"You had better go to bed now," he said with almost supernatural profundity. "Good night. G.o.d bless you."
"Let me stay, please, father. I"m not a bit tired," she pleaded.
He stood uncertain, and John Raby drew out his watch with a contemptuous smile. "Half-past one, Colonel; I must be off."
"Hang it all!" expostulated the other feebly. "You can"t go without my revenge. It ain"t fair!"
"You shall have it sometime, never fear. Good night, Miss Stuart; we can"t afford to peril such roses by late hours."
Again his words fell flat, their only result being that he looked at her with a flash of real interest. When he had gone Belle knelt beside her father"s chair, timidly asking if he was angry with her for sitting up.
"Angry!" cried the Colonel, already in a half doze. "No, child!
certainly not. Dear! dear! how like you are to your poor mother." The thought roused him, for he stood up shaking his head mournfully. "Go to bed, my dear. We all need rest. It has been a trying day, a very trying day."
Belle, as she laid her head on the pillow, felt that it had been so indeed; yet she was not disappointed with it. She was too young to criticise kindness, and they had all been kind, very kind; even Charlie had forgotten his first fright; and so she fell asleep, smiling at the remembrance of the old _ayah"s_ bandy legs.
CHAPTER III.
Early morning in the big bazaar at Faizapore. So much can be said; but who with pen alone could paint the scene, or who with brush give the aroma, physical and moral, which, to those familiar with the life of Indian streets, remains for ever the one indelible memory? The mysterious smell indescribable to those who know not the East; the air of sordid money-getting and giving which pervades even the children; the gaily-dressed, chattering stream of people drifting by; but from the grey-bearded cultivator come on a lawsuit from his village, to the sweeper, besom in hand, propelling the black flood along the gutter, the only subject sufficiently interesting to raise one voice above the universal hum, is money. Even the stalwart herdswomen with their kilted skirts swaying at each free bold step, their patchwork bodices obeying laws of decency antipodal to ours, even they, born and bred in the desert, talk noisily of the _ghee_ they are bringing to market in the russet and black jars poised on their heads; and if _ghee_ be not actually money, it is inextricably mixed up with it in the native mind.
All else may fade from the memory; the glare of sunlight, the transparent shadows, the cl.u.s.tering flies and children round the cavernous sweetmeat-shops, the glitter of brazen pots, and the rainbow-hued overflow from the dyers" vats staining the streets like a reflection of the many-tinted cloths festooned to dry overhead. Even the sharper contrasts of the scene may be forgotten; the marriage procession swerving to give way to the quiet dead, swathed in muslins and bound with tinsel, carried high on the string bed, or awaiting sunset and burial in some narrow by-way among green-gold melons and piles of red wheat. But to those who have known an Indian bazaar well, the c.h.i.n.k of money, and the smell of a chemist"s shop, will ever remain a more potent spell to awaken memory than any elaborate pictures made by pen or pencil.
On this particular morning quite a little crowd was collected round the doorway leading to the house of one Shunker Das, usurer, contractor, and honorary magistrate; a man who combined those three occupations into one unceasing manufacture of money. In his hands pice turned to annas, annas to rupees, and rupees in their turn to fat. For there is no little truth in the a.s.sertion that the real test of a _buniah"s_ (money-lender"s) wealth is his weight, and the safest guard for income-tax his girth in inches.
Nevertheless a skeleton lay hidden under Shunker Das"s mountain of prosperous flesh; a gruesome skeleton whose bones rattled ominously.
Between him and the perdition of a sonless death stood but one life; a life so frail that it had only been saved hitherto by the expedient of dressing the priceless boy in petticoats, and so palming him off on the dread Shiva as a girl. At least so said the _zenana_ women, and so in his inmost heart thought Shunker Das, though he was a prime specimen of enlightened native society. But on that day the fateful first decade during which the Destroyer had reft away so many baby-heirs from the usurer"s home was over; and amid countless ceremonies, and much dispensation of alms, the little Nuttu, with his ears and nose pierced like a girl"s, had been attired in the _pugree_ and _pyjamas_ of his s.e.x. Hence the crowd closing in round the Lala"s Calcutta-built barouche which waited for its owner to come out. Hence the number of professional beggars, looking on the whole more fat and well-liking than the workers around them, certainly more so than a small group of women who were peeping charily from the door of the next house,--a very different house from Shunker Das"s pretentious stucco erection with its blue elephants and mottled tigers frescoed round the top storey, and a railway train, flanked by two caricatures of the British soldier, over the courtyard doorway. This was a tall, square, colourless tower, gaining its only relief from the numerous places where the outer skin of bricks had fallen away, disclosing the hard red mortar beneath; mortar that was stronger than stone; mortar that had been ground and spread long years before the word "contractor" was a power in India. Here in poverty, abject in all save honour, dwelt Mahomed Lateef, a Syyed of the Syyeds;[1] and it was his hewers of wood and drawers of water who formed the group at the door, turning their lean faces away disdainfully when the baskets of dough cakes, and trays of sweet rice were brought out for distribution from the idolater"s house.
The crowd thickened, but fell away instinctively to give place to a couple of English soldiers who came tramping along shoulder to shoulder, utterly unconcerned and unsympathetic; their Glengarry caps set at the same angle, the very pipes in their mouths having a drilled appearance. Such a quiet, orderly crowd it was; not even becoming audible when Shunker Das appeared with little Nuttu, the hero of the day, who in a coat of the same brocade as his father"s, and a _pugree_ tied in the same fashion, looked a wizened, changeling double of his unwieldy companion. The barouche was brilliant as to varnish, vivid as to red linings, and the bay Australians were the best money could buy; yet the people, as it pa.s.sed, took small notice of the Lala, lolling in gorgeous attire against the Berlin-wool-worked cushion which he had bought from the Commissioner"s wife at a bazaar in aid of a cathedral.
They gave far more attention to a hawk-eyed old man with a cruel, high-bred face, who rode by on a miserable pony, and after returning the Lala"s contemptuous salutation with grave dignity, spat solemnly into the gutter.
This was Mahomed Lateef, who but the day before had put the talisman-signet on his right hand to a deed mortgaging the last acre of his ancestral estate to the usurer. Yet the people stood up with respectful _salaams_ to him, while they had only obsequious grins for the other. Indeed, one old patriarch waiting for death in the sun, curled up comfortably, his chin upon his knees, on a bed stuck well into the street, nodded his head cheerfully and muttered "Shunker"s father was n.o.body," over and over again till he fell asleep; to dream perchance of the old order of things.
Meanwhile the Lala waited his turn for audience at the District Officer"s bungalow. There were many other aspirants to that honour, seated on a row of cane-bottomed chairs in the verandah, silent, bored, uncomfortable. It is an irony of fate which elevates the chair in India into a patent of position, for nowhere does the native look more thoroughly out of place than in the coveted honour. As it is he clings to it, notably with his legs; those thin legs round whose painful want of contour the tight cotton pantaloons wrinkle all too closely, and which would be so much better tucked away under dignified skirts in true Eastern fashion. But the exotic has a strange fascination for humanity. Waiting there for his turn, the Lala inwardly cursed the Western morality which prevented an immediate and bribe-won entry; but the red-coated badge-wearers knew better than to allow even a munificent shoe-money to interfere with the roster. The hara.s.sed-looking, preoccupied official within had an almost uncanny quickness of perception, so the rupees c.h.i.n.ked into their pockets, but produced no effect beyond whining voices and fulsome flattery.
"Well, Lala-ji! and what do _you_ want?" asked the representative of British majesty when, at last, Shunker Das"s most obsequious smile curled out over his fat face. There was no doubt a certain brutality of directness in the salutation, but it came from a deadly conviction that a request lay at the bottom of every interview, and that duty bade its discovery without delay. The abruptness of the magistrate was therefore compressed politeness. As he laid down the pen with which he had been writing a judgment, and leant wearily back in his chair, his bald head was framed, as it were, in a square nimbus formed by a poster on the wall behind. It was four feet square, and held, in treble columns, a list of all the schedules and reports due from his office during the year to come. That was his patent of position; and it was one which grows visibly, as day by day, and month by month, law and order become of more consequence than truth and equity in the government of India.
The Lala"s tact bade him follow the lead given. "I want, _sahib_," he said, "to be made a _Rai Bahadur_."
Now _Rai Bahadur_ is an honorific t.i.tle bestowed by Government for distinguished service to the State. So without more ado Shunker Das detailed his own virtues, totalled up the money expended in public utility, and wound up with an offer of five thousand rupees towards a new Female Hospital. The representative of British majesty drew diagrams on his blotting-paper, and remarked, casually, that he would certainly convey the Lala"s liberal suggestion about the hospital to the proper authorities; adding his belief that one Puras Ram, who was about to receive the coveted honour, had offered fifteen thousand for the same purpose.
"I will give ten thousand, _Huzoor_" bid the usurer, with a scowl struggling with his smile; "that will make seventy-five thousand in all; and Tota Mull got it for building the big tank that won"t hold water. If it cost him fifty thousand, may I eat dirt; and I ought to know for I had the contract. It won"t last, _Huzoor_; I know the stuff that went into it."
"Tota Mull had other services."
"Other services!" echoed Shunker fumbling in his garments, and producing a printed book tied up in a cotton handkerchief. "See my certificates; one from your honour"s own hand."
Perhaps the District Officer judged the worth of the others by the measure of his own testimonial, wherein, being then a "griff" of six months" standing, he had recorded Shunker"s name opposite a list of the cardinal virtues, for he set the book aside with a sad smile. Most likely he was thinking that in those days his ambition had been a reality, and his liver an idea, and that now they had changed places.
"I am glad to see your son looking so well," he remarked with pointed irrelevance. "I hear you are to marry him next month, and that everything is to be on a magnificent scale. Tota Mull will be quite eclipsed; though his boy"s wedding cost him sixty-five thousand,--he told me so himself. Accept my best wishes on the occasion."
"_Huzoor!_ I will give fifteen thou--" British majesty rose gravely with the usual intimation of dismissal, and a remark that it was always gratified at liberality. Shunker Das left the presence with his smile thoroughly replaced by a scowl, though his going there had simply been an attempt to save his pocket; for he knew right well that he had not yet filled up the measure of qualification for a _Rai Bahadur_-ship.
While this interview had been going on, another of a very different nature was taking place outside a bungalow on the other side of the road, where Philip Marsden stood holding the rein of his charger and talking to Mahomed Lateef, whose pink-nosed pony was tied to a neighbouring tree.
The old man, in faded green turban and shawl, showed straight and tall even beside the younger man"s height and soldierly carriage.
"_Sahib_," he said, "I am no beggar to whine at the feet of a stranger for alms. I don"t know the _sahib_ over yonder whose verandah, as you see, is crowded with such folk. They come and go too fast these _sahibs_, nowadays; and I am too old to tell the story of my birth. If it is forgotten, it is forgotten. But you know me, Allah be praised!
You feel my son"s blood there on your heart where he fell fighting beside you! Which of the three was it? What matter? They all died fighting. And this one is Benjamin; I cannot let him go. He is a bright boy, and will give brains, not blood, to the Sirkar, if I can only get employment for him. So I come to you, who know me and mine."
Philip Marsden laid his hand on the old man"s shoulder. "That is true.
Khan _sahib_. What is it I can do for you?"
"There is a post vacant in the office, _Huzoor!_ It is not much, but a small thing is a great gain in our poor house. The boy could stay at home, and not see the women starve. It is only writing-work, and thanks to the old mullah, Murghub Admed is a real _khush nawis_ (penman). Persian and Arabic, too, and Euclidus, and Algebra; all a true man should know. If you would ask the _sahib_."
"I"ll go over now. No, no, _Khan sahib!_ I am too young, and you are too old."
But Mahomed Lateef held the stirrup stoutly with lean brown fingers.
"The old help the young into the saddle always, _sahib_. It is for you boys to fight now, and for us to watch and cry "Allah be with the brave!""
So it happened that as Shunker Das drove out of the District Officer"s compound, Major Marsden rode in. Despite his scowl, the usurer stood up and _salaamed_ profusely with both hands, receiving a curt salute in return.
British majesty was now in the verandah disposing of the smaller fry in batches. "Come inside," it said, hastily dismissing the final lot.
"I"ve only ten minutes left for bath and breakfast, but you"ll find a cigar there, and we can talk while I tub."
Amid vigorous splashings from within Major Marsden unfolded his mission, receiving in reply a somewhat disjointed enquiry as to whether the applicant had pa.s.sed the Middle School examination, for otherwise his case was hopeless.
"And why, in Heaven"s name?" asked his hearer impatiently.
The magistrate having finished his ablutions appeared at the door in scanty attire rubbing his bald head with a towel. "Immutable decree of government."
"And loyalty, family, influence--what of them?"
A shrug of the shoulders,--"Ask some one else. I am only a barrel-organ grinding out the executive and judicial tunes sent down from headquarters."
"And a lively discord you"ll make of it in time! But you are wrong. A man in your position is, as it were, trustee to a minor"s estate and bound to speak up for his wards."
"And be over-ridden! No good! I"ve tried it. Oh lord! twelve o"clock and I had a case with five pleaders in it at half-past eleven. Well, I"ll bet the four-anna bit the exchange left me from last month"s pay, that my judgment will be upset on appeal."
"I pity you profoundly."
"Don"t mention it; there"s balm in Gilead. This is mail-day, and I shall hear from my wife and the kids. Good-bye!--I"m sorry about the boy, but it can"t be helped."
"It strikes me it will have to be helped some day," replied Major Marsden as he rode off.
Meanwhile a third interview, fraught with grave consequences to this story, had just taken place in the Commissariat office whither Shunker Das had driven immediately after his rebuff, with the intention of robbing Peter to pay Paul; in other words, of getting hold of some Government contract, out of which he could squeeze the extra rupees required for the purchase of the _Rai Bahadur_-ship; a proceeding which commended itself to his revengeful and spiteful brain. As it so happened, he appeared in the very nick of time; for he found Colonel Stuart looking helplessly at a telegram from headquarters, ordering him to forward five hundred camels to the front at once.