"Bring me my uniform, women!" said Bikrama Singh, suddenly. Half a dozen weeping daughters and daughters-in-law and an old wife too blind to see did as they were bid, and in a short time the old man stood arrayed as for a bridal, his sword buckled tight to his bowed back.
"And the shield, women--the shield of my fathers that hangs in the entry. I shall need it, too!"
Over in Shakingarh, Buktiyar Khan, impelled likewise by those memories of the past, that hatred of the present, had donned his uniform likewise; and so the moonlight shone on cold steel and damascened gold as, silently obeying some inward community of thought, the two old men started silently alone, leaving all behind them, to seek for Peace in their own way.
Steadily over the arid fields, nearer and nearer to each other. The fields had been cut and carried; the harvest was over; it was nigh time to plough again for a fresh crop----
Of what?
"The Peace of the Unknown be upon you, oh, mine enemy," said Bikrama Singh, when at long last they stood face to face in the open.
"And the Peace of the Most Mighty be on you, my foe," answered Buktiyar Khan.
So for a moment there was silence. Then the Rajput spoke, his old voice full of fire, full of vibration.
"In the old days to which we belong, oh, Mahomedan! did brave men wait for Fate?"
"They did not wait, oh, Hindu," came the answer. "When brave men found sickness or dishonour before them: when there was no longer hope of victory: when that which lay ahead was hateful, and they left sons to carry on the race, did not the ancestors of my race claim of their enemies the glorious gift of battle?"
"They did so claim it, oh, Bikrama Singh! Dost claim it now!"
The reply, quick, vibrant, rang through the moonlight; a veritable challenge.
"Yea, Pathan--robber! thief! I claim it now! _Jug-dan, Jug-dan_--the Gift of Battle to the Death."
"Take it, pig of an idolator! Jug-dan, Jug-dan--the Gift of Battle!"
The still, hot air became full of faint c.h.i.n.kings, as buckles were settled straight, scabbards thrown aside. Then there was an instance silence as the two old warriors faced each other.
"Art ready ... friend?" The question came softly.
"Yea! I am ready ... friend!" The reply was almost a caress.
So, with a quick clash of sword on sword, youth and health and strength came back to the Hereditary Enemies.
It matters little if the combat ended in quarter of an hour, half an hour, or an hour; whether Bikrama Singh or Buktiyar Khan got in the first blow. The moon shone peacefully on the Gift of Battle. She still hung a white shield on the grey skies of dawn when Tim O"Brien and the police officer, coming to do their disagreeable duty, found the two old men lying stone dead within swords" thrust of each other on the stubble.
"They are really an incomprehensible lot," said the police officer, almost mournfully; "why the deuce should the two poor old buffers come out and kill each other, as presumably they have----"
Tim O"Brien smiled a grim smile. "You haven"t heard, I suppose--why should ye--of what they call the Gift of Battle! Well! I have. It"s an ould Rajput custom by which a man who feared he"d die in his bed or be put to it any way by any other stupid inept limitations, could claim a decent death from his nearest foe."
"Well! they"ve done it. That"s all, and small blame to them."
"By G.o.d who made me, it"s a protest with a vengeance. But the worst of it is, the Government won"t see it and I can"t explain it. Cipher telegrams won"t run to it So ... peace be with you, friends!"
THE VALUE OF A VOTE
A SKETCH FROM LIFE
He was an old man; a very old man. A Syyed--that is, a Mahomedan who claims direct descent from the prophet--by trade a Yunani hakeem, or physician according to the Grecian system, introduced to India, doubtless, by Alexander the Great. He had a little sort of shop, close to the princ.i.p.al gate of the city, where he was in touch with all those who, with its ship the camel, went out, or came back from the desert beyond, and with all strangers and sojourners in the land. So all day and every day you might see wearied travellers resting on the hard wooden platform set in a dark archway, of which his shop consisted, drinking out of green gla.s.s tumblers some restorative sherbet of things hot or things cold, things dry or things wet, while he showed dimly in the background, a visionary outline of long grey beard and high white turban. In this way he heard a good deal of what was going on both inside and outside the city, and as he was of the old school of the absolutely loyal outspoken Mahomedan, who, while he holds our rule to be inferior to that of his own faith, emphatically believes it to be superior to all others, I used often to pause in riding into or out of the city for a chat with the old man; seldom without benefit to myself.
One morning--I remember it so well!--the _gram_ fields outside the city were literally drenched with dew, making the fine tufts look like diamond plumes, amongst which the wealth of tiny purple blue pea blossom showed like a sowing of sapphires--I found him sitting with a troubled look on his high, wrinkled forehead, peering through his horn spectacles at a blue printed paper.
A patient was snoring contentedly on the boards, with, tucked into the hollow of his neck, a hard roly-poly bolster which made me ache to look at. Nothing brings home to one the impossibility of any Western judging what is, or is not pleasant or convenient to an Eastern more than the ordinary rolling pin, two feet by six inches, stuffed hard with cotton wool, which the latter habitually uses as a pillow. The sight of it makes a Western neck feel stiff.
I recognised the paper at once. We were then in the throes of "Local Self Government," and a violent effort was being made to induce this little far-away town, inhabited for the most part by Pathans (exiled these centuries back from northern wilds to the Indian plain) to elect a Munic.i.p.al Committee.
I had spent the better part of the day before in explaining to various Rais"es or honourable gentlemen of the city, that no insult was intended by asking them to put themselves up to auction as it were by the votes of their fellow citizens, instead of being discreetly and as ever nominated to the office of Councillor by the "hated alien." A few had gravely and dutifully given in to this new and quite incomprehensible fad of the const.i.tuted authorities, others had hesitated, but one, a fiery old Khan Bahadur, who was a retired risseldar from one of our crack native cavalry regiments, had sworn with many oaths that never would he take office from, amongst others, the perjured vote of Gunpat-Lal, pleader, who belonged to his ward, and whose evil, eloquent tongue had deliberately diddled him out of ancestral rights in a poppy field in the Huzoor"s own court. No! He had served the Sirkar with distinction, he had, with his own hands, nearly killed an agitator he had found in the lines; nay, more! he had absolutely sent his daughter to school to please the _sahib logue_; but _this_ was too much. It had been all I could do to prevent the hot-tempered old soldier from giving up the sword of honour with which he had been presented on retirement, as a signal of final rupture with the Government.
So, as I say, I recognised the blue paper at once as one of many voting papers which had been sent out for marking and return; for in these out of the way places in those days, the secret ballot-box was not the best blessing of the world, as it is now. And my old friend the hakeem was, I knew, on the Aga Khan"s ward.
"What have you got to do with it?" I echoed, in reply to an anxious question. "Why, put a mark against the Aga Khan"s name and give it back whence it came."
He salaamed profoundly. "Huzoor! that was the settled determination of this slave, thus combining new duties with old--which is the philosophy of faithful life; but, being called in last night to an indigestion in his house, which I combatted with burnt almonds, he told me that if I so much as went near his honourable name with my stylus, I should cease to be physician-in-ordinary to his household. And, father and son, we have been physicians to the Aga Khan ever since our fathers followed his fathers from Ghazni in that capacity with the Great Mahomed--on whom be peace."
"Then mark one of the other names--which you choose, and send it in," I replied, taking no notice of the scandalous attempt at coercion on the old Aga Khan"s part.
A still more profound salaam was the answer. "That also would have occurred to me," came the suave old voice, "but that the Aga Khan said, with oaths, that if I so much as made a chance blot on this cursed paper against any of the names thereon, I should be cast for life from his honourable company."
I felt quite nettled. Her Majesty"s lieges must not be intimidated in this fashion. "Well! you must think of the person whom you consider most fitted to fulfil all the many duties which will devolve on him, and put down his name," I said, for in these days when we really wished to get at the wishes of the people, we were not so strict about nominations and proposings and secondings as we are now, "and I will speak again to the Khan Bahadur and see if I cannot induce him to stand." (I meant to do so by threats of exposure for using force to Her Majesty"s lieges!)
As I rode off, my horse picking its way through the piles of melons, the bags of corn, the jars of milk, the nets of pottery and all the _olla podrida_ of trivial daily merchandise which finds pause for a few minutes about an active gate at dawn time, the patient sat up straight from his backboard and yawned, then asked for another violet drink. But the hakeem was absorbed in the problem of voting.
I happened that day to have business in the city in the evening also, but I entered by another gate, so that the sun was nigh setting when, on my homeward way, I saw my old friend the Yunani hakeem sitting with his pile of little medicine bottles and tiny earthenware goglets of pills and ointments beside him.
He was pounding away at something in a minute jade mortar and looked no longer disturbed, but weary utterly.
"Have you settled that knotty point, hakeem sahib?" I asked.
He gave a sigh of relief, but pounded away faster than ever. "I give G.o.d thanks I have been led into the way of wisdom," he replied, "else would I be harried, indeed! Never, within the memory of man, have so many gentlemen of rank been sick as during this day. I am but now compounding the "Thirty-six-ingredient-drug" for one honourable house, and have but just finished the "Four-great-things" for another. "Tis anxiety about the elections, methinks, for they talk of nothing else.
Hardly had your Honour left this morning, than Gunpat-Lal sent to say he had a belly-ache which his idolatrous miracle-monger could not touch. I had it away in half an hour with cuc.u.mber and lemon juice.
Cold things to cold. And Lala-ji full of compliments and regrets that the Aga Sahib would not be elected." A faintly worried air crept over the high old face.
"Did he ask you to give him your vote?" I enquired, with a sinking at my heart.
"Yea!" replied the Yunani hakeem cheerfully, "and offered me five rupees for it."
Ye G.o.ds above! How soon political corruption seizes on the innocent, I thought.
"But others have offered more," continued the old man, with a certain self-satisfaction. Then his face clouded. "Yonder pasty-faced knock-kneed student, who calls himself "Hedditerlile--jackdaw"" (Editor Loyal Objector) "told me it was his by right, since he and his like were Hindustan. But I told the lad G.o.d had ordained otherwise--for look you, Huzoor, we Mussalmans came from the north many long years before the _sahib-logue_ came from the west. So I let him talk, having, by G.o.d"s mercy, come to a decision."
"What is that, hakeem-ji?" I asked, curious to know what had influenced the old man.