did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your
voice the loudest in the hymn?"
"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul: my eyes are
opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rung through the house;
and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he
had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there
is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say,
is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious
countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once
the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has
already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in
your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the whole night, if
needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your
safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he
cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales; up, and
act!"
Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open--I can cease
from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be,
as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by
one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of
good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my
hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall
see that I can draw both energy and courage."
The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
change; they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even as
they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to
watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went
down-stairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly
before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,
random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet
haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop,
where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent.
Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And
then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.
He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
master."
X. THE NECKLACE[*] (1885)
[* "La parure" from "Contes et nouvelles."]
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT (1850-1893)
[_Setting_. The story is set in a Paris atmosphere of social aspiration
and discontent. The background is one of studied contrasts, contrasts
between the stolid contentment of a husband and the would-be
luxuriousness of a wife, between what Madame Loisel had and what she
wanted, between what she was and what she thought she could be, between
her brief moment of triumph and the long years of her undoing, between
the trivialness of what she did and the heaviness of her punishment.
These contrasts are developed not by reasoning but by action, each
action plunging Madame Loisel deeper and deeper into misery. The
author's attitude toward his work forms also a part of the real
background. Maupassant shows neither sympathy nor indignation. He writes
as if he were the stenographer of impersonal and pitiless fate.
_Plot_. Madame Loisel, a poor but beautiful and ambitious woman, borrows
and loses a diamond necklace valued at $7200. That, at least, is what
Madame Loisel thought for ten terrible years, and that is what the
reader thinks till he comes to the last words of the story. The plot
belongs, therefore, to that large group known as hoax plots. In most of
these stories one person plays a joke on another. In this story a grim
fate is made to play the joke. In fact, the current phrase, "the irony
of fate," finds here perfect illustration. We use the expression not so
much of a great misfortune as of a misfortune that seems brought about
by a peculiarly malignant train of circumstances. The injury in this
case not only was irremediable but turned on an accident. Notice also
how Maupassant has sharpened the poignancy and bitterness of Madame
Loisel's misfortune by making it depend not only on an accident that
might so easily not have happened but on a misunderstanding that might
so easily have been explained. When Madame Loisel, just on the threshold
of her life of drudgery, took the necklace bought on credit to Madame
Forestier, the latter "did not open the case, to the relief of her
friend." The irony of fate could hardly go further; but it does go
further a little later, when Madame Forestier, still young and
beautiful, fails to recognize Madame Loisel because the latter had lost
youth, beauty, daintiness, her very self, in toiling to pay to Madame
Forestier a debt that was not a debt. Just before the final revelation
Madame Loisel is made to say, "I am very glad." There is a unique pathos
in her use of this word: it lifted her a little from the ground that her
fall might be all the harder.
There is no denying the art of this story, but it is art without heart.
The author is a craftsman rather than a creator, a master of the loom
rather than of the forge. Maupassant did perfectly what he wanted to do,
but his greatness and his limitation are both revealed. "What would have
happened," he says, "if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows, who
knows? How strange life is, how changeful! How little a thing is needed
for us to be lost or to be saved!" The greatest art may begin but not
end this way.
_Characters_. The man is only a foil to his wife. He is introduced to
bring into sharper relief her unhappiness and her powerlessness to
better her condition. He is not a bad man, nor is she a bad woman. To
say that the story turns entirely on his honor and on her false pride is
to miss, I think, the author's purpose. There is nothing distinctive in
these characters; he is better than she, but both are puppets in the
grip of brute circumstance rather than everyday characters shaped by the
ordinary pressures of life. They are not types as Rip is a type, or
Scrooge, or Oakhurst. Maupassant shows in his stories that he is
interested not so much in the free play or the full reaction of
personality as in the enslavement of personality through passion or
chance. He saw life without order because without center, without reward
because without desert; and his characters are made to see it through
the same lens and to experience it on the same level. They either do not
react or do not react nobly. Had Madame Loisel and her husband been
shaped to fit into a less mechanical scheme of things, they would have
recognized in their ten years' trial the call to something higher. They
could have used their testing as a means of understanding with keener
sympathy the lifelong testing of others. They could have attained a
self-development that would have brought a happiness undreamed of before
the fateful January 18. But this is Browning's way, not Maupassant's.
The latter prefers to make Madame Loisel and her husband chiefly of
putty so that they may illustrate the blind thrusts of accident rather
than the power of personality to turn stumbling-blocks into
stepping-stones.]
She was one of those pretty and charming girls who, as if by a mistake
of destiny, are born in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no
expectations, no means of becoming known, understood, loved, wedded by
any rich and distinguished man; and so she let herself be married to a
petty clerk in the Bureau of Public Instruction.
She was simple in her dress because she could not be elaborate, but she
was as unhappy as if she had fallen from a higher rank, for with women
there is no inherited distinction of higher and lower. Their beauty,
their grace, and their natural charm fill the place of birth and family.
Natural delicacy, instinctive elegance, a lively wit, are the ruling
forces in the social realm, and these make the daughters of the common
people the equals of the finest ladies.
She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for all the refinements and
luxuries of life. She suffered from the poverty of her home as she
looked at the dirty walls, the worn-out chairs, the ugly curtains. All
those things of which another woman of her station would have been quite
unconscious tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the
country girl who was maid-of-all-work in her humble household filled her
almost with desperation. She dreamed of echoing halls hung with Oriental
draperies and lighted by tall bronze candelabra, while two tall footmen
in knee-breeches drowsed in great armchairs by reason of the heating
stove's oppressive warmth. She dreamed of splendid parlors furnished in
rare old silks, of carved cabinets loaded with priceless bric-a-brac,
and of entrancing little boudoirs just right for afternoon chats with
bosom friends--men famous and sought after, the envy and the desire of
all the other women.
When she sat down to dinner at a little table covered with a cloth three
days old, and looked across at her husband as he uncovered the soup and
exclaimed with an air of rapture, "Oh, the delicious stew! I know
nothing better than that," she dreamed of dainty dinners, of shining
silverware, of tapestries which peopled the walls with antique figures
and strange birds in fairy forests; she dreamed of delicious viands
served in wonderful dishes, of whispered gallantries heard with a
sphinx-like smile as you eat the pink flesh of a trout or the wing of a
quail.
She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing; and she loved nothing else. She
felt made for that alone. She was filled with a desire to please, to be
envied, to be bewitching and sought after. She had a rich friend, a
former schoolmate at the convent, whom she no longer wished to visit
because she suffered so much when she came home. For whole days at a
time she wept without ceasing in bitterness and hopeless misery.
Now, one evening her husband came home with a triumphant air, holding in
his hand a large envelope.
"There," said he, "there is something for you."
She quickly tore open the paper and drew out a printed card, bearing
these words:--
"The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges Rampouneau request
the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel's company at the palace of the Ministry,
Monday evening, January 18th."
Instead of being overcome with delight, as her husband expected, she
threw the invitation on the table with disdain, murmuring:
"What do you wish me to do with that?"
"Why, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and
this is such a fine opportunity! I had awful trouble in getting it.
Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many
invitations to clerks. You will see all the official world."
She looked at him with irritation, and said, impatiently:
"What do you expect me to put on my back if I go?"
He had not thought of that. He stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It seems all right to me."
He stopped, stupefied, distracted, on seeing that his wife was crying.
Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the
corners of her mouth. He stuttered:
"What's the matter? What's the matter?"
By a violent effort she subdued her feelings and replied in a calm
voice, as she wiped her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I have no dress and consequently I cannot go to this
ball. Give your invitation to some friend whose wife has better clothes
than I."
He was in despair, but began again:
"Let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable dress, which
you could wear again on future occasions, something very simple?"
She reflected for some seconds, computing the cost, and also wondering
what sum she could ask without bringing down upon herself an immediate
refusal and an astonished exclamation from the economical clerk.
At last she answered hesitatingly:
"I don't know exactly, but it seems to me that with four hundred francs
I could manage."
He turned a trifle pale, for he had been saving just that sum to buy a
gun and treat himself to a little hunting trip the following summer, in
the country near Nanterre, with a few friends who went there to shoot
larks on Sundays.
However, he said:
"Well, I think I can give you four hundred francs. But see that you have
a pretty dress."
* * * * *
The day of the ball drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad, restless,
anxious. Her dress was ready, however. Her husband said to her one
evening:
"What is the matter? Come, now, you've been looking queer these last
three days."
And she replied:
"It worries me that I have no jewels, not a single stone, nothing to put
on. I shall look wretched enough. I would almost rather not go to this
party."
He answered:
"You might wear natural flowers. They are very fashionable this season.
For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses."
She was not convinced.
"No; there is nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of
rich women."
But her husband cried:
"How stupid you are! Go and find your friend Madame Forestier and ask
her to lend you some jewels. You are intimate enough with her for that."
She uttered a cry of joy.
"Of course. I had not thought of that."
The next day she went to her friend's house and told her distress.
Madame Forestier went to her handsome wardrobe, took out a large casket,
brought it back, opened it, and said to Madame Loisel:
"Choose, my dear."
She saw first of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a
Venetian cross of gold set with precious stones of wonderful
workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated,
could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She
kept asking:
"You have nothing else?"
"Why, yes. But I do not know what will please you."
All at once she discovered, in a black satin box, a splendid diamond
necklace, and her heart began to beat with boundless desire. Her hands
trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, over her
high-necked dress, and stood lost in ecstasy as she looked at herself.
Then she asked, hesitating, full of anxiety:
"Would you lend me that,--only that?"
"Why, yes, certainly."
She sprang upon the neck of her friend, embraced her rapturously, then
fled with her treasure.
* * * * *
The day of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was
prettier than all the others, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with
joy. All the men stared at her, asked her name, tried to be introduced.
All the cabinet officials wished to waltz with her. The minister noticed
her.
She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with pleasure,
forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her
success, in a sort of mist of happiness, the result of all this homage,
all this admiration, all these awakened desires, this victory so
complete and so sweet to the heart of woman.
She left about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been dozing
since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen,
whose wives were having a good time.
He threw about her shoulders the wraps which he had brought for her to
go out in, the modest wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted
sharply with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to
escape, that she might not be noticed by the other women who were
wrapping themselves in costly furs.
Loisel held her back.
"Wait here, you will catch cold outside. I will go and find a cab."
But she would not listen to him, and rapidly descended the stairs. When
they were at last in the street, they could find no carriage, and began
to look for one, hailing the cabmen they saw passing at a distance.
They walked down toward the Seine in despair, shivering with the cold.
At last they found on the quay one of those ancient nocturnal cabs that
one sees in Paris only after dark, as if they were ashamed to display
their wretchedness during the day.
They were put down at their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly
mounted the steps to their apartments. It was all over, for her. And as
for him, he reflected that he must be at his office at ten o'clock.
She took off the wraps which covered her shoulders, before the mirror,
so as to take a final look at herself in all her glory. But suddenly she
uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace about her neck!
Her husband, already half undressed, inquired:
"What is the matter?"
She turned madly toward him.
"I have--I have--I no longer have Madame Forestier's necklace."
He stood up, distracted.
"What!--how!--it is impossible!"
They looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in the
pockets, everywhere. They could not find a trace of it.
He asked:
"You are sure you still had it when you left the ball?"
"Yes. I felt it on me in the vestibule at the palace."
"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It
must be in the cab."
"Yes. That's probable. Did you take the number?"
"No. And you, you did not notice it?"
"No."
They looked at each other thunderstruck. At last Loisel put on his
clothes again.
"I am going back," said he, "over every foot of the way we came, to see
if I cannot find it."
So he started. She remained in her ball dress without strength to go to
bed, sitting on a chair, with no fire, her mind a blank.
Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.
He went to police headquarters, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to
the cab companies, everywhere, in short, where a trace of hope led him.
She watched all day, in the same state of blank despair before this
frightful disaster.
Loisel returned in the evening with cheeks hollow and pale; he had found
nothing.
"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the
clasp of her necklace and that you are having it repaired. It will give
us time to turn around."
She wrote as he dictated.
* * * * *
At the end of a week they had lost all hope.
And Loisel, looking five years older, declared:
"We must consider how to replace the necklace."
The next day they took the box which had contained it, and went to the
place of the jeweller whose name they found inside. He consulted his
books.
"It was not I, madame, who sold the necklace; I must simply have
furnished the casket."
Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, looking for an ornament like
the other, consulting their memories, both sick with grief and anguish.
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds which
seemed to them exactly what they were looking for. It was worth forty
thousand francs.[*] They could have it for thirty-six thousand.
[* A franc is equal to twenty cents of our money.]
So they begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they made
an arrangement that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand
francs if the other were found before the end of February.
Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He
would borrow the rest.
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another,
five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, made ruinous
engagements, dealt with usurers, with all the tribe of money-lenders. He
compromised the rest of his life, risked his signature without knowing
if he might not be involving his honor, and, terrified by the anguish
yet to come, by the black misery about to fall upon him, by the prospect
of every physical privation and every mental torture, he went to get the
new necklace, and laid down on the dealer's counter thirty-six thousand
francs.
When Madame Loisel took the necklace back to Madame Forestier, the
latter said coldly:
"You should have returned it sooner, for I might have needed it."
She did not open the case, to the relief of her friend. If she had
detected the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she
have said? Would she have taken her friend for a thief?
* * * * *
Madame Loisel now knew the horrible life of the needy. But she took her
part heroically. They must pay this frightful debt. She would pay it.
They dismissed their maid; they gave up their room; they rented another,
under the roof.
She came to know the drudgery of housework, the odious labors of the
kitchen. She washed the dishes, staining her rosy nails on the greasy
pots and the bottoms of the saucepans. She washed the dirty linen, the
shirts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she carried
the garbage down to the street every morning, and carried up the water,
stopping at each landing to rest. And, dressed like a woman of the
people, she went to the fruiterer's, the grocer's, the butcher's, her
basket on her arm, bargaining, abusing, defending sou[*] by sou her
miserable money.
[* A sou, or five-centime piece, is equal to one cent of our money.]
Each month they had to pay some notes, renew others, obtain more time.
The husband worked every evening, neatly footing up the account books of
some tradesman, and often far into the night he sat copying manuscript
at five sous a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years they had paid everything,--everything, with the
exactions of usury and the accumulations of compound interest.
Madame Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the woman of impoverished
households,--strong and hard and rough. With hair half combed, with
skirts awry, and reddened hands, she talked loud as she washed the floor
with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the
office, she sat down near the window and thought of that evening at the
ball so long ago, when she had been so beautiful and so admired.
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows,
who knows? How strange life is, how changeful! How little a thing is
needed for us to be lost or to be saved!
* * * * *
But one Sunday, as she was going for a walk in the Champs Élysées to
refresh herself after the labors of the week, all at once she saw a
woman walking with a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still
beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel was agitated. Should she speak to her? Why, of course. And
now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?
She drew near.
"Good morning, Jeanne."
The other, astonished to be addressed so familiarly by this woman of the
people, did not recognize her. She stammered:
"But--madame--I do not know you. You must have made a mistake."
"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh! my poor Mathilde, how changed you are!"
"Yes, I have had days hard enough since I saw you, days wretched
enough--and all because of you!"
"Me? How so?"
"You remember that necklace of diamonds that you lent me to wear to the
ministerial ball?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"How can that be? You returned it to me."
"I returned to you another exactly like it. These ten years we've been
paying for it. You know it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last
it is over, and I am very glad."
Madame Forestier was stunned.
"You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes; you did not notice it, then? They were just alike."
And she smiled with a proud and naïve pleasure.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth five
hundred francs at most."
XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING[*] (1888)
[* From "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."]
BY RUDYARD KIPLING (1865- )
[_Setting_. "They call it Kafiristan," said Dravot, the unfortunate hero
of the story. "By my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of
Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar."
Determined to be Kings of Kafiristan, Carnehan and Dravot started
probably from the capital of the Punjab, Lahore, where the newspaper
office seems to have been. Ten miles west of Peshawar they entered the
famous Khaiber (or Khyber) Pass, a region which Kipling describes more
at length in "The Man Who Was," "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," "The
Lost Legion," "Love o' Women," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "With the Main
Guard." No country in Asia is less known to civilization than
Kafiristan. The Mohammedan traders say that it is the most attractive
part of Afghanistan. The name means "country of unbelievers," the Kafirs
having resisted all attempts to convert them to the Mohammedan faith.
They are pure Aryans, being thus brothers to the Greeks, Romans,
Germans, English, and ourselves. They are noted for their beauty and
strength. India or rather Anglo-India has been almost re-discovered by
Kipling, but this is his only story of Kafiristan. It too, as Carnehan
and Dravot learn to their sorrow, is a land of impenetrable mystery.
_Plot_. The real plot does not begin to unfold itself until Carnehan,
wrecked in body and mind, returns to the newspaper office and tries to
report his experiences. Thus nearly one half of the story may be called
introductory or preliminary. This is unusual with Kipling and with all
other modern story writers. The introduction justifies itself, however,
in this case because, since a half-crazed man with weakening memory is
to tell the real tale, his narrative would have to be supplemented by
explanations on nearly every page unless the introductory part could be
taken for granted. Notice how often in reading Carnehan's broken story
you supply what he omits and interpret what he only fragmentarily says
by reference to what has gone before.
Kipling has done more in this story than to present a character of
limitless audacity. He has impressed again one of his favorite
teachings. There is, he holds, a barrier between East and West that can
never be crossed. The West can go so far with the East but no farther.
Brave men of the West may conquer the East and rule it, but to take
liberties with it is to uncover a vast realm of the unknown and to
invite disaster. In "The Return of Imray," a good-natured Englishman
pats the head of Bahadur Khan's child and is killed for it. Another
Englishman, in "Beyond the Pale," thought that he understood the heart
of India, and here is his epitaph: "He took too deep an interest in
native life, but he will never do so again." Dravot could play king and
even god in Kafiristan, but when he exposed himself ignorantly to an old
racial superstition he met instant and inevitable destruction.
_Characters_. Carnehan tells the story, but Dravot is the energizing
character. Captain James Cook, the discoverer of the Sandwich Islands,
is plainly the original of Dravot. Read the thirtieth chapter of the
second volume of Mark Twain's "Roughing It" (1872) and you will find
Kipling's story clearly outlined. One cannot withhold a measure of
admiration for this type of uncontrolled audacity. Dravot was not bad at
heart, he was only boundless, a type of the adventurer that has given
many a fascinating chapter to history as well as to literature. In "The
Research Magnificent," by Mr. H.G. Wells, the hero, Benham, says: "I
think what I want is to be king of the world.... It is the very core of
me.... I mean to be a king in this earth. _King_. I'm not mad." His
motive, however, is very different from Dravot's. "I see the world," he
continues, "staggering from misery to misery, and there is little
wisdom, less rule, folly, prejudice, limitation ... and it is my world
and I am responsible.... As soon as your kingship is plain to you, there
is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in
utmost effort." The three weaknesses to be overcome are Fear,
Indulgence, and Jealousy. Both Dravot and Benham fail and the comment of
each on his own failure is an autobiography. Benham: "I can feel that
greater world I shall never see as one feels the dawn coming through the
last darkness." Dravot: "We've had a dashed fine run for our money.
What's coming next?"]
Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy
to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under
circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other
was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came
near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was
promised the reversion of a Kingdom--army, law-courts, revenue and
policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead,
and if I want a crown I must go hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions
in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate,
which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty,
or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy
from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. That is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the
carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.
My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when a big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered,
and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He
was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste
for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and
of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food.
"If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the
crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't seventy
millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven hundred
millions," said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed
to agree with him.
We talked politics--the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the
underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off--and we talked
postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back
from the next station to Ajmir, the turning-off place from the Bombay to
the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond
eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing
to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a
wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there
were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any
way.
"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick,"
said my friend, "but that'd mean enquiries for you and for me, and
_I_'ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you were travelling
back along this line within any days?"
"Within ten," I said.
"Can't you make it eight?" said he. "Mine is rather urgent business."
"I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you," I
said.
"I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It's this
way. He leaves Delhi on the 23rd for Bombay. That means he'll be running
through Ajmir about the night of the 23rd."
"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.
"Well _and_ good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction to
get into Jodhpore territory--you must do that--and he'll be coming
through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay
Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'T won't be
inconveniencing you because I know that there's precious few pickings to
be got out of these Central India States--even though you pretend to be
correspondent or the _Backwoodsman_."
"Have you ever tried that trick?" I asked.
"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get
escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them.
But about my friend here. I _must_ give him a word o' mouth to tell him
what's come to me or else he won't know where to go. I would take it
more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to
catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him: 'He has gone South for the
week.' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and
a great swell he is. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all
his luggage round him in a Second-class apartment. But don't you be
afraid. Slip down the window and say: 'He has gone South for the week,'
and he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by
two days. I ask you as a stranger--going to the West," he said with
emphasis.
"Where have _you_ come from?" said I.
"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him the
message on the Square--for the sake of my Mother as well as your own."
Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their
mothers; but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw
fit to agree.
"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I asked you
to do it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in
it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I
must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want."
"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of
your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to
run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the
_Backwoodsman_. There's a real one knocking about here, and it might
lead to trouble."
"Thank you," said he, simply, "and when will the swine be gone? I can't
starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the
Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump."
"What did he do to his father's widow, then?"
"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung
from a beam. I found that out myself and I'm the only man that would
dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to
poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.
But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?"
He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and
bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never
met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die
with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of
English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of
government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or
drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not
understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of
Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of
the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full of
unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from
a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had
promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a
funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as
I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the
carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the
window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a
railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the
ribs. He woke with a grunt and I saw his face in the light of the lamps.
It was a great and shining face.
"Tickets again?" said he.
"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He
has gone South for the week!"
The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "He has
gone South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just like his
impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't."
"He didn't," I said and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out
in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the
sands. I climbed into my own train--not an Intermediate carriage this
time--and went to sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as
a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having
done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they forgathered and personated correspondents of newspapers,
and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-trap states of
Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious
difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as
accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in
deporting them: and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them
headed back from the Degumber borders.
Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no
Kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A
newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to
the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that
the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian
prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village;
Colonels who have been overpassed for command sit down and sketch the
outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on
Seniority _versus_ Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have
not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and
swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial
We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot
pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or
Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling
machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call
with specifications in their pockets and hours at their disposal;
tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office
pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their
last dance more fully described; strange ladies rustle in and say: "I
want a hundred lady's cards printed _at once_, please," which is
manifestly part of an Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that
ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for
employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is
ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires
are saying--"You're another," and Mister Gladstone is calling down
brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are
whining "_kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh_" (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most
of the paper is as blank as Modred's shield.
But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
when none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up
to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above
reading-light, and the press-machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody
writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or
obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because
it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew
intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you with a garment, and you sit
down and write: "A slight increase of sickness is reported from the
Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its
nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District
authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret
we record the death," etc.
Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and
reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the Empires
and the Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and
the Foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in
twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations in the middle
of their amusements say: "Good gracious! Why can't the paper be
sparkling? I'm sure there's plenty going on up here."
That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, "must
be experienced to be appreciated."
It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper
began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to
say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This was a great
convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn
would lower the thermometer from 96° to almost 84° for half an hour, and
in that chill--you have no idea how cold is 84° on the grass until you
begin to pray for it--a very tired man could get off to sleep ere the
heat roused him.
One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed
alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to die
or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the
other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the
latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.
It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the
_loo_, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the
tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and
again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the
flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It
was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there,
while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the
windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their
foreheads, and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back,
whatever it was, would not come off, though the _loo_ dropped and the
last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking
heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and
wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying
man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay
was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to
make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the
machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was
in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have
shrieked aloud.
Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of
me. The first one said: "It's him!" The second said: "So it is!" And
they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped
their foreheads. "We seed there was a light burning across the road and
we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my
friend here, 'The office is open. Let's come along and speak to him as
turned us back from the Degumber State,'" said the smaller of the two.
He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the
red-bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows
of the one or the beard of the other.
I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with
loafers. "What do you want?" I asked.
"Half an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable, in the office,"
said the red-bearded man. "We'd _like_ some drink--the Contrack doesn't
begin yet, Peachey, so you needn't look--but what we really want is
advice. We don't want money. We ask you as a favor, because we found out
you did us a bad turn about Degumber State."
I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's something like,"
said he. "This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me
introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother
Daniel Dravot, that is _me_, and the less said about our professions the
better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor,
compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and
correspondents of the _Backwoodsman_ when we thought the paper wanted
one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first, and see that's
sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your
cigars apiece, and you shall see us light up."
I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a
tepid whiskey and soda.
"Well _and_ good," said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from
his moustache. "Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India,
mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty
contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big
enough for such as us."
They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's beard seemed to
fill half the room and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as they sat
on the big table. Carnehan continued: "The country isn't half worked out
because they that governs it won't let you touch it. They spend all
their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip
a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the
Government saying--'Leave it alone, and let us govern.' Therefore, such
_as_ it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where
a man isn't crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and
there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed
a Contrack on that. _Therefore_, we are going away to be Kings."
"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.
"Yes, of course," I said. "You've been tramping in the sun, and it's a
very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? Come
to-morrow."
"Neither drunk nor sunstruck," said Dravot. "We have slept over the
notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have
decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong
men can sar-a-_whack_. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles
from Peshawar. They have two-and-thirty heathen idols there, and we'll
be the thirty-third and fourth. It's a mountaineous country, and the
women of those parts are very beautiful."
"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan. "Neither
Woman nor Liqu-or, Daniel."
"And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they
fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill
men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King
we find--'D' you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how
to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will
subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty."
"You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the Border," I
said. "You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country.
It's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has
been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached
them you couldn't do anything."
"That's more like," said Carnehan. "If you could think us a little more
mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this
country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to
tell us that we are fools and to show us your books." He turned to the
book-cases.
"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.
"A little," said Dravot, sweetly. "As big a map as you have got, even if
it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you've got. We can
read, though we aren't very educated."
I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, and the men consulted them.
"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey
and me know the road. We was there with Roberts's Army. We'll have to
turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we
get among the hills--fourteen thousand feet--fifteen thousand--it will
be cold work there, but it don't look very far on the map."
I handed him Wood on the _Sources of the Oxus_. Carnehan was deep in the
_Encyclopædia_.
"They're a mixed lot," said Dravot, reflectively; "and it won't help us
to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they'll
fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm!"
"But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate
as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's
the file of the _United Services' Institute_. Read what Bellew says."
"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're a stinkin' lot of heathens,
but this book here says they think they're related to us English."
I smoked while the men pored over _Raverty, Wood_, the maps, and the
_Encyclopædia_.
"There is no use your waiting," said Dravot, politely. "It's about four
o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock if you want to sleep, and we
won't steal any of the papers. Don't you sit up. We're two harmless
lunatics, and if you come to-morrow evening down to the Serai we'll say
good-bye to you."
"You _are_ two fools," I answered. "You'll be turned back at the
Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want
any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance
of work next week."
"Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you," said Dravot.
"It isn't so easy being a King as it looks. When we've got our Kingdom
in going order we'll let you know, and you can come up and help us to
govern it."
"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?" said Carnehan, with
subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of notepaper on which was
written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity--
_This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of
God--Amen and so forth.
(One) That me and you will settle this matter together; i.e., to be
Kings of Kafiristan.
(Two) That you and me will not, while this matter is being settled, look
at any Liquor, nor any Woman black, white, or brown, so as to get mixed
up with one or the other harmful.
(Three) That we conduct ourselves with Dignity and Discretion, and if
one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him.
Signed by you and me this day.
Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.
Daniel Dravot.
Both Gentlemen at Large_.
"There was no need for the last article," said Carnehan, blushing
modestly; "but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that
loafers are--we _are_ loafers, Dan, until we get out of India--and _do_
you think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in
earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth
having."
"You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this
idiotic adventure. Don't set the office on fire," I said, "and go away
before nine o'clock."
I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of
the "Contrack." "Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow," were
their parting words.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the
strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the
nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk
of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try
to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats,
saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep, and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get
many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down to see
whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying there
drunk.
A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me,
gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant
bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up
two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks
of laughter.
"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me. "He is going up to Kabul
to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honor or have his
head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly
ever since."
"The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked
Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell future events."
"Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up
by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!" grunted the Eusufzai
agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been diverted into
the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose misfortunes
were the laughing-stock of the bazar. "Ohé, priest, whence come you and
whither do you go?"
"From Roum have I come," shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; "from
Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves,
robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers!
Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell charms that are
never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not
fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of
the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to
slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel?
The protection of Pir Khan be upon his labors!" He spread out the skirts
of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.
"There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, _Huzrut_"
said the Eusufzai trader. "My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and
bring us good-luck."
"I will go even now!" shouted the priest. "I will depart upon my winged
camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan," he yelled to
his servant, "drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own."
He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to
me, cried: "Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will
sell thee a charm--an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan."
Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the
Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.
"What d'you think o' that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk
their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant.
'T isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for
fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan
at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see if we can get
donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the
Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you
feel."
I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.
"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot, placidly. "Twenty of 'em and ammunition to
correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls."
"Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" I said. "A
Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans."
"Fifteen hundred rupees of capital--every rupee we could beg, borrow, or
steal--are invested on these two camels," said Dravot. "We won't get
caught. We're going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who'd
touch a poor mad priest?"
"Have you got everything you want?" I asked, overcome with astonishment.
"Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of your kindness,
_Brother_. You did me a service, yesterday, and that time in Marwar.
Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is." I slipped a small
charm compass from my watch chain and handed it up to the priest.
"Good-bye," said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously. "It's the last time
we'll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with
him, Carnehan," he cried, as the second camel passed me.
Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai proved that they were
complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that
Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without
detection. But, beyond, they would find death--certain and awful death.
Ten days later a native correspondent giving me the news of the day from
Peshawar, wound up his letter with: "There has been much laughter here
on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to
sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great
charms to H.H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and
associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The
merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that
such mad fellows bring good-fortune."
The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for them,
but, that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded an obituary
notice.
* * * * *
The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again.
Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The
daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there
fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to
be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened
before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines
worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the Office garden
were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.
I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I
have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had
been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three
o'clock I cried, "Print off," and turned to go, when there crept to my
chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was
sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other
like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled--this
rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he
was come back. "Can you give me a drink?" he whimpered. "For the Lord's
sake, give me a drink!"
I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I
turned up the lamp.
"Don't you know me?" he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his
drawn face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to the light.
I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over
the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not
tell where.
"I don't know you," I said, handing him the whiskey. "What can I do for
you?"
He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the
suffocating heat.
"I've come back," he repeated; "and I was the King of Kafiristan--me and
Dravot--crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it--you setting
there and giving us the books. I am Peachey--Peachey Taliaferro
Carnehan, and you've been setting here ever since--O Lord!"
I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings
accordingly.
"It's true," said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which
were wrapped in rags. "True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon
our heads--me and Dravot--poor Dan--oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never
take advice, not though I begged of him!"
"Take the whiskey," I said, "and take your own time. Tell me all you can
recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the border
on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do
you remember that?"
"I ain't mad--yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember.
Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep
looking at me in my eyes and don't say anything."
I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He
dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was
twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red,
diamond-shaped scar.
"No, don't look there. Look at _me_" said Carnehan. "That comes
afterwards, but for the Lord's sake don't distrack me. We left with that
caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people
we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the
people was cooking their dinners--cooking their dinners, and--what did
they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into Dravot's
beard, and we all laughed--fit to die. Little red fires they was, going
into Dravot's big red beard--so funny." His eyes left mine and he smiled
foolishly.
"You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan," I said at a venture,
"after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you turned off to
try to get into Kafiristan."
"No, we didn't neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before
Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn't good
enough for our two camels--mine and Dravot's. When we left the caravan,
Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be
heathen, because the Kafirs didn't allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So
we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I
never saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and
slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns.
He shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a
heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels
couldn't go along any more because of the mountains. They were tall and
black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild goats--there are lots
of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no
more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don't let you sleep
at night."
"Take some more whiskey," I said, very slowly. "What did you and Daniel
Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads
that led into Kafiristan?"
"What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan
that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in
the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in
the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir.--No; they
was two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and
woeful sore.--And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to
Dravot--'For the Lord's sake let's get out of this before our heads are
chopped off,' and with that they killed the camels all among the
mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took
off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along
driving four mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them,
singing--'Sell me four mules.' Says the first man--'If you are rich
enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;' but before ever he could put
his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the
other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that
was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward into those
bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a road broader than the back
of your hand."
He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the
nature of the country through which he had journeyed.
"I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it
might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot
died. The country was mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and
the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and
down and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot
not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus
avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't worth
being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed
for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the
mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having
anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and
played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.
"Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty
men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair
men--fairer than you or me--with yellow hair and remarkable well built.
Says Dravot, unpacking the guns--'This is the beginning of the business.
We'll fight for the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles at the
twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock
where he was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and
Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the
valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too,
and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their
heads and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks
them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them
friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and
waves his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They
takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine
wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot he
goes to the biggest--a fellow they call Imbra--and lays a rifle and a
cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectful with his own nose,
patting him on the head, and saluting in front of it. He turns round to
the men and nods his head, and says--'That's all right. I'm in the know
too, and all these old jim-jams are my friends.' Then he opens his mouth
and points down it, and when the first man brings him food, he
says--'No;' and when the second man brings him food, he says--'No;' but
when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food,
he says--'Yes,' very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came to
our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled
from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those damned rope-bridges,
you see, and--you couldn't expect a man to laugh much after that?"
"Take some more whiskey and go on," I said. "That was the first village
you came into. How did you get to be King?"
"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot, he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other
party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side
of old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot's
order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot
picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs
down into the valley and up again the other side and finds another
village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on
their faces, and Dravot says--'Now what is the trouble between you two
villages?' and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that
was carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and
counts up the dead--eight there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a
little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and
'That's all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of
each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows
them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives
each a sod of turf from both sides of the line. Then all the people
comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says--'Go and
dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they
didn't understand. Then we asks the names of things in their
lingo--bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the
priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and
judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.
"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as
bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and
told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'That's just the beginning,'
says Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan picks out twenty
good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and
advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see
the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and
leaves one at one village, and one at the other, and off we two goes to
see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there
was a little village there, and Carnehan says--'Send 'em to the old
valley to plant,' and takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that
wasn't took before. They were a poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid
before letting 'em into the new Kingdom. That was to impress the people,
and then they settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot who
had got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountaineous.
There was no people there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one
of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the
Army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better
not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We makes
friends with the priest and I stays there alone with two of the Army,
teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across
the snow with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he heard there
was a new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of the men
half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a
message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come
and shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes alone
first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about,
same as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes
my eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb
show if he had an enemy he hated. 'I have,' says the Chief. So Carnehan
weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them
drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as
Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top
of a mountain, and the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it;
we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that
village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, 'Occupy
till I come;' which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and
the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him
standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then
I sends a letter to Dravot wherever he be by land or by sea."
At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted--"How
could you write a letter up yonder?"
"The letter?--Oh!--The letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes,
please. It was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the way of it
from a blind beggar in the Punjab."
I remember that there had once come to the office a blind man with a
knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig
according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days
or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the
alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his method,
but I could not understand.
"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan; "and told him to come
back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then
I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They
called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first
village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but
they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from
another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked
for that village, and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards.
That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot,
who had been away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet.
"One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan
Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of
men, and, which was the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head.
'My Gord, Carnehan,' says Daniel, 'this is a tremenjus business, and
we've got the whole country as far as it's worth having. I am the son of
Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a God
too! It's the biggest thing we've ever seen. I've been marching and
fighting for six weeks with the Army, and every footy little village for
fifty miles has come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I've got the key
of the whole show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you! I told
'em to make two of 'em at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the
rock like suet in mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked out
of the cliffs, and there's garnets in the sands of the river, and here's
a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and,
here, take your crown.'
"One of the men opens a black hair bag, and I slips the crown on. It was
too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it
was--five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.
"'Peachey,' says Dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. The Craft's
the trick, so help me!' and he brings forward that same Chief that I
left at Bashkai--Billy Fish we called him afterwards, because he was so
like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in
the old days. 'Shake hands with him,' says Dravot, and I shook hands and
nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but
tried him with the Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, and I tried
the Master's Grip, but that was a slip. 'A Fellow Craft he is!' I says
to Dan. 'Does he know the word?'--'He does,' says Dan, 'and all the
priests know. It's a miracle! The Chiefs and the priests can work a
Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's very like ours, and they've cut the
marks on the rocks, but they don't know the Third Degree, and they've
come to find out. It's Gord's Truth. I've known these long years that
the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A
God and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third
Degree I will open, and we'll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of
the villages.'
"'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant
from any one; and you know we never held office in any Lodge.'
"'It's a master-stroke o' policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie on a down grade. We can't stop
to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at my
heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be.
Billet these men on the villages, and see that we run up a Lodge of some
kind. The temple of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must
make aprons as you show them. I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and
Lodge to-morrow.'
"I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what
a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests' families how
to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron the blue border
and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took
a great square stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and little
stones for the officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with
white squares, and did what we could to make things regular.
"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big
bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of
Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make
Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in
quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands,
and they were so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with
old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had
known in India--Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was
Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.
"_The_ most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night. One of the old
priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we'd
have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what the men knew. The old
priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The
minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the girls had made for
him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the
stone that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's all up now,' I says. 'That comes
of meddling with the Craft without warrant!' Dravot never winked an eye,
not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master's
chair--which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing
the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he
shows all the other priests the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's
apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra
knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet
and kisses 'em. 'Luck again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, 'they
say it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. We're
more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and
says: 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and
the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in
Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o' the country, and King of
Kafiristan equally with Peachey!' At that he puts on his crown and I
puts on mine--I was doing Senior Warden--and we opens the Lodge in most
ample form. It was a amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through
the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was
coming back to them. After that, Peachey and Dravot raised such as was
worthy--high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the
first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in
any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't raise
more than ten of the biggest men, because we didn't want to make the
Degree common. And they was clamoring to be raised.
"'In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another
Communication, and see how you are working.' Then he asks them about
their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other,
and were sick and tired of it. And when they wasn't doing that they was
fighting with the Mohammedans. 'You can fight those when they come into
our country,' says Dravot. 'Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for
a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be
drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he
does well, and I know that you won't cheat me, because you're white
people--sons of Alexander--and not like common, black Mohammedans. You
are _my_ people, and by God,' says he, running off into English at the
end--'I'll make a damned fine Nation of you, or I'll die in the making!'
"I can't tell all we did for the next six months, because Dravot did a
lot I couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I
never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again go
out with some of the Army and see what the other villages were doing,
and make 'em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the
country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and
down in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with both
fists I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise about, and I just
waited for orders.
"But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were
afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of
friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across
the hills with a complaint, and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call
four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in
Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we
call Kafuzelum--it was like enough to his real name--and hold councils
with 'em when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That
was his Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak,
and Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of 'em they sent me,
with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises,
into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that
come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati
regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for
turquoises.
"I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the pick of
my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some
more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a
hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails that'll throw
to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the
rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed 'em among the men
that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to
those things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we
turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew
how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made
guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and
factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was
coming on.
"'I won't make a Nation,' says he. 'I'll make an Empire! These men
aren't niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes--look at their
mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own
houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they've grown
to be English. I'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't get
frightened. There must be a fair two million of 'em in these hills. The
villages are full o' little children. Two million people--two hundred
and fifty thousand fighting men--and all English! They only want the
rifles and a little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready
to cut in on Russia's right flank when she tries for India! Peachey,
man,' he says, chewing his beard in great hunks, 'we shall be
Emperors--Emperors of the Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us.
I'll treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me
twelve picked English--twelve that I know of--to help us govern a bit.
There's Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at Segowli--many's the good dinner
he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the
Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hundreds that I could lay my hand on if
I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me, I'll send a man through
in the spring for those men, and I'll write for a dispensation from the
Grand Lodge for what I've done as Grand-Master. That--and all the
Sniders that'll be thrown out when the native troops in India take up
the Martini. They'll be worn smooth, but they'll do for fighting in
these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the
Amir's country in dribblets--I'd be content with twenty thousand in one
year--and we'd be an Empire. When everything was shipshape, I'd hand
over the crown--this crown I'm wearing now--to Queen Victoria on my
knees, and she'd say: "Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot." Oh, it's big! It's
big, I tell you! But there's so much to be done in every place--Bashkai,
Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.'
"'What is it?' I says. 'There are no more men coming in to be drilled
this autumn. Look at those fat black clouds. They're bringing the snow.'
"'It isn't that,' says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my
shoulder; 'and I don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no
other living man would have followed me and made me what I am as you
have done. You're a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the people know
you; but--it's a big country, and somehow you can't help me, Peachey, in
the way I want to be helped.'
"'Go to your blasted priests, then!' I said, and I was sorry when I made
that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so superior
when I'd drilled all the men, and done all he told me.
"'Don't let's quarrel, Peachey,' says Daniel, without cursing. 'You're a
King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can't you see,
Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now--three or four of 'em, that we
can scatter about for our Deputies. It's a hugeous great State, and I
can't always tell the right thing to do, and I haven't time for all I
want to do, and here's the winter coming on and all.' He put half his
beard into his mouth, all red like the gold of his crown.
"'I'm sorry, Daniel,' says I. 'I've done all I could. I've drilled the
men and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and I've
brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband--but I know what you're
driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.'
"'There's another thing too,' says Dravot, walking up and down. 'The
winter's coming and these people won't be giving much trouble, and if
they do we can't move about. I want a wife.'
"'For Gord's sake leave the women alone!' I says. 'We've both got all
the work we can, though I _am_ a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep
clear o' women.'
"The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and Kings we
have been these months past,' says Dravot, weighing his crown in his
hand. 'You go get a wife too, Peachey--a nice, strappin', plump girl
that'll keep you warm in the winter. They're prettier than English
girls, and we can take the pick of 'em. Boil 'em once or twice in hot
water, and they'll come out like chicken and ham.'
"'Don't tempt me!' I says. 'I will not have any dealings with a woman
not till we are a dam' side more settled than we are now. I've been
doing the work o' two men, and you've been doing the work o' three.
Let's lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from
Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no women.'
"'Who's talking o' _women_?' says Dravot. 'I said _wife_--a Queen to
breed a King's son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe,
that'll make them your blood-brothers, and that'll lie by your side and
tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That's
what I want.'
"'Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I was a
plate-layer?' says I. 'A fat lot o' good she was to me. She taught me
the lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? She ran away
with the Station Master's servant and half my month's pay. Then she
turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the
impidence to say I was her husband--all among the drivers in the
running-shed too!'
"'We've done with that,' says Dravot, 'these women are whiter than you
or me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.'
"'For the last time o' asking, Dan, do _not_,' I says. 'It'll only bring
us harm. The Bible says that Kings ain't to waste their strength on
women, 'specially when they've got a new raw Kingdom to work over.'
"'For the last time of answering I will,' said Dravot, and he went away
through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil, the sun being on
his crown and beard and all.
"But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before the
Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he'd better
ask the girls. Dravot damned them all round. 'What's wrong with me?' he
shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. 'Am I a dog or am I not enough of a
man for your wenches? Haven't I put the shadow of my hand over this
country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?' It was me really, but Dravot
was too angry to remember. 'Who bought your guns? Who repaired the
bridges? Who's the Grand-Master of the sign cut in the stone?' says he,
and he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in Lodge,
and at Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish said nothing
and no more did the others. 'Keep your hair on, Dan,' said I; 'and ask
the girls. That's how it's done at Home, and these people are quite
English.'
"'The marriage of the King is a matter of State,' says Dan, in a
white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against his
better mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others sat
still, looking at the ground.
"'Billy Fish,' says I to the Chief of Bashkai, 'what's the difficulty
here? A straight answer to a true friend.'
"'You know,' says Billy Fish. 'How should a man tell you who knows
everything? How can daughters of men marry Gods or Devils? It's not
proper.'
"I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if, after seeing us
as long as they had, they still believed we were Gods, it wasn't for me
to undeceive them.
"'A God can do anything,' says I. 'If the King is fond of a girl he'll
not let her die.'--'She'll have to,' said Billy Fish. 'There are all
sorts of Gods and Devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl
marries one of them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two know the
Mark cut in the stone. Only the Gods know that. We thought you were men
till you showed the sign of the Master.'
"I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine
secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All
that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way
down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests
told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.
"'I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says Dan. 'I don't want to
interfere with your customs, but I'll take my own wife.'--'The girl's a
little bit afraid,' says the priest. 'She thinks she's going to die, and
they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.'
"'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you with
the butt of a gun so you'll never want to be heartened again.' He licked
his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the night,
thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I wasn't
by any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a woman in
foreign parts, though you was a crowned King twenty times over, could
not but be risky. I got up very early in the morning while Dravot was
asleep, and I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the
Chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of
their eyes.
"'What is up, Fish?' I say to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his
furs and looking splendid to behold.
"'I can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can make the King drop all
this nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and yourself a
great service.'
"'That I do believe,' says I. 'But sure, you know, Billy, as well as me,
having fought against and for us, that the King and me are nothing more
than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I
do assure you.'
"'That may be,' says Billy Fish, 'and yet I should be sorry if it was.'
He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks.
'King,' says he, 'be you man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-day.
I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We'll go to
Bashkai until the storm blows over.'
"A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white except
the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. Dravot
came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his
feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.
"'For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I in a whisper, 'Billy Fish here
says that there will be a row.'
"'A row among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey, you're a fool
not to get a wife too. Where's the girl?' says he with a voice as loud
as the braying of a jackass. 'Call up all the Chiefs and priests, and
let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.'
"There was no need to call any one. They were all there leaning on their
guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. A lot
of priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl, and the
horns blew fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters round and gets as
close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with
matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot, and
behind me was twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a
strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as
death, and looking back every minute at the priests.
"'She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 'What's to be afraid of, lass?
Come and kiss me.' He puts his arm round her. She shuts her eyes, gives
a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of Dan's flaming
red beard.
"'The slut's bitten me!' says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and,
sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his
matchlock-men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into
the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo,--'Neither God
nor Devil but a man!' I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in
front, and the Army behind began firing into the Bashkai men.
"'God A'mighty!' says Dan. 'What is the meaning o' this?'
"'Come back! Come away!' says Billy Fish. 'Ruin and Mutiny is the
matter. We'll break for Bashkai if we can.'
"I tried to give some sort of orders to my men--the men o' the regular
Army--but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of 'em with an
English Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley was full
of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, 'Not a God
nor a Devil but only a man!' The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all
they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul
breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull,
for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him
running out at the crowd.
"'We can't stand,' says Billy Fish. 'Make a run for it down the valley!
The whole place is against us.' The matchlock-men ran, and we went down
the valley in spite of Dravot. He was swearing horrible and crying out
he was a King. The priests rolled great stones on us, and the regular
Army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six men, not counting Dan,
Billy Fish, and Me, that came down to the bottom of the valley alive.
"Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again. 'Come
away--for Gord's sake come away!' says Billy Fish. 'They'll send runners
out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect you
there, but I can't do anything now.'
"My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that hour.
He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back
alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he could have
done. 'An Emperor am I,' says Daniel, 'and next year I shall be a Knight
of the Queen.'
"'All right, Dan,' says I; 'but come along now while there's time.'
"'It's your fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your Army better.
There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know--you damned
engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He sat
upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was
too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought
the smash.
"'I'm sorry, Dan,' says I, 'but there's no accounting for natives. This
business is our Fifty-Seven. Maybe we'll make something out of it yet,
when we've got to Bashkai.'
"'Let's get to Bashkai, then,' says Dan, 'and, by God, when I come back
here again I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a blanket
left!'
"We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up and down
on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself.
"'There's no hope o' getting clear,' said Billy Fish. 'The priests will
have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why
didn't you stick on as Gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead
man,' says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins
to pray to his Gods.
"Next morning we was in a cruel bad country--all up and down, no level
ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at Billy
Fish hungryway as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never a
word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all covered with
snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an Army in
position waiting in the middle!
"'The runners have been very quick,' says Billy Fish, with a little bit
of a laugh. 'They are waiting for us.'
"Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a chance
shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to his senses.
He looks across the snow at the Army, and sees the rifles that we had
brought into the country.
"'We're done for,' says he. 'They are Englishmen, these people,--and
it's my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back, Billy
Fish, and take your men away; you've done what you could, and now cut
for it. Carnehan,' says he, 'shake hands with me and go along with
Billy. Maybe they won't kill you. I'll go and meet 'em alone. It's me
that did it. Me, the King!'
"'Go!' says I. 'Go to Hell, Dan. I am with you here. Billy Fish, you
clear out, and we two will meet those folk.'
"'I'm a Chief,' says Billy Fish, quite quiet. 'I stay with you. My men
can go.'
"The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word but ran off, and Dan
and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and
the horns were horning. It was cold--awful cold. I've got that cold in
the back of my head now. There's a lump of it there."
The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in
the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the
blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that
his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously
mangled hands, and said: "What happened after that?"
The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.
"What was you pleased to say?" whined Carnehan. "They took them without
any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King
knocked down the first man that set hand on him--not though old Peachey
fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary
sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you
their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us
all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the
King kicks up the bloody snow and says: 'We've had a dashed fine run for
our money. What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell
you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir.
No, he didn't neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o'
one of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a
rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen
such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says the
King. 'D' you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to
Peachey--Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've brought you to
this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your happy life to be
killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the
Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.'--'I do,' says Peachey.
'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.'--'Shake hands, Peachey,' says
he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and
when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes,--'Cut, you
beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and
round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall
till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with
the gold crown close beside.
"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They
crucified him, Sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They used wooden pegs
for his hands and his feet; and he didn't die. He hung there and
screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle
that he wasn't dead. They took him down--poor old Peachey that hadn't
done them any harm--that hadn't done them any--"
He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of
his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.
"They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said
he was more of a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned
him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came home in
about a year, begging along the roads quite safe; for Daniel Dravot he
walked before and said: 'Come along, Peachey. It's a big thing we're
doing.' The mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried
to fall on Peachey's head, but Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came
along bent double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of
Dan's head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind
him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold, and Peachey
was starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot, Sir!
You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him now!"
He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black
horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to
my table--the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun
that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind
sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw
turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.
"You be'old now," said Carnehan, "the Emperor in his 'abit as he
lived--the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old
Daniel that was a monarch once!"
I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized the
head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to
stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whiskey,
and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to
the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my
health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've
urgent private affairs--in the south--at Marwar."
He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the
Deputy Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down
the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white
dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after
the fashion of street singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight,
and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang
through his nose, turning his head from right to left:
The Son of Man goes forth to war,
A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar--
Who follows in his train?
I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and
drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the
Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he did not
in the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary.
Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the
Asylum.
"He was admitted suffering from sun-stroke. He died early yesterday
morning," said the Superintendent. "Is it true that he was half an hour
bare-headed in the sun at midday?"
"Yes," said I, "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by
any chance when he died?"
"Not to my knowledge," said the Superintendent.
And there the matter rests.
XII. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI[*] (1905)
[* From "The Four Million." Used by special arrangement with Doubleday,
Page & Company, publishers of O. Henry's Works.]
BY O. HENRY[*] (1862-1910)
[*: The pen-name of William Sidney Porter.]
[_Setting_. Christmas Eve in New York and a furnished flat at $8 per
week make the setting of this perfect little story. Della has only $1.87
with which to buy a present for Jim and outside is "a grey cat walking a
grey fence in a grey backyard." But there is a spirit within that is to
make the modest flat a place of glory and this Christmas Eve memorable
in short-story annals. The flat is the stable with the manger, and New
York widens into Bethlehem.
_Plot_. "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young
child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him; and when
they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold,
and frankincense, and myrrh." These were the gifts of the magi, but
their gift was love. The infant Christ could make no use of gold or
frankincense or myrrh, nor could Della and Jim make use of the combs and
the chain; but the love that prompted the giving shines all the more
resplendent because the gifts, humanly speaking, were egregious misfits.
"That the gold at least," says a recent commentator, "would be highly
serviceable to the parents in their unexpected journey to Egypt and
during their stay there--thus much at least admits of no dispute."
Perhaps so. But read the famous passage once more and turn again to O.
Henry's story. Which interpretation goes deeper into the heart of the
incident? Which leaves you more in love with love?
_Characters_. Della and Jim have been said to illustrate the "story of
cross-purposes." But the phrase is not well used. Their purposes were
one; only their methods crossed. O. Henry rarely comments on his
characters, but he has here picked out one quality of these "two foolish
children in a flat" for unreserved praise: "Of all who give gifts these
two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are
wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi." If the magi, as
O. Henry says, "invented the art of giving Christmas presents," Della
and Jim re-discovered it. We have had no two characters in whose company
it is better to leave our study of the short story.]
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the
next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch
and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that
life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per
week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that
word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of
prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the
income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as
though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and
unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and
reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs.
James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all
very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a
grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she
had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving
every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a
week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated.
They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a
happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something
fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being
worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have
seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may,
by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips,
obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Delia, being slender,
had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her
eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its
full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been
his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the
Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have
let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate her
Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all
his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his
watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from
envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or
two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of
skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered
out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of all
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all
of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by
meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to
both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home
with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly
anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he
sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap
that he used in place of a chain.
When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is
always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second
look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what
could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of
the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Delia doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she
heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent
prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered:
"Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut
off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without
giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I
just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!'
Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice--what a beautiful,
nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Delia. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Delia. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and
gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden
serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I
put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For
ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential
object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a
year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you
the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not
among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that
could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package
you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had
worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful
vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had
simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of
possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have
adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up
with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with
a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have
to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I
want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled. "Dell," said he, "let's put our
Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use
just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.
And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought
gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And
here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two
foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of
these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the
wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.