ipling, celebrating Imperial India, has
shown us the English at close war with the India of black magic and
secret murder, of cruelty and fear. But he has balanced the account.
There is another set of stories, showing us how the white man comes to
disaster, who, not content with his exact and simple duty, insolently
overleaps the breach between East and West--the breach which Mr Kipling
himself so scrupulously observes. There was Trajego:

"He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the
second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never
do so again."

His story is entitled _Beyond the Pale_, and is to be found among
_Plain Tales from the Hills_. There is also _The Man Who Would Be
King_. He, too, neglected the barriers. India may be ruled by the
resolute and challenged by the brave; but India may never be embraced.

India, who strikes out of a brazen sky; who poisons with her infected
breath and is served to the death without reward; who physically cows
her people with dust and fever and heat, and is possessed with devils
who must be pacified; where successive civilisations have left their
bones upon the soil and a hundred religions have decayed, leaving the
old air heavy with exhalations--this India slowly takes shape in Mr
Kipling's native stories. Her physical immensity and pressure is felt
in stories like _The End of the Passage_ and _William the Conqueror_.
Her sleepless tyranny, which has made men intricate and incalculable,
driving them to subterranean ways of thought and fancy, rules in every
page of a tale like _The Return of Imray_. Imray was an amiable
Englishman who incautiously patted the head of his servant's child.
Bahadur Khan speaks of it thus to Strickland of the Police:

"'Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child who
was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the
fever, my child!'

"'What said Imray Sahib?'

"'He said he was a handsome child and patted him on the head; wherefore
my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he
had come, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the
roof-beams and made all fast behind him--the Heaven-born knows all
things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born. . . . Be it remembered
that the Sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an
extra piece of soap in his wash-basin. My child was bewitched and I
slew the wizard.