For it was the smile of a sycophant as unblushingly false as the teeth which it displayed--teeth which were square, dicelike blocks of ivory, unvarying in size, strung together en a bold gold wire, and hung--Heaven knows how--to his toothless gums.
"Sit down, _meean-jee_," said the census enumerator, politely, for the heart-whole artificiality of the smile admitted of no breach of manners. "We seek but honourable names and ages."
So they brought the old man a quaint red lacquered stool, which had once carried a certain dignity in its spindled back rail by reason of its having come into the family with some far dead and gone bride--Chiragh Shah"s own, mayhap!--and there he sate, still with that look of urbane smiling alacrity rejuvenating his wrinkled face.
There was a hint, beneath the semi-transparency of his frayed white muslin robe, cut in a bygone fashion, of very worn, very old brocade fitting closely to the very thin, very old body, and the embroidered cap set back from his high, narrow forehead showed a glint here and there of frayed old worn gold thread.
"His name is Chiragh Shah," yawned the spokesman, adding in a bawl, "How old art thou, dada--the Sirkar is asking?"
There was a little pause, and wintry though the sun was, its shine seemed to filter straight through all things, denying a visible shadow even to the blue paper.
"How old?" came the urbane voice, speaking with a long-lapsed precision of polish. "That is as G.o.d wills and my lord chooses."
Prem Lal glanced doubtfully at the schedules. They did not provide for such politeness, so he appealed mutely to the spokesman, who replied by roundabout a.s.sertion:
"He was of knowledgeable years when the city fell--wast thou not, dada?" The explanatory shout brought keen intelligence to the hearer.
"Aye! it was from the palace bastion I watched the English. Half the city watched them that 14th of September...." Here once more voice and memory lapsed awhile. But Prem Lal"s history was at least equal to the more recent event of that memorable date, so his pen grew glib in ciphering. "Taking knowledgeable age as ten," he commenced rapidly, "with deduction of years 1857 from present epoch 1881----"
His face darkened. "He has the appearance of more age than thirty-five," he began dubiously, when the suave old voice picked up the lost thread of recollection.
"Lake sahib came to our court two days after, and the King, being blind, saw not that the English face was no more merciful than the French face which had been driven away, so there were rejoicings."
"He means the day which began the hundred years of tyranny," suggested the spokesman; and Prem Lal"s pen had already subst.i.tuted 1805 for 1857, when the voice of her who had to be obeyed came sternly from the c.h.i.n.k. "Put him down as a hundred, boy!" it said scornfully. "Meat is tough when the sacrifice is past its prime, anyhow, so what does it matter?"
The next question presented no difficulty. No one in that house could be aught but a descendant of the Prophet, so the answer "Syyed" sprang to every lip with chill, almost scornful, pride.
"Profession or trade," continued Prem Lal, mechanically; "gold-thread embroiderer, I suppose, like the rest of you."
It was a natural supposition, seeing that the high-bred, in-bred household had for years past--since, in fact, courts were abolished in Delhi--taken to this, the trade of so many ousted officials.
"Huzoor! no!" replied the spokesman with a yawn, for the proceedings were becoming uninteresting to him. "He is before that. He does nothing--he never did anything."
"Gentleman at large," hesitated on Prem Lal"s pen; there an ephemeral conscientiousness born of his ephemeral dignity made him appeal to the old man himself.
Chiragh Shah smiled courteously. His hands trembled themselves tip to tip.
"My profession," he echoed. "Surely I am Chaplaoo--of inheritance and choice," he added alertly.
"Chaplaoo!" That was clear enough to Prem Lal in the vernacular, but how was it to be translated for the blue paper which must be written in English as an exposition of learning that might lead to further employment?
Being prepared for such emergencies by a pocket dictionary, he looked the word up--a proceeding which revived interest in the audience, notably behind the c.h.i.n.k, whence the magisterial voice was heard remarking that it was no wonder the Sirkar wanted brains if it was so cra.s.sly ignorant as not to know what chaplaoo meant!
This flurried Prem Lal into premature decision. "Chaplaoo," he quoted under his breath, "a fawner--ha! I see! One who keepers the fawn--forester--huntsman--Am I not right?" he translated with a preparative flick of the steel pen.
The even ivory smile was clouded by an expression too blank for resentment.
"The Sirkar mistakes. This slave kept no animals."
Prem Lal dived hurriedly into further equivalents.
"Parasite--backbiter--one who bites backs! Ah! I see--bug--etc."
"This slave, as he has said, kept no kind of animals whatever,"
repeated Chiragh Shah, with a suave, unconscious dignity which appeased even the rising storm of virtuous indignation behind the c.h.i.n.k. "He was--if the Sirkar prefers the t.i.tle--Chapar-qunatya, by inheritance and choice."
The rolling Arabic word had a soothing sound, and a hush fell with the sunshine even on Prem Lal"s search after a common factor between East and West.
"Toad eater! eater of toads----" he began with doubt in the suggestion; "lick spittle--one who licks the spittle?"
"Eater of toads, licker of spittle," shrilled the voice of the c.h.i.n.k.
"Dost come here defiling an honourable house--and I who purvey its food--with such vile calumny--I----"
"Peace, mother," soothed a softer voice; "such things do no harm save to the speaker. What you spit at the sky falls on your own face!"
"Aye!" a.s.sented a ruder voice, "and is he not a Kyasth (clerk)--lie he must or his belly will burst."
The word "lie" gave the agitated enumerator a fresh clue, and the pages of the dictionary fluttered as if in a full gale.
"Lie--liar--slanderer----"
There was no connection in his tone; but the suggestion being at least plausible to his audience, the question was referred loudly to old Chiragh Shah, who was beginning to nod with combined sunshine and opium drams.
"Lie?" he asked, with a return of that swift alacrity. "Surely, I lied always. Yea! from the beginning to the end."
He used the high-sounding Arabic word for liar, and so sent Prem Lal a--fluttering once more. Ere he had lit on the correct gutteral, old Chiragh Shah"s set smile had changed into a real one. The slack muscles of his neck stiffened; he flung out his right hand airily.
"Hush!" said the two smallest boys on the roof in sudden interest; "dada is going to talk."
He was.
"Lies!" he began, and there was tone in the old voice, "and wherefore not if it is a real lie and not a bungle? But I never was a bungler. I know my profession too well--even at the last--yea, at the very end they had to come to me for artifice--for subterfuge. It was the last lie--to count as a real lie."
He paused, one of the boys had crept round to him and now laid a compelling hand of entreaty on the old man.
"Tell us of it, dada."
The spokesman looked at the enumerator as if for orders.
"It may elucidate the meanings," muttered the Middle-fail to himself.
So in the stillness of that sunshiny roof, set so far above the workaday world, they sate listening.
"Yea! it was the last lie that was worth the telling. Yet I was past my prime like the court itself. For none, save those who saw, knew the heart-burnings, the bitterness of those last years. King but in name, the very court officials drifting away to other allegiance. And Lake sahib had been so full of promise on that first September day, when the Frenchman was driven away because, forsooth! he had made the blind Shah Alum a prisoner in his own palace----" There was a pause in the thin old cadences, and a flitting shadow fell on the sun-saturate listeners from a wheeling kite overhead.
"And what was Bahadur Shah but a prisoner, too? What matter--the Huzoors gave him bread after their fashion and he was unfaithful to the salt of it. That was not well--one must be loyal even to a lie! So after the mad midsummer dream of recovered kingship in the palace--such a mad dream--we who dreamed it knew at the time that we were dreaming--came that second September day when the English returned to Delhi. We did not watch them, then; we were hiding in the tombs--Humayon"s tomb without the wall.
"It was the night after Hudson _sahib bahadur_ had wiled away the King by fair promises--aya! the Huzoor knew the trick of those well--but the Princes were still hiding--and many a better man, too.