‘When does this man take over charge? I’m alone just now, and I gather
that I’m to stand fast under him.’
‘Would you have cared for a transfer?’ said Bullows keenly. Then, laying
his hand on Tallantire’s shoulder: ‘We’re all in the same boat; don’t
desert us. And yet, why the devil should you stay, if you can get
another charge?’
‘It was Orde’s,’ said Tallantire simply.
‘Well, it’s De’s now. He’s a Bengali of the Bengalis, crammed with code
and case law; a beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go, and
pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always kept him in his own home
district, where all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived,
somewhere south of Dacca. He did no more than turn the place into a
pleasant little family preserve, allowed his subordinates to do what
they liked, and let everybody have a chance at the shekels. Consequently
he’s immensely popular down there.’
‘I’ve nothing to do with that. How on earth am I to explain to the
district that they are going to be governed by a Bengali? Do you--does
the Government, I mean--suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet
when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How
will the police--Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans--how will THEY work under him?
We couldn’t say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper; but
my people will say a good deal, you know that. It’s a piece of cruel
folly!’
‘My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I’ve represented it, and have
been told that I am exhibiting “culpable and puerile prejudice.” By
Jove, if the Khusru Kheyl don’t exhibit something worse than that I
don’t know the Border! The chances are that you will have the district
alight on your hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help you
pull through. I needn’t ask you to stand by the Bengali man in every
possible way. You’ll do that for your own sake.’
‘For Orde’s. I can’t say that I care twopence personally.’
‘Don’t be an ass. It’s grievous enough, God knows, and the Government
will know later on; but that’s no reason for your sulking. YOU must try
to run the district, YOU must stand between him and as much insult as
possible; YOU must show him the ropes; YOU must pacify the Khusru Kheyl,
and just warn Curbar of the Police to look out for trouble by the way.
I’m always at the end of a telegraph-wire, and willing to peril my
reputation to hold the district together. You’ll lose yours, of course,
If you keep things straight, and he isn’t actually beaten with a stick
when he’s on tour, he’ll get all the credit. If anything goes wrong,
you’ll be told that you didn’t support him loyally.’
‘I know what I’ve got to do,’ said Tallantire wearily, ‘and I’m going to
do it. But it’s hard.’
‘The work is with us, the event is with Allah,--as Orde used to say when
he was more than usually in hot water.’ And Bullows rode away.
That two gentlemen in Her Majesty’s Bengal Civil Service should thus
discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man
withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of
the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon
a rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell
from a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah,
then urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets.
So he became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little
accident. Yardley-Orde knew his failing, and had many times laughed at
him therefor.
‘Dogs you are,’ said the Blind Mullah to the listening tribesmen round
the fire. ‘Whipped dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and called
him father and behaved as his children, the British Government have
proven how they regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead.’
‘Ai! ai! ai!’ said half a dozen voices.
‘He was a man. Comes now in his stead, whom think ye? A Bengali of
Bengal--an eater of fish from the South.’
‘A lie!’ said Khoda Dad Khan. ‘And but for the small matter of thy
priesthood, I’d drive my gun butt-first down thy throat.’
‘Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English? Go in to-morrow across
the Border to pay service to Orde Sahib’s successor, and thou shalt slip
thy shoes at the tent-door of a Bengali, as thou shalt hand thy offering
to a Bengali’s black fist. This I know; and in my youth, when a young
man spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of Heaven and Hell, the
gun-butt was not rammed down the Mullah’s gullet. No!’
The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan with Afghan hatred; both being
rivals for the headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared for
bodily as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda Dad Khan looked at Orde’s
ring and grunted, ‘I go in to-morrow because I am not an old fool,
preaching war against the English. If the Government, smitten with
madness, have done this, then...’
‘Then,’ croaked the Mullah, ‘thou wilt take out the young men and strike
at the four villages within the Border?’
‘Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum, for a bearer of
ill-tidings.’
Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with great care, put on his best
Bokhara belt, a new turban-cap and fine green shoes, and accompanied by
a few friends came down from the hills to pay a visit to the new Deputy
Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute--four or five
priceless gold mohurs of Akbar’s time in a white handkerchief. These the
Deputy Commissioner would touch and remit. The little ceremony used to
be a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan’s personal influence went,
the Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,--till the next time; especially
if Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In
Yardley-Orde’s consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner
and perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and
great good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to
his hold, vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire Sahib
another, and that whosoever went a-raiding into British territory would
be flayed alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy Commissioner’s
tents looking much as usual. Regarding himself as privileged he strode
through the open door to confont a suave, portly Bengali in English
costume writing at a table. Unversed in the elevating influence of
education, and not in the least caring for university degrees, Khoda
Dad Khan promptly set the man down for a Babu--the native clerk of the
Deputy Commissioner--a hated and despised animal.
‘Ugh!’ said he cheerfully. ‘Where’s your master, Babujee?’
‘I am the Deputy Commissioner,’ said the gentleman in English. Now he
overvalued the effects of university degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan
in the face. But if from your earliest infancy you have been accustomed
to look on battle, murder, and sudden death, if spilt blood affects
your nerves as much as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
believed that the Bengali was the servant of all Hindustan, and that all
Hindustan was vastly inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
endure, even though uneducated, a very large amount of looking over. You
can even stare down a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter
has been born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hothouse, and fearing
physical pain as some men fear sin; especially if your opponent’s mother
has frightened him to sleep in his youth with horrible stories of devils
inhabiting Afghanistan, and dismal legends of the black North. The eyes
behind the gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan chuckled,
and swung out to find Tallantire hard by. ‘Here,’ said he roughly,
thrusting the coins before him, ‘touch and remit. That answers for MY
good behaviour. But, O Sahib, has the Government gone mad to send a
black Bengali dog to us? And am I to pay service to such an one? And
are you to work under him? What does it mean?’ ‘It is an order,’ said
Tallantire. He had expected something of this kind. ‘He is a very clever
S-sahib.’
‘He a Sahib! He’s a kala admi--a black man--unfit to run at the tail of
a potter’s donkey. All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal. It
is written. Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or plunder
whither went we? To Bengal--where else? What child’s talk is this of
Sahibdom--after Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah was right.’
‘What of him?’ asked Tallantire uneasily. He mistrusted that old man
with his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.
‘Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we
watched him die by the river yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is
it true that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own
neck, and that there is no more English rule in the land?’
‘I am here,’ said Tallantire, ‘and I serve the Maharanee of England.’
‘The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib
the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now
have been held by the strong hand. Also that they were taking away
the white soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was
changing.’
This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country.
What looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable
in Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its
complexion on the banks of the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as
clearly as he could that, though he himself intended to be good, he
really could not answer for the more reckless members of his tribe under
the leadership of the Blind Mullah. They might or they might not give
trouble, but they certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new
Deputy Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event
of any systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it
down promptly?
‘Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool’s talk,’ said Tallantire
curtly, ‘that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I talk to one who
no longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?’
Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned something that
he much wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically
complimented by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was
deadlier flame than ever dung-cake fed.