TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.
By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun, Fell the Stone To the Tarn where the daylight is lost; So She fell from the light of the Sun, And alone.
Now the fall was ordained from the first, With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn, But the Stone Knows only Her life is accursed, As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn, And alone.
Oh, Thou who has builded the world Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun! Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn! Judge Thou The Sin of the Stone that was hurled By the Goat from the light of the Sun, As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn, Even now--even now--even now!
From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin.
"Say, is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me? Oh be it night--be it--"
Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the Seraiwhere the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from CentralAsia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night was dark,he could not rise again till I helped him. That was the beginning of myacquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. When a loafer, and drunk, singsThe Song of the Bower, he must be worth cultivating. He got off thecamel's back and said, rather thickly:--"I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but adip in Loggerhead will put me right again; and I say, have you spoken toSymonds about the mare's knees?"
Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close toMesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, andCharley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks. It wasstrange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the horsesand camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the man seemed to rememberhimself and sober down at the same time. He leaned against the camel andpointed to a corner of the Serai where a lamp was burning:--
"I live there," said he, "and I should be extremely obliged if you wouldbe good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for I am more thanusually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight. But not in respect to myhead. 'My brain cries out against'--how does it go? But my head rides onthe--rolls on the dung-hill I should have said, and controls the qualm."
I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed onthe edge of the verandah in front of the line of native quarters.
"Thanks--a thousand thanks! O Moon and little, little Stars! To thinkthat a man should so shamelessly.... Infamous liquor, too. Ovid in exiledrank no worse. Better. It was frozen. Alas! I had no ice. Good-night. Iwould introduce you to my wife were I sober--or she civilized."
A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began callingthe man names; so I went away. He was the most interesting loafer thatI had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later on, he becamea friend of mine. He was a tall, well-built, fair man fearfully shakenwith drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the thirty-five which, hesaid, was his real age. When a man begins to sink in India, and is notsent Home by his friends as soon as may be, he falls very low from arespectable point of view. By the time that he changes his creed, as didMcIntosh, he is past redemption.
In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three Sahibs,generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or Mussulman, and who livemore or less as such. But it is not often that you can get to knowthem. As McIntosh himself used to say:--"If I change my religion for mystomach's sake, I do not seek to become a martyr to missionaries, nor amI anxious for notoriety."
At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned me. "Remember this. I amnot an object for charity. I require neither your money, your food,nor your cast-off raiment. I am that rare animal, a self-supportingdrunkard. If you choose, I will smoke with you, for the tobacco of thebazars does not, I admit, suit my palate; and I will borrow any bookswhich you may not specially value. It is more than likely that I shallsell them for bottles of excessively filthy country-liquors. In return,you shall share such hospitality as my house affords. Here is a charpoyon which two can sit, and it is possible that there may, from time totime, be food in that platter. Drink, unfortunately, you will find onthe premises at any hour: and thus I make you welcome to all my poorestablishments."
I was admitted to the McIntosh household--I and my good tobacco. Butnothing else. Unluckily, one cannot visit a loafer in the Serai byday. Friends buying horses would not understand it. Consequently, Iwas obliged to see McIntosh after dark. He laughed at this, and saidsimply:--"You are perfectly right. When I enjoyed a position in society,rather higher than yours, I should have done exactly the same thing,Good Heavens! I was once"--he spoke as though he had fallen from theCommand of a Regiment--"an Oxford Man!" This accounted for the referenceto Charley Symonds' stable.
"You," said McIntosh, slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, tooutward appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for strongdrinks. On the whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of the two. YetI am not certain. You are--forgive my saying so even while I am smokingyour excellent tobacco--painfully ignorant of many things."
We were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he ownedno chairs, watching the horses being watered for the night, while thenative woman was preparing dinner. I did not like being patronized by aloafer, but I was his guest for the time being, though he owned only onevery torn alpaca-coat and a pair of trousers made out of gunny-bags.He took the pipe out of his mouth, and went on judicially:--"All thingsconsidered, I doubt whether you are the luckier. I do not refer toyour extremely limited classical attainments, or your excruciatingquantities, but to your gross ignorance of matters more immediatelyunder your notice. That for instance."--He pointed to a woman cleaninga samovar near the well in the centre of the Serai. She was flicking thewater out of the spout in regular cadenced jerks.
"There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. If you knew why shewas doing her work in that particular fashion, you would know what theSpanish Monk meant when he said--
'I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange-pulp-- In three sips the Aryan frustrate, While he drains his at one gulp.--'
and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes. However, Mrs.McIntosh has prepared dinner. Let us come and eat after the fashion ofthe people of the country--of whom, by the way, you know nothing."
The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us. This was wrong.The wife should always wait until the husband has eaten. McIntoshJellaludin apologized, saying:--
"It is an English prejudice which I have not been able to overcome; andshe loves me. Why, I have never been able to understand. I fore-gatheredwith her at Jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with meever since. I believe her to be moral, and know her to be skilled incookery."
He patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly. She wasnot pretty to look at.
McIntosh never told me what position he had held before his fall. Hewas, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was rathermore of the first than the second. He used to get drunk about once aweek for two days. On those occasions the native woman tended himwhile he raved in all tongues except his own. One day, indeed, he beganreciting Atalanta in Calydon, and went through it to the end, beatingtime to the swing of the verse with a bedstead-leg. But he did most ofhis ravings in Greek or German. The man's mind was a perfect rag-bagof useless things. Once, when he was beginning to get sober, he toldme that I was the only rational being in the Inferno into which he haddescended--a Virgil in the Shades, he said--and that, in return formy tobacco, he would, before he died, give me the materials of a newInferno that should make me greater than Dante. Then he fell asleep on ahorse-blanket and woke up quite calm.
"Man," said he, "when you have reached the uttermost depths ofdegradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to youof no consequence. Last night, my soul was among the gods; but I make nodoubt that my bestial body was writhing
down here in the garbage."
"You were abominably drunk if that's what you mean," I said.
"I WAS drunk--filthy drunk. I who am the son of a man with whom you haveno concern--I who was once Fellow of a College whose buttery-hatch youhave not seen. I was loathsomely drunk. But consider how lightly I amtouched. It is nothing to me. Less than nothing; for I do not even feelthe headache which should be my portion. Now, in a higher life, howghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter my repentance! Believeme, my friend with the neglected education, the highest is as thelowest--always supposing each degree extreme."
He turned round on the blanket, put his head between his fists andcontinued:--
"On the Soul which I have lost and on the Conscience which I havekilled, I tell you that I CANNOT feel! I am as the gods, knowing goodand evil, but untouched by either. Is this enviable or is it not?"
When a man has lost the warning of "next morning's head," he must be ina bad state, I answered, looking at McIntosh on the blanket, with hishair over his eyes and his lips blue-white, that I did not think theinsensibility good enough.
"For pity's sake, don't say that! I tell you, it IS good and mostenviable. Think of my consolations!"
"Have you so many, then, McIntosh?"
"Certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which is essentially the weaponof a cultured man, are crude. First, my attainments, my classical andliterary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate drinking--whichreminds me that before my soul went to the Gods last night, I sold thePickering Horace you so kindly lent me. Ditta Mull the Clothesman hasit. It fetched ten annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee--but stillinfinitely superior to yours. Secondly, the abiding affection of Mrs.McIntosh, best of wives. Thirdly, a monument, more enduring than brass,which I have built up in the seven years of my degradation."
He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water. Hewas very shaky and sick.
He referred several times to his "treasure"--some great possession thathe owned--but I held this to be the raving of drink. He was as poor andas proud as he could be. His manner was not pleasant, but he knew enoughabout the natives, among whom seven years of his life had been spent,to make his acquaintance worth having. He used actually to laugh atStrickland as an ignorant man--"ignorant West and East"--he said. Hisboast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts,which may or may not have been true--I did not know enough to check hisstatements--and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of nativelife"--which was a fact. As an Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: hewas always throwing his education about. As a Mahommedan faquir--asMcIntosh Jellaludin--he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smokedseveral pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of thingsworth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when thecold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thinalpaca-coat. He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, andthat he was not going into hospital. He had lived like a beast and hewould die rationally, like a man.
As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia; and on the night of his deathsent over a grubby note asking me to come and help him to die.
The native woman was weeping by the side of the bed. McIntosh, wrappedin a cotton cloth, was too weak to resent a fur coat being thrown overhim. He was very active as far as his mind was concerned, and his eyeswere blazing. When he had abused the Doctor who came with me so foullythat the indignant old fellow left, he cursed me for a few minutes andcalmed down.
Then he told his wife to fetch out "The Book" from a hole in the wall.She brought out a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a petticoat, of oldsheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all numbered and covered with finecramped writing. McIntosh ploughed his hand through the rubbish andstirred it up lovingly.
"This," he said, "is my work--the Book of McIntosh Jellaludin, showingwhat he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and others; being alsoan account of the life and sins and death of Mother Maturin. What MirzaMurad Ali Beg's book is to all other books on native life, will my workbe to Mirza Murad Ali Beg's!"
This, as will be conceded by any one who knows Mirza Ali Beg's book, wasa sweeping statement. The papers did not look specially valuable; butMcIntosh handled them as if they were currency-notes. Then he saidslowly:--"In despite the many weaknesses of your education, you havebeen good to me. I will speak of your tobacco when I reach the Gods. Iowe you much thanks for many kindnesses. But I abominate indebtedness.For this reason I bequeath to you now the monument more enduring thanbrass--my one book--rude and imperfect in parts, but oh, how rare inothers! I wonder if you will understand it. It is a gift more honorablethan... Bah! where is my brain rambling to? You will mutilate ithorribly. You will knock out the gems you call 'Latin quotations,' youPhilistine, and you will butcher the style to carve into your own jerkyjargon; but you cannot destroy the whole of it. I bequeath it to you.Ethel... My brain again!... Mrs. McIntosh, bear witness that I give thesahib all these papers. They would be of no use to you, Heart of myheart; and I lay it upon you," he turned to me here, "that you do notlet my book die in its present form. It is yours unconditionally--thestory of McIntosh Jellaludin, which is NOT the story of McIntoshJellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and of a far greater woman.Listen now! I am neither mad nor drunk! That book will make you famous."
I said, "thank you," as the native woman put the bundle into my arms.
"My only baby!" said McIntosh with a smile. He was sinking fast, buthe continued to talk as long as breath remained. I waited for theend: knowing that, in six cases out of ten the dying man calls for hismother. He turned on his side and said:--
"Say how it came into your possession. No one will believe you, but myname, at least, will live. You will treat it brutally, I know you will.Some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish fools. I was theirservant once. But do your mangling gently--very gently. It is a greatwork, and I have paid for it in seven years' damnation."
His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, and then he began mumblinga prayer of some kind in Greek. The native woman cried very bitterly.Lastly, he rose in bed and said, as loudly as slowly:--"Not guilty, myLord!"
Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he died. The nativewoman ran into the Serai among the horses and screamed and beat herbreasts; for she had loved him.
Perhaps his last sentence in life told what McIntosh had once gonethrough; but, saving the big bundle of old sheets in the cloth, therewas nothing in his room to say who or what he had been.
The papers were in a hopeless muddle.
Strickland helped me to sort them, and he said that the writer waseither an extreme liar or a most wonderful person. He thought theformer. One of these days, you may be able to judge for yourself. Thebundle needed much expurgation and was full of Greek nonsense, at thehead of the chapters, which has all been cut out.
If the things are ever published some one may perhaps remember thisstory, now printed as a safeguard to prove that McIntosh Jellaludin andnot I myself wrote the Book of Mother Maturin.
I don't want the Giant's Robe to come true in my case.
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