Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING[*] (1888)
[* From "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."]
BY RUDYARD KIPLING (1865- )
[_Setting_. "They call it Kafiristan," said Dravot, the unfortunate hero
of the story. "By my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of
Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar."
Determined to be Kings of Kafiristan, Carnehan and Dravot started
probably from the capital of the Punjab, Lahore, where the newspaper
office seems to have been. Ten miles west of Peshawar they entered the
famous Khaiber (or Khyber) Pass, a region which Kipling describes more
at length in "The Man Who Was," "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," "The
Lost Legion," "Love o' Women," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "With the Main
Guard." No country in Asia is less known to civilization than
Kafiristan. The Mohammedan traders say that it is the most attractive
part of Afghanistan. The name means "country of unbelievers," the Kafirs
having resisted all attempts to convert them to the Mohammedan faith.
They are pure Aryans, being thus brothers to the Greeks, Romans,
Germans, English, and ourselves. They are noted for their beauty and
strength. India or rather Anglo-India has been almost re-discovered by
Kipling, but this is his only story of Kafiristan. It too, as Carnehan
and Dravot learn to their sorrow, is a land of impenetrable mystery.
_Plot_. The real plot does not begin to unfold itself until Carnehan,
wrecked in body and mind, returns to the newspaper office and tries to
report his experiences. Thus nearly one half of the story may be called
introductory or preliminary. This is unusual with Kipling and with all
other modern story writers. The introduction justifies itself, however,
in this case because, since a half-crazed man with weakening memory is
to tell the real tale, his narrative would have to be supplemented by
explanations on nearly every page unless the introductory part could be
taken for granted. Notice how often in reading Carnehan's broken story
you supply what he omits and interpret what he only fragmentarily says
by reference to what has gone before.
Kipling has done more in this story than to present a character of
limitless audacity. He has impressed again one of his favorite
teachings. There is, he holds, a barrier between East and West that can
never be crossed. The West can go so far with the East but no farther.
Brave men of the West may conquer the East and rule it, but to take
liberties with it is to uncover a vast realm of the unknown and to
invite disaster. In "The Return of Imray," a good-natured Englishman
pats the head of Bahadur Khan's child and is killed for it. Another
Englishman, in "Beyond the Pale," thought that he understood the heart
of India, and here is his epitaph: "He took too deep an interest in
native life, but he will never do so again." Dravot could play king and
even god in Kafiristan, but when he exposed himself ignorantly to an old
racial superstition he met instant and inevitable destruction.
_Characters_. Carnehan tells the story, but Dravot is the energizing
character. Captain James Cook, the discoverer of the Sandwich Islands,
is plainly the original of Dravot. Read the thirtieth chapter of the
second volume of Mark Twain's "Roughing It" (1872) and you will find
Kipling's story clearly outlined. One cannot withhold a measure of
admiration for this type of uncontrolled audacity. Dravot was not bad at
heart, he was only boundless, a type of the adventurer that has given
many a fascinating chapter to history as well as to literature. In "The
Research Magnificent," by Mr. H.G. Wells, the hero, Benham, says: "I
think what I want is to be king of the world.... It is the very core of
me.... I mean to be a king in this earth. _King_. I'm not mad." His
motive, however, is very different from Dravot's. "I see the world," he
continues, "staggering from misery to misery, and there is little
wisdom, less rule, folly, prejudice, limitation ... and it is my world
and I am responsible.... As soon as your kingship is plain to you, there
is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in
utmost effort." The three weaknesses to be overcome are Fear,
Indulgence, and Jealousy. Both Dravot and Benham fail and the comment of
each on his own failure is an autobiography. Benham: "I can feel that
greater world I shall never see as one feels the dawn coming through the
last darkness." Dravot: "We've had a dashed fine run for our money.
What's coming next?"]
Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy
to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under
circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other
was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came
near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was
promised the reversion of a Kingdom--army, law-courts, revenue and
policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead,
and if I want a crown I must go hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions
in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate,
which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty,
or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy
from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. That is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the
carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.
My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when a big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered,
and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He
was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste
for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and
of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food.
"If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the
crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't seventy
millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven hundred
millions," said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed
to agree with him.
We talked politics--the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the
underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off--and we talked
postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back
from the next station to Ajmir, the turning-off place from the Bombay to
the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond
eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing
to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a
wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there
were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any
way.
"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick,"
said my friend, "but that'd mean enquiries for you and for me, and
_I_'ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you were travelling
back along this line within any days?"
"Within ten," I said.
"Can't you make it eight?" said he. "Mine is rather urgent business."
"I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you," I
said.
"I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It's this
way. He leaves Delhi on the 23rd for Bombay. That means he'll be running
through Ajmir about the night of the 23rd."
"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.
"Well _and_ good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction to
get into Jodhpore territory--you must do that--and he'll be coming
through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay
Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'T won't be
inconveniencing you because I know that there's precious few pickings to
be got out of these Central India States--even though you pretend to be
correspondent or the _Backwoodsman_."
"Have you ever tried that trick?" I asked.
"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get
escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them.
But about my friend here. I _must_ give him a word o' mouth to tell him
what's come to me or else he won't know where to go. I would take it
more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to
catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him: 'He has gone South for the
week.' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and
a great swell he is. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all
his luggage round him in a Second-class apartment. But don't you be
afraid. Slip down the window and say: 'He has gone South for the week,'
and he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by
two days. I ask you as a stranger--going to the West," he said with
emphasis.
"Where have _you_ come from?" said I.
"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him the
message on the Square--for the sake of my Mother as well as your own."
Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their
mothers; but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw
fit to agree.
"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I asked you
to do it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in
it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I
must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want."
"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of
your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to
run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the
_Backwoodsman_. There's a real one knocking about here, and it might
lead to trouble."
"Thank you," said he, simply, "and when will the swine be gone? I can't
starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the
Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump."
"What did he do to his father's widow, then?"
"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung
from a beam. I found that out myself and I'm the only man that would
dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to
poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.
But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?"
He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and
bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never
met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die
with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of
English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of
government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or
drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not
understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of
Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of
the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full of
unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from
a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had
promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a
funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as
I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the
carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the
window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a
railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the
ribs. He woke with a grunt and I saw his face in the light of the lamps.
It was a great and shining face.
"Tickets again?" said he.
"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He
has gone South for the week!"
The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "He has
gone South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just like his
impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't."
"He didn't," I said and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out
in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the
sands. I climbed into my own train--not an Intermediate carriage this
time--and went to sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as
a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having
done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they forgathered and personated correspondents of newspapers,
and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-trap states of
Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious
difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as
accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in
deporting them: and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them
headed back from the Degumber borders.
Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no
Kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A
newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to
the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that
the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian
prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village;
Colonels who have been overpassed for command sit down and sketch the
outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on
Seniority _versus_ Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have
not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and
swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial
We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot
pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or
Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling
machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call
with specifications in their pockets and hours at their disposal;
tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office
pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their
last dance more fully described; strange ladies rustle in and say: "I
want a hundred lady's cards printed _at once_, please," which is
manifestly part of an Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that
ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for
employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is
ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires
are saying--"You're another," and Mister Gladstone is calling down
brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are
whining "_kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh_" (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most
of the paper is as blank as Modred's shield.
But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
when none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up
to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above
reading-light, and the press-machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody
writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or
obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because
it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew
intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you with a garment, and you sit
down and write: "A slight increase of sickness is reported from the
Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its
nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District
authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret
we record the death," etc.
Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and
reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the Empires
and the Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and
the Foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in
twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations in the middle
of their amusements say: "Good gracious! Why can't the paper be
sparkling? I'm sure there's plenty going on up here."
That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, "must
be experienced to be appreciated."
It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper
began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to
say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This was a great
convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn
would lower the thermometer from 96 deg. to almost 84 deg. for half an hour, and
in that chill--you have no idea how cold is 84 deg. on the grass until you
begin to pray for it--a very tired man could get off to sleep ere the
heat roused him.
One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed
alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to die
or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the
other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the
latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.
It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the
_loo_, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the
tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and
again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the
flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It
was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there,
while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the
windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their
foreheads, and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back,
whatever it was, would not come off, though the _loo_ dropped and the
last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking
heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and
wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying
man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay
was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to
make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the
machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was
in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have
shrieked aloud.
Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of
me. The first one said: "It's him!" The second said: "So it is!" And
they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped
their foreheads. "We seed there was a light burning across the road and
we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my
friend here, 'The office is open. Let's come along and speak to him as
turned us back from the Degumber State,'" said the smaller of the two.
He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the
red-bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows
of the one or the beard of the other.
I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with
loafers. "What do you want?" I asked.
"Half an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable, in the office,"
said the red-bearded man. "We'd _like_ some drink--the Contrack doesn't
begin yet, Peachey, so you needn't look--but what we really want is
advice. We don't want money. We ask you as a favor, because we found out
you did us a bad turn about Degumber State."
I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's something like,"
said he. "This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me
introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother
Daniel Dravot, that is _me_, and the less said about our professions the
better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor,
compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and
correspondents of the _Backwoodsman_ when we thought the paper wanted
one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first, and see that's
sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your
cigars apiece, and you shall see us light up."
I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a
tepid whiskey and soda.
"Well _and_ good," said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from
his moustache. "Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India,
mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty
contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big
enough for such as us."
They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's beard seemed to
fill half the room and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as they sat
on the big table. Carnehan continued: "The country isn't half worked out
because they that governs it won't let you touch it. They spend all
their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip
a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the
Government saying--'Leave it alone, and let us govern.' Therefore, such
_as_ it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where
a man isn't crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and
there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed
a Contrack on that. _Therefore_, we are going away to be Kings."
"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.
"Yes, of course," I said. "You've been tramping in the sun, and it's a
very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? Come
to-morrow."
"Neither drunk nor sunstruck," said Dravot. "We have slept over the
notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have
decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong
men can sar-a-_whack_. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles
from Peshawar. They have two-and-thirty heathen idols there, and we'll
be the thirty-third and fourth. It's a mountaineous country, and the
women of those parts are very beautiful."
"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan. "Neither
Woman nor Liqu-or, Daniel."
"And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they
fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill
men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King
we find--'D' you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how
to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will
subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty."
"You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the Border," I
said. "You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country.
It's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has
been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached
them you couldn't do anything."
"That's more like," said Carnehan. "If you could think us a little more
mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this
country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to
tell us that we are fools and to show us your books." He turned to the
book-cases.
"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.
"A little," said Dravot, sweetly. "As big a map as you have got, even if
it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you've got. We can
read, though we aren't very educated."
I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, and the men consulted them.