I suppose it was about that time that Surji Rao began to consider
whether it was after all for the best interests of the State that
ee-Wobbis should remain in it. Surji Rao was first Minister to the
Maharajah, and a very important person. He had charge of the
Treasury, and it was his business to produce every day one hundred
fresh rupees to put into it. This was his duty, and whether the
harvests had been good and the cattle many, or whether the locusts
and the drought had made the people poor, Surji Rao did his duty.
If ever he should fail, there hung a large and heavy shoe upon the
wall of the Maharajah's apartment, which daily suggested personal
chastisement and a possible loss of dignity to Surji Rao.
Dr. Roberts was making serious demands upon the Treasury, and
proposed to make others more serious still. Worse than that, he
was supplanting Surji Rao in the confidence and affection of the
Maharajah. Worse still, he was making a pundit of that outcast
boy, who had been already too much favoured in the palace, so that
he might very well grow up to be Minister of the Treasury instead
of Rasso, son of Surji Rao--a thing unendurable. Surji Rao was the
fattest man in the State, so fat that it was said he sat down only
twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks
reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously,
thin. To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of
countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer
curiosity, to refrain from asking him what was the matter.
'My father and my mother! I grow poor with thinking that the feet
of strangers are in the palace of the King, and what may come of
it.'
The Maharajah laughed and put his arm about the shoulders of Surji
Rao.
'I will give you a tub of melted butter to grow fat upon again, and
two days to eat it, though indeed with less on your bones you were
a better Rajput. What should come of it, Surji Rao?'
The Minister sheathed the anger that leapt up behind his eyes in a
smile. Then he answered gravely--
'What should come of it but more strangers? Is it not desired to
make a road for their guns and their horses? And talk and
treaties, and tying of the hand and binding of the foot, until at
last that great Jan Larrens[6] himself will ride up to the gate of
the city and refuse to go away until Your Highness sends a bag of
gold mohurs to the British Raj, as he has done before.'
[6] John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence and Viceroy of India.
'I do not think I will make the road,' said the Maharajah
reflectively.
'King, you are the wisest of men, and therefore your own best
counsellor. It is well decided. But the Rajputs are all sons of
one father, and even now there is grief among the chief of them
that outcasts should be dwelling in the King's favour.'
'I will not make the road,' said the Maharajah. 'Enough!'
Surji Rao thought it was not quite enough, however, and took
various means to obtain more, means that would never be thought of
anywhere but in countries where the sun beats upon the plots of
Ministers and ferments fanaticism in the heads of the people. He
talked to the Rajput chiefs, and persuaded them--they were not
difficult to persuade--that Dr. Roberts was an agent and a spy of
the English Government at Calcutta, that his medicines were a sham.
When it was necessary, Surji Rao said that the medicines were a
slow form of poison, but generally he said they were a sham. He
persuaded as many of the chiefs as dared, to remonstrate with the
Maharajah, and to follow his example of going about looking as if
they were upon the brink of some terrible disaster. Surji Rao's
wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the
Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a
corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and
some one in the dark behind spat at him. Amongst them they managed
to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable. But the old man
continued to decline obstinately to send the missionary back.
Then it became obvious to Surji Rao that Dr. Roberts must be
disposed of otherwise. He went about that in the same elaborate
and ingenious way. His arrangements required time, but there is
always plenty of time in Rajputana. He became friendly with Dr.
Roberts, and encouraged the hospital. He did not wish in any way
to be complicated with his arrangements. Nobody else became
friendly. Surji Rao took care of that. And at last one morning a
report went like wildfire about the palace and the city that the
missionary had killed a sacred bull, set free in honour of Krishna
at the birth of a son to Maun Rao, the chief of the Maharajah's
generals. Certainly the bull was found slaughtered behind the
monkey temple, and certainly Dr. Roberts had beefsteak for
breakfast that day. Such a clamour rang through the palace about
it that the Maharajah sent for the missionary, partly to inquire
into the matter, and partly with a view to protect him.
It was very unsatisfactory--the missionary did not know how the
bull came to be killed behind his house, and, in spite of all the
Maharajah's hints, would not invent a story to account for it. The
Maharajah could have accounted for it fifty times over, if it had
happened to him. Besides, Dr. Roberts freely admitted having
breakfasted upon beefsteak, and didn't know where it had come from!
He rode home through an angry crowd, and nobody at all came for
medicines that day.
Two days later the Rajput general's baby died--could anything else
have been expected? The general went straight to the Maharajah to
ask for vengeance, but His Highness, knowing why the chief had
come, sent word that he was ill--he would see Maun Rao to-morrow.
To-morrow he had not recovered, nor even the day after; but in the
meantime he had been well enough to send word to Dr. Roberts that
if he wished to go away he should have two camels and an escort.
Dr. Roberts sent to ask whether Sunni might go with him, but to
this the Maharajah replied by an absolute 'No.'
So the missionary stayed.
It was Surji Rao who brought the final word to the Maharajah.
'My father and my mother!' he said, 'it is no longer possible to
hold the people back. It is cried abroad that this English
hakkim[7] has given the people powder of pig's feet. Even now they
have set upon his house. And to-day is the festival of Krishna.
My heart is bursting with grief.'
[7] 'Doctor.'
'If Maun Rao strikes, I can do nothing,' said the Maharajah weakly.
'He thinks the Englishman killed his son. But look you, send Sunni
to me. HE saved mine. And I tell you,' said the Maharajah,
looking at Surji Rao fiercely with his sunken black eyes, 'not so
much of his blood shall be shed as would stain a moth's wing.'
But Maun Rao struck, and the people being told that the missionary
was dead, went home hoping that Krishna had nothing more against
them; they had done what they could.
As to Sunni he told his grief to Tooni because it comforted him,
and went into mourning for nine days in defiance of public opinion,
because he owed it to the memory of a countryman. He began, too,
to take long restless rambles beyond the gates, and once he asked
Tooni if she knew the road to Calcutta.
'It is fifty thousand miles,' said Tooni, who had an imagination;
'and the woods are full of tigers.'