there arrived a young person, blue-lipped and gasping, who cried only:
‘Badalia, 17 Gunnison Street. Tell the curick to come at once--at
once--at once!’ and vanished into the night. This message was borne to
the Rev. Eustace Hanna, then enjoying his beauty-sleep. He saw there
was urgency in the demand, and unhesitatingly knocked up Brother Victor
across the landing. As a matter of etiquette, Rome and England divided
their cases in the district according to the creeds of the sufferers;
but Badalia was an institution, and not a case, and there was no
district-relief etiquette to be considered. ‘Something has happened to
Badalia,’ the curate said, ‘and it’s your affair as well as mine. Dress
and come along.’
‘I am ready,’ was the answer. ‘Is there any hint of what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing beyond a runaway-knock and a call.’
‘Then it’s a confinement or a murderous assault. Badalia wouldn’t wake
us up for anything less. I’m qualified for both, thank God.’
The two men raced to Gunnison Street, for there were no cabs abroad,
and under any circumstances a cab-fare means two days’ good firing
for such as are perishing with cold. Lascar Loo’s mother had gone to
bed, and the door was naturally on the latch. They found considerably
more than they had expected in Badalia’s room, and the Church of Rome
acquitted itself nobly with bandages, while the Church of England could
only pray to be delivered from the sin of envy. The Order of Little
Ease, recognising that the soul is in most cases accessible through the
body, take their measures and train their men accordingly.
‘She’ll do now,’ said Brother Victor, in a whisper. ‘It’s internal
bleeding, I fear, and a certain amount of injury to the brain. She has
a husband, of course?’
‘They all have, more’s the pity.’
‘Yes, there’s a domesticity about these injuries that shows their
origin.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s a perfectly hopeless business, you
understand. Twelve hours at the most.’
Badalia’s right hand began to beat on the counterpane, palm down.
‘I think you are wrong,’ said the Church of England. ‘She is going.’
‘No, that’s not the picking at the counterpane,’ said the Church of
Rome. ‘She wants to say something; you know her better than I.’
The curate bent very low.
‘Send for Miss Eva,’ said Badalia, with a cough.
‘In the morning. She will come in the morning,’ said the curate, and
Badalia was content. Only the Church of Rome, who knew something of the
human heart, knitted his brows and said nothing. After all, the law of
his order was plain. His duty was to watch till the dawn while the moon
went down.
It was a little before her sinking that the Rev. Eustace Hanna said,
‘Hadn’t we better send for Sister Eva? She seems to be going fast.’
Brother Victor made no answer, but as early as decency admitted there
came one to the door of the house of the Little Sisters of the Red
Diamond and demanded Sister Eva, that she might soothe the pain of
Badalia Herodsfoot. That man, saying very little, led her to Gunnison
Street, No. 17, and into the room where Badalia lay. Then he stood on
the landing, and bit the flesh of his fingers in agony, because he was
a priest trained to know, and knew how the hearts of men and women beat
back at the rebound, so that Love is born out of horror, and passion
declares itself when the soul is quivering with pain.
Badalia, wise to the last, husbanded her strength till the coming of
Sister Eva. It is generally maintained by the Little Sisters of the Red
Diamond that she died in delirium, but since one Sister at least took
a half of her dying advice, this seems uncharitable.
She tried to turn feebly on the bed, and the poor broken human
machinery protested according to its nature.
Sister Eva started forward, thinking that she heard the dread
forerunner of the death-rattle. Badalia lay still conscious, and spoke
with startling distinctness, the irrepressible irreverence of the
street-hawker, the girl who had danced on the winkle-barrow, twinkling
in her one available eye.
‘Sounds jest like Mrs. Jessel, don’t it? Before she’s ’ad ’er lunch an’
’as been talkin’ all the mornin’ to her classes.’
Neither Sister Eva nor the curate said anything. Brother Victor stood
without the door, and the breath came harshly between his teeth, for he
was in pain.
‘Put a cloth over my ’ead,’ said Badalia. ‘I’ve got it good, an’ I
don’t want Miss Eva to see. I ain’t pretty this time.’
‘Who was it?’ said the curate.
‘Man from outside. Never seed ’im no more’n Adam. Drunk, I s’pose.
S’elp me Gawd that’s truth! Is Miss Eva ’ere? I can’t see under the
towel. I’ve got it good, Miss Eva. Excuse my not shakin’ ’ands with
you, but I’m not strong, an’ it’s fourpence for Mrs. Imeny’s beef-tea,
an’ wot you can give ’er for baby-linning. Allus ’avin’ kids, these
people. I ’adn’t oughter talk, for _my_ ’usband ’e never come a-nigh
me these two years, or I’d a-bin as bad as the rest; but ’e never come
a-nigh me.... A man come and ’it me over the ’ead, an’ ’e kicked me,
Miss Eva; so it was just the same’s if I had ha’ had a ’usband, ain’t
it? The book’s in the drawer, Mister ’Anna, an’ it’s all right, an’ I
never guv up a copper o’ the trust money--not a copper. You look under
the chist o’ drawers--all wot isn’t spent this week is there.... An’,
Miss Eva, don’t you wear that gray bonnick no more. I kep’ you from the
diptheery, an’--an’ I didn’t want to keep you so, but the curick said
it ’ad to be done. I’d a sooner ha’ took up with ’im than any one, only
Tom ’e come, an’ then--you see, Miss Eva, Tom ’e never come a-nigh me
for two years, nor I ’aven’t seen ’im yet. S’elp me ----, I ’aven’t. Do
you ’ear? But you two go along, and make a match of it. I’ve wished
otherways often, but o’ course it was not for the likes o’ me. If Tom
’ad come back, which ’e never did, I’d ha’ been like the rest--sixpence
for beef-tea for the baby, an’ a shilling for layin’ out the baby.
You’ve seen it in the books, Mister ’Anna. That’s what it is; an’ o’
course, you couldn’t never ’ave nothing to do with me. But a woman she
wishes as she looks, an’ never you ’ave no doubt about ’im, Miss Eva.
I’ve seen it in ’is face time an’ agin--time an’ agin.... Make it a
four pound ten funeral--with a pall.’
It was a seven pound fifteen shilling funeral, and all Gunnison Street
turned out to do it honour. All but two; for Lascar Loo’s mother saw
that a Power had departed, and that her road lay clear to the custards.
Therefore, when the carriages rattled off, the cat on the doorstep
heard the wail of the dying prostitute who could not die--
‘Oh, mother, mother, won’t you even let me lick the spoon!’
JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE.
Gloriana! The Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us....
And where are the galleons of Spain?
DOBSON.
One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill
in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour
abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large contempt for all
other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors; and
knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards
is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or
later, its international differences end in the common people, who have
no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no
dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their new dignity. The
consequences may or may not be war; but the chances do not favour peace.
One advantage in living in a civilised land which is really governed
lies in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and Emperors of the
Continent are closely related by blood or marriage; are, in fact,
one large family. A wise head among them knows that what appears to
be a studied insult may be no more than some man’s indigestion or
woman’s indisposition, to be treated as such, and explained by quiet
talk. Again, a popular demonstration, headed by King and Court, may
mean nothing more than that so-and-so’s people are out of hand for
the minute. When a horse falls to kicking in a hunt-crowd at a gate,
the rider does not dismount, but puts his open hand behind him, and
the others draw aside. It is so with the rulers of men. In the old
days they cured their own and their people’s bad temper with fire and
slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter
so large, they do other things; and few among their people guess how
much they owe of mere life and money to what the slang of the minute
calls ‘puppets’ and ‘luxuries.’
Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a
once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping-boy
of all the world, and behaved, as every one said, most scandalously.
But it is not generally known that that Power fought a pitched battle
with England and won a glorious victory. The trouble began with the
people. Their own misfortunes had been many, and for private rage it
is always refreshing to find a vent in public swearing. Their national
vanity had been deeply injured, and they thought of their ancient
glories and the days when their fleets had first rounded the Cape of
Storms, and their own newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them
to extravagances. It was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that
was checking their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once
that their ruler was in league with England, so they cried with great
heat that they would forthwith become a Republic and colonially expand
themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the people threw
stones at the English Consuls and spat at English ladies, and cut off
drunken sailors of Our fleet in their ports and hammered them with
oars, and made things very unpleasant for tourists at their customs,
and threatened awful deaths to the consumptive invalids of Madeira,
while the junior officers of the Army drank fruit-extracts and entered
into most blood-curdling conspiracies against their monarch; all with
the object of being a Republic. Now the history of the South American
Republics shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be
also Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and
the propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments
can be arranged much more economically and with less effect on the
death-rate by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the
Power as represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It was
the kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider explained that
he could not check it. So the people enjoyed all the glory of war with
none of the risks, and the tourists who were stoned in their travels
returned stolidly to England and told the _Times_ that the police
arrangements of foreign towns were defective.
This, then, was the state of affairs north the Line. South it was
more strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England,
unable to go back because of the pressure of adventurous children
behind her, and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not
come to heel, but offering to buy out her rival; and the other Power,
lacking men or money, stiff in the conviction that three hundred
years of slave-holding and intermingling with the nearest natives
gave an inalienable right to hold slaves and issue half-castes to all
eternity. They had built no roads. Their towns were rotting under
their hands; they had no trade worth the freight of a crazy steamer;
and their sovereignty ran almost one musket-shot inland when things
were peaceful. For these very reasons they raged all the more, and the
things that they said and wrote about the manners and customs of the
English would have driven a younger nation to the guns with a long red
bill for wounded honour.
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat,
of some 270 tons displacement, designed for the defence of rivers,
Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for the future as
Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like a flat-iron with
a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of water or less;
carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the ship; and, on
account of its persistent rolling, was, to live in, three degrees worse
than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the
thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his
first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, ‘Bai Jove, that
topmast wants staying forward!’ The topmast was a stick about as thick
as a clothes-prop; but the flat-iron was Judson’s first command, and he
would not have exchanged his position for second post on the _Anson_
or the _Howe_. He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and lovingly
to the Cape (the story of the topmast came with him), and he was so
absurdly in love with his wallowing wash-tub when he reported himself,
that the Admiral of the station thought it would be a pity to kill a
new man on her, and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied rule.
The Admiral visited her once in Simon’s Bay, and she was bad, even
for a flat-iron gunboat, strictly designed for river and harbour
defence. She sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of a
preparation of powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside paint.
She rolled in the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc’s’le was a
dog-kennel; Judson’s cabin was practically under the water-line; not
one of her dead-lights could ever be opened; and her compasses, thanks
to the influence of the four-inch gun, were a curiosity even among
Admiralty compasses. But Bai-Jove-Judson was radiant and enthusiastic.
He had even contrived to fill Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room
artificer, who was his chief engineer, with the glow of his passion.
The Admiral, who remembered his own first command, when pride forbade
him to slack off a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his
rigging to pieces in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly.
Her fenders were done all over with white sennit, which was truly
white; her big gun was varnished with a better composition than the
Admiralty allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as the
chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were made of
four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons’ heads (that was one result of
Bai-Jove-Judson’s experiences with the naval brigade in the Burmese
war), the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being painted, and there
were charts other than the Admiralty scale supplied. The Admiral was
well pleased, for he loved a ship’s husband--a man who had a little
money of his own and was willing to spend it on his command. Judson
looked at him hopefully. He was only a Junior Navigating Lieutenant
under eight years’ standing. He might be kept in Simon’s Bay for six
months, and his ship at sea was his delight. The dream of his heart
was to enliven her dismal official gray with a line of gold-leaf and,
perhaps, a little scroll-work at her blunt barge-like bows.
‘There’s nothing like a first command, is there?’ said the Admiral,
reading his thoughts. ‘You seem to have rather queer compasses though.
Better get them adjusted.’
‘It’s no use, sir,’ said Judson. ‘The gun would throw out the Pole
itself. But--but I’ve got the hang of most of the weaknesses.’
‘Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees, please?’
The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the needle
merrily, and the Admiral whistled.
‘You must have kept close to your convoy?’
‘Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir,’ said Judson with a
flush, for he resented the slur on his steamship. ‘She’s--she’s a
little out of hand now, but she will settle down after a while.’
The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the Service,
but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the squadron in
Simon’s Bay, for they one and all made light of the flat-iron for many
days. ‘What can you shake out of her, Judson?’ said the Lieutenant of
the _Mongoose_, a real white-painted ram-bow gunboat with quick-firing
guns, as he came into the upper verandah of the little naval Club
overlooking the dockyard one hot afternoon. It is in that club, as the
captains come and go, that you hear all the gossip of all the Seven
Seas.
‘Ten point four,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson.
‘Ah! That was on her trial trip. She’s too much by the head now. I told
you staying that topmast would throw her out.’
‘You leave my top-hamper alone,’ said Judson, for the joke was
beginning to pall on him.
‘Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy’s top-hamper. Keate, have you heard
of the flat-iron’s top-hamper? You’re to leave it alone. Commodore
Judson’s feelings are hurt.’
Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big _Vortigern_, and he
despised small things. ‘His top-hamper,’ said he slowly. ‘Oh, ah yes,
of course. Juddy, there’s a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I think
they’re foul of your screws. Better go down, or they’ll carry away
something.’
‘I don’t let things carry away as a rule. You see _I’ve_ no Torpedo
Lieutenant aboard, thank God.’
Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging-in of
a small torpedo-boat on the _Vortigern_, that the boat had broken the
crutches on which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the
dockyard under the Club windows.
‘One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy, you’re hereby appointed
dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you’re very good and
there’s no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour. Waitabeechee,
Commodore. What’ll you take? Vanderhum for the “Cook and the captain
bold, And the mate o’ the _Nancy_ brig, And the bo’sun tight” [Juddy,
put that cue down or I’ll put you under arrest for insulting the
lieutenant of a real ship], “And the midshipmite, And the crew of the
captain’s gig.”’
By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding him
with the half-butt. The Admiral’s Secretary entered, and saw the
scuffle from the door.
‘Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that--er--topmast of yours away! Here’s
the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a Staff-captain instead of a
bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night. That’s what makes
Sperril tumble home from the waist upwards. Sperril, I defy you to
touch me. I’m under orders for Zanzibar. Probably I shall annex it!’
‘Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!’ said the Staff-Captain,
disregarding the scoffer of the _Mongoose_.
‘I told you you’d be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh
beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you understand,
Juddy?’
Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.
‘Now, what does the old man want with Judson?’ said Keate from the bar.
‘Don’t know. Juddy’s a damned good fellow, though. I wish to goodness
he was on the _Mongoose_ with us.’
The Lieutenant of the _Mongoose_ dropped into a chair and read the
mail-papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and
shouted to him. Judson’s eyes were very bright, and his figure was held
very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the Lieutenant of the
_Mongoose_, the Club was empty.
‘Juddy, there will be a beautiful row,’ said that young man when he
had heard the news delivered in an undertone. ‘You’ll probably have to
fight, and yet I can’t see what the old man’s thinking of to----’
‘My orders are not to row under any circumstances,’ said Judson.
‘Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?’
‘To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I may
want a few men for the day.’
‘Anything on the _Mongoose_ is at your service. There’s my gig come
over now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you’ll need
all the knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two together!
Come along with me.’
For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the
_Mongoose_, listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes,
and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like
these: ‘Now you’ll have to lie in here if there’s any sea on. That
current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets _west_ at this
season of the year, remember. Their boats never come south of this,
see? So it’s no good looking out for them.’ And so on and so forth,
while Judson lay at length on the locker by the three-pounder, and
smoked and absorbed it all.
Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon’s Bay; only a little
smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the
second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry.
At the Admiral’s house the ancient and retired bo’sun who had seen many
admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new
coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big cannon balls that stood one
on each side of the Admiral’s entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great
events were stirring.
And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely for
the defence of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and was
swept from end to end and sat upon her twin screws and leaped as
gracefully as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr. Davies
began to fear for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo boys that
made the majority of the crew were deathly sick. She ran along a
very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays, where ugly
flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and very many
extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do with the story,
but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.
At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly
muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands
standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged
the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the lieutenant of
the _Mongoose_ had told him. Then he found a river full of the smell
of fever and mud, with green stuff growing far into its waters, and a
current that made the flat-iron gasp and grunt.
‘We will turn up here,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up
accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant,
and the Kroo boys grinning merrily. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to
the bows and meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After two
hours of rooting through this desolation at an average rate of five
miles an hour, his eyes were cheered by the sight of one white buoy in
the coffee-hued mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously,
and a leadsman took soundings all round it from a dinghy, while
Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head on one side.
‘About seven feet, isn’t there?’ said he. ‘That must be the tail-end
of the shoal. There’s four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy
down with axes. I don’t think it’s picturesque, somehow.’ The Kroo
men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and the
mooring-chain sank with the last splinters of wood. Bai-Jove-Judson
laid the flat-iron carefully over the site, while Mr. Davies watched,
biting his nails nervously.
‘Can you back her against this current?’ said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr.
Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-Judson
stood in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came
into line or opened out. The flat-iron dropped down over the tail of
the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once more before
Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up-stream for half an
hour, put into shoal-water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on
the anchor.
‘Seems to me,’ said Mr. Davies deferentially, ‘like as if I heard some
one a-firing off at intervals, so to say.’
There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air.
‘Seems to me,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, ‘as if I heard a screw. Stand by
to slip her moorings.’
Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer.
Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily-built
white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red boss in
the centre.
‘Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy astern. Let go,
all!’ The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the water to mark
where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-iron waddled out
into mid-stream with the white ensign at her one mast-head.
‘Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us,’ said Judson.
‘And down we go.’
‘It’s war--bloody war! He’s going to fire,’ said Mr. Davies, looking up
through the engine-room hatch.