Again I was on my way to Jalalpur, with the precious parcel, the other
papers, and that fatal photograph. What is the use of telling of my
feelings? Any one can imagine what they were. I reached the big bungalow
again, but instead of sending in my card, I told the Janus at the door
that Stark Sahib wished to see the Commissioner Sahib. I well knew that
if he learned my name I would not be admitted. It was a little lie, but
who does not lie sometimes?
I was ushered in. I had scarcely got inside the door before he shouted,
“You here again! What the devil do you want now?” I replied that I had
come on very important business. Rising to his feet, in a great state of
anger, he blurted out, “I don’t want to hear anything from you—not a
word,” and he came toward me. I stood my ground, facing him so boldly
that he halted. I said, “I have something to tell you this time, and you
have got to hear it whether you like it or not. I am not going till I
tell you, and the sooner you let me commence, the sooner I will finish.”
“Well, damn it!” he fairly screamed, “what have you got to say?” I
calmed down a little and said, “I come to you with all the respect I can
command; I want nothing from you whatever; no recognition, no place or
position; and as to money, thanks to the best friend of my life, I
probably have ten rupees to every one of yours; so I want nothing but to
tell my story, and then there will be an end, so far as I am concerned.”
I think he saw that I was not to be bluffed or bullied, and as I asked
for nothing, it would be best to let me talk. “Go on then,” he said very
sternly, but quite subdued, “and the sooner you get through the better!”
I continued, “You were a sub-magistrate in Lucknow in the year —, and
you kept a mussalmani in a muhalla.” “It’s a lie, every word of it!” he
retorted. I went on regardless of his interruption. “You remember a M.
Le Maistre there, for you rented one of his houses. One night, or rather
toward morning, he met you in the gully coming from the muhalla. Another
time he saw you coming in through the little back door—you remember
it—and he saw you go up the narrow stairs in the corner to the upper
rooms, where the woman lived.”
“It’s all a lie, a damned lie!” he cried.
I resumed, “You had two children by this woman, a boy and a girl, and
then you left her.”
“You cannot prove a word you have said,” he interjected.
“You left a number of letters with her.”
“I deny them,” he replied.
“You thought,” I went on, “that you were very shrewd in not signing the
letters, but I got a lot of papers from the cutchery written by you, and
signed with your name, and here they are, a dozen of them and a package
of letters, all written by you, with every stroke and mark and dot
alike.”
“What damnable plot are you hatching?” he exclaimed.
I continued, “In the packet of letters there was a photograph of
yourself. This is it.”
“Let me see it,” he said, reaching out for it.
“You can look at it, but it shall not go out of my hands,” I said.
“That is no likeness of mine,” he replied.
I started again, “I went to the photographer and obtained this, another
of you, and on the back is written by the same hand that wrote the
letters and papers: ‘You may make me one dozen like this. H. J. Smith.’
Is that your handwriting and signature?” I inquired, holding up the back
of the picture for him to see.
He rose and began pacing the room back and forth. He evidently found
himself caught and bagged. He at length asked:
“What is your object in raking up these youthful follies of mine? I wish
you would stop at once.”
“No,” I replied, “I am not ready yet.”
“Go on then, go on; damn your persistency,” he retorted.
I did go on. “You left my mother. She never smiled again, and soon after
died of a broken heart. You left your two children to die of starvation
had not some kind-hearted people taken care of them. What were they to
you? You married in England and returned to India. After some years you
became magistrate of Bhagulpur, and one Sunday, when you were reading
prayers in the church, you saw a young girl in the congregation, and
when you went to dine at the mess that evening, you asked who that plump
young woman was. Even when you were in the house of God, and conducting
religious service, your lustful eyes were searching for a victim.”
“Damn your insolence!” he angrily exclaimed.
I waited not. “You became acquainted with that governess, and by your
flatteries and promises to marry her, you seduced her, and brought her
here with you, as your mistress, to her shame and sorrow.”
“Where is she? Tell me where she is and I will marry her at once,” he
excitedly exclaimed.
I replied, “I came here and took her and her child away and you will
never see her again. That girl was your daughter and my sister.”
“Good God! You don’t say so!” he exclaimed, and flung himself into a
chair. He sat with his face pale as death, and with staring eyes, as if
he really saw the horrible enormity of his crimes.
I let him have some moments for reflection, and then asked, “Do you
remember seeing me in Bhagulpur? I had rescued a young girl from the
hands of your police, as they were dragging her to a brothel. For this
you ordered me, by the mouth of one of your servants to come to your
bungalow, and then not only insulted me, but called me ‘That damned
Eurasian.’ When I called to see you here, you insulted me and spurned me
out of this door, and again called me ‘That damned Eurasian’—me, your
son! Who made me an Eurasian, but you?”
“Have you finished?” he asked, very mildly though, for the great man, as
he was considered to be, seemed to be completely cowed, beaten.
“Yes,” I replied, “nearly so, for I have little more to say. Had you
treated me any way decently, I might have concealed some of these things
from you, but you defied me, dared me, so I have done my best, as you
know to your sorrow. And to close, I must tell you that I have not the
least respect for you as a man, nor the least regard for you as a
father. I leave you to your own bitter thoughts, which will be hell
enough for you, and may God have mercy on your soul, if He can.”
I left at once, glad enough to have finished the hateful business. Did I
do right in what might be called running this man to earth? What less
could I have done than what I did? It seems most natural that there
should be some filial regard of a child for a parent, but I could never,
from the time I first saw him, so hardened and devilish, looking down on
my weeping mother, feel the least respect, much less love for him as a
father, and could only think of him as a wicked, contemptible, living
thing.
Other thoughts I have had. The chaplains must have known the character
of this man, and yet they appointed or allowed him to conduct the
religious services in church; his associates must have known of his
amours, intrigues and seductions, for such things cannot be concealed,
but they probably were as deep in the mire as he was in the mud, so very
likely no one ever checked him in his career of lust and crime. Society
must have known all about him, yet he was the swell cad of them all, the
admired and intimate friend of the ladies. What delicate tastes some
ladies have! He was called a Christian too, and he would no doubt have
taken it as an insult if any one had hinted otherwise. A Christian!
I have read the story of a wicked man, who, being angry with his wife,
took their child to a wood and murdered it. Then taking some of its
flesh he returned home, and sending his wife on an errand put the flesh
into a curry that she was preparing. Unheeding the child’s absence, the
woman presently ate of the curry, when the inhuman father told her what
he had done. Crazed with horror the wretched mother fled to the jungle
and destroyed herself. This wicked man belonged to a wild jungle tribe
of heathen, but there is not a heathen so low and degraded but would
hold up his hands in horror at such an unnatural crime.
But here is a Christian, an intelligent man, of good standing in the
upper class of English society, who murdered his wife, my mother, as
much as if he had put a noose around her neck and strangled her. He
discarded his own children; left them to poverty and starvation. He
seduces his own daughter, my sister, and becomes grandfather to his own
child! Tell me, O God! and all thinking beings on the earth, who was the
worse, that heathen wicked man, or this so-called Christian gentleman?