Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (728 page)

‘I can’t bring in Aunt Maria any way,’ the clerk broke out at last. ‘Listen here, every one! She has heart-disease. She dies just as she’s lifted the dropsical Lattimer to change his sheets. She says: “Sorry, Willy! I’d make a dam’ pore ‘ospital nurse!”; Then she sits down and croaks. Now I call that good! I’ve a great mind to take it round to the War-side as an indirect casualty and get a breath of fresh air.’

‘Then you’ll be hauled over the coals,’ a neighbour suggested.

‘I’m used to that, too,’ the clerk sniggered.

‘Are you?’ said Death, stepping forward suddenly from behind a high map-stand. ‘Who are you?’ The clerk cowered in his skeleton jacket.

‘I’m not on the Regular Establishment, Sir,’ he stammered. ‘I’m a- Volunteer. I-I wanted to see how people behaved when they were in trouble.’

‘Did you? Well, take the late Mr. Wilbraham Lattimer’s and Miss Maria Lattimer’s papers to the War-side General Reference Office. When they have been passed upon, tell the Attendance Clerk that you are to serve as probationer in-let’s see-in the Domestic Induced Casualty Side-7 G.S.’

The clerk collected himself a little and spoke through dry lips.

‘But-but I’m-I slipped in from the Lower Establishment, Sir,’ he breathed.

There was no need to explain. He shook from head to foot as with the palsy; and under all Heaven none tremble save those who come from that class which ‘also believe and tremble.’

‘Do you tell Me this officially, or as one created being to another?’ Death asked after a pause.

‘Oh, non-officially, Sir. Strictly non-officially, so long as you know all about it.’

His awe-stricken fellow-workers could not restrain a smile at Death having to be told about anything. Even Death bit his lips.

‘I don’t think you will find the War-side will raise any objection,’ said he. ‘By the way, they don’t wear that uniform over there.’

Almost before Death ceased speaking, it was ripped off and flung on the floor, and that which had been a sober clerk of Normal Civil Death stood up an unmistakable, curly-haired, bat-winged, faun-eared Imp of the Pit. But where his wings joined his shoulders there was a patch of delicate dove-coloured feathering that gave promise to spread all up the pinion. St. Peter saw it and smiled, for it was a known sign of grace.

‘Thank Goodness!’ the ex-clerk gasped as he snatched up the Lattimer records and sheered sideways through the skylight.

‘Amen!’ said Death and St. Peter together, and walked through the door.

‘Weren’t you hinting something to me a little while ago about my lax methods?’ St. Peter demanded, innocently.

‘Well, if one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,’ Death retorted. ‘Now, I shall have to pitch in a stiff demi- official asking how that young fiend came to be taken on in the N.C.D. without examination. And I must do it before the N.C.D. complain that I’ve been interfering with their departmental transfers. Aren’t they human? If you want to go back to The Gate I think our shortest way will be through here and across the War-Sheds.’

They carne out of a side-door into Heaven’s full light. A phalanx of Shining Ones swung across a great square singing

‘To Him Who made the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion.

To Him Who drives the cleansing tide twice a day round Ocean-

Let His Name be magnified in all poor folks’ devotion!’

Death halted their leader, and asked a question.

‘We’re Volunteer Aid Serving Powers,’ the Seraph explained, ‘reporting for duty in the Domestic Induced Casualty Department-told off to help relatives, where we can.’

The shift trooped on-such an array of Powers, Honours, Glories, Toils, Patiences, Services, Faiths and Loves as no man may conceive even by favour of dreams. Death and St. Peter followed them into a D.I.C.D. Shed on the English side where, for the moment, work had slackened. Suddenly a name flashed on the telephone-indicator. ‘Mrs. Arthur Bedott, 317, Portsmouth Avenue, Brondesbury. Husband badly wounded. One child.’ Her special weakness was appended.

A Seraph on the raised dais that overlooked the Volunteer Aids waiting at the entrance, nodded and crooked a finger. One of the new shift-a temporary Acting Glory-hurled himself from his place and vanished earthward.

‘You may take it,’ Death whispered to St. Peter, ‘there will be a sustaining epic built up round Private Bedott’s wound for his wife and Baby Bedott to cling to. And here-’they heard wings that flapped wearily-’here, I suspect, comes one of our failures.’

A Seraph entered and dropped, panting, on a form. His plumage was ragged, his sword splintered to the hilt; and his face still worked with the passions of the world he had left, as his soiled vesture reeked of alcohol.

‘Defeat,’ he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name. ‘Utter defeat! Look!’ He held up the stump of his sword. ‘I broke this on her gin-bottle.’

‘So? We try again,’ said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned, and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from the N.C.D.

‘Go you!’ said the Seraph. ‘We must deal with a fool according to her folly. Have you pride enough?’

There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.

St. Peter nodded high approval. ‘I see!’ he said. ‘He’ll work on her pride to steady her. By all means-”if by all means,” as my good Paul used to say. Only it ought to read “by any manner of possible means.” Excellent!’

‘It’s difficult, though,’ a soft-eyed Patience whispered. ‘I fail again and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.’

Once more the record flashed-a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.

‘Oh, me!’ she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.

‘But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,’ said St. Peter.

‘Something wrong with the installation-as usual. Waves are always jamming here,’ the Seraph replied.

‘So it seems,’ said St. Peter as a wireless cut in with the muffled note of some one singing (sorely out of tune), to an accompaniment of desultory poppings:

‘Unless you can love as the Angels love With the breadth of Heaven be — ’

‘Twixt!’ It broke off. The record showed a name. The waiting Seraphs stiffened to attention with a click of tense quills.

‘As you were!’ said the Chief Seraph. ‘He’s met her.’

‘Who is she?’ said St. Peter.

‘His mother. You never get over your weakness for romance,’ Death answered, and a covert smile spread through the Office.

‘Thank Heaven, I don’t. But I really ought to be going — ’

‘Wait one minute. Here’s trouble coming through, I think,’ Death interposed.

A recorder had sparked furiously in a broken run of S.O.S.’s that allowed no time for inquiry.

‘Name! Name!’ an impatient young Faith panted at last. ‘It can’t be blotted out.’ No name came up. Only the reiterated appeal.

‘False alarm!’ said a hard-featured Toil, well used to mankind. ‘Some fool has found out that he owns a soul. ‘Wants work. I’d cure him!...’

‘Hush!’ said a Love in Armour, stamping his mailed foot. The office listened.

‘‘Bad case?’ Death demanded at last.

‘Rank bad, Sir. They are holding back the name,’ said the Chief Seraph. The S.O.S. signals grew more desperate, and then ceased with an emphatic thump. The Love in Armour winced.

‘Firing-party,’ he whispered to St. Peter. ‘‘Can’t mistake that noise!’

‘What is it?’ St. Peter cried nervously.

‘Deserter; spy; murderer,’ was the Chief Seraph’s weighed answer. ‘It’s out of my department-now. No-hold the line! The name’s up at last.’

It showed for an instant, broken and faint as sparks on charred wadding, but in that instant a dozen pens had it written. St. Peter with never a word gathered his robes about him and bundled through the door, headlong for The Gate.

‘No hurry,’ said Death at his elbow. ‘With the present rush your man won’t come up for ever so long.’

‘‘Never can be sure these days. Anyhow, the Lower Establishment will be after him like sharks. He’s the very type they’d want for propaganda. Deserter-traitor-murderer. Out of my way, please, babies!’

A group of children round a red-headed man who was telling them stories, scattered laughing. The man turned to St. Peter.

‘Deserter, traitor, murderer,’ he repeated. ‘Can I be of service?’

‘You can!’ St. Peter gasped. ‘Double on ahead to The Gate and tell them to hold up all expulsions till I come. Then,’ he shouted as the man sped off at a long hound-like trot, ‘go and picket the outskirts of the Convoys. Don’t let any one break away on any account. Quick!’

But Death was right. They need not have hurried. The crowd at The Gate was far beyond the capacities of the Examining Board even though, as St. Peter’s Deputy informed him, it had been enlarged twice in his absence.

‘We’re doing our best,’ the Seraph explained, ‘but delay is inevitable, Sir. The Lower Establishment are taking advantage of it, as usual, at the tail of the Convoys. I’ve doubled all pickets there, and I’m sending more. Here’s the extra list, Sir-Arc J., Bradlaugh C., Bunyan J., Calvin J. Iscariot J. reported to me just now, as under your orders, and took ‘em with him. Also Shakespeare W. and — ’

‘Never mind the rest,’ said St. Peter. I I’m going there myself. Meantime, carry on with the passes-don’t fiddle over ‘em-and give me a blank or two.’ He caught up a thick block of Free Passes, nodded to a group in khaki at a passport table, initialled their Commanding Officer’s personal pass as for ‘Officer and Party,’ and left the numbers to be filled in by a quite competent-looking Quarter-master- Sergeant. Then, Death beside him, he breasted his way out of The Gate against the incoming multitude of all races, tongues, and creeds that stretched far across the plain.

An old lady, firmly clutching a mottle-nosed, middle-aged Major by the belt, pushed across a procession of keen-faced poilus, and blocked his path, her captive held in that terrible mother-grip no Power has yet been able to unlock.

‘I found him! I’ve got him! Pass him !’ she ordered.

St. Peter’s jaw fell. Death politely looked elsewhere.

‘There are a few formalities,’ the Saint began.

‘With Jerry in this state? Nonsense! How like a man! My boy never gave me a moment’s anxiety in — ’

‘Don’t, dear-don’t!’ The Major looked almost as uncomfortable as St. Peter.

‘Well, nothing compared with what he would give me if he weren’t passed.’

‘Didn’t I hear you singing just now?’ Death asked, seeing that his companion needed a breathing-space.

‘Of course you did,’ the Mother intervened. ‘He sings beautifully. And that’s another reason! You’re bass, aren’t you now, darling?’

St. Peter glanced at the agonised Major and hastily initialled him a pass. Without a word of thanks the Mother hauled him away.

‘Now, under what conceivable Ruling do you justify that?’ said Death.

‘I.W.-the Importunate Widow. It’s scandalous!’ St. Peter groaned. Then his face darkened as he looked across the great plain beyond The Gate. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘The Lower Establishment is out in full force to-night. I hope our pickets are strong enough — ’

The crowd here had thinned to a disorderly queue flanked on both sides by a multitude of busy, discreet emissaries from the Lower Establishment who continually edged in to do business with them, only to be edged off again by a line of watchful pickets. Thanks to the khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have seen on earth any evening of the old days outside the refreshment-room by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started. St. Peter’s appearance was greeted by the usual outburst of cock-crowing from the Lower Establishment.

‘Dirty work at the cross-roads,’ said Death dryly.

‘I deserve it!’ St. Peter grunted, ‘but think what it must mean for Judas.’

He shouldered into the thick of the confusion where the pickets coaxed, threatened, implored, and in extreme cases bodily shoved the wearied men and women past the voluble and insinuating spirits who strove to draw them aside.

A Shropshire Yeoman had just accepted, together with a forged pass, the assurance of a genial runner of the Lower Establishment that Heaven lay round the corner, and was being stealthily steered thither, when a large hand jerked him back, another took the runner in the chest, and some one thundered: ‘Get out, you crimp!’ The situation was then vividly explained to the soldier in the language of the barrack- room.