Plain Tales from the Hills - Kipling Rudyard - Страница 17

«The honest course is always the best,» said Tarrion after an hour and a half of study and conversation. «All things considered, the Intelligence Branch is about my form. Either that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay siege to the High Gods in their Temples.»

He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head of a strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest man that the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an appointment at Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence of this amused the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the moment, he listened to the proposals of the audacious Tarrion. «You have, I presume, some special qualifications, besides the gift of self-assertion, for the claims you put forwards?» said the Strong Man. «That, Sir,» said Tarrion, «is for you to judge.» Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of the more important notes in the papers — slowly and one by one as a man drops chlorodyne into a glass. When he had reached the peremptory order — and it was a peremptory order — the Strong Man was troubled.

Tarrion wound up — «And I fancy that special knowledge of this kind is at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a distingushed officer’s wife.» That hit the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had been by black favor, and he knew it. «I’ll see what I can do for you,» said the Strong Man. «Many thanks,» said Tarrion. Then he left, and the Strong Man departed to see how the appointment was to be blocked.

* * *

Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained, and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special information would be worth translating. So they translated him. They must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do not know about things Up Above, you won’t understand how to fill it in, and you will say it is impossible.

What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was — «So, this is the boy who „rusked“ the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir, that is not done twice.» So he must have known something.

What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was — «If Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be Viceroy of India in twenty years.»

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears in his eyes, was first — «I told you so!» and next, to herself — «What fools men are!»

THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN

This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud of it. Making a Tract is a Feat.

Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man — least of all a junior — has a right to thrust these down other men’s throats. The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGoggin was the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever — brilliantly clever — but his clevereness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping to the study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by a man called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a Professor Clifford. [You will find these books in the Library.] They deal with people’s insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs. There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should have smacked him. They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with a rarefied religion over and above his work. It was not much of a creed. It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God and no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the good of Humanity.

One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful than giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said; but I suspect he had misread his primers.

I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, where there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building — all shut in by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higher than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything. But in this country, where you really see humanity — raw, brown, naked humanity — with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the head of affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant, the Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress be not responsible to her Maker — if there is no Maker for her to be responsible to — the entire system of Our administration must be wrong. Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually «beany.» When you take a gross, «beany» horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can’t see the horns. But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get «beany» in India. The climate and the work are against playing bricks with words.

If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endings in «isms,» to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers on both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came out in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no souls too, and to help him to eliminate his Creator. As a good many men told him, HE undoubtedly had no soul, because he was so young, but it did not follow that his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether there was another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in this. «But that is not the point — that is not the point!» Aurelian used to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the «Blastoderm» — he said he came from a family of that name somewhere, in the pre-historic ages — and, by insult and laughter, strove to choke him dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that, for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there — all head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in McGoggin’s soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody’s else’s. His busi ness was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of devastating the Club with «isms.»

He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too responsible and left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride an old horse in a halter; but never a colt. McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee cases — both sides perjured to the gullet — advanced the cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually «beany» and proud of himself and his powers, and he would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily.