Chapter VIII: Psychological Studies 390 (5)

98. But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation--the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.

99. It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

100. “Come back,” he said, tenderly. “You will be cold.”

101. “It is colder for my son,” said the old woman, and wept afresh.

102. The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start.

103. “The paw!” she cried wildly. “The monkey’s paw!”

104. He started up in alarm. “Where? Where is it? What’s the matter?”

105. She came stumbling across the room toward him. “I want it,” she said, quietly. “You’ve not destroyed it?”

106. “It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,” he replied marvelling. “Why?”

107. She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

108. “I only just thought of it,” she said, hysterically. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?”

109. “Think of what?” he questioned.

110. “The other two wishes,” she replied, rapidly. “We’ve only had one.”

111. “Was not that enough?” he demanded, fiercely.

112. “No,” she cried, triumphantly; “we’ll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”

113. The man sat up in bed and flung the bed-clothes from his quaking limbs. “Good God, you are mad!” he cried, aghast.

114. “Get it,” she panted; “get it quickly, and wish--Oh, my boy, my boy!”

115. Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. “Get back to bed,” he said, unsteadily. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

116. “We had the first wish granted,” said the old woman, feverishly; “why not the second?”

117. “A coincidence,” stammered the old man.

118. “Go and get it and wish,” cried his wife, quivering with excitement.

119. The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. “He has been dead ten days, and besides he--I would not tell you else, but--I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?”

120. “Bring him back,” cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. “Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?”

121. He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.

122. Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.

123. “Wish!” she cried in a strong voice.

124. “It is foolish and wicked,” he faltered.

125. “Wish!” repeated his wife.

126. He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.”

127. The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.

128. He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle-end, which had burned below the rim of the china candle-stick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceilings and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him.

129. Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.

130. At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

131. The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house.

132. “What’s that?” cried the old woman, starting up.

133. “A rat,” said the old man in shaking tones--“a rat. It passed me on the stairs.”

134. His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.

135. “It’s Herbert!” she screamed, “It’s Herbert!”

136. She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.

137. “What are you going to do?” he whispered hoarsely.

138. “It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” she cried, struggling mechanically. “I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.”

139. “For God’s sake don’t let it in,” cried the old man, trembling.

140. “You’re afraid of your own son,” she cried, struggling. “Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming.”

141. There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman’s voice, strained and panting.

142. “The bolt,” she cried, loudly. “Come down. I can’t reach it.”

143. But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

144. The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back, and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. Does it add to the interest of a story, for you, when you are baffled by its mystery up to the very end?

2. What author’s detective stories do you consider the best? Why?

3. If possible, secure a copy of Voltaire’s “Zadig,” and write a short paper on Zadig’s reasoning.

4. Does the introduction of an element of the supernatural increase or lessen the interest of a story, for you?

5. Write about two-hundred words comparing (a) the work of Poe’s Dupin with Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; (b) with that of any other fictional detective--Chesterton’s Father Brown, for example.

6. Explain what is meant by _inductive_ reasoning.

7. Select from some magazine (a) a good detective story, and (b) a good story of the unexplained, or supernatural. (c) Discuss the relative merits of each.

8. Do you prefer Jacobs as a writer of humorous stories of sea-faring folk or as a writer of the weird?

9. Which of Poe’s stories do you like best, and why?

TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY

“The Horla,” Guy de Maupassant, translated in _Modern Ghosts_.

“The Lost Duchess,” Anonymous, in _The Lock and Key Library_.

“The Golden Ingot,” Fitz-James O’Brien, in _The Lock and Key Library_.

“The Gold Bug,” Edgar Allan Poe, in _Tales_.

“The Black Spaniel,” Robert Hichens, in volume of same title.

“The Upper Berth,” F. Marion Crawford, in _Short-Story Classics, American_.

“The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” A. Conan Doyle, in _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_.

“The Venus of Ille,” Prosper Mérimée, translated in _Little French Masterpieces_.

“The Pavilion on the Links,” Robert Louis Stevenson, in _New Arabian Nights_.

“The Damned Thing,” Ambrose Bierce, in _Short-Story Classics, American_.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead & Co., in the collection of short-stories, _The Lady of the Barge_. Used by permission.

III
STORIES OF EMOTION

_The Last Class._--ALPHONSE DAUDET
_Without Benefit of Clergy._--RUDYARD KIPLING

In painting we may represent any fine figure we please; but we
never can give it those enlivening touches which it may receive
from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you can only draw
a beautiful young man winged: but what painting can furnish out
any thing so grand as the addition of one word, “the angel of the
_Lord_?...” Now, as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned
countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of
the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and
certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to
passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the
influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which
far more clearly and distinctly express the subject-matter. We
yield to sympathy what we refuse to description.--EDMUND BURKE, _On
the Sublime and Beautiful_.

STORIES OF EMOTION

Fictional plots deal with the inner man quite as often as with the outer. Indeed, the action of the soul is more real, intense and interesting than mere visible action could possibly be. For this reason the master story-tellers nearly always interpret the inner life--whether of thought, of emotion, or of decision--by displaying the outer, instead of by merely analyzing and discussing the thoughts, feelings and decisions of their characters. The more clearly this outer action pictures the inner man, the more real does the character become to us and the more perfectly do we grasp the whole story.

As a universal human experience, emotion[20] mingles with all manifestations of life. In the short-story it finds various expression in the hilarious fun of “Pigs is Pigs,” by Butler; the character humor of Barrie’s “Thrums” stories; the mingled humor and pathos of Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp”; the patriotic sentiment of Daudet’s “The Siege of Berlin”; the mystic sympathy of Kipling’s “They”; the idyllic love of the Book of Ruth; the incomparable psychological insight of Maupassant’s “A Coward”; the cold, revengeful jealousy of Balzac’s “La Grande Bretêche”; the choking, supernatural terror of Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum”; the tragic passion of Mérimée’s “Mateo Falcone,” and all the myriad shades and combinations of shades which lie between.

Naturally, each story in this entire collection illustrates one or another emotional phase, as even a cursory reading will make clear. What, for example, could be more intense than the emotions of those two parents, as depicted in “The Monkey’s Paw?” But for this group two stories have been selected as being typical examples of emotional expression, because in them human feeling predominates over all other characteristics and really makes the story.

“The Last Class,” which is here presented in a translation by the editor of this volume, is rich in local color, in impressionism, and in character drawing, but as an unaffected picture of patriotic feeling it is unsurpassed in the literature of the short-story. There is not a single jarring emotional tone, not the slightest exaggeration of true emotional values. With singular repression, Daudet secures his effects by suggesting rather than fully expressing the profound feelings of the school-master, his pupils, and the visitors; and when the majestically simple climax is reached, we have accepted the reality of it all and have received a single effective and lasting impression.

“Without Benefit of Clergy,” the second specimen, is left for the reader to analyze and discuss. Surely this most sadly touching of all love-stories presents the poignant pity, the inevitable disaster, the final heart-break of unsanctified love, as never before or since in the pages of fiction.

DAUDET AND HIS WRITINGS

Alphonse Daudet was born at Nîmes, France, May 13, 1840. Here and at Lyons he received his education. At the age of seventeen he and his brother Ernest went to Paris, where Alphonse published his first long poem two years later. This began his literary success. From 1860 to 1865 he served as secretary in the Cabinet of the Duke de Morny, and at the early age of twenty-five was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was profoundly impressed by the memories of his early life and frequently revisited his native Provence. The South-of-France tone is distinguishable in much of his work, just as the powerful feelings called forth by the Franco-Prussian war find expression in other of his writings. He died in Paris, December 16, 1897.

Alphonse Daudet was a dramatist, poet, novelist, and short-story writer. _The Nabob_, _Sappho_, _Jack_, _Kings in Exile_, _Numa Roumestan_, _Fromont and Risler_, _The Evangelist_, and the “Tartarin” books are his best known novels. Among his best short-stories are “The Pope’s Mule,” “The Death of the Dauphin,” “The Three Low Masses,” “The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher,” “Old Folks,” and “Master Cornille’s Secret”--all from the collection, _Letters from My Mill_. The following little masterpieces are from his _Monday Tales_: “The Game of Billiards,” “The Child Spy,” “The Little Pies,” “Mothers,” “The Siege of Berlin,” and “The Last Class.”

At the close of the Franco-Prussian war, in 1871, France was forced to cede to Germany almost all of Alsace, about nine thousand square miles of territory, in addition to an indemnity of one billion dollars. “The Last Class” was held, therefore, about 1872, and the story was first published in 1873.

* * * * *

Daudet’s literary genius sounded every note, from farce, delicate humor, and satire, to poetic pathos, dramatic action, character analysis, and social criticism. He resembled Dickens in his humor, but displayed more emotional tenderness, and, in his later work, more satire, than did the English writer. Though he may be called the literary descendant of Balzac, whose novels systematically depicted French society in all its phases, Daudet was less a social philosopher and more a man expressing his own personality through his work. Comparing him with Maupassant, we find his stories less perfect in form, but far richer in human feeling. Though at times he dealt with subjects which English readers consider broad, his sympathy unmistakably appears to be with his nobler characters.

When only ten years of age, I was already haunted at times by the
desire to lose my own personality, and incarnate myself in other
beings; the mania was already laying hold of me for observing and
analyzing, and my chief amusement during my walks was to pick out
some passerby, and to follow him all over Lyons, through all his
idle strollings or busy occupations, striving to identify myself
with his life, and to enter into his innermost thoughts.--ALPHONSE
DAUDET, _Thirty Years of Paris_.

Daudet expresses many things; but he most frequently expresses
himself--his own temper in the presence of life, his own feeling on
a thousand occasions.--HENRY JAMES, _Partial Portraits_.

Life, as he knows it, is sad, full of disappointment, bitterness,
and suffering; and yet the conclusion he draws from experience is
that this life, with all its sadness, is well worth living.--RENÉ
DOUMIC, _Contemporary French Novelists_.

The short stories are Daudet at his best, a style tense, virile,
full of suppressed energy.... There is a nobler strain in these
stories than speaks from the pages of _Le Petit Chose_ [“Little
What’s-His-Name”],--the ring of passionate patriotism, no longer
the voice of Provence, or of Paris, but the voice of France....
The touching story, _La Dernière Classe_, might have come from the
lips of an Alsatian, so true is it to the spirit of Alsace during
those sorrowful days that followed the Franco-Prussian War.--MARION
MCINTYRE, Introduction to _Works_.

Daudet’s two main series of stories (_Letters from My Mill_ and
_Monday Tales_) contain between sixty and seventy pieces.... They
represent Daudet the poet, with his exquisite fancy, his winning
charm, his subtle, indescribable style, his susceptibility to all
that is lovely and joyous in nature and in human life; in short,
in his sunny, mercurial Provençal temperament.... But there was
another Daudet more or less superimposed upon this sunny, poetic
Daudet, true child of Provence. Upon few Frenchmen of a generation
ago did the terrible years of the Franco-Prussian War and the
Commune produce a more sobering impression. The romanticist and
poet deepened into a realistic observer of human life in all its
phases.--W. P. TRENT, Introduction to the volume on Daudet, in
_Little French Masterpieces_.

The charm reflected in his works lay in the man himself, and
earned for him a host of friends and an unclouded domestic life--it
lay in his open, sunny, inconsequent, southern nature, with his
quick sympathies, his irony at once forcible and delicate, his
ready tears. It lay in the spontaneousness of his talent, in his
Provençal gift of improvisation.... And it lay, too, in what was
an essential characteristic of his nature, his rapid alternation
of mood. Take even the slightest of his _Contes_ [stories]....
Within a few pages he is in turn sad, gay, sentimental, ironical,
pathetic, and one mood glides into the next without jar or
friction.--V. M. CRAWFORD, _Studies in Foreign Literature_.

His stories first of all amuse, excite, distress himself....
He never could, indeed, look on them disinterestedly, either
while they were making or when they were made. He made them with
actual tears and laughter; and they are read with actual tears
and laughter by the crowd.... But he had no philosophy behind
his fantastic and yet only too probable creations. Caring, as he
thought, supremely for life, he cared really for that surprising,
bewildering pantomime which life seems to be to those who watch its
coloured movement, its flickering lights, its changing costumes,
its powdered faces, without looking through the eyes into the
hearts of the dancers. He wrote from the very midst of the human
comedy; and it is from this that he seems at times to have caught
the bodily warmth and the taste of the tears and the very ring of
the laughter of men and women....--ARTHUR SYMONS, _Studies in Prose
and Verse_.

FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON DAUDET

_Chats about Books_, Mayo W. Hazeltine (1883); _French Fiction of To-day_, M. S. Van de Velde (1891); _Alphonse Daudet; a Biographical and Critical Study_, R. H. Sherard (1894); _The Literary Movement in France_, Georges Pellissier (1897); _Literary Likings_, Richard Burton (1898); _The Historical Novel_, Brander Matthews (1901); _French Profiles_, Edmund W. Gosse (1905); _Short-Story Masterpieces_, J. Berg Esenwein (1912).

THE LAST CLASS
(La Dernière Classe)

THE STORY OF A LITTLE ALSATIAN
BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

_Translation by The Editor_

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION plunges us at once into the action. There is one main incident throughout. The narrator is immediately seen to be a child, and surmised to be a boy.]

That morning I was very late for school, so I was terribly afraid of a scolding--particularly since Master Hamel had said that he would examine us on participles, and I knew not the first word about them! For a little while I thought of playing truant and wandering the fields.

2. The day was so warm, so clear!

[Sidenote: Setting. Note how the rural community is suggested.]

3. I could hear the blackbirds whistling on the border of the wood; and back of the sawmill, in the Rippert field, the Prussian soldiers were drilling. All of this was much more tempting to me than participial rules--but I was strong enough to resist and away to school I ran, as fast as I could.

[Sidenote: Small municipalities have mayors, in France.]

[Sidenote: The tone is struck here. Forecast of crisis.]

[Sidenote: Franco-Prussian War.]

4. As I passed by the mayor’s office, I observed that a number of people were assembled before the little board on which notices were generally posted. For two years every piece of bad news had come from that board--defeats in battle, conscriptions, orders from headquarters--and, without stopping, I wondered:

[Sidenote: Forecasts a crisis.]

5. “What can it be this time!”

[Sidenote: Note the Prussian name. Alsace was a border province.]

6. Just then, as I was running across the square, Wachter the blacksmith, who with his apprentice stood reading the placard, called after me:

[Sidenote: Hint of crisis to come. CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

7. “You needn’t hurry so fast, my lad, you’ll get to school soon enough!”

[Sidenote: The school was held in the master’s house.]

8. I thought he was making game of me, and I kept right on, reaching Master Hamel’s little yard quite out of breath.

[Sidenote: Unusual air depicted by contrast.]

[Sidenote: The story proper begins.]

[Sidenote: An old custom.]

9. Ordinarily, as school was opening, the uproar was so great that it could be heard clear out on the street--desk-lids opening and shutting, lessons droned aloud in unison, pupils holding their ears shut to learn their lessons easier, while the master’s great ferrule beat upon the desks:

10. “A little quietness!”

[Sidenote: Contrast.]

11. I had counted on all this noise to enable me to reach my seat unnoticed; but on that particular day everything was as quiet as a Sabbath morning. Through the open window I saw my schoolmates already ranged in their places, and Master Hamel pacing to and fro, his formidable iron ferrule under his arm. In the midst of that complete silence I had to open the door and go in! You can well imagine whether I blushed and was afraid!

[Sidenote: Contrast.]

12. But, quite to the contrary, Master Hamel looked at me with no sign of anger, and then very gently said:

[Sidenote: Evidently a small school.]

13. “Go directly to your seat, my little Frantz--we were about to begin without you.”

[Sidenote: At which others were also seated.]

[Sidenote: All the contrasts prepare us for the crisis.]

[Sidenote: Prussian name.]

[Sidenote: Dazed.]

14. Immediately I stepped over the bench and sat down at my desk. Only then, when I had partly gotten over my fright, did I observe that our master was wearing his handsome blue riding-coat, his plaited ruff, and his black silk embroidered breeches--worn only on inspection days or when prizes were awarded. Furthermore, there was something extraordinary, something solemn, about the whole school. But what astounded me more than anything else was to see a number of people from the village sitting, as silent as we, on the usually empty benches at the back of the room: old Father Hauser with his three-cornered hat, the ex-mayor, the former postman, besides a number of others. All seemed cast down, and Father Hauser had brought with him an old primer, with chewed up leaves, which he held wide-open up-side-down on his knees, and lying on it his huge spectacles.

15. While I was marvelling at all this, Master Hamel had mounted his platform, and in the same gentle and serious voice with which he had greeted me, he said to us:

[Sidenote: FOUNDATION OF CLIMAX. Summary of the theme. Compare with Longfellow’s _Evangeline_.]

[Sidenote: This law went into effect July 1, 1870.]

16. “My children, this is the last day that I shall keep school. The order has come from Berlin that nothing but German shall be taught in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The new school-master will arrive to-morrow. This is the last class in French--I beg of you to be very attentive!”

17. His simple words overwhelmed me. This, then, was the notice they had posted at the mayor’s office. Oh, the scoundrels!

[Sidenote: The crisis becomes personal.]

18. My last lesson in French!

[Sidenote: Scarcely a paragraph but appeals to emotion in some form.]

[Sidenote: The _Saar_ flows northward into the _Moselle_.]

19. And I was scarcely able to write! Then I was never to learn! I must stop short just where I was! How angry with myself it made me to remember the time I had frittered away, and the lessons I had missed while hunting birds’ nests or sliding on the Saar! My books now seemed to me like old comrades from whom it broke my heart to part, and only a moment since I had found them--my grammar, my sacred history--so dull, and so heavy to carry! It was just the same when I thought of Master Hamel. He was going away. I should never see him again--the thought made me forget all his punishments and strokes with the ferrule.

[Sidenote: Shift to interest in the Master.]

[Sidenote: Now to the villagers.]

[Sidenote: Age indicated, thus adding to the pathos.]

[Sidenote: THESE ARE THE KEY WORDS.]

20. Poor old man! So it was in honor of that last lesson in French that he had donned his Sunday best--and now I understood why those old folks from the village were seated at the back of the room. It seemed to say they regretted that they had not visited the school oftener. Besides, it was a sort of way of thanking our teacher for his forty years of devoted service, and of showing their love for the fatherland which was passing away.

[Sidenote: Note how Daudet arouses our sympathies by avoiding generalities and centering our interest upon persons.]

21. Just at this point in my reflections I heard my name called--it was my turn to recite. Oh, I would have given anything to be able to recite without a slip, in a strong, clear voice, that celebrated rule about participles; but at the very first words I grew confused and I only stood there at my bench swaying back and forward, my heart swelling, not daring to lift my head. At length I heard Master Hamel saying to me:

[Sidenote: Ordinary rebuke is swallowed up in the great common sorrow.]

[Sidenote: Daudet here teaches all France a lesson--and all nations as well.]

22. “My little Frantz, I shall not scold you; you are punished enough, I think. It is so with all of us; every day we reassure ourselves: ‘Bah! I have plenty of time. To-morrow I shall learn.’ Then you see what happens. Alas! it has ever been the great misfortune of our Alsace to defer its lessons until the morrow. And now these people are justified in saying to us, ‘What, you pretend to be French, and you are able neither to speak nor to write your language!’ But in all this you are not the most guilty one, my poor Frantz--we are all worthy of a full measure of self-reproach.

[Sidenote: Note M. Hamel’s simple sincerity.]

23. “Your parents have not taken enough care to see that you got an education. They preferred to save a few more sous by putting you to work in the fields or in the factories. And I--have I nothing for which to blame myself? Have I not frequently sent you to water my garden instead of keeping you at your books? Or have I ever hesitated to dismiss school when I wanted to go trout-fishing?”

24. So Master Hamel, passing from one theme to another, began to speak to us about our French language. He said that it was the most beautiful language in the whole world--the most clear, the most substantial; that we must ever cherish it among ourselves, and never forget it, for when a nation falls into bondage, just so long as it clings to its language, it holds the key of its prison.[21]

[Sidenote: The attention follows the lead of the emotions.]

[Sidenote: So does the teacher’s skill.]

25. Then he took a grammar and read us our lesson. I was astonished to see how readily I understood! Everything he said seemed to me so easy--so very easy. I believe that never before had I listened so attentively, and that he, in turn, had never explained things with such infinite patience. It almost seemed as though the poor fellow wished to impart all his knowledge to us before he left us--to drive it all into our heads with one blow.

[Sidenote: A proof of unusual absorption.]

[Sidenote: Note the pathos of the appeal.]

26. The lesson ended, we went on to the exercises in penmanship. For that day Master Hamel had gotten ready some entirely new copies on which he had written in a neat, round hand: “France, Alsace, France, Alsace.” The slips of paper looked like tiny flags, waving all about the room and hanging from the rods of our desks. You should have seen how diligently everyone worked, and how quiet it was! Only the scratching of the pens over the paper could be heard. Once some beetles flew in, but nobody paid any attention to them--not even the very smallest chaps, who were struggling to draw their oblique lines with a will and an application as sincere as though even the lines themselves were French.... Pigeons cooed in low tones on the roof of the schoolhouse, and as I listened to them I thought to myself:

27. “I wonder if they are going to make them coo in German too!”

[Sidenote: A picture. All of these contributory pictures stand in lieu of contributory incidents. The whole is highly unified.]

[Sidenote: The lad reasons as a lad--to him the pathos is not for himself but for the old man.]

28. Now and then, as I lifted my eyes from my task, I saw Master Hamel seated motionless in his chair, and staring at things about him as though in that look he would carry away with him the whole of his little schoolhouse. Think of it! For forty years he had occupied that same place, his yard in front of him, and his school always unchanged. Only the benches and desks were rubbed by use until they were polished; the walnuts in the yard had grown large, and the hop-vine he himself had planted now hung in festoons from the windows clear to the roof. How heartbreaking it must have been for that poor man to leave all this--to hear his sister moving to and fro in the room overhead as she packed their trunks! Next day they were going away--to leave the fatherland forever.

29. All the same, he had the courage to keep the school to the very closing minute. The writing over, we had our lesson in history. Then the little ones sang in unison their _ba, be, bi, bo, bu_. Yonder, at the back of the room, old Father Hauser was holding his spelling-book with both hands, and with the aid of his great spectacles he spelled out the letters--one could see that even he too was applying himself. Emotion shook his voice, and to hear him was so droll that we all wanted to laugh--and to cry. Ah! I shall always remember that last class.

[Sidenote: PREPARATION FOR CLIMAX.]

[Sidenote: FORMAL CRISIS--the end approaches.]

[Sidenote: Note the force of this.]

[Sidenote: Moral qualities affect the physical.]

30. Suddenly the church clock sounded twelve. Then the Angelus. At the same instant were heard under our very windows the trumpets of the Prussians returning from drill. Pale as death, Master Hamel rose from his chair. Never had he seemed so large.

31. “My friends,” he began; “my friends, I--I--”

32. But something choked him. He could not end the sentence.

[Sidenote: Note the intensity.]

33. Then he turned to the blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and, bearing with all his strength, he wrote in the largest letters he could make:

[Sidenote: FULL CLIMAX.]

34. “VIVE LA FRANCE!”

35. Then he stood there, his head leaning against the wall, and without a word he signed to us with his hand:

36. “It is the end ... go!”

KIPLING AND HIS WRITINGS

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, December 30, 1865, of English parents, his father, J. Lockwood Kipling, an artist of ability, having been in the colonial Civil Service. He was educated at the United Services College, Devon, but returned to India in 1882 and became an editorial writer and correspondent. In 1889 he began extensive travels. For several years he resided in Brattleboro, Vermont, but returned to England and settled in Rottingdean, Sussex.

Rudyard Kipling has attained celebrity as poet, novelist, and short-story writer. His best-known poems are found in the collections entitled _Departmental Ditties_, _Barrack-Room Ballads_, _The Seven Seas_, and _The Five Nations_. _Kim_ is his ablest novel. The two “Jungle Books” constitute a remarkable collection of connected tales of the jungle folk. His best short-stories are found in the following volumes: _Soldiers Three_ (the “Mulvaney” stories, “The Man Who Was,” etc.), _The Phantom Rickshaw_ (“The Man Who Would be King,” “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,” etc.), _Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories_ (“The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “Under the Deodars,” etc.), _The Day’s Work_ (“The Bridge Builders,” “The Brushwood Boy,” etc.), and _Traffic and Discoveries_ (“They,” etc.). “Without Benefit of Clergy” first appeared in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (London) in June, 1890, and in the June 7th and 14th, 1890, numbers of _Harper’s Weekly_ (New York). In the same year it was published in the volume, _The Courting of Dinah Shadd, and Other Stories_, but in 1891 it was included in the volume _Life’s Handicap: being Stories of Mine Own People._

* * * * *

Rudyard Kipling is without doubt the greatest of living short-story writers, though in interest his later fiction does not equal his productions of the early nineties. His journalistic work drilled him in compression; his precocious intuitions and personal experience of life in India opened up a fresh and fascinating field; his genius taught him how to tell his stories with unfailing variety, a robust humor, and an understanding of the human heart quite uncanny in one so young. In style, he is a master of the unexpected; in narration, he is by turns deliberate and swift; in atmospheric painting, he transports us to real places, wherein real folk do real things.

Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they
have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy
imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone hast seen, then what
thou hast heard, and since they be children tell them of battles
and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not to
tell them of love and such like. All the earth is full of tales to
him who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door.
The poor are the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear
to the ground every night.--RUDYARD KIPLING, Preface to _Life’s
Handicap_.

The tremulous passion of Ameera, her hopes, her fears, and her
agonies of disappointment, combine to form by far the most tender
page which Mr. Kipling has written.--EDMUND GOSSE, _Questions at
Issue_.

... The truly appreciative reader should surely have no quarrel
with the primitive element in Mr. Kipling’s subject-matter, or with
what, for want of a better name, I may call his love of low life.
What is that but essentially a part of his freshness? And for what
part of his freshness are we exactly more thankful than for just
this smart jostle that he gives the old stupid superstition that
the amiability of a story-teller is the amiability of the people
he represents--that their vulgarity, or depravity, or gentility,
or fatuity are tantamount to the same qualities in the painter
himself?--HENRY JAMES, Introduction to _Works_.

It was not until “Without Benefit of Clergy” that he came to his
full strength in pathetic prose. The history of Ameera is one of
the triumphs of the short story. Its characterization is vivid; its
progress direct and poignant. I do not wish even for an instant to
seem to cheapen one of the most touching and beautiful stories in
the world when I call it journalism. But the voice of the desolate
mother breaking into the nursery rime of the wicked crow,

“And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound,
Only a penny a pound, baba--only--,”

and every pathetic moment, is chosen by an inspired sense for what
would most feelingly grasp the interest of the reader. This is high
art, with intense feeling behind it--otherwise it would not be so
excellent. But it is also good journalism.--HENRY SEIDEL CANBY,
_The Short-Story in English._

For Mr. Kipling to write a story without some firm human touch,
however slight, would be impossible.... In his effects Mr.
Kipling is usually photographic (“cinematographic” is better),
but his methods are almost invariably, for want of a better word,
“artistic.” I mean that whereas the principle of selection,
which is a vital principle of art, can operate but little in
photography, it is seen to be remarkably active in all Mr.
Kipling’s best work. His stories, so to speak, represent the
epigram of action, the epigram of a given situation.... It is from
the lives of such Englishmen ... that Mr. Kipling has gathered so
many of his vivid anecdotes. A great number of them ... are the
lesser lights and darks contributing to such more serious elements
of the general picture as “At the End of the Passage,” “Without
Benefit of Clergy,” “In Flood Time,” “The Man Who Was,” behind
which looms vast in the background the image of that old Sphinx of
the Plains complete in mystery as no other writer has ever been
able to suggest her.... Also he had written at least one love-story
(“Without Benefit of Clergy”) that broke one’s heart.... For all
the humour and buoyancy of his writings, Mr. Kipling is at heart
a pessimist, and, perhaps, his sincerest expression of opinion in
regard to the government of the universe is contained in the fierce
Omarian exclamation of Holden in “Without Benefit of Clergy,”
addressed to no one in particular, but evidently meant to reach far
up into the skies: “O you brute! You utter brute!” So Omar bade
Allah “man’s forgiveness give and take.”--RICHARD LE GALLIENNE,
_Rudyard Kipling: A Criticism_.

FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON KIPLING

_Essays in Little_, Andrew Lang (1894); _Cervantes, Zola, Kipling & Co._, in _Aspects of Modern Fiction_, Brander Matthews (1896); _My Contemporaries in Fiction_, J. D. C. Murray (1897); _A Ken of Kipling_, Will M. Clemens (1899); _Victorian Novelists_, James Oliphant (1899); _A Kipling Primer_, F. L. Knowles (1899); _The Religion of Mr. Kipling_, W. B. Parker (1899); _Rudyard Kipling, A Biographical Sketch_, C. E. Norton (1899).

FOR ANALYSIS

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
BY RUDYARD KIPLING

Before my Spring I garnered Autumn’s gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
Who am too wise in that I should not know.

_Bitter Waters._

I

“But if it be a girl?”

2. “Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and sent gifts to Sheikh Badl’s shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son--a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity--God send he be born in an auspicious hour!--and then, thou wilt never weary of me, thy slave.”

3. “Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?”

4. “Since the beginning--till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?”

5. “Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.”

6. “And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow dancing-girl instead of a child.”

7. “Art thou sorry for the sale?”

8. “I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me now?--answer, my king.”

9. “Never--never. No.”

10. “Not even though the _mem-log_--the white women of thy own blood--love thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are very fair.”

11. “I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon, and--then I saw no more fire-balloons.”

12. Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. “Very good talk,” she said. Then with an assumption of great stateliness: “It is enough. Thou hast my permission to depart--if thou wilt.”

13. The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and she a Mussulman’s daughter bought two years before from her mother, who, being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.

14. It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John Holden’s life. For her, and the withered hag, her mother, he had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found--when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters of housekeeping in general--that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor’s bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard to the women’s rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was going to be added to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby’s hands. “And then,” Ameera would always say, “then he will never care for the white _mem-log_. I hate them all--I hate them all.”

15. “He will go back to his own people in time,” said the mother; “but by the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.”

16. Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.

17. “It is not good,” she said slowly, “but it is not all bad. There is my mother here, and no harm will come to me--unless indeed I die of pure joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days are done I believe ... nay, I am sure. And--and then I shall lay _him_ in thy arms, and thou wilt love me forever. The train goes to-night, at midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the road to talk to the bold white _mem-log_. Come back to me swiftly, my life.”

18. As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for the state was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other man’s duties, and how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.

19. “Has aught occurred?” said Holden.

20. “The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but--” He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is entitled to a reward.

21. Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room. His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but it did not prove that Ameera was alive.

22. “Who is there?” he called up the narrow brick staircase.

23. There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the mother, tremulous with old age and pride--“We be two women and--the man--thy--son.”

24. On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient heel.

25. “God is great!” cooed Ameera in the half-light. “Thou hast taken his misfortunes on thy head.”

26. “Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with her?”

27. “She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is no harm; but speak softly,” said the mother.

28. “It only needed thy presence to make me all well,” said Ameera. “My king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah, ah! It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look! Was there ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.”

29. “Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, _bachari_ [little woman].”

30. “Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [_peecharee_] between us now that nothing can break. Look--canst thou see in this light? He is without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. _Ya illah!_ he shall be a pundit--no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.”

31. “Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and rest.”

32. “Then do not go. Sit by my side here--so. Mother, the lord of this house needs a cushion. Bring it.” There was an almost imperceptible movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera’s arm. “Aho!” she said, her voice breaking with love. “The babe is a champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us--thine and mine. Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are unskilled in such matters.”

33. Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy head.

34. “He is of the faith,” said Ameera; “for lying here in the night-watches I whispered the Call to Prayer and the Profession of Faith into his ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his hands.”

35. Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed lightly.

36. “Get hence, _sahib_,” said her mother under her breath. “It is not good that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.”

37. “I go,” said Holden submissively. “Here be rupees. See that my _baba_ gets fat and finds all that he needs.”

38. The chink of the silver roused Ameera. “I am his mother, and no hireling,” she said weakly. “Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have borne my lord a son.”

39. The deep sleep of weakness came upon her before the sentence was completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly, with his heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. “This house is now complete,” he said, and without further comment thrust into Holden’s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir Khan, served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the well-curb.

40. “There be two,” said Pir Khan, “two goats of the best. I bought them, and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, _sahib_! ’Tis an ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the marigolds.”

41. “And why?” said Holden, bewildered.

42. “For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be said.”

43. Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child up-stairs--the child that was his own son--and a dread of loss filled him.

44. “Strike!” said Pir Khan. “Never life came into the world but life was paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing cut!”

45. Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mohammedan prayer that runs: “Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin for skin.” The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden’s riding-boots.

46. “Well smitten!” said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. “A swordsman was lost in thee. Go with a light heart, heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and ... the flesh of the goats is all mine?” Pir Khan drew back richer by a month’s pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse. “I never felt like this in my life,” he thought. “I’ll go to the club and pull myself together.”

47. A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing at the top of his voice:

“‘In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!’”