And while he talked in this fashion he sat in the sunshine combing his long hair, and piously wondering how folk could defile their insides with tobacco. Then he would stroll off into the shadow and bring out the black lump of dreams. Yet if Sonny _baba_ came out into the verandah calling after the Indian fashion for some one, the broad northern accent was always ready with its "_Huzoor!_"
So the months pa.s.sed in preparations, and the angelic voice might have been heard to sing "Lead, kindly Light" more often than any other hymn in the book. About this time, also, Sonny _baba_ speaking of Dhurm Singh and his ways, used to quote in rather a patronising manner a certain text regarding those who might expect to be beaten with few stripes--a speech which roused the doctor to vigorous retort. He had observed, he said, that the remark held good about most honest, healthy men who could play singlestick.
The fact being, however, that Sonny _baba_ was beginning to get obstinate, as is only natural when a man pa.s.ses five and twenty. It was time, he felt, to begin work in earnest; for the enthusiasm and the faith and the fervour were as hot as ever in him still. Looking back on the last three years he hardly understood why he had done so little.
"There seems so much to learn before one can even begin on the problem," he sighed, "and then, dear as the old man is, I really think Dhurm Singh is a drawback. I hoped when we left the Army--but indeed, Taylor, I think even you will allow that he is hardly the sort of man for a missionary"s servant."
"Well, I don"t know that I should cla.s.sify him under that head; but then," he paused, thinking, perhaps, that when all was said and done the master was no more fit for the place than the servant.
"I"m glad you agree with me," put in Sonny eagerly, "for I"ve quite made up my mind to a change. You have no idea how the old fellow hectors over getting me a pint of milk or a couple of eggs. You would think I was about to loot a whole village. I must own that I invariably get what I want--that, too, without the least unpleasantness; but it is not edifying. Not the sort of thing that ought to go on. Then his habit of eating opium. It does not seem to hurt him, I own; but that again is not what it ought to be. It is bad enough to belong to a race who, while they go about with words of condemnation on their lips--"
"Pardon me," murmured the doctor, "I pa.s.s--"
"--on their lips, are at the same time battening on the proceeds of an infamous monopoly of a drug dealing death and disease to a whole continent."
"One-third of one per cent of the total population," murmured the doctor again.
"You forget the opium grown in China," put in Sonny with great heat.
"My dear fellow, isn"t there a story somewhere about the Emperor of China"s clothes? If I remember right he forgot to put "em on, and then every one was afraid to tell him he was naked. It appears to me that in this opium business the good gentleman hasn"t a rag of reason for complaint, but that you are all afraid to say so. If we can prevent our subjects from growing poppy except under supervision, why can"t he? It isn"t Jonah"s gourd, but a three month crop."
Sonny _baba_ began to walk up and down the room excitedly. "It is perfectly inexplicable to me how a man like you--"
"Excuse me," interrupted the doctor. "I"ll explain. I"m forty-four years of age. Two and twenty years of that I lived in a parish in Scotland where every decent, respectable body would have thought shame to himself if he didn"t have more whisky than he could carry on market days. The other two and twenty I"ve spent in India. Out of cantonments, where they"ve learnt the trick from us, I only remember having met two drunken men in all those years, and though I see more of the natives than most people, I can only call to mind three who might be said to have suffered seriously from the effects of opium.[13] But it is a subject which it is quite useless to discuss. It turns on a question of heredity, like most things. The Indo-Germanic races never have taken and never will take to narcotics, so naturally they abuse them--and drink instead. _Chacun a son gout_."
"And mine is to give poor old Dhurm Singh an extra pension when I go itinerating, and send him back to end his days in peace in his village."
The doctor whistled. "Don"t you wish you may get him to do it?"
"He must if he is a hindrance to the work--"
"And if your work is a hindrance to him? That"s what it comes to all round. He was put in charge of you, and mark my words, Dhurm Singh will do it _dhurm nal_ until he goes to settle the vexed question."
"What vexed question?"
"Whether his work or yours was the better."
III.
"Dhurm Singh?"
"_Huzoor_."
After five and twenty years the same appeal--the same reply. But on that May night and July day neither the man nor the woman had any doubt as to what was to come next; the universe held no possibility save "the _mem sahib_" or "Sonny _baba_ But the latter, now it came to his turn, hesitated; even while he was conscious that to a well-balanced mind capable of weighing advantage and disadvantage fairly, there ought to be no difficulty in telling any one that you had no further need for his services. The recollection of certain thin-lipped, dignified, self-respecting conversations overheard at home sprang to memory obtrusively. "Then, Mary Ann, it had better be this day month." "Yes, ma"am, this day month, if you please; and if you please, ma"am, Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days from eleven till one, if convenient, for a character."
But things were different somehow in this heathen country, which was so backward in education, so ignorant of liberty, equality, and--ahem!
"Dhurm Singh," began Sonny once more rather hurriedly.
"_Huzoor_."
"I--I am going to make a complete change of plan, Dhurm Singh. I--I am going to begin work on a new principle. I--I am going to start in another part of the country where I shall not require--er--many things I have hitherto required." He paused, well satisfied at his plunge _in medias res_.
Dhurm Singh, standing attention at the door, smiled approvingly. "It is a good word, _Huzoor_. So said the _Gurus_ also. When do we start?"
Half an hour afterwards Sonny _baba_ in rather a shamefaced manner, told the doctor that, after all, he had come to the conclusion it would be better not to dismiss Dhurm Singh. To begin with, the village children delighted in his tales, and then--it was a triviality, no doubt, perhaps in a measure a giving in to prejudice--the elders certainly set store by position; for instance, they were always more ready to listen to him if the old swash-buckler had had an opportunity of giving the family history, embellishments and all. In addition, Dhurm Singh had promised to amend his ways generally; to spend his days in compounding pills and potions instead of hectoring about. Finally, he had agreed to an allowance of opium, swearing _dhurm nal_ to take no more than was served out by the master.
"Of course," said Sonny _baba_ at this juncture, with a considerate superiority which raised every atom of the doctor"s original sin, "I shall be careful, I shall not dock it too much at once; but in the course of a year or two I hope to break him entirely of this most pernicious habit."
"Which has never done him or his surroundings the least harm," growled Taylor savagely. "Upon my soul, I begin to wish I were five and twenty again, if only that I might be as c.o.c.k-sure of being right about everything as you are. As it is, even the _bacillus_--" He wrinkled his eyes over the microscope once more, and did not finish his sentence.
After this Dhurm Singh might have been seen any day of the week in the dispensary verandah grinding away vigorously with pestle and mortar at unsavoury medicaments, rolling pills under his flexible brown fingers, or polishing up surgical instruments with all the fervour bestowed of yore on the old sword.
"Lo! if the _Baba-sahib_ cares not for being a big _Hakm_ (magistrate, ruler), sure the next best thing is to be a big _Hakeem_ (doctor)," he would say, smiling simply at his own wit. "And doth not the _Guru_ say, "Fight with no weapon but the sword of the Spirit"? Besides, when I feel like fighting I can put an edge to the knives or pound harder with the pestle. G.o.d knows they may both do more damage than a sabre. Then the rolling of pills is ever the first step towards dream-getting. Thus in all ways, I, Dhurm Singh, Sikh, ex-_duffadar_, _pinson-wallah_, and _Akali_, am consoled. But there! G.o.d is good to the Sikh. Know you that He never made an ugly one yet?"
This was a favourite boast of the old man"s, backed always, should doubts be expressed, by a modest appeal to his own looks, joined to an a.s.sertion--which, by the way, was perfectly true--that he was the meanest looking of ten brothers.
So, in due season, the doctor once more watched the odd couple pa.s.s out together into the wilderness; and this time, noticing the change in Sonny _baba_ and remembering the raw lad who had been his cabin companion, he, so to speak, put his whole pile on Dhurm Singh--unless the boy killed him with philanthropy.
The rains, after an unusually heavy fall, had ceased early, the result being an epidemic of autumnal fever. Now the cholera may kill its thousands, but year by year, with every now and again a sort of jubilee over its own strength, malaria kills its tens of thousands quietly, unostentatiously; so quietly, that it is only when the officer in charge of a district finds himself during his cold weather camp deciding the rival claims to hereditary offices day after day in village after village, that even he realises how widely the archangel Azrael has spread his wings over the people. The doctor, however, judging simply by the weather, sent Sonny into the jungles well supplied with that carmine-tinted quinine which carries the fact of its being Government property in its colour: a useless attempt to prevent the sale of charity in a land where the regulation five grain powder is as much a part of the currency as a two anna bit. Well supplied, yet at the same time with cautions not to be over generous except in genuine cases. Let him stick to the country medicines as prophylactics. Opium and aconite were to be had for the buying; and if he did wander into the low jungles close to the hills, and if he could be tolerant and learn not to despise old wisdom, let him prescribe the former in preference to the latter--though perhaps that was too much to expect from a five-and-twenty-year old who was c.o.c.k-sure he knew best.
"I know nothing of myself," replied Sonny in all seriousness. "The Eternal Right decides. There lies the difference between you and me--pardon me if I say between the Christian and the Unbeliever. You trust to your finite mind, I to Something which is and was, which cannot err."
And Dhurm Singh, gleefully employed in turning a cash transport mule with its fixings into a perambulating dispensary, was keeping up his character of devotee by repeating verses from the _Adhee Grunt"h_[14]
in sing-song; his round, mellow voice echoing out through the sunshine--
"Remember, oh man, the primal truth--the Truth ere the world began.
The Truth which is and the Truth which must remain.
How can this Truth be told, save by doing the will of the Lord?"
"Listen!" said Taylor, and Sonny _baba_ moved uneasily in his chair.
When these same preparations were complete, the old man"s delight was huge; and he drove the mule forth to the wilderness before him with much futile waving of the stick which had replaced the sword. Even over that abnegation he was cheerful.
"Lo! I am turned a _dhundi-wallah_[15] in mine old age, as becomes the pious-minded. _Ari!_ thou misbegotten offspring of a mixed race doomed to childless extinction, wilt stray from the beaten path! Wouldst steal the corn of others, when thy master is a _missen sahib_, and thy tender a devotee? May the uttermost--"
Then to Sonny"s pained reproof he would reply, cheerfully as ever, that he had understood the refraining of his tongue from abuse was to be towards those born of Adam; and this was not even a G.o.d-created thing, but a nondescript invented by the _sahib-logue_.
Cheerful always; even when, as time went on, his daily pills of opium were mixed with quinine. He sat and compounded them himself _dhurm nal_, keeping no grain of the beloved dream-giver from the sacrilegious mixture, and telling the full tale of the "_fiat pillulae_" into the master"s locked medicine chest, whence they were doled out daily.
For the first month or more, everything went smoothly. Never before had Sonny _baba_ had such attentive listeners to the great truths he expounded as a preliminary to his other work; never before had he felt that he was really on the right tack, really had his opportunity of a fair hearing. The letters he wrote home to his aunt who, fond woman, had faithfully followed, as woman can do, every step in the career of her darling with unswerving confidence, filled that excellent creature with sheer, unalloyed delight. She told all her circle of friends that her nephew had fulfilled her dearest wishes in going in for the medical mission, which was undoubtedly the only way of getting at the poor, dear natives.
And Sonny, in less emotional fashion, felt this to be so true that he worked as he had never worked before. A sort of feverish desire to utilise every opportunity, to lose no occasion for preaching the great Gospel of Peace came over him, and he spared himself not at all, after the manner of his kind.
So that sometimes returning tired out in evening from some long tramp, it was a relief to find the old swash-buckler ready with kid _pullao_ or "_rose chikken_,"[16] and to see the tea-kettle swinging over a fire of twigs. Sometimes after they entered the tract of forest-land near the foot of the hills, the indefatigable old poacher would produce a stew of black partridge; and once Sonny, coming home to the tiny tent late at night, found his henchman keeping an eye on roast pork, and at the same time utilising the flame-light in giving a suspicious clean to the biggest surgical knife--a queer picture seen by the fire, leaping and dancing up into the shadows of a mango grove.