Traffics and Discoveries by Rudyard Kipling

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"Here," I said, when the drink was properly warmed, "take some of this,
Mr. Shaynor."

He jerked in his chair with a start and a wrench, and held out his hand
for the glass. The mixture, of a rich port-wine colour, frothed at the
top.

"It looks," he said, suddenly, "it looks--those bubbles--like a string of
pearls winking at you--rather like the pearls round that young lady's
neck." He turned again to the advertisement where the female in the dove-
coloured corset had seen fit to put on all her pearls before she cleaned
her teeth.

"Not bad, is it?" I said.

"Eh?"

He rolled his eyes heavily full on me, and, as I stared, I beheld all
meaning and consciousness die out of the swiftly dilating pupils. His
figure lost its stark rigidity, softened into the chair, and, chin on
chest, hands dropped before him, he rested open-eyed, absolutely still.

"I'm afraid I've rather cooked Shaynor's goose," I said, bearing the fresh
drink to young Mr. Cashell. "Perhaps it was the chloric-ether."

"Oh, he's all right." The spade-bearded man glanced at him pityingly.
"Consumptives go off in those sort of doses very often. It's exhaustion...
I don't wonder. I dare say the liquor will do him good. It's grand stuff,"
he finished his share appreciatively. "Well, as I was saying--before he
interrupted--about this little coherer. The pinch of dust, you see, is
nickel-filings. The Hertzian waves, you see, come out of space from the
station that despatches 'em, and all these little particles are attracted
together--cohere, we call it--for just so long as the current passes
through them. Now, it's important to remember that the current is an
induced current. There are a good many kinds of induction----"

"Yes, but what _is_ induction?"

"That's rather hard to explain untechnically. But the long and the short
of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire there's
a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put another wire
parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic field--why then, the
second wire will also become charged with electricity."

"On its own account?"

"On its own account."

"Then let's see if I've got it correctly. Miles off, at Poole, or wherever
it is----"

"It will be anywhere in ten years."

"You've got a charged wire----"

"Charged with Hertzian waves which vibrate, say, two hundred and thirty
million times a second." Mr. Cashell snaked his forefinger rapidly through
the air.

"All right--a charged wire at Poole, giving out these waves into space.
Then this wire of yours sticking out into space--on the roof of the house
--in some mysterious way gets charged with those waves from Poole----"

"Or anywhere--it only happens to be Poole tonight."

"And those waves set the coherer at work, just like an ordinary telegraph-
office ticker?"

"No! That's where so many people make the mistake. The Hertzian waves
wouldn't be strong enough to work a great heavy Morse instrument like
ours. They can only just make that dust cohere, and while it coheres (a
little while for a dot and a longer while for a dash) the current from
this battery--the home battery"--he laid his hand on the thing--"can get
through to the Morse printing-machine to record the dot or dash. Let me
make it clearer. Do you know anything about steam?"

"Very little. But go on."

"Well, the coherer is like a steam-valve. Any child can open a valve and
start a steamer's engines, because a turn of the hand lets in the main
steam, doesn't it? Now, this home battery here ready to print is the main
steam. The coherer is the valve, always ready to be turned on. The
Hertzian wave is the child's hand that turns it."

"I see. That's marvellous."

"Marvellous, isn't it? And, remember, we're only at the beginning. There's
nothing we sha'n't be able to do in ten years. I want to live--my God, how
I want to live, and see it develop!" He looked through the door at Shaynor
breathing lightly in his chair. "Poor beast! And he wants to keep company
with Fanny Brand."

"Fanny _who_?" I said, for the name struck an obscurely familiar chord in
my brain--something connected with a stained handkerchief, and the word
"arterial."

"Fanny Brand--the girl you kept shop for." He laughed, "That's all I know
about her, and for the life of me I can't see what Shaynor sees in her, or
she in him."

"_Can't_ you see what he sees in her?" I insisted.

"Oh, yes, if _that's_ what you mean. She's a great, big, fat lump of a
girl, and so on. I suppose that's why he's so crazy after her. She isn't
his sort. Well, it doesn't matter. My uncle says he's bound to die before
the year's out. Your drink's given him a good sleep, at any rate." Young
Mr. Cashell could not catch Mr. Shaynor's face, which was half turned to
the advertisement.

I stoked the stove anew, for the room was growing cold, and lighted
another pastille. Mr. Shaynor in his chair, never moving, looked through
and over me with eyes as wide and lustreless as those of a dead hare.

"Poole's late," said young Mr. Cashell, when I stepped back. "I'll just
send them a call."

He pressed a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there
leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams of sparks, and sparks
again.

"Grand, isn't it? _That's_ the Power--our unknown Power--kicking and
fighting to be let loose," said young Mr. Cashell. "There she goes--kick--
kick--kick into space. I never get over the strangeness of it when I work
a sending-machine--waves going into space, you know. T.R. is our call.
Poole ought to answer with L.L.L."

We waited two, three, five minutes. In that silence, of which the boom of
the tide was an orderly part, I caught the clear "_kiss--kiss--kiss_" of
the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the installation-
pole.

"Poole is not ready. I'll stay here and call you when he is."

I returned to the shop, and set down my glass on a marble slab with a
careless clink. As I did so, Shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed once
more on the advertisement, where the young woman bathed in the light from
the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. His lips moved without
cessation. I stepped nearer to listen. "And threw--and threw--and threw,"
he repeated, his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony.

I moved forward astonished. But it was then he found words--delivered
roundly and clearly. These:--

And threw warm gules on Madeleine's young breast.

The trouble passed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his
place, rubbing his hands.

It had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading
and prize-competitions as a diversion, that Mr. Shaynor ever read Keats,
or could quote him at all appositely. There was, after all, a certain
stained-glass effect of light on the high bosom of the highly-polished
picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a vile chromo
recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken. Night, my drink,
and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a poet. He sat down
again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper, his lips quivering.

I shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. He made no
sign that he saw or heard. I looked over his shoulder, and read, amid
half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:--

--Very cold it was. Very cold
The hare--the hare--the hare--
The birds----

He raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of the
poulterer's shop where they jutted out against our window. Then one clear
line came:--

The hare, in spite of fur, was very cold.

The head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertisement where
the Blaudett's Cathedral pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and went
on:--

Incense in a censer--
Before her darling picture framed in gold--
Maiden's picture--angel's portrait--

"Hsh!" said Mr. Cashell guardedly from the inner office, as though in the
presence of spirits. "There's something coming through from somewhere; but
it isn't Poole." I heard the crackle of sparks as he depressed the keys of
the transmitter. In my own brain, too, something crackled, or it might
have been the hair on my head. Then I heard my own voice, in a harsh
whisper: "Mr. Cashell, there is something coming through here, too. Leave
me alone till I tell you."

"But I thought you'd come to see this wonderful thing--Sir," indignantly
at the end.

"Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet."

I watched--I waited. Under the blue-veined hand--the dry hand of the
consumptive--came away clear, without erasure:

And my weak spirit fails To think how the dead must freeze--
he shivered as he wrote--

Beneath the churchyard mould.

Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.

For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a
rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most
dispassionately considered my own soul as that fought with an over-
mastering fear. Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from Mr.
Shaynor's clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of
trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. I was still in my place of
observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the butts, half-bent,
hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the black, red, and
yellow blanket of his shoulder. I was whispering encouragement, evidently
to my other self, sounding sentences, such as men pronounce in dreams.

"If he has read Keats, it proves nothing. If he hasn't--like causes _must_
beget like effects. There is no escape from this law. _You_ ought to be
grateful that you know 'St. Agnes Eve' without the book; because, given
the circumstances, such as Fanny Brand, who is the key of the enigma, and
approximately represents the latitude and longitude of Fanny Brawne;
allowing also for the bright red colour of the arterial blood upon the
handkerchief, which was just what you were puzzling over in the shop just
now; and counting the effect of the professional environment, here almost
perfectly duplicated--the result is logical and inevitable. As inevitable
as induction."

Still, the other half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering
in some minute and inadequate corner--at an immense distance.

Hereafter, I found myself one person again, my hands still gripping my
knees, and my eyes glued on the page before Mr. Shaynor. As dreamers
accept and explain the upheaval of landscapes and the resurrection of the
dead, with excerpts from the evening hymn or the multiplication-table, so
I had accepted the facts, whatever they might be, that I should witness,
and had devised a theory, sane and plausible to my mind, that explained
them all. Nay, I was even in advance of my facts, walking hurriedly before
them, assured that they would fit my theory. And all that I now recall of
that epoch-making theory are the lofty words: "If he has read Keats it's
the chloric-ether. If he hasn't, it's the identical bacillus, or Hertzian
wave of tuberculosis, _plus_ Fanny Brand and the professional status
which, in conjunction with the main-stream of subconscious thought common
to all mankind, has thrown up temporarily an induced Keats."

Mr. Shaynor returned to his work, erasing and rewriting as before with
swiftness. Two or three blank pages he tossed aside. Then he wrote,
muttering:

The little smoke of a candle that goes out.

"No," he muttered. "Little smoke--little smoke--little smoke. What else?"
He thrust his chin forward toward the advertisement, whereunder the last
of the Blaudett's Cathedral pastilles fumed in its holder. "Ah!" Then with
relief:--

The little smoke that dies in moonlight cold.

Evidently he was snared by the rhymes of his first verse, for he wrote and
rewrote "gold--cold--mould" many times. Again he sought inspiration from
the advertisement, and set down, without erasure, the line I had
overheard:

And threw warm gules on Madeleine's young breast.

As I remembered the original it is "fair"--a trite word--instead of
"young," and I found myself nodding approval, though I admitted that the
attempt to reproduce "its little smoke in pallid moonlight died" was a
failure.

Followed without a break ten or fifteen lines of bald prose--the naked
soul's confession of its physical yearning for its beloved--unclean as we
count uncleanliness; unwholesome, but human exceedingly; the raw material,
so it seemed to me in that hour and in that place, whence Keats wove the
twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem. Shame I had none in
overseeing this revelation; and my fear had gone with the smoke of the
pastille.

"That's it," I murmured. "That's how it's blocked out. Go on! Ink it in,
man. Ink it in!"

Mr. Shaynor returned to broken verse wherein "loveliness" was made to
rhyme with a desire to look upon "her empty dress." He picked up a fold of
the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with infinite
tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which I could not
decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped the stuff.
Here I found myself at fault, for I could not then see (as I do now) in
what manner a red, black, and yellow Austrian blanket coloured his dreams.

In a few minutes he laid aside his pen, and, chin on hand, considered the
shop with thoughtful and intelligent eyes. He threw down the blanket,
rose, passed along a line of drug-drawers, and read the names on the
labels aloud. Returning, he took from his desk Christie's _New Commercial
Plants_ and the old Culpepper that I had given him, opened and laid them
side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone from his face,
read first in one and then in the other, and paused with pen behind his
ear.

"What wonder of Heaven's coming now?" I thought.

"Manna--manna--manna," he said at last, under wrinkled brows. "That's what
I wanted. Good! Now then! Now then! Good! Good! Oh, by God, that's good!"
His voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:--

Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd,
And jellies smoother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon,
Manna and dates in Argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

He repeated it once more, using "blander" for "smoother" in the second
line; then wrote it down without erasure, but this time (my set eyes
missed no stroke of any word) he substituted "soother" for his atrocious
second thought, so that it came away under his hand as it is written in
the book--as it is written in the book.

A wind went shouting down the street, and on the heels of the wind
followed a spurt and rattle of rain.

After a smiling pause--and good right had he to smile--he began anew,
always tossing the last sheet over his shoulder:--

"The sharp rain falling on the window-pane,
Rattling sleet--the wind-blown sleet."

Then prose: "It is very cold of mornings when the wind brings rain and
sleet with it. I heard the sleet on the window-pane outside, and thought
of you, my darling. I am always thinking of you. I wish we could both run
away like two lovers into the storm and get that little cottage by the
sea which we are always thinking about, my own dear darling. We could sit
and watch the sea beneath our windows. It would be a fairyland all of our
own--a fairy sea--a fairy sea...."

He stopped, raised his head, and listened. The steady drone of the
Channel along the sea-front that had borne us company so long leaped up a
note to the sudden fuller surge that signals the change from ebb to
flood. It beat in like the change of step throughout an army--this
renewed pulse of the sea--and filled our ears till they, accepting it,
marked it no longer.

"A fairyland for you and me
Across the foam--beyond ...
A magic foam, a perilous sea."

He grunted again with effort and bit his underlip. My throat dried, but I
dared not gulp to moisten it lest I should break the spell that was
drawing him nearer and nearer to the high-water mark but two of the sons
of Adam have reached. Remember that in all the millions permitted there
are no more than five--five little lines--of which one can say: "These
are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry."
And Mr. Shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them!

I vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold
soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and
re-repeating:

A savage spot as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.

But though I believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon
the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals
and cigarette-smoke.

Our windows fronting on the dangerous foam,

(he wrote, after long, irresolute snatches), and then--

"Our open casements facing desolate seas
Forlorn--forlorn--"

Here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I had
first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was
tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It
lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul
must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of sweat
trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back of my
hand.

"Our windows facing on the desolate seas
And pearly foam of magic fairyland--"

"Not yet--not yet," he muttered, "wait a minute.
_Please_ wait a minute. I shall get it then--"

Our magic windows fronting on the sea,
The dangerous foam of desolate seas ..
For aye.

"_Ouh_, my God!"

From head to heel he shook--shook from the marrow of his bones
outwards--then leaped to his feet with raised arms, and slid the chair
screeching across the tiled floor where it struck the drawers behind and
fell with a jar. Mechanically, I stooped to recover it.

As I rose, Mr. Shaynor was stretching and yawning at leisure.

"I've had a bit of a doze," he said. "How did I come to knock the chair
over? You look rather--"

"The chair startled me," I answered. "It was so sudden in this quiet."

Young Mr. Cashell behind his shut door was offendedly silent.

"I suppose I must have been dreaming," said Mr. Shaynor.

"I suppose you must," I said. "Talking of dreams--I--I noticed you
writing--before--"

He flushed consciously.

"I meant to ask you if you've ever read anything written by a man called
Keats."

"Oh! I haven't much time to read poetry, and I can't say that I remember
the name exactly. Is he a popular writer?"

"Middling. I thought you might know him because he's the only poet who
was ever a druggist. And he's rather what's called the lover's poet."

"Indeed. I must dip into him. What did he write about?"

"A lot of things. Here's a sample that may interest you."

Then and there, carefully, I repeated the verse he had twice spoken and
once written not ten minutes ago.

"Ah. Anybody could see he was a druggist from that line about the
tinctures and syrups. It's a fine tribute to our profession."

"I don't know," said young Mr. Cashell, with icy politeness, opening the
door one half-inch, "if you still happen to be interested in our trifling
experiments. But, should such be the case----"

I drew him aside, whispering, "Shaynor seemed going off into some sort of
fit when I spoke to you just now. I thought, even at the risk of being
rude, it wouldn't do to take you off your instruments just as the call
was coming through. Don't you see?"

"Granted--granted as soon as asked," he said unbending. "I _did_ think it
a shade odd at the time. So that was why he knocked the chair down?"

"I hope I haven't missed anything," I said.
"I'm afraid I can't say that, but you're just in time for the end of a
rather curious performance. You can come in, too, Mr. Shaynor. Listen,
while I read it off."

The Morse instrument was ticking furiously. Mr. Cashell interpreted:
"'_K.K.V. Can make nothing of your signals_.'" A pause. "'_M.M.V. M.M.V.
Signals unintelligible. Purpose anchor Sandown Bay. Examine instruments
to-morrow.'_ Do you know what that means? It's a couple of men-o'-war
working Marconi signals off the Isle of Wight. They are trying to talk to
each other. Neither can read the other's messages, but all their messages
are being taken in by our receiver here. They've been going on for ever so
long. I wish you could have heard it."

"How wonderful!" I said. "Do you mean we're overhearing Portsmouth ships
trying to talk to each other--that we're eavesdropping across half South
England?"

"Just that. Their transmitters are all right, but their receivers are out
of order, so they only get a dot here and a dash there. Nothing clear."

"Why is that?"

"God knows--and Science will know to-morrow. Perhaps the induction is
faulty; perhaps the receivers aren't tuned to receive just the number of
vibrations per second that the transmitter sends. Only a word here and
there. Just enough to tantalise."

Again the Morse sprang to life.

"That's one of 'em complaining now. Listen: '_Disheartening--most
disheartening_.' It's quite pathetic. Have you ever seen a spiritualistic
seance? It reminds me of that sometimes--odds and ends of messages coming
out of nowhere--a word here and there--no good at all."

"But mediums are all impostors," said Mr. Shaynor, in the doorway,
lighting an asthma-cigarette. "They only do it for the money they can
make. I've seen 'em."

"Here's Poole, at last--clear as a bell. L.L.L. _Now_ we sha'n't be long."
Mr. Cashell rattled the keys merrily. "Anything you'd like to tell 'em?"

"No, I don't think so," I said. "I'll go home and get to bed. I'm feeling
a little tired."

THE ARMY OF A DREAM

SONG OF THE OLD GUARD

"And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold of beaten work shall the
candlestick be made: his shaft and its branches, his bowls, his knops,
and his flowers, shall be the same.

"And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop
under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the
same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick.
Their knops and their branches shall be the same."--_Exodus._

"Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
And all the clouds are gone--
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
Good times are coming on"--
The evil that was threatened late
To all of our degree,
Hath passed in discord and debate,
And, _Hey then up go we!_

A common people strove in vain
To shame us unto toil,
But they are spent and we remain,
And we shall share the spoil
According to our several needs
As Beauty shall decree,
As Age ordains or Birth concedes,
And, _Hey then up go we!_

And they that with accursed zeal
Our Service would amend,
Shall own the odds and come to heel
Ere worse befall their end
For though no naked word be wrote
Yet plainly shall they see
What pinneth Orders to their coat,
And, _Hey then up go we!_

Our doorways that, in time of fear,
We opened overwide
Shall softly close from year to year
Till all be purified;
For though no fluttering fan be heard
Nor chaff be seen to flee--
The Lord shall winnow the Lord's Preferred--
And, _Hey then up go we!_

Our altars which the heathen brake
Shall rankly smoke anew,
And anise, mint, and cummin take
Their dread and sovereign due,
Whereby the buttons of our trade
Shall all restored be
With curious work in gilt and braid,
And, _Hey then up go we!_

Then come, my brethren, and prepare
The candlesticks and bells,
The scarlet, brass, and badger's hair
Wherein our Honour dwells,
And straitly fence and strictly keep
The Ark's integrity
Till Armageddon break our sleep ...
And, _Hey then up go we!_

THE ARMY OF A DREAM

PART I

I sat down in the club smoking-room to fill a pipe.

* * * * *

It was entirely natural that I should be talking to "Boy" Bayley. We had
met first, twenty odd years ago, at the Indian mess of the Tyneside
Tail-twisters. Our last meeting, I remembered, had been at the Mount
Nelson Hotel, which was by no means India, and there we had talked half
the night. Boy Bayley had gone up that week to the front, where I think
he stayed a long, long time.

But now he had come back.

"Are you still a Tynesider?" I asked.

"I command the Imperial Guard Battalion of the old regiment, my son," he
replied.

"Guard which? They've been Fusiliers since Fontenoy. Don't pull my leg,
Boy."

"I said Guard, not Guard-s. The I. G. Battalion of the Tail-twisters.
Does that make it any clearer?"

"Not in the least."

"Then come over to the mess and see for yourself. We aren't a step from
barracks. Keep on my right side. I'm--I'm a bit deaf on the near."

We left the club together and crossed the street to a vast four-storied
pile, which more resembled a Rowton lodging-house than a barrack. I could
see no sentry at the gates.

"There ain't any," said the Boy lightly. He led me into a many-tabled
restaurant full of civilians and grey-green uniforms. At one end of the
room, on a slightly raised dais, stood a big table.

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