Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (779 page)

‘Not bad, for the meekest medico on the register,’ said Scree approvingly.

‘I was annoyed,’ Keede confessed, ‘but I wasn’t as annoyed as Wilkie. When he’d polished me off, he wanted the slides and test records. I don’t know what hanky-panky they had worked; but a youth turned up from the bug-run and said there had been a mistake in the samples or the filing of the guinea-pigs, and they were tracing the responsibility in the basement. Meantime, here were the genuine articles.

‘Then Wilks began again on him: “But you had all the time you wanted! You had no reason to hurry! You were under no strain! You had only to label and number.” That showed what he had been suffering from, at the back of his mind, at the Front. But he went too far. He asked the pup how long he thought he would be allowed to hold his job after this disgraceful exposure.

‘I had to remind him that he was one blooming civil case in one blooming bed, and he would get his bill, and he could bring his civil action when he pleased, but he did not command the Hospital staff. The youth got out. I took the rest of the barrage. No mistake about it — it was a desperately important affair to Wilkie, damned or saved. Then that “bungling amateur,” Scree, came in.’

‘Was this all a put-up job?’ I asked.

‘Not in the least. It was Scree’s regular round. Wilkie wasn’t as offensive to him as he’d been to me. More professionally pained and shocked, you know. That put Scree on his high horse at once. He said he was an operative mason, not a speculative one.’

‘You infernal old liar,’ Scree broke in, passing over the siphon.

‘That was the sense of it, at any rate. Scree said he’d been told to operate on a foot reported as tuberculous, and it wasn’t his job to question me. Then he mentioned the figures that the crowned heads of Europe always paid him for cutting their corns, and he implied that being operated on by him was equivalent to a K.C.B. You ought to hear Scree’s top-note. It cowed the bacteriologist. And then he sat down by the old boy’s bed and began to talk Research with him, giving the impression that he was sitting at the feet of Gamaliel. It was — shut up, Scree! This is true! — the prettiest and kindest bit of work I’ve ever known even that hardened ruffian do. It had Wilkie steadied in five minutes, and in another five he was sailing away about Research, with his brain working like treacle.’

The tiny muscle that twitches when we feel certain sorts of shame showed itself beneath Scree’s lower eyelid.

‘In the middle of it Howlie came in, and Scree put up his hand to stop him speaking till Wilkie had finished.’

‘Wilkie was giving his reasons for having chucked Maldoni’s theory,’ said Scree in extenuation.

‘Then Howlieglass slid into the conference, and there they sat, with me playing bad boy in the corner, while they talked about taming spirochetes. Didn’t you, Scree?’

‘We talked, if you want to know, about the general administration of St. Peggotty’s New Biological Laboratories Extension,’ said Scree.

‘Did you? Then you can carry on,’ said Keede; and Sir James Belton was heard speaking through Scree’s lips: ‘“I am ver-ree sor-ree to say that there has been a mis-take, Mis-ter Wilkett, about your foot. It was due to an erroneous di-ag-nosis on the part of Mis-ter Keede, who is onlee a sub-urban Gen-eral Prac-titioner. We must not judge him too hard-ly.”‘

‘And then,’ Keede supplemented, ‘Scree, who might have had the decency to have kept out of it, said it was an infernal and grotesque blunder on my part.’

‘Sorry,’ said Scree, returning to his natural voice, ‘I thought you only wanted to know what Howlieglass said. Yes, of course I went for Keede for compromising my professional career that way. We all went for Keede.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ Keede turned to me again. ‘I’m rather an exponent of the bedside manner, though you mightn’t think it; but for sheer bluff and tying a poor devil into knots I never heard anything within miles of that show round Wilkie’s bed. They had him apologising at last for owning a foot at all, and hoping he hadn’t given too much trouble.’

‘But how about the mix-up of the slides? Did they saddle you with it?’ said I.

‘Worse! Much worse! Wilkie was drawing up to the subject — he’d have apologised for that, too — but Howlieglass got in first, and — ’

Keede nodded towards the obedient Scree. Once more we heard the voice of the head of St. Peggotty’s, preciser than ever.

‘“If you had been at your post here after the War, Mis-ter Wil-kett, in-stead of relaxing your mind in rest-cures, this lit-tle af-fair, which we have ag-reed to for-get, would never have ta-ken place. I trust you will not al-low it to oc-cur again.” And, damn it all!’ — Scree’s operating hand smacked on my knee — ’poor Wilk’s mouth went down at the corners like a child’s, and he said, “I see that now, sir. I’m so sorry, sir.”‘

‘Did it cure him?’ I asked later as we moved towards the taxi-cup.

‘Ab-so-bally-lutely,’ said Keede. ‘Not a head or a hoot since.’

‘And was the foot tuberculous?’ I persisted.

‘Anything with a sinus of long-standing may turn into anything. It’s always best to be on the safe side,’ was the response. ‘We were playing for the man’s reason — not his carcass.’

‘One more,’ I ventured. ‘How was the mix-up in the slides managed? It’s rather a grave matter to play with samples, isn’t it?’

‘By the same woman who knew where his mother had taken him. It wasn’t a job to trust to a man. A man would have said that he had a reputation or something to lose.’

‘Arising out of the reply to the previous question, does Mr. Wilkett realise about the lady?...’

‘No,’ said Sir Thomas Horringe very gravely to me; ‘that’s where he has made a mistake.’

‘Mistake! Poor devil! He has!’ said Keede with equal solemnity.

The Penalty

ONCE in life I watched a Star;

  But I whistled, ‘Let her go!

There are others, fairer far.

  Which my favouring skies shall show.’

Here I lied, and herein I

Stood to pay the penalty.

Marvellous the Planets shone

  As I ranged from coast to coast;

But beyond comparison

  Rode the Star that I had lost.

I had lied, and only I

Did not guess the penalty!

When my Heavens were turned to blood.

  When the dark had filled my day.

Furthest, but most faithful, stood

  That lone Star I cast away.

I had loved myself, and I

Have not lived and dare not die!

Uncovenanted Mercies

IF the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below, as that Ancient affirms who has had experience of the Orders,1 it follows that in the Administration of the Universe all Departments must work together.

This explains why Azrael, Angel of Death, and Gabriel, Adam’s First Servant and Courier of the Thrones, were talking with the Prince of Darkness in the office of the Archangel of the English, who — Heaven knows — is more English than his people.

Two Guardian Spirits had been reported to the Archangel for allowing their respective charges to meet against Orders. The affair involved Gabriel, as official head of all Guardian Spirits, and also Satan, since Guardian Spirits are exhuman souls, reconditioned for re-issue by the Lower Hierarchy. There was a doubt, too, whether the Orders which the couple had disobeyed were absolute or conditional. And, further, Ruya’il, the female spirit, had refused to tell the Archangel of the English what the woman in her charge had said or thought when she met the man, for whom Kalka’il, the male Guardian Spirit, was responsible. Kalka’il had been equally obstinate; both Spirits sheltering themselves behind the old Ruling: — ’Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?’ The Archangel of the English, ever anxious to be just, had therefore invited Azrael, who separates the Spirit from the Flesh, to assist at the inquiry.

The four Powers were going over the case in detail.

‘I am afraid,’ said Gabriel at last, ‘no Guardian Spirit is obliged to — er — give away, as your people say, his or her charge. But’ — he turned towards the Angel of Death — ’what’s your view of the Ruling?’

‘“Ecclesiastes, Three, Twenty-one,”‘ Satan prompted.

‘Thank you so much. I should say that it depends on the interpretation of “Who,”‘ Azrael answered. ‘And it is certainly laid down that Whoever Who may be’ — his halo paled as he bowed his head — ’it is not any member of either Hierarchy.’

‘So I have always understood,’ said Satan.

‘To my mind’ — the Archangel of the English spoke fretfully — ’this lack of — er — loyalty in the rank and file of the G.S. comes from our pernicious system of employing reconditioned souls on such delicate duties.’

The shaft was to Satan’s address, who smiled in acknowledgment.

‘They have some human weaknesses, of course,’ he returned. ‘By the way, where on earth were that man and the woman allowed to meet?’

‘Under the Clock at — -Terminus, I understand.’

‘How interesting! ‘By appointment?’

‘Not at all. Ruya’il says that her woman stopped to look for her ticket in her bag. Kalka’il says that his man bumped into her. Pure accident, but a breach of Orders — trivial, in my judgment, for — ’

‘Was it a breach of Orders for Life?’ Azrael asked.

He referred to that sentence, written on the frontal sutures of the skull of every three-year-old child, which is supposed, by the less progressive Departments, to foreshadow his or her destiny.

‘As a matter of detail,’ said the Archangel, ‘there were Orders for Life — identical in both cases. Here’s the copy. But nowadays we rely on training and environment to counteract this sort of auto- suggestion.’

‘Let’s make sure,’ Satan picked up the typed slip, and read aloud: — ‘“If So-and-so shall meet So-and-So, their state at the last shall be such as even Evil itself shall pity.” H’m! That’s not absolutely prohibitive. It’s conditional — isn’t it? ‘There’s great virtue in your “if,” and’ — he muttered to himself — ’it will all come back to me.’

‘Nonsense!’ the Archangel replied. ‘I intend that man and that woman for far better things. Orders for Life nowadays are no more than Oriental flourishes — aren’t they?’

But the level-browed Gabriel, in whose department these trifles lie, was not to be drawn.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Satan said after a pause. ‘So you intend that couple for better things?’

‘Yes!’ the Archangel of the English cleared his throat ominously. ‘Rightly or wrongly, I’m an optimist. I do believe in the general upward trend of life. It connotes, of course, a certain restlessness among my people — the English, you know.’

‘The English I know,’ said Satan.

‘But in my humble judgment, they are developing on new planes. They must be met and guided by new methods. Surely in your dealings with the — er — more temperamental among them, you must have noticed this new sense of a larger outlook.’

‘In a measure — ye-es,’ Satan replied. ‘But I remember much the same sort of thing after printing was invented. Your people used to come down to me then, reeking — positively Caxtonised — with words. Some of ‘em were convinced they had invented new sins. We-ell! Boiled and peeled (we had to do a little of that, of course) their novelties were only variations on the Imperfect Octave — Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony, Covetousness, Lust. Technique, I grant you. Originality, nil. You may find it so with this new Zeitgeist of theirs.’

‘Ah, but you’re such a pessimist,’ the Archangel retorted, smiling. ‘I do wish you could meet these two I have in my eye. Charmin’ people. Cultured, capable, devout, of the happiest influences on their respective entourages; practical, earnest, and — er — so forth — they will each, in their spheres, supply just that touch which My People need at the present moment for their development. Therefore, I am giving them each full advantages for self-expression and realisation. These will include impeccable surroundings, wealth, culture, health, felicity (unhappy people can’t make other people happy, can they?), and — everything else commensurate with the greatness of the destiny for which I — er — destine them.’

The Archangel of the English rubbed his soft hands and beamed on his colleagues.

‘I hope you’re justified,’ said Satan. ‘But are you quite sure that your method of — may I call it cosseting people, gets the best out of them?’

‘‘Rather what I was thinking,’ said Azrael. ‘I’ve seen wonderful work done — with My Sword practically at people’s throats — even when I’ve had to haggle a bit. They’re a hard lot sometimes.’

‘Let’s take Job’s case.’ Satan continued. ‘He didn’t reach the top of his form, as your people say, till I had handled him a little — did he?’