A MODEL STATE
Acting on the urgent recommendation of Hoosanee, who saw reason to
fear for his master's safety, should he continue any longer in this
dangerous locality, Tom and his servants left the neighbourhood
of Lucknow early the next morning. Two days' march of a perfectly
uneventful character brought them to the English port and station of
Futtehgur. There they crossed the Ganges and travelled on quietly
over roads shaded with acacia, pipul, and cork trees, into the wide
and fertile plains of Central India. Gumilcund was included within
the bounds of what was called the Central Indian Agency, a district
more or less under the Company's control. Like several other small
native states that lay clustered together in this region, and that
formerly had lived a life of pillage and internecine warfare, it
had acknowledged the British as the paramount power, and an English
resident had been accredited to its court. The government of the
little State had, however, been so wise, just, and beneficent, that the
position of the Resident was a mere sinecure. During the late reign his
chief function had been to supply the rajah, whom he, in common with
the rest of the world, admired and revered, with European society.
There were few amongst the English who did not enjoy a visit to
Gumilcund. The courtesy and urbanity of the rajah, in whose manners the
grace of the Asiatic and the simple dignity of the well-bred Englishman
seemed to meet, with the novelty of the life to which he introduced
his own and the Resident's guests, made the city popular. Some said
that nowhere on the face of the earth was there a place to compare
with it. Such statements, no doubt, savoured of extravagance; but
Gumilcund did certainly possess certain advantages that are not to be
met with elsewhere. For fifty years--ever since the son of Sir Anthony
Bracebridge was given the title and dignity of rajah--it may be said
to have been governed by one man, for although in that period son had
succeeded to father, the ideas of the two, with regard to government,
were practically identical.
The first rajah was a man of experience. He knew not only the
barbarities of Indian social life, but also the plague-spots of Western
civilization. He was, moreover, a strong man. When he undertook to weld
the chaos of the State that had been given to him to govern into the
ideal that lived in his imagination, every one of his measures, planned
out beforehand with deliberateness, was carried through unflinchingly.
He had wealth, which was one great factor in his success. He had
besides--and this quality his son inherited--a power over men almost
amounting to fascination. Reforms which, if introduced by any other
ruler, would have certainly induced rebellion, were accepted from him
without a murmur. When, after an unusually long reign, he left the
State to his son, it was already well started on the path of progress.
The reign of the second rajah was no less fortunate than that of
the first, while his wealth, which was drawn from other than Indian
sources, continued to increase.
His life, as we know, was cut short by an assassin, a man from a
neighbouring State, who translated into this violent deed the jealousy
felt by many of the outlying peoples of the prosperity attained by
Gumilcund under those who were spoken of far and near as her foreign
rulers.
To the immediate friends and followers of the rajah his death was a
terrible blow. They honoured him as a master: they loved him as a
friend: they had been looking forward to the wonderful things which
he would do in the future, and, in him, all their hopes were crushed;
but, so far as the State was concerned, his work was done. Any one
of the wise men he had been training could have governed it now, for
every one within its borders was aware of the exceptional advantages of
their position. And in fact, there existed at that time in Gumilcund
such a social order as was scarcely to be found elsewhere. The State
was prosperous, for all its resources had been wisely developed, and
this prosperity was felt in every corner. There was no seamy side in
Gumilcund. The back slums and dismal alleys that lie hidden in the
centre of our own great Western towns were not to be found in its
bright little capital. Idleness and beggary did not thrive in its
streets, and they had long ago departed to find a home elsewhere. There
were no intoxicants, and therefore there was little crime. Everyone
who chose to work could find work to do; so, although there were
inequalities of condition, there was no grinding poverty. Oppressive
acts of any kind being promptly discovered and punished, the people
had become tired of practising them. The women, too, were freer than
in other parts of India, for although here, as elsewhere, they were
shrouded in the graceful saree, they could move about the city at their
pleasure. Taking it altogether, the State presented a curious example
of what can be done by one-man government, when the people are pliable
and the rulers wise and enlightened.
Of course such results could never have been reached had it not been
for the tranquillity which the power of the British name, and the
authority of her rulers, had given the district. In former days the
very prosperity and quietness of the little State would have attracted
towards it the hostility of its neighbours, which, indeed, the
disastrous death of the late rajah proved. He had never been slow to
recognize his obligation to the Paramount Power and to impress it upon
his people; and this, combined it may be with the circumstance that the
English had never been their actual rulers, but often their guests, was
the cause of the love, amounting, in many cases, to reverence, with
which English men and women were regarded in the city and territory of
Gumilcund.
The sympathy was mutual. Little Gumilcund was tenderly regarded by the
English. Even Lord Dalhousie, the great annexer, when the rajah wrote
to him, that, being without heirs he had adopted a son, who, with the
permission of the Governor-General, would succeed him, could not find
it in his heart to decree the separation of Gumilcund from her native
rulers. Had he known that the heir was, to all intents and purposes,
an Englishman, the decision might have been different; but the rajah,
in his letter, had given Tom the title which he would assume were his
heirship to the estate recognised, stating that he was being trained
and educated in England, and it was allowed to remain an open question.
Under the English Resident the rajah's heir should govern the State,
and if his rule proved as beneficent as that of his predecessors, his
title would be confirmed.--If, on the other hand, he acted as so many
young rajahs had done when they came to the supreme power, the rule
would be taken from him and vested in an English Governor. So the
Governor-General decreed, and then, having weightier matters to dispose
of, he dismissed Gumilcund from his mind. Little could he have imagined
that, in days to come, it would prove a bulwark of the dominion, which
he had taken so much pains to build up, and a refuge, sorely needed
for his distressed fellow-country people, in the midst of a hostile
rebellious continent.
Returning from this digression, which was necessary if we would
understand the position of the little State, the government of which
our venturous young Englishman had come over to assume, I must briefly
follow his further movements. He marched on quietly, for there was
nothing to indicate that the convulsion which his friends had predicted
was close at hand, and though he wished to reach Gumilcund, he was not
in the least impatient.
Day after day, in this smiling tract of country, the same prospect met
him. There were fields of green paddy and rustling sugar-cane, and
sheets of feathery dal, with which the large blue-green leaves of the
castor-oil plant contrasted curiously; and, interspersed with these,
were tracts of marsh and jungle, and a few pleasant groves of mango
and neem. April had opened. The heat was terrible in the day-time; but
it was a dry heat, and Tom stood it marvellously well. For the most
part they travelled at night or very early in the morning. During the
forenoon, and in the awful noontide, their camp would be pitched either
under a huge banyan tree by the wayside--whose dry, thirsty roots were
hanging down raggedly to seek the soil, while its glorious over-canopy
of leafage made a shelter from the sweltering sunlight--or in a grove
on the outskirts of a village or town. Sometimes he slept, but oftener
he thought and listened. How silent it was in these noontide hours! Now
and then he would catch a rustle as a lizard or snake crept through the
dry grass, or there would be a flutter overhead, where the little wild
birds--parroquets and mynas--sought a precarious shelter, or a scream
when some bird of prey swooped down upon them. But for the most part,
even the vultures and the hawks, and the hideous flying-foxes, that
hung in uncouth bags from the trees, were quiet. Man, meanwhile, was
at peace, having no energy even for labour. Through the woods came no
ring of hammer or axe: the tramp of the wanderer had ceased along the
road, and long, swathed figures, motionless as the sheeted dead, lay
under the trees and in the shadow of walls and houses. The whole earth
lay weltering in a fiery bath. With the drawing on of evening there
would be movement. Flocks of parroquets would rush out of the tree-tops
screaming discordantly: birds of prey would prune their wings and set
off slowly, with harsh cries, in search of food; and the confused
murmur of a restless humanity would begin again.
Then the rajah's heir would emerge from his shelter, and, while his
tent was being taken down, and his camels laden, would stroll into the
nearest village. There he would often take his seat on the chiboutra,
under a spreading tree, where the talkers met together to discuss,
over their hookahs, such important matters as the price of grain and
cattle. They welcomed him with the grave courtesy of Indians; but
whether they spoke freely in his presence he could not tell. Except in
one or two cases, when a Hindoo priest or a Moulvie from a distance
had visited the district, he heard nothing which could lead him to
suppose that there was any widespread spirit of disaffection, while
English magistrates were often spoken of in his presence with a respect
bordering on adoration. So he went on towards Gumilcund with an easier
mind.