Plain Tales from the Hills

  THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.

  Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel. But, once in a way, there will come a day When the colt must be taught to feel The lash that falls, and the curb that galls, and the sting of the rowelled steel.

  Life's Handicap.

  This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud ofit. Making a Tract is a Feat.

  Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--leastof all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's throats.The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGogginwas the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever--brilliantlyclever--but his cleverness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping tothe study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by aman called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a ProfessorClifford. [You will find these books in the Library.] They deal withpeople's insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs.There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should havesmacked him. They fermented in his head, and he came out to India witha rarefied religion over and above his work. It was not much of acreed. It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God andno hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the good ofHumanity.

  One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful thangiving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said;but I suspect he had misread his primers.

  I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, wherethere is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all shut inby the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higherthan himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything.But in this country, where you really see humanity--raw, brown, nakedhumanity--with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only theused-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away,and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not longenough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at thehead of affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant,the Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above theCommissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of theSecretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empressbe not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for her to beresponsible to--the entire system of Our administration must be wrong.Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They arestalled up a good deal and get intellectually "beany." When you take agross, "beany" horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bittill you can't see the horns. But the bit is there just the same. Men donot get "beany" in India. The climate and the work are against playingbricks with words.

  If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endingsin "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers onboth sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain cameout in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had nosouls too, and to help him to eliminate his Creator. As a good many mentold him, HE undoubtedly had no soul, because he was so young, but itdid not follow that his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whetherthere was another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers inthis. "But that is not the point--that is not the point!" Aurelian usedto say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go toany particular place he might believe in. They christened him the"Blastoderm"--he said he came from a family of that name somewhere, inthe pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter, strove to choke himdumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being anoffence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working onthe Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, ifhe had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to theSecretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--allhead, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested inMcGoggin's soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's.His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead ofdevastating the Club with "isms."

  He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order withouttrying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men tooresponsible and left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride anold horse in a halter; but never a colt. McGoggin took more troubleover his cases than any of the men of his year. He may have fancied thatthirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee cases--both sides perjured to thegullet--advanced the cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much,and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured awayon his ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn himthat he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the rupeein June without suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually "beany"and proud of himself and his powers, and he would take no hint. Heworked nine hours a day steadily.

  "Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you areover-engined for your beam." McGoggin was a little chap.

  One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant toembellish a Tract.

  It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in thedead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue cloudswould let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away, there was afaint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river.One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, and said,naturally enough:--"Thank God!"

  Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure youit's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomenaof the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to aBeing who never did exist--who is only a figment--"

  "Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and throwme over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments." The Blastodermreached out to the table, took up one paper, and jumped as if somethinghad stung him. Then he handed the paper over.

  "As I was saying," he went on slowly and with an effort--"due toperfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"

  "Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser."

  The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and thekites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains. Wewere all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and wasfighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--

  "Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--redoak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone."

  "Blastoderm's drunk," said one man. But the Blastoderm was not drunk. Helooked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with his handsin the half light as the clouds closed overhead. Then--with a scream:--

  "What is it?--Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"

  But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and--just as the lightning shottwo tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the rain fellin quivering sheets--the Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing andchamping like a hard-held horse, and his eyes were full of terror.

  The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard the story. "It'saphasia," he said. "Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash would come."We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to his quarters,and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to make him sleep.

  Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like allthe arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only oncebefore--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a case.I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this suddendumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm himself might have said,due to "perfectly natural causes."

  "He'll have to take leave after this," said the Doctor. "He won't befit for work for another three months. No; it isn't insanity or anythinglike it. It's only complete loss of control over the speech and memory.I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though."


  Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again. The firstquestion he asked was: "What was it?" The Doctor enlightened him. "But Ican't understand it!" said the Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane; but I can'tbe sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can I?"

  "Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it," saidthe Doctor.

  "But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm. "It was my OWNmind and memory."

  "I can't help it," said the Doctor; "there are a good many things youcan't understand; and, by the time you have put in my length of service,you'll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in this world."

  The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could not understand it. He wentinto the Hills in fear and trembling, wondering whether he would bepermitted to reach the end of any sentence he began.

  This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. The legitimateexplanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to satisfyhim. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milkylips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly afraid.

  So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come acrossAurelian McGoggin laying down the law on things Human--he doesn't seemto know as much as he used to about things Divine--put your forefingeron your lip for a moment, and see what happens.

  Don't blame me if he throws a glass at your head!