same instant were heard under our very windows the trumpets of the
Prussians returning from drill. Pale as death, Master Hamel rose from
his chair. Never had he seemed so large.
31. “My friends,” he began; “my friends, I--I--”
32. But something choked him. He could not end the sentence.
[Sidenote: Note the intensity.]
33. Then he turned to the blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and,
bearing with all his strength, he wrote in the largest letters he could
make:
[Sidenote: FULL CLIMAX.]
34. “VIVE LA FRANCE!”
35. Then he stood there, his head leaning against the wall, and
without a word he signed to us with his hand:
36. “It is the end ... go!”
KIPLING AND HIS WRITINGS
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, December 30, 1865,
of English parents, his father, J. Lockwood Kipling, an artist of
ability, having been in the colonial Civil Service. He was educated
at the United Services College, Devon, but returned to India in 1882
and became an editorial writer and correspondent. In 1889 he began
extensive travels. For several years he resided in Brattleboro,
Vermont, but returned to England and settled in Rottingdean, Sussex.
Rudyard Kipling has attained celebrity as poet, novelist, and
short-story writer. His best-known poems are found in the collections
entitled _Departmental Ditties_, _Barrack-Room Ballads_, _The Seven
Seas_, and _The Five Nations_. _Kim_ is his ablest novel. The two
“Jungle Books” constitute a remarkable collection of connected tales
of the jungle folk. His best short-stories are found in the following
volumes: _Soldiers Three_ (the “Mulvaney” stories, “The Man Who
Was,” etc.), _The Phantom Rickshaw_ (“The Man Who Would be King,”
“The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,” etc.), _Wee Willie Winkie and
Other Stories_ (“The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “Under the Deodars,”
etc.), _The Day’s Work_ (“The Bridge Builders,” “The Brushwood Boy,”
etc.), and _Traffic and Discoveries_ (“They,” etc.). “Without Benefit
of Clergy” first appeared in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (London) in
June, 1890, and in the June 7th and 14th, 1890, numbers of _Harper’s
Weekly_ (New York). In the same year it was published in the volume,
_The Courting of Dinah Shadd, and Other Stories_, but in 1891 it was
included in the volume _Life’s Handicap: being Stories of Mine Own
People._
* * * * *
Rudyard Kipling is without doubt the greatest of living short-story
writers, though in interest his later fiction does not equal his
productions of the early nineties. His journalistic work drilled him in
compression; his precocious intuitions and personal experience of life
in India opened up a fresh and fascinating field; his genius taught him
how to tell his stories with unfailing variety, a robust humor, and
an understanding of the human heart quite uncanny in one so young. In
style, he is a master of the unexpected; in narration, he is by turns
deliberate and swift; in atmospheric painting, he transports us to real
places, wherein real folk do real things.
Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they
have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy
imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone hast seen, then what
thou hast heard, and since they be children tell them of battles
and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not to
tell them of love and such like. All the earth is full of tales to
him who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door.
The poor are the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear
to the ground every night.--RUDYARD KIPLING, Preface to _Life’s
Handicap_.
The tremulous passion of Ameera, her hopes, her fears, and her
agonies of disappointment, combine to form by far the most tender
page which Mr. Kipling has written.--EDMUND GOSSE, _Questions at
Issue_.
... The truly appreciative reader should surely have no quarrel
with the primitive element in Mr. Kipling’s subject-matter, or with
what, for want of a better name, I may call his love of low life.
What is that but essentially a part of his freshness? And for what
part of his freshness are we exactly more thankful than for just
this smart jostle that he gives the old stupid superstition that
the amiability of a story-teller is the amiability of the people
he represents--that their vulgarity, or depravity, or gentility,
or fatuity are tantamount to the same qualities in the painter
himself?--HENRY JAMES, Introduction to _Works_.
It was not until “Without Benefit of Clergy” that he came to his
full strength in pathetic prose. The history of Ameera is one of
the triumphs of the short story. Its characterization is vivid; its
progress direct and poignant. I do not wish even for an instant to
seem to cheapen one of the most touching and beautiful stories in
the world when I call it journalism. But the voice of the desolate
mother breaking into the nursery rime of the wicked crow,
“And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound,
Only a penny a pound, baba--only--,”
and every pathetic moment, is chosen by an inspired sense for what
would most feelingly grasp the interest of the reader. This is high
art, with intense feeling behind it--otherwise it would not be so
excellent. But it is also good journalism.--HENRY SEIDEL CANBY,
_The Short-Story in English._
For Mr. Kipling to write a story without some firm human touch,
however slight, would be impossible.... In his effects Mr.
Kipling is usually photographic (“cinematographic” is better),
but his methods are almost invariably, for want of a better word,
“artistic.” I mean that whereas the principle of selection,
which is a vital principle of art, can operate but little in
photography, it is seen to be remarkably active in all Mr.
Kipling’s best work. His stories, so to speak, represent the
epigram of action, the epigram of a given situation.... It is from
the lives of such Englishmen ... that Mr. Kipling has gathered so
many of his vivid anecdotes. A great number of them ... are the
lesser lights and darks contributing to such more serious elements
of the general picture as “At the End of the Passage,” “Without
Benefit of Clergy,” “In Flood Time,” “The Man Who Was,” behind
which looms vast in the background the image of that old Sphinx of
the Plains complete in mystery as no other writer has ever been
able to suggest her.... Also he had written at least one love-story
(“Without Benefit of Clergy”) that broke one’s heart.... For all
the humour and buoyancy of his writings, Mr. Kipling is at heart
a pessimist, and, perhaps, his sincerest expression of opinion in
regard to the government of the universe is contained in the fierce
Omarian exclamation of Holden in “Without Benefit of Clergy,”
addressed to no one in particular, but evidently meant to reach far
up into the skies: “O you brute! You utter brute!” So Omar bade
Allah “man’s forgiveness give and take.”--RICHARD LE GALLIENNE,
_Rudyard Kipling: A Criticism_.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON KIPLING
_Essays in Little_, Andrew Lang (1894); _Cervantes, Zola, Kipling
& Co._, in _Aspects of Modern Fiction_, Brander Matthews (1896);
_My Contemporaries in Fiction_, J. D. C. Murray (1897); _A Ken of
Kipling_, Will M. Clemens (1899); _Victorian Novelists_, James Oliphant
(1899); _A Kipling Primer_, F. L. Knowles (1899); _The Religion of
Mr. Kipling_, W. B. Parker (1899); _Rudyard Kipling, A Biographical
Sketch_, C. E. Norton (1899).
FOR ANALYSIS
WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
Before my Spring I garnered Autumn’s gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
Who am too wise in that I should not know.
_Bitter Waters._
I
“But if it be a girl?”
2. “Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights,
and sent gifts to Sheikh Badl’s shrine so often, that I know God will
give us a son--a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this
and be glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again,
and the mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity--God send
he be born in an auspicious hour!--and then, thou wilt never weary of
me, thy slave.”
3. “Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?”
4. “Since the beginning--till this mercy came to me. How could I be
sure of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?”
5. “Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.”
6. “And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen.
What talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a
Lucknow dancing-girl instead of a child.”
7. “Art thou sorry for the sale?”
8. “I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to
love me now?--answer, my king.”
9. “Never--never. No.”
10. “Not even though the _mem-log_--the white women of thy own
blood--love thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the
evening; they are very fair.”
11. “I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon,
and--then I saw no more fire-balloons.”
12. Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. “Very good talk,” she said.
Then with an assumption of great stateliness: “It is enough. Thou hast
my permission to depart--if thou wilt.”
13. The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch
in a room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs,
and a very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat
a woman of sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes.
By every rule and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an
Englishman, and she a Mussulman’s daughter bought two years before from
her mother, who, being left without money, would have sold Ameera
shrieking to the Prince of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
14. It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before
the girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion
of John Holden’s life. For her, and the withered hag, her mother, he
had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and
found--when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard
and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of
comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the
cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters
of housekeeping in general--that the house was to him his home. Any
one could enter his bachelor’s bungalow by day or night, and the life
that he led there was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his
feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard to the women’s rooms;
and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him he was king in his
own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was going to be added
to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to
resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the
orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with
delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so. The love
of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an inconstant
affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby’s
hands. “And then,” Ameera would always say, “then he will never care
for the white _mem-log_. I hate them all--I hate them all.”
15. “He will go back to his own people in time,” said the mother; “but
by the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.”
16. Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his
thoughts were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are
manifold. The Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of
the station for a fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who
was watching by the bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification
of the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought
to think himself lucky in being a bachelor and a free man. He came to
break the news to Ameera.
17. “It is not good,” she said slowly, “but it is not all bad. There
is my mother here, and no harm will come to me--unless indeed I die of
pure joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When
the days are done I believe ... nay, I am sure. And--and then I shall
lay _him_ in thy arms, and thou wilt love me forever. The train goes
to-night, at midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be
heavy by cause of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt
not stay on the road to talk to the bold white _mem-log_. Come back to
me swiftly, my life.”
18. As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered
to the gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who
guarded the house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch
the filled-up telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that
could be done, and with the sensations of a man who has attended his
own funeral Holden went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour
of the day he dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of
the night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence
his work for the state was not of first-rate quality, nor was his
temper towards his colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended
without a sign from his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties,
Holden returned to be swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner
at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices
telling him how execrably he had performed the other man’s duties, and
how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then he fled on
horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There was no
answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled his
horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and
held his stirrup.
19. “Has aught occurred?” said Holden.
20. “The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor,
but--” He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news
who is entitled to a reward.
21. Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper
room. His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little
wail that sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new
voice, but it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
22. “Who is there?” he called up the narrow brick staircase.
23. There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the
mother, tremulous with old age and pride--“We be two women and--the
man--thy--son.”
24. On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that
was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his
impatient heel.
25. “God is great!” cooed Ameera in the half-light. “Thou hast taken
his misfortunes on thy head.”
26. “Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it
with her?”
27. “She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born.
There is no harm; but speak softly,” said the mother.
28. “It only needed thy presence to make me all well,” said Ameera. “My
king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah,
ah! It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look! Was there
ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.”
29. “Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, _bachari_ [little woman].”
30. “Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [_peecharee_]
between us now that nothing can break. Look--canst thou see in this
light? He is without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. _Ya
illah!_ he shall be a pundit--no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life,
dost thou love me as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn?
Answer truly.”
31. “Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl,
and rest.”
32. “Then do not go. Sit by my side here--so. Mother, the lord of this
house needs a cushion. Bring it.” There was an almost imperceptible
movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera’s
arm. “Aho!” she said, her voice breaking with love. “The babe is a
champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty
kicks. Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us--thine and
mine. Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young,
and men are unskilled in such matters.”
33. Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the
downy head.
34. “He is of the faith,” said Ameera; “for lying here in the
night-watches I whispered the Call to Prayer and the Profession of
Faith into his ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a
Friday, as I was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost
grip with his hands.”
35. Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his
finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his
heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to
realise that there was some one else in the world, but he could not
feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and
Ameera dozed lightly.
36. “Get hence, _sahib_,” said her mother under her breath. “It is not
good that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.”
37. “I go,” said Holden submissively. “Here be rupees. See that my
_baba_ gets fat and finds all that he needs.”
38. The chink of the silver roused Ameera. “I am his mother, and no
hireling,” she said weakly. “Shall I look to him more or less for the
sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have borne my lord a son.”
39. The deep sleep of weakness came upon her before the sentence was
completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly, with his
heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight.
“This house is now complete,” he said, and without further comment
thrust into Holden’s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when
he, Pir Khan, served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered
goat came from the well-curb.
40. “There be two,” said Pir Khan, “two goats of the best. I bought
them, and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party
assembled their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, _sahib_! ’Tis
an ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads
from cropping the marigolds.”
41. “And why?” said Holden, bewildered.
42. “For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being
unguarded from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the
fitting words to be said.”
43. Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever
speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm
turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child up-stairs--the child
that was his own son--and a dread of loss filled him.
44. “Strike!” said Pir Khan. “Never life came into the world but life
was paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a
drawing cut!”
45. Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut twice as he muttered the
Mohammedan prayer that runs: “Almighty! In place of this my son I offer
life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair
for hair, skin for skin.” The waiting horse snorted and bounded in
his pickets at the smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden’s
riding-boots.
46. “Well smitten!” said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. “A swordsman was
lost in thee. Go with a light heart, heaven-born. I am thy servant, and
the servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and ...
the flesh of the goats is all mine?” Pir Khan drew back richer by a
month’s pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through
the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous
exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards
no particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of
his uneasy horse. “I never felt like this in my life,” he thought.
“I’ll go to the club and pull myself together.”
47. A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden
entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows,
singing at the top of his voice:
“‘In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!’”
48. “Did you?” said the club-secretary from his corner. “Did she happen
to tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man,
it’s blood!”
49. “Bosh!” said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. “May I cut in?
It’s dew. I’ve been riding through high crops. My faith, my boots are
in a mess, though!”
50. “‘And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
He shall walk the quarter-deck--’”
51. “Yellow on blue--green next player,” said the marker monotonously.
52. “_He shall walk the quarter-deck_'--Am I green, marker?--_He
shall walk the quarter-deck_'--eh! that's a bad shot--‘_As his daddy
used to do_!’”
53. “I don’t see that you have anything to crow about,” said a zealous
junior civilian acidly. “The Government is not exactly pleased with
your work when you relieved Sanders.”
54. “Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?” said Holden with an
abstracted smile. “I think I can stand it.”
55. The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man’s work,
and steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow,
where his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden
remained awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were
pleasant ones.
II
56. “How old is he now?”
57. “_Ya illah!_ What a man’s question! He is all but six weeks old;
and on this night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count
the stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under
the sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us
both and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved?”
58. “There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt
count the stars--but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.”
59. “The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season.
Come, before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.”
60. “Thou hast forgotten the best of all.”
61. “_Ai!_ Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.”
62. Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof.
The child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm,
gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head.
Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes
the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of
the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded
with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of
beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the
pure metal, and the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging
low over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as
befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow
to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass
bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand,
and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country’s
ornaments but, since they were Holden’s gift and fastened with a
cunning European snap, delighted her immensely.
63. They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the
city and its lights.
64. “They are happy down there,” said Ameera. “But I do not think that
they are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white _mem-log_ are as
happy. And thou?”
65. “I know they are not.”
66. “How dost thou know?”
67. “They give their children over to the nurses.”
“I have never seen that,” said Ameera with a sigh, “nor do I wish
to see. _Ahi!_”--she dropped her head on Holden’s shoulder--“I have
counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my
life, he is counting too.”
68. The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens.
Ameera placed him in Holden’s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
69. “What shall we call him among ourselves?” she said. “Look! Art thou
ever tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth--”
70. “Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?”
71. “’Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart
between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.”
72. “Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.”
73. “When he cries thou wilt give him back--eh? What a man of mankind
thou art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what
little name shall we give him?”