Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (775 page)

  Save what his own hard fingers mended

While, any hour, at every need

  (As Conscience or La Grippe assailed ‘em).

His parish bade him come with speed.

  And, foot or cart, he never failed ‘em.

His speech — to suit his hearers — ran

  From pure Parisian to gross peasant.

With interludes North African

  If any Legionnaire were present:

And when some wine-ripe atheist mocked

  His office or the Faith he knelt in.

He left the sinner dumb and shocked

  By oaths his old Battalion dealt in...

And he was learned in Death and Life;

  And he was Logic’s self (as France is).

He knew his folk — man, maid, and wife —

  Their forebears, failings, and finances.

Spite, Avarice, Devotion, Lies —

  Passion ablaze or sick Obsession —

He dealt with each physician-wise;

  Stern or most tender, at Confession.

* * * * *

To-day? God knows where he may lie —

  His Cross of weathered beads above him

But one not worthy to untie

  His shoe-string, prays you read — and love him!

The Miracle of Saint Jubanus

THE visitor had been drawn twenty kilometres beyond the end of the communal road under construction, by a rumour of a small window of thirteenth-century glass, said to represent a haloed saint in a helmet — none other, indeed, than Saint Julian of Auvergne — and to be found in the village church of Saint Jubans, down the valley.

But there was a wedding in the church, followed by the usual collection for charity. After the bridal procession had passed into the sunshine, two small acolytes began fighting over an odd sou. In a stride the tall old priest was upon them, knocked their heads together, unshelled them from their red, white-laced robes of office, and they rolled — a pair of black-gabardined gamins locked in war — out over the threshold on to the steep hillside.

He stood at the church door and looked down into the village beneath, half buried among the candles of the horse-chestnuts. It climbed up, house by house, from a busy river, to sharp, turfed slopes that lapped against live rock, whence, dominating the red valley, rose enormous ruins of an old château with bastions, curtains, and keeps, and a flying bridge that spanned the dry moat. Valerian and lilac in flower sprang wherever there was foothold.

‘All acolytes are little devils,’ said the priest benignly, and descended to the wedding-breakfast, which one could see in plan, set out by the stream in a courtyard of cut limes. His bearing was less that of a curé than a soldier, for his soutane swung like a marching- overcoat, and he lacked that bend of the neck, ‘the priest’s stoop,’ with which his Church stamps her sons when they are caught young. The wedding-feast had ended, and the heat of the day was abated before he climbed up again, beneath an enormous umbrella, to find the visitor among the ruins beside the little church...

‘I make a rule not to smoke unless it is offered. A thousand thanks!...This ought to be Smyrna...’ He exhaled the smoke through his finely-cut nostrils. ‘Yes, it is Smyrna...Good! And Monsieur appreciates our “Marylands” also? Hmm. I remember the time when our Government tobaccos were a national infamy...How long here am I? Close upon forty years...No. Never much elsewhere. It suffices me...’

‘A good people. Composed of a few old clans — Meilhac — Leclos — Falloux — Poivrain — Ballart. Monsieur may have observed their names upon our Monument.’ He pointed downward to the little cast-iron poilu, which seemed to be standard pattern for War memorials in that region. ‘Neither rich nor poor. When the charabanc-road through the valley is made they will be richer...Postcards for the tourists, an hotel, and an antiquity shop, for sure, here beside the church. A Syndicate of Initiative has, indeed, approached me to write on the attractions of the district, as well as on the life of Saint Jubanus...But surely he existed! He was a Gaul commanding a Gaulish legion at the time when Christianity was spreading in the Roman Army. We were — he was engaged against the Bo — the Alemanni — and was on the eve of attack when some of his officers chose that moment to throw down their swords and embrace the Cross. Knowing that he had been baptized, they assumed his sympathy; but he charged them to wait till the battle was finished. He said, in effect “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Some obeyed. Some did not. But even with defaitist and demoralised forces he won the day. They would then have given him a triumph, but he put aside the laurel wreath, and from his own chariot publicly renounced his profession and the old deities. So — I expect it was necessary for discipline to be kept — he was beheaded on the field he had won. That is the legend...

‘His miracles? But one only on record. He called a dying man back to life by whispering in his ear, and the man sat up and laughed. (I wish I knew that joke.) That is why we have a proverb in our valley: “It would take Saint Jubans himself to make you smile.” I imagine him as an old soldier, strict in his duty, but also something of a farceur. Every year I deliver on his Day a discourse in his honour. And you will perceive that when the War came his life applied with singular force to the situation...

‘They called up the priests? Assuredly! I went...It is droll to re-enter the old life in a double capacity. You see, one can sometimes — er — replace a casualty if — if — one has been — had experience. In that event, one naturally speaks secularly on secular subjects. A moment later one gives them Absolution as they advance. But they were good — good boys. And so wastefully used!...That is why I am of all matchmakers in our village the least scrupulous. Ask the old women!...Yes, monsieur...and I returned without a scar...The good God spared me also the darkness of soul which covered, and which covers still, so many — the doubt — the defiance — the living damnation. I had thought — may He pardon me! — that it was hard to reach the hearts of my people here. I saw them, after the War, split open! Some entered hells of whose existence they had not dreamed — of whose terrors they lacked words to tell. So they — men distraught — needed more care in the years that followed the War than even at Chemin des Dames...Yes, I was there, also, when it seemed that hope had quitted France. I know now how a man can lay hands upon himself out of pure fear!

‘And there were those, untouched, whom the War had immobilised from the soul outwards. In special, there was Martin Ballart, the only one of his family who returned — the son of a good woman who died at his birth. Him, frankly, I loved from the beginning, and, I think, he loved me. Yes, even when I took him for one of my acolytes — you saw the type at the wedding? — and I had very often to correct him. He was not clever nor handsome, but he had the eyes of a joyous faithful dog, and the laugh of Pan himself. And he came back at the last blasted, withered, dumb — a ghost that gnawed itself. There had been his girl, too...When they met again he did not know her. She said: “No matter. I will wait.” But he remained as he was. He lived, at first, with his aunt down there. Oh, he worked — it was no time for idleness — but the work did not restore. And he would hide himself for an hour or two and come back visibly replunged in his torments. I watched him, of course. It was a little photograph — one of those accursed Kodak pictures, of a young man in a trench, dancing languorously with a skeleton. It was the nail of his obsession...I left it with him. Had I taken it, there might have been a crisis. Short of that, I tried every expedient, even to exorcism...But why not? You call them mick- robs. We call them Devils...One thing only gave me hope. He took pleasure in my company. He looked at me with the eyes of a dog in pain, and followed me always. It came about in effect that he lived up here. He would sit still while I played piquet with our schoolmaster, Falloux...

‘Ah, that was a type upon whom our War had done bad work! No, he had not served. He had some internal trouble, which I told him always was a mere constipation of Atheism. Oh yes — he was enormously a freethinker! A man with a thick black beard, and an intellect (he carried it in front of him like his stomach) never happy unless it was dirtily rude to the Bon Dieu and His Saints. Little unclean stories and epigrams, you understand. He called Saint Jubanus a militarist and an impostor — this defaitist of a Zeppelinistic belly! But he could play piquet, and he was safer at my house than infecting our estaminet with his witticisms. I told him always that he would be saved on account of “invincible ignorance.” Then he would thunder:

‘“But if your God has any logic, I shall be damned!”‘

‘“Be content,” I would reply. “The Bon Dieu will never hear your name. You will be certified, together with the Cartel, by some totally inferior specialist of a demon as incapable of receiving even rudimentary instruction.”

‘Then he would clutch at his beard and throw down the cards, which poor Martin picked up for us. But apart from his rudeness to God and the Hierarchy, he was of exemplary life. Pardi, he had to be! She charged herself with that. Not believing in God, he had naturally married a devil before whom he trembled. She took him to Mass. That was why he was always most extravagant at my house on Monday evenings. His atheism, Monsieur, was, after all, but the panache without which a good little Frenchman cannot exist. A fond, there are few atheists in France. But, I concede, there are several arrivistes. Knowing this (and her), I hardly troubled to pray for him.

‘It was for poor Martin that I prayed always but not with full passion until his aunt told me she would take him to Lourdes...Every man, besides being all the other base characters in Scripture, is a Naaman at heart. You have seen Lourdes, Monsieur? A-ah!...

‘So I exposed this new trouble and my own mean little soul to the Bon Dieu. It was He — I remember the very night — Who put it into my heart to pray seriously to Saint Jubanus. I had prayed to him, oh, many times before; but it occurred to me at that hour that my past demands had not, in view of his secular career, been sufficiently precised or underlined. The idea kept me awake. I got up. I went to the church, which is, as you see, not three steps. There — it is — it was — an old duty of my life in the world — I kept my — I walked up and down in the dark. At last I found myself, constating my case, not formally to a Saint, but officially as to my commanding officer. I said — substantially:

‘“Mon General, the time has come for action. You gave your single life to uphold the honour of your military obligation. There are some two million Gauls who have given up theirs for much the same object, as well as twenty-three out of your very own village here. Surely some of these must by now have appeared before you! I address you simply, then, as an old moustache who is trying to beat off an attack of the Devil on the soul of Martin Ballart, Corporal, 743rd of the Line, Two Citations. (One must be precise always with the Hierarchy.) I am at the end of my resources. God has ordered that I should report to you. I ask no obvious miracles, because, between ourselves, I do not in the least desire this pleasant retreat of ours to develop into a Lourdes. I beg only your help as my officer in the case of a good boy who, by fortune of war, is descending alive into Hell.” I concluded, textually: “Mon General, many reputations rest upon a single action. That also is the fortune of war. But I submit, with respect, after your sixteen-hundred years in retreat, it is not too much that an old and very tired combatant of your own race should signal for a small reinforcement from his Commandant...”

‘I think — I know, indeed, from what happened afterwards — he was moved by this last thrust. It was as though all God’s good night had chuckled above me. I went to my bed again and slept in confidence...

‘Did I look for a sign? Did Gouraud give any when he took our revenge for Chemin des Dames — when he let the enemy fall into the trap by their own momentum? No! I continued my work, and always I prayed for Martin. Then there came down the valley — as he does yearly — the itinerant mender of umbrellas, for whom my housekeeper stores up her repairs. She had acquired a piece of material to re-cover my umbrella, which, as you can see, is somewhat formidable in point of size, and of a certain antiquity. Indeed, I do not know whether there still exists another effective machine of its type, constructed, see you, from the authentic bone of the whale. Look! Vast as it is, it was still more vast when that artist arrived. My Mathilde’s piece of material was found to be inadequate in extent. But the man said that, with a small cutting down of the tips of the ribs, he could accommodate the area to the fabric. The result you behold. A fraction smaller, but essentially the same. And equally strong. Mon Dieu, that was needed!...Yes, sometimes I dare to think that that crapulous vagrant might have been Saint Jubanus himself!...

‘This was in the interval — while the good Saint prepared his second line just like our Gouraud. During that time I listened to poor Martin’s aunt making her arrangements to take him to Lourdes, of which officially I had to approve. For, what miracle had we to offer? Further, I endured the attacks of’ that Falloux. Something that I may have said in respect to The Almighty diverted his dirtinesses from that quarter, and he fell back on Saint Jubanus. My own vanity — the Syndicate of Initiative having approached me, as I have told you, to write his life for prospective tourists — drew that on my head. I fear that, once or twice, I may have lost my dignity with him as a priest. He asserts that I swore like a Foot Chausseur, which had been his service. (Poor little rats of the Line!)...