Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (334 page)

‘I done it for your sake, Jenny,’ he whimpered feebly, trying to take her hand.

‘You killed ‘er for the money, same as you would ha’ killed me. Get out o’ this. Lay ‘er on the bed first, you brute!’

They lifted Badalia on to the bed, and crept forth silently.

‘I can’t be took along o’ you — and if you was took you’d say I made you do it, an’ try to get me ‘anged. Go away — anywhere outer ‘ere,’ said Jenny, and she dragged him down the stairs.

‘Goin’ to look for the curick?’ said a voice from the pavement. Lascar Loo’s mother was still waiting patiently to hear Badalia squeal.

‘Wot curick?’ said Jenny swiftly. There was a chance of salving her conscience yet in regard to the bundle upstairs.

‘Anna — 63 Roomer Terrace — close ‘ere,’ said the old woman. She had never been favourably regarded by the curate. Perhaps, since Badalia had not squealed, Tom preferred smashing the man to the woman. There was no accounting for tastes.

Jenny thrust her man before her till they reached the nearest main road. ‘Go away, now,’ she gasped. ‘Go off anywheres, but don’t come back to me. I’ll never go with you again; an’, Tom — Tom, d’you ‘ear me? — clean your boots.’

Vain counsel. The desperate thrust of disgust which she bestowed upon him sent him staggering face-down into the kennel, where a policeman showed interest in his welfare.

‘Took for a common drunk. Gawd send they don’t look at ‘is boots! ‘Anna, 63 Roomer Terrace!’ Jenny settled her hat and ran.

The excellent housekeeper of the Roomer Chambers still remembers how there arrived a young person, blue-lipped and gasping, who cried only: Badalia, 17 Gunnison Street. Tell the curick to come at once — at once — at once!’ and vanished into the night. This message was borne to the Rev. Eustace Hanna, then enjoying his beauty-sleep. He saw there was urgency in the demand, and unhesitatingly knocked up Brother Victor across the landing. As a matter of etiquette, Rome and England divided their cases in the district according to the creeds of the sufferers; but Badalia was an institution, and not a case, and there was no district-relief etiquette to be considered. ‘Something has happened to Badalia,’ the curate said, ‘and it’s your affair as well as mine. Dress and come along.’

‘I am ready,’ was the answer. ‘Is there any hint of what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing beyond a runaway-knock and a call.’

‘Then it’s a confinement or a murderous assault. Badalia wouldn’t wake us up for anything less. I’m qualified for both, thank God.’

The two men raced to Gunnison Street, for there were no cabs abroad, and under any circumstances a cab-fare means two days’ good firing for such as are perishing with cold. Lascar Loo’s mother had gone to bed, and the door was naturally on the latch. They found considerably more than they had expected in Badalia’s room, and the Church of Rome acquitted itself nobly with bandages, while the Church of England could only pray to be delivered from the sin of envy. The Order of Little Ease, recognising that the soul is in most cases accessible through the body, take their measures and train their men accordingly.

‘She’ll do now,’ said Brother Victor, in a whisper. ‘It’s internal bleeding, I fear, and a certain amount of injury to the brain. She has a husband, of course?’

‘They all have, more’s the pity.’

‘Yes, there’s a domesticity about these injuries that shows their origin.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s a perfectly hopeless business, you understand. Twelve hours at the most.’

Badalia’s right hand began to beat on the counterpane, palm down.

‘I think you are wrong,’ said the Church of England ‘She is going.’

‘No, that’s not the picking at the counterpane,’ said the Church of Rome. ‘She wants to say something; you know her better than L’

The curate bent very low.

‘Send for Miss Eva,’ said Badalia, with a cough.

‘In the morning. She will come in the morning,’ said the curate, and Badalia was content. Only the Church of Rome, who knew something of the human heart, knitted his brows and said nothing. After all, the law of his Order was plain. His duty was to watch till the dawn while the moon went down.

It was a little before her sinking that the Rev. Eustace Hanna said, ‘Hadn’t we better send for Sister Eva? She seems to be going fast.’

Brother Victor made no answer, but as early as decency admitted there came one to the door of the house of the Little Sisters of the Red Diamond and demanded Sister Eva, that she might soothe the pain of Badalia Herodsfoot. That man, saying very little, led her to Gunnison Street, No. 17, and into the room where Badalia lay. Then he stood on the landing, and bit the flesh of his fingers in agony, because he was a priest trained to know, and knew how the hearts of men and women beat back at the rebound, so that Love is born out of horror, and passion declares itself when the soul is quivering with pain.

Badalia, wise to the last, husbanded her strength till the coming of Sister Eva. It is generally maintained by the Little Sisters of the Red Diamond that she died in delirium, but since one Sister at least took a half of her dying advice, this seems uncharitable.

She tried to turn feebly on the bed, and the poor broken human machinery protested according to its nature.

Sister Eva started forward, thinking that she heard the dread forerunner of the death-rattle. Badalia lay still conscious, and spoke with startling distinctness, the irrepressible irreverence of the street-hawker, the girl who had danced on the winkle-barrow, twinkling in her one available eye.

‘Sounds jest like Mrs. Jessel, don’t it? Before she’s ‘ad ‘er lunch an’ ‘as been talkin’ all the mornin’ to her classes.’

Neither Sister Eva nor the curate said anything. Brother Victor stood without the door, and the breath came harshly between his teeth, for he was in pain.

‘Put a cloth over my ‘ead,’ said Badalia. ‘I’ve got it good, an’ I don’t want Miss Eva to see. I ain’t pretty this time.’

‘Who was it?’ said the curate.

‘Man from outside. Never seed ‘im no more’n Adam. Drunk, I s’pose. S’elp me Gawd that’s truth! Is Miss Eva ‘ere? I can’t see under the towel. I’ve got it good, Miss Eva. Excuse my not shakin’ ‘ands with you, but I’m not strong, an’ it’s fourpence for Mrs. Imeny’s beef-tea, an’ wot you can give ‘er for baby-linning. Allus ‘avin’ kids, these people. I ‘adn’t oughter talk, for my ‘usband ‘e never come a-nigh me these two years, or I’d a-bin as bad as the rest; but ‘e never come a- nigh me...A man come and ‘it me over the ‘ead, an’ ‘e kicked me, Miss Eva; so it was just the same’s if I had ha’ had a ‘usband, ain’t it? The book’s in the drawer, Mister ‘Anna, an’ it’s all right, an’ I never guv up a copper o’ the trust money — not a copper. You look under the chist o’ drawers — all wot isn’t spent this week is there... An’, Miss Eva, don’t you wear that gray bonnick no more. I kep’ you from the diptheery, an’ — an’ I didn’t want to keep you so, but the curick said it ‘ad to be done. I’d a sooner ha’ took up with ‘im than any one, only Tom ‘e come, an’ then — you see, Miss Eva, Tom ‘e never come a — nigh me for two years, nor I ‘aven’t seen ‘im yet. S’elp me — , I ‘aven’t. Do you ‘ear? But you two go along, and make a match of it. I’ve wished otherways often, but o’ course it was not for the likes o’ me. If Tom ‘ad come back, which ‘e never did, I’d ha’ been like the rest — sixpence for beef-tea for the baby, an’ a shilling for layin’ out the baby. You’ve seen it in the books, Mister ‘Anna. That’s what it is; an’ o’ course, you couldn’t never ‘ave nothing to do with me. But a woman she wishes as she looks, an’ never you ‘ave no doubt about ‘im, Miss Eva. I’ve seen it in ‘is face time an’ agin — time an’ agin...Make it a four pound ten funeral — with a pall.’

It was a seven pound fifteen shilling funeral, and all Gunnison Street turned out to do it honour. All but two; for Lascar Loo’s mother saw that a Power had departed, and that her road lay clear to the custards. Therefore, when the carriages rattled off, the cat on the doorstep heard the wail of the dying prostitute who could not die —

‘Oh, mother, mother, won’t you even let me lick the spoon!’

JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE

Gloriana! The Don may attack us

Whenever his stomach be fain;

He must reach us before he can rack us...

And where are the galleons of Spain?

— DOBSON.

ONE of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large contempt for all other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors; and knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or later, its international differences end in the common people, who have no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their new dignity. The consequences may or may not be war; but the chances do not favour peace.

One advantage in living in a civilised land which is really governed lies in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and Emperors of the Continent are closely related by blood or marriage; are, in fact, one large family. A wise head among them knows that what appears to be a studied insult may be no more than some man’s indigestion or woman’s indisposition, to be treated as such, and explained by quiet talk. Again, a popular demonstration, headed by King and Court, may mean nothing more than that so-and-so’s people are out of hand for the minute. When a horse falls to kicking in a hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not dismount, but puts his open hand behind him, and the others draw aside. It is so with the rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own and their people’s bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things; and few among their people guess how much they owe of mere life and money to what the slang of the minute calls ‘puppets’ and ‘luxuries.’

Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping- boy of all the world, and behaved, as every one said, most scandalously. But it is not generally known that that Power fought a pitched battle with England and won a glorious victory. The trouble began with the people. Their own misfortunes had been many, and for private rage it is always refreshing to find a vent in public swearing. Their national vanity had been deeply injured, and they thought of their ancient glories and the days when their fleets had first rounded the Cape of Storms, and their own newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to extravagances. It was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was checking their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that their ruler was in league with England, so they cried with great heat that they would forthwith become a Republic and colonially expand themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the people threw stones at the English Consuls and spat at English ladies, and cut off drunken sailors of Our fleet in their ports and hammered them with oars, and made things very unpleasant for tourists at their customs, and threatened awful deaths to the consumptive invalids of Madeira, while the junior officers of the army drank fruit-extracts and entered into most blood-curdling conspiracies against their monarch; all with the object of being a Republic. Now the history of the South American Republics shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and the propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments can be arranged much more economically and with less effect on the death-rate by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the Power as represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It was the kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider explained that he could not check it. So the people enjoyed all the glory of war with none of the risks, and the tourists who were stoned in their travels returned stolidly to England and told the Times that the police arrangements of foreign towns were defective.

This, then, was the state of affairs north the Line. South it was more strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England, unable to go back because of the pressure of adventurous children behind her, and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not come to heel, but offering to buy out her rival; and the other Power, lacking men or money, stiff in the conviction that three hundred years of slave- holding and intermingling with the nearest natives gave an inalienable right to hold slaves and issue half-castes to all eternity. They had built no roads. Their towns were rotting under their hands; they had no trade worth the freight of a crazy steamer; and their sovereignty ran almost one musket-shot inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons they raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.

It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat, of some 270 tons displacement, designed for the defence of rivers, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for the future as Bai- Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of water or less; carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the ship; and, on account of its persistent rolling, was, to live in, three degrees worse than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, ‘Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!’ The topmast was a stick about as thick as a clothesprop; but the flat-iron was Judson’s first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on the Anson or the Howe. He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and lovingly to the Cape (the story of the topmast came with him), and he was so absurdly in love with his wallowing wash-tub when he reported himself, that the Admiral of the station thought it would be a pity to kill a new man on her, and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied rule.