* * * * * *

“Several weeks of darkness pass after this.  For the Moon has gone out.  The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before making my way homeward.  Again the noise of shuffling feet.  The morning call is about to begin, and my nightwatch is over.  ’Allah ho Akbar!  Allah ho Akbar!’ The east grows grey, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face towards the dawning day. . . .

“‘Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?’ What is it?  Something borne on men’s shoulders comes by in the half-light, and I stand back.  A woman’s corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and a bystander says, ‘She died at midnight from the heat.’”

This passage may stand as a fair example of Mr Kipling’s method of dealing with India.  It is an able piece of descriptive writing.  It is marked by a conscious and deliberate resolve that the “effect” shall be made.  It shows us the Indian city from a high distance, as it appeared to an observer with a knack for vividly delivering his impressions.  It is in no sense an inspired wrestle with the reality of India; and in that it is typical.  Mr Kipling has never claimed to grasp or interpret his Indian theme.  He has stood away almost ostentatiously from the material he was exploiting.

It is indeed the chief merit of his Indian tales that he admits himself to be no more, so far as India is concerned, than an adventurer making the literary most of his adventure.  He has at any rate the sensibility to be conscious that often he is in the position of a tripper before the Sphinx.  His tales are thrilled with respect and a sense of India’s power.  She it is who wipes the lips of Aurelian McGoggin, who flouts the Greatest of All the Viceroys, humbles the Legal Member of the Supreme Legislative Council, and drives the lonely white intruder to illusion and death.  She is indifferent to every conqueror.  She feeds her multitudes like a mother; and then suddenly her bounty dries and there is famine and pestilence.  Always she is a confronting Presence dwarfing to one height masters and slaves.  Mr Kipling has followed this Presence as Browning’s poet followed a more familiar quest: 

  “Yet the day wears,
  And door succeeds door;
  I try the fresh fortune—­
  Range the wide house from the wing to the centre. 
  Still the same chance!  She goes out as I enter.”

It is a lawful adventure, and for some it is an absolute duty, to follow and challenge the Presence in word and deed.  Englishmen who live in her shadow have sometimes for their honour to grasp and defy her; to assume that they are bound to question her authority.  India for all her unknown terror has to be wrestled with for the blessing that England requires upon the labour of the English.  Though the Gods of India are sacred, the devils of India, filthy and lawless, must be driven out.  When India put the mark of the beast upon Fleete the powers of darkness had of necessity to be brought to heel, and this story may be read as a parable.  The mark of the beast, wherever it may appear, is the Imperial concern of the English in India.