Rudyard Kipling

“ Here the car, without warning, sobbed and stopped. One does not expect the make-and-break of the magneto—that tiny two-inch spring of finest steel—to fracture; and by the time we had found the trouble, night shut down on us. A rounded pile of woods ahead took one sudden star to its forehead and faded out; the way-waste melted into the darker velvet of the hedge; another star reflected itself in the glassy black of the bitumened road; and a weak moon struggled up out of a mist-patch from a valley. Our lights painted the grass unearthly greens, and the tree-boles bone-white. ”

“ Out of compliment to Chisto, Apis chose as his objective (every bull varies in this respect) the inner edge of the cloak—that nearest to the man’s body. This allows but a few millimetres clearance in charging. But Apis trusted himself as Chisto trusted him, and, this time, he conformed to the man, with inimitable judgment and temper. He allowed himself to be played into the shadow or the sun, as the delighted audience demanded. ”

“ The Magdalene was drawn in palest, almost transparent, grisaille, against a raging, swaying background of woman-faced devils, each broke to and by her special sin, and each, one could see, frenziedly straining against the Power that compelled her.
“I’ve never seen the like of this grey shadow-work,” said the Abbot. “How came you by it?”
“Non nobis! It came to me,” said John, not knowing he was a generation or so ahead of his time in the use of that medium.
“Why is she so pale?” the Friar demanded.
“Evil has all come out of her—she’d take any colour [Pg 326] now.” ”

“ The Abbot laughed.
“And see again! The devil that came out of the dumb man. What use is snout or bill to him? He’d be faceless as a leper. Above all—God send I live to do it!—the devils that entered the Gadarene swine. They’d be—they’d be—I know not yet what they’d be, but they’d be surpassing devils. I’d have ’em diverse as the Saints themselves. But now, they’re all one pattern, for wall, window, or picture-work.”
“Go on, John. You’re deeper in this mystery than I.”
“Heaven forbid! But I say there’s respect due to devils, damned tho’ they be.” ”

“ While he was being barbered, Brother Thomas (St. Illod’s meek but deadly persistent Infirmarian) gave him a list of drugs that he was to bring back from Spain by hook, crook, or lawful purchase. Here they were surprised by the lame, dark Abbot Stephen, in his fur-lined night-boots. Not that Stephen de Sautré was any spy; but as a young man he had shared an unlucky Crusade, which had ended, after a battle at Mansura, in two years’ captivity among the Saracens at Cairo where men learn to walk softly. ”

“ Pessimists, no more than poets, love each other, and even when they work together it is one thing to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced junior, even though the latter’s college career may have included more exhibitions—nay, even pot-huntings—than one’s own. The Reverend John did his best to pour water on the flames. ”

“ Yon Philosopher in the hairy cloak bids me wait only a thousand years, till ye’ve sorted yourselves more to the likeness of mankind.
The Priest of the Mountain Men. There are none beside ourselves to lead the world!
Gow. That is common knowledge. I supplicate you to allow us the head of the Pass, that we may better reach the Queen’s host yonder. Ye will not? Why?
The Priest. Because it is our will. There is none other law for all the earth. ”

“ If I build not an Altar, the Woman who walks by my side will be a reproach to me by day and a penance by night, and peace will depart from the earth.” Jibrail answered, in the voice of the Peacock: “For the sake of Peace on earth build her also an Altar.” So they built an Altar with a Mirror in all respects conformable to the Altar which Adam had made, and Adam made proclamation from the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth that there were now two Gods upon earth—the one Man, and the other Woman. ”

“ The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one’s grave next morning. ”

“ It is in their blood. The Spaniards make a cult of bull-fighting. Our little devils down here bait bulls as automatically as the English child kicks or throws balls. This calf would chase them with his eyes open, like a cow when she hunts a man. They would take refuge behind our tractors and wine-carts in the centre of the yard: he would chase them in and out as a dog hunts rats. More than that, he would study their psychology, his eyes in their eyes. ”

“ “You have your handwork and your art and—John—remember there’s no jealousy in the grave.” ”

“ The Clergyman was bristling. “Kamerad!” the wise Sergeant-Major went on, both hands up. “Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as an average plan of life. What I’ve seen at the front makes me sure of it.”
Brother Burges came out of his muse. “There ought to be a dozen—twenty—other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn’t the young men join? They practise what we’re always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what we can. What’s the use of old Masons if they can’t give a little help along their own lines?” ”

“ The pickets dropped to the rear, relaxed, and compared notes.
“What always impresses me most,” said Death to St. Peter, “is the sheeplike simplicity of the intellectual mind.” He had been watching one of the pickets apparently overwhelmed by the arguments of an advanced atheist who—so hot in his argument that he was deaf to the offers of the Lower Establishment to make him a god—had stalked, talking hard—while the picket always gave ground before him—straight past the Broad Road. ”

“ There were, however, one or two leading questions about Shakespeare. A boy’s hand shot up from a back bench.
“In answering Number Seven—reasons for Shakespeare’s dramatic supremacy”—he said, “are we to take it Shakespeare did write the plays he is supposed to have written, sir?”
The Examiner hesitated an instant. “It is generally assumed that he did.” But there was no reproof in his words. Beetle began to sit down slowly.
Another hand and another voice: “Have we got to say we believe he did, sir? Even if we do not?”
“You are not called upon to state your beliefs. ”

“ The pickets fell in, guardians no longer but friends [Pg 302] and companions all down the line. There was a little burst of cheering and the whole Convoy strode away towards the not so distant Gate.
The Saint and Death stayed behind to rest awhile. It was a heavenly evening. They could hear the whistle of the low-flighting Cherubim, clear and sharp, under the diviner note of some released Seraph’s wings, where, his errand accomplished, he plunged three or four stars deep into the cool Baths of Hercules; the steady dynamo-like hum of the nearer planets on their axes ”

“ Then said Jibrail: “Lie still and rejoice, for out of thee He will create that than which (there) is no handsomer thing—to wit a Successor and a Wearer of the Diadem over thee through the ages.” Earth said: “I adjure thee to abstain from thy purpose, lest evil and condemnation of that person who is created out of me should later overtake him, and the Abiding (sorrow) be loosed upon my head. I have no power to resist the Will of the Most High, but I take refuge with Allah from thee.” ”

“ Now for your own tricks, John,” the tactful Abbot broke in. “You shall show the doctors your Magdalene and your Gadarene Swine and the devils.”
“Devils? Devils? I have produced devils by means of drugs; and have abolished them by the same means. Whether devils be external to mankind or immanent, I have not yet pronounced.” Roger of Salerno was still angry.
“Ye dare not,” snapped the Friar from Oxford. “Mother Church makes Her own devils.”
“Not wholly! Our John has come back from Spain with brand-new ones.” Abbot Stephen took the vellum handed to him, and laid it tenderly on the table. ”

“ We heard the rings of the hangings that drape the passage from Lodge to Banquet Room click along their poles, and what sound there had been, of feet and voices, was shut off.
Strangwick, retching impotently, complained of the frozen dead who creak in the frost.
“He’s playing up still,” Keede whispered. “That’s not his real trouble—any more than ’twas last time.”
“But surely,” I replied, “men get those things on the brain pretty badly. ’Remember in October——”
“This chap hasn’t, though. I wonder what’s really helling him. What are you thinking of?” said Keede peremptorily. ”

“ For the bull-ring. When your charming tourists leave us, we institute our little amusements there. Not a real bull-fight, you understand, but young bulls with padded horns, and our boys from hereabouts and in the city, go to play with them. Naturally, before we send them we try them in our yards at home. So we brought up Apis from his pastures. He knew at once that he was among the friends of his youth—he almost shook hands with them—and he submitted like an angel to padding his horns. He investigated the carts and tractors in the yards, to choose his lines of defence and attack. ”

“ Yet if I—if we doctors—so much as raise the skin of one of them to look at God’s fabric beneath, what says Mother Church? ‘Sacrilege! Stick to your pigs and dogs, or you burn!’”
[Pg 324]
“And not Mother Church only!” the Friar chimed in. “Every way we are barred—barred by the words of some man, dead a thousand years, which are held final. Who is any son of Adam that his one say-so should close a door towards truth? ”

“ These came in like sycophantic pups at walk, and when the Reverend John climbed the Pebble Ridge, more than a dozen of them were at his heels, with never a towel among them. One could only bathe off the Ridge with a House Master, but by custom, a dozen details above a certain age, no matter whence recruited, made a “House” for bathing, if any kindly Master chose so to regard them. Beetle led the low, growing reminder: “House! House, sir? We’ve got a House now, Padre.” ”

“ An English-speaking policeman inspected my licence on a bridge, while the cattle blundered and blew round the car. A native in plain clothes lolled out an enormous mulberry-coloured tongue, with which he licked a numbered label, precisely like one of those on the behinds of the bullocks, and made to dab it on my wind-screen. I protested. “But it will save you trouble,” he said. “You’re liable to be held up for your licence from now on. This is your protection. Everybody does it.” ”

“ The Mole said: “Their God is of small stature, pinkish in colour, unclothed, fat and smiling. They lay it upon the grass and, filling its hands with flowers, worship it and desire no greater comfort.” ”

“ In the eyes of Mother Church we have seen more than is permitted to man.”
“But it was Life—created and rejoicing,” said Thomas.
“To look into Hell as we shall be judged—as we shall be proved—to have looked, is for priests only.”
“Or green-sick virgins on the road to sainthood who, for cause any mid-wife could give you——”
The Abbot’s half-lifted hand checked Roger of Salerno’s outpouring.
“Nor may even priests see more in Hell than Church knows to be there. John, there is respect due to Church as well as to Devils.”
“My trade’s the outside of things,” said John quietly. “I have my patterns.” ”

“ It was the Reverend John who stopped himself, just in time, from breaking forth. He recalled that, some days ago, he had heard Stalky on the stairs of Number Five, hurling the boots of many fags at Howell’s door and bidding the “impassioned Diderot” within “break forth” at his peril.
“Odd,” said he, gravely, when his pipe drew again. “Where did Diderot say that?”
“I’ve forgotten for the moment. Taffy told me he’d picked it up in the course of holiday reading.”
“Possibly. One never knows what heifers the young are ploughing with. Oh! How did Beetle do?” ”

“ Roger of Salerno hunched head and shoulders like an [Pg 323] angry cat. “Always that!” he said, and John snatched down the twist of the thin lips.
“Never at rest, John,” the Abbot smiled at the artist. “You should break off every two hours for prayers, as we do. St. Benedict was no fool. Two hours is all that a man can carry the edge of his eye or hand.”
“For copyists—yes. Brother Martin is not sure after one hour. But when a man’s work takes him, he must go on till it lets him go.”
“Yes, that is the Demon of Socrates,” the Friar from Oxford rumbled above his cup. ”