; and when Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C. her invitation-card,
and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his vendettas, he really
thought he had made a mistake; and--which was wise--realized that it
was no use to fight with Mrs. Hauksbee. She was grateful to Tarrion and
asked what she could do for him. He said simply: “I'm a Freelance up
here on leave, and on the lookout for what I can loot. I haven't a
square inch of interest in all Simla. My name isn't known to any man
with an appointment in his gift, and I want an appointment--a good,
sound, pukka one. I believe you can do anything you turn yourself to do.
Will you help me?” Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed
the last of her riding-whip through her lips, as was her custom when
thinking. Then her eyes sparkled, and she said:--“I will;” and she shook
hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this great woman,
took no further thought of the business at all. Except to wonder what
sort of an appointment he would win.
Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the Heads of
Departments and Members of Council she knew, and the more she thought
the more she laughed, because her heart was in the game and it amused
her. Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of the appointments.
There are some beautiful appointments in the Civil List. Eventually, she
decided that, though Tarrion was too good for the Political Department,
she had better begin by trying to get him in there. What were her own
plans to this end, does not matter in the least, for Luck or Fate played
into her hands, and she had nothing to do but to watch the course of
events and take the credit of them.
All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through the “Diplomatic
Secrecy” craze. It wears off in time; but they all catch it in the
beginning, because they are new to the country. The particular Viceroy
who was suffering from the complaint just then--this was a long time
ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came from Canada, or Lord Ripon from the
bosom of the English Church--had it very badly; and the result was that
men who were new to keeping official secrets went about looking unhappy;
and the Viceroy plumed himself on the way in which he had instilled
notions of reticence into his Staff.
Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom of committing
what they do to printed papers. These papers deal with all sorts of
things--from the payment of Rs. 200 to a “secret service” native, up to
rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, and rather
brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them to put their houses
in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or filling offenders with
pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of that kind. Of course, these
things could never be made public, because Native Princes never err
officially, and their States are, officially, as well administered as
Our territories. Also, the private allowances to various queer people
are not exactly matters to put into newspapers, though they give quaint
reading sometimes. When the Supreme Government is at Simla, these papers
are prepared there, and go round to the people who ought to see them in
office-boxes or by post. The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy
quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent
despotism like Ours should never allow even little things, such as
appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper time. He
was always remarkable for his principles.
There was a very important batch of papers in preparation at that time.
It had to travel from one end of Simla to the other by hand. It was not
put into an official envelope, but a large, square, pale-pink one; the
matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper. It was addressed to “The
Head Clerk, etc., etc.” Now, between “The Head Clerk, etc., etc.,”
and “Mrs. Hauksbee” and a flourish, is no very great difference if the
address be written in a very bad hand, as this was. The chaprassi who
took the envelope was not more of an idiot than most chaprassis. He
merely forgot where this most unofficial cover was to be delivered, and
so asked the first Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding
down to Annandale in a great hurry. The Englishman hardly looked, said:
“Hauksbee Sahib ki Mem,” and went on. So did the chaprasss, because that
letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his work over. There
was no book to sign; he thrust the letter into Mrs. Hauksbee's bearer's
hands and went off to smoke with a friend. Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting
some cut-out pattern things in flimsy paper from a friend. As soon
as she got the big square packet, therefore, she said, “Oh, the
DEAR creature!” and tore it open with a paper-knife, and all the MS.
enclosures tumbled out on the floor.
Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said the batch was rather
important. That is quite enough for you to know. It referred to some
correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a native chief and
two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the first
glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian Government, stripped
of its casings, and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, impresses even
the most stupid man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was
a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid hold of a
lightning-flash by the tail, and did not quite know what to do with it.
There were remarks and initials at the side of the papers; and some
of the remarks were rather more severe than the papers. The initials
belonged to men who are all dead or gone now; but they were great in
their day. Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought calmly as she read. Then
the value of her trove struck her, and she cast about for the best
method of using it. Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read through all
the papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had come by
them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the greatest woman on earth. Which I
believe was true, or nearly so.
“The honest course is always the best,” said Tarrion after an hour and a
half of study and conversation. “All things considered, the Intelligence
Branch is about my form. Either that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay
siege to the High Gods in their Temples.”
He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head of a
strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest man that
the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an appointment at
Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence of this amused the Strong
Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the moment, he listened to the
proposals of the audacious Tarrion. “You have, I presume, some special
qualifications, besides the gift of self-assertion, for the claims you
put forwards?” said the Strong Man. “That, Sir,” said Tarrion, “is for
you to judge.” Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of
the more important notes in the papers--slowly and one by one as a
man drops chlorodyne into a glass. When he had reached the peremptory
order--and it WAS a peremptory order--the Strong Man was troubled.
Tarrion wound up:--“And I fancy that special knowledge of this kind is
at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign Office, as
the fact of being the nephew of a distinguished officer's wife.” That hit
the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had
been by black favor, and he knew it. “I'll see what I can do for you,”
said the Strong Man. “Many thanks,” said Tarrion. Then he left, and the
Strong Man departed to see how the appointment was to be blocked.
. . . . . . . . .
Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much
telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying
only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it
was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained,
and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special
information would be worth translating. So they translated him. They
must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was
due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including
the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for
yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do
not know about things Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in,
and you will say it is impossible.
What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was:--“So, this
is the boy who 'rushed' the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir,
that is not done TWICE.” So he must have known something.
What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--“If Mrs.
Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be
Viceroy of India in twenty years.”
What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears
in his eyes, was first:--“I told you so!” and next, to herself:--“What
fools men are!”
THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.
Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.
But, once in a way, there will come a day
When the colt must be taught to feel
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
and the sting of the rowelled steel.
Life's Handicap.
This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud of
it. Making a Tract is a Feat.
Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--least
of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's throats.
The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGoggin
was the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever--brilliantly
clever--but his cleverness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping to
the study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by a
man called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a Professor
Clifford. [You will find these books in the Library.] They deal with
people's insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs.
There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should have
smacked him. They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with
a rarefied religion over and above his work. It was not much of a
creed. It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God and
no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the good of
Humanity.
One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful than
giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said;
but I suspect he had misread his primers.
I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, where
there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all shut in
by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higher
than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything.
But in this country, where you really see humanity--raw, brown, naked
humanity--with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the
used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away,
and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long
enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the
head of affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant,
the Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the
Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the
Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress
be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for her to be
responsible to--the entire system of Our administration must be wrong.
Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They are
stalled up a good deal and get intellectually “beany.” When you take a
gross, “beany” horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit
till you can't see the horns. But the bit is there just the same. Men do
not get “beany” in India. The climate and the work are against playing
bricks with words.
If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endings
in “isms,” to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers on
both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came
out in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no
souls too, and to help him to eliminate his Creator. As a good many men
told him, HE undoubtedly had no soul, because he was so young, but it
did not follow that his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether
there was another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
this. “But that is not the point--that is not the point!” Aurelian used
to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to
any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the
“Blastoderm”--he said he came from a family of that name somewhere, in
the pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter, strove to choke him
dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an
offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on
the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,
for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if
he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the
Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--all
head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in
McGoggin's soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's.
His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of
devastating the Club with “isms.”
He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too
responsible and left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride an
old horse in a halter; but never a colt. McGoggin took more trouble
over his cases than any of the men of his year. He may have fancied that
thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee cases--both sides perjured to the
gullet--advanced the cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much,
and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away
on his ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee
in June without suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually “beany”
and proud of himself and his powers, and he would take no hint. He
worked nine hours a day steadily.
“Very well,” said the doctor, “you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam.” McGoggin was a little chap.
One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.
It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in the
dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds
would let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away, there was a
faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river.
One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, and said,
naturally enough:--“Thank God!”
Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--“Why? I assure you
it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a
Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--”
“Blastoderm,” grunted the man in the next chair, “dry up, and throw
me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments.” The Blastoderm
reached out to the table, took up one paper, and jumped as if something
had stung him. Then he handed the paper over.
“As I was saying,” he went on slowly and with an effort--“due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--”
“Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser.”
The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains. We
were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and was
fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--
“Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red
oak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone.”
“Blastoderm's drunk,” said one man. But the Blastoderm was not drunk. He
looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with his hands
in the half light as the clouds closed overhead. Then--with a scream:--
“What is it?--Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--”
But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and--just as the lightning shot
two tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the rain fell
in quivering sheets--the Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing and
champing like a hard-held horse, and his eyes were full of terror.
The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard the story. “It's
aphasia,” he said. “Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash would come.”
We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to his quarters,
and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to make him sleep.
Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like all
the arrears of “Punjab Head” falling in a lump; and that only once
before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a case.
I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this sudden
dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm himself might have said,
due to “perfectly natural causes.”
“He'll have to take leave after this,” said the Doctor. “He won't be
fit for work for another three months. No; it isn't insanity or anything
like it. It's only complete loss of control over the speech and memory.
I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though.”
Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again. The first
question he asked was: “What was it?” The Doctor enlightened him. “But I
can't understand it!” said the Blastoderm; “I'm quite sane; but I can't
be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can I?”
“Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it,” said
the Doctor.
“But I can't understand it,” repeated the Blastoderm. “It was my OWN
mind and memory.”
“I can't help it,” said the Doctor; “there are a good many things you
can't understand; and, by the time you have put in my length of service,
you'll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in this world.”
The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could not understand it. He went
into the Hills in fear and trembling, wondering whether he would be
permitted to reach the end of any sentence he began.
This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. The legitimate
explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to satisfy
him. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milky
lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly afraid.
So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come across
Aurelian McGoggin laying down the law on things Human--he doesn't seem
to know as much as he used to about things Divine--put your forefinger
on your lip for a moment, and see what happens.
Don't blame me if he throws a glass at your head!
A GERM DESTROYER.
Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.
As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State
in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you. This tale
is a justifiable exception.
Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and
each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary,
who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks
after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.
There was a Viceroy once, who brought out with him a turbulent Private
Secretary--a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for
work. This Secretary was called Wonder--John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy
possessed no name--nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds
of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the
electro-plated figurehead of a golden administration, and he watched
in a dreamy, amused way Wonder's attempts to draw matters which were
entirely outside his province into his own hands. “When we are all
cherubims together,” said His Excellency once, “my dear, good friend
Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers
or stealing Peter's keys. THEN I shall report him.”
But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's officiousness,
other people said unpleasant things. Maybe the Members of Council began
it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was “too much Wonder,
and too little Viceroy,” in that regime. Wonder was always quoting “His
Excellency.” It was “His Excellency this,” “His Excellency that,” “In
the opinion of His Excellency,” and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he
did not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his
“dear, good Wonder,” they might be induced to leave the “Immemorial
East” in peace.
“No wise man has a policy,” said the Viceroy. “A Policy is the blackmail
levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not
believe in the latter.”
I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance
Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--“Lie low.”
That season, came up to Simla one of these crazy people with only a
single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they are not
nice to talk to. This man's name was Mellish, and he had lived for
fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He
held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a
muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake.
The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by “Mellish's Own
Invincible Fumigatory”--a heavy violet-black powder--“the result of
fifteen years' scientific investigation, Sir!”
Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially
about “conspiracies of monopolists;” they beat upon the table with
their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their
persons.