PART II

So let us melt and make no noise, No tear-floods nor

sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys to tell the

Laity our love. A Valediction.

It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and

camped by day; but within the limits of his vision there was no

man whom Scott could call master. He was as free as Jimmy

Hawkins - freer, in fact, for the Government held the Head of

the Famine tied neatly to a telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever

regarded telegrams seriously, the death-rate of that famine

would have been much higher than it was.

At the end of a few days' crawling Scott learned something of the

size of the India which he served, and it astonished him. His

carts, as you know, were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley,

good food-grains needing only a little grinding. But the people

to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters. They

could hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of the

heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that

the white man convoyed so laboriously. They clamoured for rice -

unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed to - and, when they

found that there was none, broke away weeping from the sides of

the cart. What was the use of these strange hard grains that

choked their throats? They would die. And then and there very

many of them kept their word. Others took their allowance, and

bartered enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few

handfuls of rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate. A few put

their share into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste

with foul water; but they were very few. Scott understood dimly

that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule,

but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen

rice in the blade or ear, and least of all would have believed

that in time of deadly need men could die at arm's length of

plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the

interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed in

vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving crept away

to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the

open sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms

of children at Scott's feet, looking back as they staggered away.

Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners

should die, and it remained only to give orders to burn the

dead. None the less there was no reason why the Sahib should lack

his comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of experience, had

picked up a few lean goats and had added them to the procession.

That they might give milk for the morning meal, he was feeding

them on the good grain that these imbeciles rejected. "Yes," said

Faiz Ullah; "if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be

given to some of the babies"; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies

were cheap, and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was

no Government order as to babies. Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz

Ullah and the two policemen, and bade them capture goats where

they could find them. This they most joyfully did, for it was a

recreation, and many ownerless goats were driven in. Once fed,

the poor brutes were willing enough to follow the carts, and a

few days' good food - food such as human beings died for lack of

- set them in milk again.

"But I am no goatherd," said Faiz Ullah. "It is against my izzat

[my honour]."

"When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat," Scott

replied. "Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers

to the camp, if I give the order."

"Thus, then, it is done," grunted Faiz Ullah, "if the Sahib will

have it so"; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while

Scott stood over him.

"Now we will feed them," said Scott; "twice a day we will feed

them"; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible

cramp.

When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless

mother of kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you

suffer in all your system. But the babies were fed. Each morning

and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from

their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were always

many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped

into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when

they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since

they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were

hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at

the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their

weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the

absurdity keenly; but at least he was saving life, and when the

women saw that their children did not die, they made shift to eat

a little of the strange foods, and crawled after the carts,

blessing the master of the goats.

"Give the women something to live for," said Scott to himself, as

he sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, "and they'll

hang on somehow. This beats William's condensed-milk trick all to

pieces. I shall never live it down, though."

He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship

had come in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were

available; found also an overworked Englishman in charge of the

shed, and, loading the carts, set back to cover the ground he

had already passed. He left some of the children and half his

goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not thanked by the

Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he knew what

to do with. Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he

went on with his wayside ministrations in addition to

distributing the paddy. More babies and more goats were added

unto him; but now some of the babies wore rags, and beads round

their wrists or necks. "That" said the interpreter, as though

Scott did not know, "signifies that their mothers hope in

eventual contingency to resume them offeecially."

The sooner, the better," said Scott; but at the same time he

marked, with the pride of ownership, how this or that little

Ramasawmy was putting on flesh like a bantam. As the

paddy-carts were emptied he headed for Hawkins's camp by the

railway, timing his arrival to fit in with the dinner-hour, for

it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He had no desire to

make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered

it that when he had taken off his helmet to get the evening

breeze, the low light should fall across his forehead, and he

could not see what was before him; while one waiting at the tent

door beheld with new eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god

in a halo of golden dust, walking slowly at the head of his

flocks, while at his knee ran small naked Cupids. But she

laughed - William, in a slate-coloured blouse, laughed

consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he could upon the

matter, halted his armies and bade her admire the kindergarten.

It was an unseemly sight, but the proprieties had been left ages

ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred

miles to the north.

"They are coming on nicely," said William. "We've only

five-and-twenty here now. The women are beginning to take them

away again."

"Are you in charge of the babies, then?"

"Yes - Mrs. Jim and I. We didn't think of goats, though. We've

been trying condensed-milk and water."

"Any losses?"

More than I care to think of;" said William, with a shudder.

"And you?"

Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his

route - one cannot burn a dead baby - many mothers who had wept

when they did not find again the children they had trusted to

the care of the Government.

Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked

hungrily, for he had a beard that he did not love. And when

they sat down to dinner in the tent he told his tale in few

words, as it might have been an official report. Mrs. Jim

snuffled from time to time, and Jim bowed his head judicially;

but William's grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face, and it

was to her that Scott seemed to appeal.

"Good for the Pauper Province!" said William, her chin on her

hand, as she leaned forward among the wine~glasses. Her cheeks

had fallen in, and the scar on her forehead was more prominent

than ever, but the well-turned neck rose roundly as a column

from the ruffle of the blouse which was the accepted

evening-dress in camp.

"It was awfully absurd at times," said Scott. "You see, I didn't

know much about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if

the tale goes up North."

"Let 'em," said William, haughtily. "We've all done coolie-work

since we came. I know Jack has." This was to Hawkins's address,

and the big man smiled blandly.

"Your brother's a highly efficient officer, William," said he,

"and I've done him the honour of treating him as he deserves.

Remember, I write the confidential reports."

"Then you must say that William's worth her weight in gold," said

Mrs. Jim. "I don't know what we should have done without her. She

has been everything to us." She dropped her hand upon William's,

which was rough with much handling of reins, and William patted

it softly. Jim beamed on the company. Things were going well with

his world. Three of his more grossly incompetent men had died,

and their places had been filled by their betters. Every day

brought the Rains nearer. They had put out the famine in five of

the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate had not been

too heavy - things considered. He looked Scott over carefully, as

an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and iron-hard

condition.

"He's just the least bit in the world tucked up," said Jim to

himself, "but he can do two men's work yet." Then he was aware

that Mrs. Jim was telegraphing to him, and according to the

domestic code the message ran: "A clear case. Look at them!"

He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: "What

can you expect of a country where they call a bhistee [a

water-carrier] a tunni-cutch?" and all that Scott answered was:

"I shall be glad to get back to the Club. Save me a dance at the

Christmas Ball, won't you?"

"It's a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall," said Jim.

"Better turn in early, Scott. It's paddy-carts to-morrow;

you'll begin loading at five."

"Aren't you going to give Mr. Scott a single day's rest?"

"'Wish I could, Lizzie, but I'm afraid I can't. As long as he can

stand up we must use him."

"Well, I've had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I'd nearly

forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?"

"Leave them here," said William -" we are in charge of that - and

as many goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk now."

"If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I'll show you. I

have to milk, you see. Half of 'em have beads and things round

their necks. You must be careful not to take 'em off; in case

the mothers turn up."

"You forget I've had some experience here."

"I hope to goodness you won't overdo." Scott's voice was

unguarded.

"I'll take care of her," said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word

messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his

orders for the coming campaign. It was very late - nearly nine

o'clock.

"Jim, you're a brute," said his wife, that night; and the Head of

the Famine chuckled.

"Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala

Settlement for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was

slender, Lizzie. I've never done as good a piece of work since.

He'll work like a demon."

"But you might have given him one day."

"And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it's their

happiest time."

"I don't believe either of the darlings know what's the matter

with them. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it lovely?"

"Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye

Gods, why must we grow old and fat?"

"She's a darling. She has done more work under me -"

"Under you? The day after she came she was in charge and you

were her subordinate. You've stayed there ever since; she

manages you almost as well as you manage me."

"She doesn't, and that's why I love her. She's as direct as a

man - as her brother."

"Her brother's weaker than she is. He's always to me for orders;

but he's honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I'm rather

fond of William, and if I had a daughter -"

The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child's grave more

than twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it

any more.

All the same, you're responsible," Jim added, a moment's silence.

"Bless 'em!" said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.

Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked

and went about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour

unkind to rouse Faiz Ullah and the interpreter. His head being

close to the ground, he did not hear William till she stood over

him in the dingy old riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with

sleep, a cup of tea and a piece of toast in her hands. There

was a baby on the ground, squirming on a piece of blanket, and a

six-year-old child peered over Scott's shoulder.

"Hai, you little rip," said Scott, "how the deuce do you expect

to get your rations if you aren't quiet?"

A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the

milk gurgled into his mouth.

"'Mornin'," said the milker. "You've no notion how these little

fellows can wriggle."

"Oh, yes, I have." She whispered, because the world was asleep.

"Only I feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than

mine. .And you've been doing this day after day?" The voice was

almost lost.

"Yes; it was absurd. Now you try," he said, giving place to the

girl. "Look out! A goat's not a cow."

The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle,

in which Scott snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over

again, and William laughed softly and merrily. She managed,

however, to feed two babies, and a third.

"Don't the little beggars take it well?" said Scott. "I trained

'em."

They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad

daylight, and before they knew, the camp was awake, and they

kneeled among the goats, surprised by the day, both flushed to

the temples. Yet all the round world rolling up out of the

darkness might have heard and seen all that had passed between

them.

"Oh," said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast,

"I had this made for you. It's stone-cold now. I thought you

mightn't have anything ready so early. 'Better not drink it.

It's - it's stone-cold."

"That's awfully kind of you. It's just right. It's awfully good

of you, really. I'll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs.

Jim, and, of course, any one in camp can show you about the

milking."

"Of course," said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and

statelier and more stately, as she strode back to her tent,

fanning herself with the saucer.

There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder

children saw their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah

unbent so far as to jest with the policemen, and Scott turned

purple with shame because Hawkins, already in the saddle,

roared.

A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a

rabbit, clung to Scott's boot, William pursuing with long, easy

strides.

"I will not go - I will not go!" shrieked the child, twining his

feet round Scott's ankle. They will kill me here. I do not know

these people."

"I say," said Scott, in broken Tamil, "I say, she will do you no

harm. Go with her and be well fed."

"Come!" said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott,

who stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.

"Go back," said Scott quickly to William. I'll send the little

chap over in a minute."

The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not

exactly intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with

gravity: "I did not know the woman was thine. I will go." Then

he cried to his companions, a mob of three-, four-, and

five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture ere they

stampeded: "Go back and eat. It is our man's woman. She will

obey his orders."

Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen

grinned; and Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.

"That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their

presence," said Faiz Ullah. "The time comes that I must seek new

service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and

have knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for

honest butlers in the matter of weekly accounts."

What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her

brother, ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of

Scott's performances, he said, laughing: "Well, that settles it.

He'll be Bakri Scott to the end of his days." (Bakri in the

Northern vernacular, means a goat.) "What a lark! I'd have given

a month's pay to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some

with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right."

"It's perfectly disgusting," said his sister, with blazing eyes.

"A man does something like -like that - and all you other men

think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh

and think it's funny."

"Ah," said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.

"Well, you can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby

the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India's

the land of nicknames."

"That's different," William replied. "She was only a girl, and

she hadn't done anything except walk like a quail, and she does.

But it isn't fair to make fun of a man."

"Scott won't care," said Martyn. "You can't get a rise out of old

Scotty. I've been trying for eight years, and you've only known

him for three. How does he look?"

"He looks very well," said William, and went away with a flushed

cheek. "Bakri Scott, indeed!" Then she laughed to herself, for

she knew her country. "But it will he Bakri all the same"; and

she repeated it under her breath several times slowly,

whispering it into favour.

When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the

name far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as

he led his paddy-carts to war. The natives believed it to be

some English title of honour, and the cart-drivers used it in

all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of foreign

japes, broke their heads. There was very little time for milking

now, except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott's

idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern

grains. Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts

to hold the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly,

and for that purpose no one was better than the big Canal

officer, who never lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary

order, and never questioned an order given. Scott pressed on,

saving his cattle, washing their galled necks daily, so that no

time should be lost on the road; reported himself with his rice

at the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by

forced night-march to the next distributing centre, to find

Hawkins's unvarying telegram: "Do it again." And he did it

again and again, and yet again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles

away, marked off on a big map the tracks of his wheels

gridironing the stricken lands. Others did well - Hawkins

reported at the end they all did well - but Scott was the most

excellent, for he kept good coined rupees by him, settled for

his own cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to meet all sorts of

unconsidered extras, trusting to be recouped later on.

Theoretically, the Government should have paid for every shoe

and iinchpin, for every hand employed in the loading; but

Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and intelligent and

efficient clerks write at great length, contesting unauthorised

expenditures of eight annas. The man who wants to make his work

a success must draw on his own bank-account of money or other

things as he goes.

"I told you he'd work," said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six

weeks. "He's been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up

north, on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less

trouble than young Martyn with his ten constables; and I'm

morally certain - only Government doesn't recognise moral

obligations - he's spent about half his pay to grease his

wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for one week's work! Forty miles

in two days with twelve carts; two days' halt building a

famine-shed for young Rogers. (Rogers ought to have built it

himself, the idiot!) Then forty miles back again, loading six

carts on the way, and distributing all Sunday. Then in the

evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying

the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on

relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some

broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good

water-supply when the Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam

in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches - aren't they

clear and good ~ I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he was

as pukka as this."

"I must show these to William," said Mrs. Jim. "The child's

wearing herself out among the babies."

"Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to

see us out of the wood. I'm sorry it's not in my power to

recommend you for a V. C."

William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page

after page of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of

proposed repairs to the reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows

over the columns of figures of estimated water-supply."And he

finds time to do all this," she cried to herself, "and-well, I

also was present. I've saved one or two babies.

She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust,

and woke refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of

them, wastrels picked up by the wayside, their bones almost

breaking their skin, terrible and covered with sores.

Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was

duly forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation,

not rare in India, of knowing that another man was reaping where

he had sown. That also was discipline profitable to the soul.

"He's much too good to waste on canals," said Jimmy. "Any one can

oversee coolies. You needn't be angry, William; he can - but I

need my pearl among bullock-drivers, and I've transferred him to

the Khanda district, where he'll have it all to do over again. He

should be marching now.

"He's not a coolie," said William, furiously. "He ought to be

doing his regulation work."

"He's the best man in his service, and that's saying a good deal;

but if you must use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the

best cutlery."

"Isn't it almost time we saw him again?" said Mrs. Jim. "I'm sure

the poor boy hasn't had a respectable meal for a month. He

probably sits on a cart and eats sardines with his fingers."

"All in good time, dear. Duty before decency - wasn't it Mr.

Chucks said that?"

"No; it was Midshipman Easy," William laughed. "I sometimes

wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or

sit under a roof. I can't believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my

life."

"One minute," said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. "If he goes to

Khanda, he passes within five miles of us. Of course he'll ride

in."

"Oh, no, he won't," said William.

"How do you know, dear?"

"It will take him off his work. He won't have time."

"He'll make it," said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.

"It depends on his own judgment. There's absolutely no reason

why he shouldn't, if he thinks fit," said Jim.

"He won't see fit," William replied, without sorrow or emotion.

"It wouldn't be him if he did."

"One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like

these," said Jim, drily; but William's face was serene as ever,

and even as she prophesied, Scott did not appear.

The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed

earth was red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where

every one was weather-bound for a fortnight - all except

Hawkins, who took horse and plashed about in the wet, rejoicing.

Now the Government decreed that seed-grain should be distributed

to the people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of

new oxen; and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty,

while William skipped from brick to brick laid down on the

trampled mud, and dosed her charges with warming medicines that

made them rub their little round stomachs; and the milch goats

throve on the rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in

the Khanda district, away to the southeast, except the regular

telegraphic report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had

disappeared; his drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn's

loaned policemen had died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty

grains of quinine a day to fight the fever that comes with the

rain: but those were things Scott did not consider necessary to

report. He was, as usual, working from a base of supplies on a

railway line, to cover a circle of fifteen miles radius, and

since full loads were impossible, he took quarter-loads, and

toiled four times as hard by consequence; for he did not choose

to risk an epidemic which might have grown uncontrollable by

assembling villagers in thousands at the relief-sheds. It was

cheaper to take Government bullocks, work them to death, and

leave them to the crows in the wayside sloughs.

That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard

condition told, though a man's head were ringing like a bell

from the cinchona, and the earth swayed under his feet when he

stood and under his bed when he slept. If Hawkins had seen fit

to make him a bullock-driver, that, he thought, was entirely

Hawkins's own affair. There were men in the North who would

know what he had done; men of thirty years' service in his own

department who would say that it was "not half bad"; and above,

immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there was William in

the thick of the fight, who would approve because she understood.

He had so trained his mind that it would hold fast to the

mechanical routine of the day, though his own voice sounded

strange in his own ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew

large as pillows or small as peas at the end of his wrists. That

steadfastness bore his body to the telegraph-office at the

railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins saying that

the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he

"waited further orders."

The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt

man falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the

weight as because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt

him when he found the body rolled under a bench. Then Faiz Ullah

took blankets, quilts, and coverlets where he found them, and lay

down under them at his master's side, and bound his arms with a

tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible stew of herbs, and set

the policeman to fight him when he wished to escape from the

intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut the door of the

telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights and one

day; and when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins

kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural

voice, and Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.

"For two nights, Heaven-born, he was pagal" said Faiz Ullah.

"Look at my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat

us with his bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and

though his words were tez, we sweated him. Heaven-born, never has

been such a sweat! He is weaker now than a child; but the fever

has gone out of him, by the grace of God. There remains only my

nose and the eye of the constabeel. Sahib, shall I ask for my

dismissal because my Sahib has beaten me?" And Faiz Ullah laid

his long thin hand carefully on Scott's chest to be sure that the

fever was all gone, ere he went out to open tinned soups and

discourage such as laughed at his swelled nose.

"The district's all right," Scott whispered. "It doesn't make

any difference. You got my wire?" I shall be fit in a week.

'Can't understand how it happened. I shall be fit in a few

days."

"You're coming into camp with us," said Hawkins.

"But look here - but -"

"It's all over except the shouting. We sha'n't need you Punjabis

any more. On my honour, we sha'n't. Martyn goes back in a few

weeks; Arbuthnot's returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting

the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government's built as

relief-work. Morten's dead - he was a Bengal man, though; you

wouldn't know him. 'Pon my word, you and Will - Miss Martyn -

seem to have come through it as well as anybody."- "Oh, how is

she, by-the-way"." The voice went up and down as he spoke.

"Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are

adopting the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests;

the Basil Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the

rest. You should hear the little beggars howl when they're sent

away from William. She's pulled down a bit, but so are we all.

Now, when do you suppose you'll be able to move?"

"I can't come into camp in this state. I won't," he replied

pettishly.

"Well, you are rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it

seemed to me they'd be glad to see you under any conditions.

I'll look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of

days, and you can pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds

you up."

Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins's inspection was

ended, and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it

was "not half bad," and volunteered, further, that he had

considered Scott his right-hand man through the famine, and

would feel it his duty to say as much officially.

So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no

crowds near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and

black, and the famine-sheds were almost empty.

"You see!" said Jim. "There isn't much more to do. 'Better ride

up and see the wife. They've pitched a tent for you. Dinner's at

seven. I've some work here."

Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to

William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the

dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and

worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not seem to be any

Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: "My

word, how pulled down you look!"

"I've had a touch of fever. You don't look very well yourself."

"Oh, I'm fit enough. We've stamped it out. I suppose you know?"

Scott nodded. "We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins

told me."

"Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha'n't you be glad to go back

~ I can smell the wood-smoke already"; William sniffed. "We

shall be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don't suppose

even the Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack

till the new year?"

"It seems hundreds of years ago - the Punjab and all that -

doesn't it? Are you glad you came?"

"Now it's all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You

know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so

much."

"Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?"

"I managed it somehow - after you taught me. 'Remember?"

Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs.

Jim.

"That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk.

I thought perhaps you'd be coming here when you were transferred

to the Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you

didn't."

"I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle

of a march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few

minutes, and I couldn't get 'em over the ground till ten o'clock

that night. I wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn't

you?"

"I - believe - I - did," said William, facing him with level

eyes. She was no longer white."

"Did you understand?"

"Why you didn't ride in? Of course I did."

"Why?""Because you couldn't, of course. I knew that."

"Did you care?"

"If you had come in - but I knew you wouldn't - but if you had, I

should have cared a great deal. You know I should."

"Thank God I didn't! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn't trust myself

to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging 'em over

here, don't you know?"

"I knew you wouldn't," said William, contentedly. "Here's your

fifty."

Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy

notes. Its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the

head.

"And you knew, too, didn't you?" said William, in a new voice.

"No, on my honour, I didn't. I hadn't the - the cheek to expect

anything of the kind, except . . I say, were you out riding

anywhere the day I passed by to Khanda?"

William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised

in a good deed.

"Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the -"

"Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you

came up from the mullah by the temple - just enough to be sure

that you were all right. D' you care?"

This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk

of the dining-tent, and, because William's knees were trembling

under her, she had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she

wept long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott

imagined that it would be well to comfort her, she needing

nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out

into the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But

when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it necessary to

support one hand with the other, or the good whisky and soda

would have been spilled abroad. There are fevers and fevers.

But it was worse - much worse - the strained, eye-shirking talk

at dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when

Mrs. Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down,

kissed Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of

champagne, hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and William

sat outside the tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in

for fear of more fever.

Apropos of these things and some others William said: "Being

engaged is abominable, because, you see, one has no official

position. We must be thankful we've lots of things to do."

"Things to do!" said Jim, when that was reported to him.

"They're neither of them any good any more. I can't get five

hours' work a day out of Scott. He's in the clouds half the

time."

"Oh, but they're so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my

heart when they go. Can't you do anything for him?"

"I've given the Government the impression - at least, I hope I

have - that he personally conducted the entire famine. But all

he wants is to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William's

just as bad. Have you ever heard 'em talking of barrage and

aprons and waste-water ~ It's their style of spooning, I

suppose."

Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. "Ah, that's in the intervals - bless

'em."

And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while

men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine

in the Eight Districts.

Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December,

the layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks,

the domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white

Northern plains, as the mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej

Bridge. William, wrapped in a poshteen - a silk-embroidered

sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough astrakhan - looked out with

moist eyes and nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of

pagodas and palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu South, was done

with. Here was the land she knew and loved, and before her lay

the good life she understood, among folk of her own caste and

mind.

They were picking them up at almost every station now - men and

women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with

bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with

fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets

like William's, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled

with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of

them, her hands deep in her pockets, her collar turned up over

her ears, stamping her feet on the platforms as she walked up and

down to get warm, visiting from carriage to carriage and

everywhere being congratulated. Scott was with the bachelors at

the far end of the train, where they chaffed him mercilessly

about feeding babies and milking goats; but from time to time he

would stroll up to William's window, and murmur: "Good enough,

isn't it?" and William would answer with sighs of pure delight:

"Good enough, indeed." The large open names of the home towns

were good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur,

they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William

felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders -

visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the

country.

It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the

Christmas Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the

chief and honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make

things very pleasant for their friends. She and Scott danced

nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest in the big

dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the

uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and

four hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags

on the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of it.

About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came

over from the Club to play "Waits," and that was a surprise the

Stewards had arranged - before any one knew what had happened,

the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into "Good King

Wenceslaus," and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with

her foot:

"Mark my footsteps well, my page,

Tread thou in them boldly.

Thou shalt feel the winter's rage

Freeze thy blood less coldly!"

"Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn't it pretty,

coming out of the dark in that way? Look - look down. There's

Mrs. Gregory wiping her eyes!"

"It's like Home, rather," said Scott. "I remember -"

"Hsh! Listen! - dear." And it began again:

"When shepherds watched their flocks by night -"

"A-h-h!" said William, drawing closer to Scott.

"All seated on the ground,

The Angel of the Lord came down,

And glory shone around.

'Fear not,' said he (for mighty dread

Had seized their troubled mind);

'Glad tidings of great joy I bring

To you and all mankind.'"

This time it was William that wiped her eyes.

End of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR - PART II

THE SON OF HIS FATHER

"It is a queer name," Mrs. Strickland admitted, "and none of our

family have ever borne it, but, you see, he is the first man to

us."

So he was called Adam, and to that world about him he was the

first of men - a man-child alone. Heaven sent him no Eve for a

companion, but all earth, horse and foot, was at his feet. As

soon as he was old enough to appear in public, he held a levee;

and Strickland's sixty policemen, with their sixty clanking

sabres, bowed to the dust before him. When his fingers closed a

little on Imam Din's sword-hilt, they rose and roared - till Adam

roared, too, and was withdrawn.

"Now, that was no cry of fear," said Imam Din, afterwards,

speaking to his companions in the Police Lines. "He was angry -

and so young! Brothers, he will make a very strong Police

officer."

"Does the Memsahib give him the breast?" said a new Phillour

recruit, the dye smell not yet out of his yellow cotton uniform.

"Ho!" said an up-country Naik, scornfully. "It has not been known

for more than ten days that my woman suckles him." He curled his

moustaches as lordly as ever an Inspector could afford to do, for

he knew that the husband of the foster-mother of the son of the

District Superintendent of Police was a man sure of

consideration.

"I am glad," said Imam Din, loosening his belt. "Those who drink

our blood become of our own blood, and I have seen, in these

thirty years, that the sons of the Sahibs, once being born here,

return when they are men. Yes, they return after they have been

to Belait [Europe]."

"And what do they do in Belait?" asked the recruit, respectfully.

"Get instruction - which thou hast not," returned the Naik. "Also

they drink of belaitee-panee [soda-water], enough to give them

that devil's restlessness which endures for all their lives.

Whence we of Hind have trouble."

"My father's uncle," said Imam Din, slowly, with importance, "was

Ressaldar of the Longcoat Horse; and the Empress called him to

Belait in the year that she had accomplished fifty years of

rule. He said (and there were also other witnesses) that the

Sahibs there drink common water, even as do we; and that the

belaitee-panee does not run in all the rivers.

"He said also that there was a Shish Mahal - half a glass palace

- half a koss in length and that the rail-gbarri ran under the

roads, and that there are boats bigger than a village. He is a

great talker." The Naik spoke scornfully. He had no well-born

uncles.

"He is a man of good birth," said Imam Din, with the least

possible emphasis on the first word, and the Naik was silent.

"Ho! ho!" Imam Din reached out to his pipe, chuckling until his

fat sides shook again. "Strickland Sahib's foster-mother was the

wife of an Arain in the Ferozepur district. I was a young man

then, ploughing while the English fought. This child will also be

suckled here, and he will have double wisdom, and when he is a

Police officer it will be very bad for the thieves in this

illakha."

"There will be no English in the land then. They are asking

permission of clerks and low-caste men to continue their rule

even now," said the Naik.

"All but foolish men - such as those clerks are - would know that

this asking is but an excuse for making trouble, and thus

holding the country more strictly. Now, in an investigation, is

it not our custom to permit the villagers to talk loosely and

give us abuse for a little time? Then do we not grow hot, and

walk them to the thana two by two - as these clerks will be

walked? Thus do I read the new talk."

"So do not I," said the Naik, who borrowed the native

newspapers.

"Because thou art young, and wast born in time of peace. I saw

the year that was to end the English rule. Men said it was

ended, indeed, and that all could now take their neighbour's

cattle. This I saw ploughing, and I was minded to fight too,

being a young man. My father sent me to Gurgaon to buy cattle,

and I saw the tents of Van Corlin Sahib(1) in the wheat, and I

saw that he was going up and down collecting the revenue,

neither abating nor increasing it, though Delhi was all afire,

and the Sahibs lay dead about the fields. I have seen what I have

seen. This Raj will not be talked down; and he who builds on the

present madness of the Sahib-log, which, O Naik, covers great

cunning, builds for himself a lock-up. My father's uncle has seen

their country, and he says that he is afraid as never he feared

before. So Strickland Sahib's boy will come back to this country,

and his son after him. Naik, have they named him yet?"

"The butler spoke to my household, having heard the talk at

table, and he says that they will call him Adam, and no

jaw-splitting English name. Ud-daam. The padre will name him at

their church in due time."(1) Van Cortland?

"Who can tell the ways of Sahibs? Now, Strickland Sahib knows

more of the Faith than ever I had time to learn-prayers, charms,

names, and stories of the Blessed Ones. Yet he is not a

Musalman," said Imam Din, thoughtfully.

"For the reason that he knows as much of the gods of Hindustan,

and so rides with a rein in each hand. Remember that he sat

under the Baba Atall, a fakir among fakirs, for ten days:

whereby a man came to be hanged for the murder of the

dancing-girl on the night of the great earthquake," said the

Naik.

"True - it is true - and yet . . . they are one day so wise, the

Sahibs, and another so foolish. But he has named the child well:

Adam. Huzrut Adam! Ho! ho! Father Adam we must call him."

"And all who minister to the child," said the Naik, quietly, but

with meaning, "will come to great honour."

Adam throve, being prayed over before the gods of at least three

creeds, in a garden almost as fair as Eden. There were gigantic

clumps of bamboo that talked continually, and enormous plantains

on whose soft paper skin he could scratch with his nails; green

domes of mango-trees as huge as the dome of St. Paul's, full of

parrots as big as cassowaries, and grey squirrels the size of

foxes. At the end of the garden stood a hedge of flaming

poinsettias higher than any-thing in the world, because,

childlike, Adam's eye could not carry to the tops of the

mango-trees. Their green went out against the blue sky, but the

red poinsettias he could just see. A nurse who talked

continually about snakes and pulled him back from the mouth of a

fascinating dry well, and a mother who believed that the sun hurt

little heads, were the only drawbacks to this loveliness. But, as

his legs grew under him, he found that by scaling an enormous

rampart -three feet of broken-down mud wall at the end of the

garden - he could come into a ready-made kingdom where every one

was his slave. Imam Din showed him the way one evening, and the

police troopers cooking their supper received him with rapture,

and gave him pieces of very indigestible but altogether

delightful spiced bread.

Here he sat or sprawled in the horse-feed where the police horses

were picketed in a double line, and he named them, men and

beasts together, according to his ideas and experiences, as his

First Father had done before him. In those days everything had a

name, from the mud mangers to the heel-ropes; for things were

people to Adam, exactly as people are things to folk in their

second childhood. Through all the conferences - one hand twisted

into Imam Din's beard, and the other on his polished belt-buckle

- there were two other people who came and went across the talk -

Death and Sickness - persons stronger than Imam Din, and stronger

than the heel-roped stallions. There was Mata, the small-pox, a

woman in some way connected with pigs; and Heza, the cholera, a

black man, according to Adam; and Booka, starvation; and Kismet,

who quietly settled all questions, from the choking of a pet

mungoose in the kitchen drain, to the absence of a young

policeman who once missed a parade and never came back. It was

all very wonderful to Adam, but not worth much thinking over; for

a child's mind is bounded by his eyes exactly as a horse's view

of the road is limited by blinkers. Between all these

objectionable shadowy vagrants stood a ring of kind faces and

strong arms, and Mata and Heza would never touch Adam, the first

of men. Kismet might do so, because - and this was a mystery no

staring into the looking-glass would solve - Kismet, who was a

man, was also written, like police orders for the day, in or on

Adam's head. Imam Din could not explain how this might be, and

it was from that grey fat Muhammadan that Adam learned through

every inflection the Khuda janta (God knows) that settled

everything in his mind.

Beyond the fact that "Khuda" was a very good man and kept lions,

Adam's theology did not run far. Mrs. Strickland tried to teach

him a few facts, but he revolted at the story of Genesis as

untrue. A turtle, he said, upheld the world, and one-half the

adventures of Huzrut Nu (Father Noah) had never been told. If

Mamma wanted to hear them, she must ask Imam Din. Adam had heard

of a saint who had made wooden cakes and pressed them to his

stomach when he felt hungry, and the Feeding of the Multitude did

not impress him. So it came about that a reading of miracle

stories generally ended in a monologue by Adam on other and much

more astonishing miracles.

"It's awful," said Mrs. Strickland, half crying, "to think of his

growing up like a little heathen." Mrs. Strickland (Miss Youghal

that was, if you remember her) had been born and brought up in

England, and did not quite understand things.

"Let him alone," said Strickland; "he'll grow out of it all, or

it will only come back to him in dreams.""Are you sure?" said

his wife, to whom Strickland's least word was pure truth.

"Quite. I was sent home when I was seven, and they flicked it

out of me with a wet towel at Harrow. Public schools don't

encourage any-thing that isn't quite English."

Mrs. Strickland shuddered, for she had been trying not to think

of the separation that follows motherhood in India, and makes

life there, for all that is written to the contrary, not quite

the most desirable thing in the world. Adam trotted out to hear

about more miracles, and his nurse must have worried him beyond

bounds, for she came back weeping, saying that Adam Baba was in

danger of being eaten alive by wild horses.

As a matter of fact, he had shaken off Juma by bolting between a

couple of picketed horses and lying down under their bellies.

That they were personal friends of his, Juma did not understand,

nor Strickland either. Adam was settled at ease when his father

arrived, breathless and white, and the stallions put back their

ears and squealed.

"If you come here," said Adam, "they will hit you kicks. Tell

Juma I have eaten my rice and wish to be alone."

"Come out at once," said Strickland, for the horses were

beginning to paw violently.

"Why should I obey Juma's order? She is afraid of horses."

"It is not Juma's order. It is mine. Obey!"

"Ho!" said Adam, "Juma did not tell me that." And he crawled out

on all fours among the shod feet. Mrs. Strickland was crying

bitterly with fear and excitement, and as a sacrifice to the

home gods Adam had to be whipped. He said with perfect justice:

"There was no order that I should not sit with the horses, and

they are my horses. Why is there this tamasha?"

Strickland's face showed him that the whipping was coming, and

the child turned white. Mother-like, Mrs. Strickland left the

room, but Juma, the foster-mother, stayed to see.

"Am I to be whipped here?" he gasped.

"Of course."

"Before that woman? Father, I am a man -I am not afraid. It is my

izzat - my honour."

Strickland only laughed (to this day I cannot imagine what

possessed him), and gave Adam the little tap-tap with a

riding-cane that was whipping sufficient for his years.

When it was all over, Adam said quietly: "I am little, and you

are big. If I stayed among my horse folk I should not have been

whipped. You are afraid to go there."

The merest chance led me to Strickland's house that afternoon.

When I was half-way down the drive Adam passed me, without

recognition, at a fast run. I caught one glimpse of his face

under his big hat, and it was the face of his father as I had

once seen that in the grey of morning when it bent above a

leper. I caught the child by the shoulder.

"Let me go!" he screamed, and he and I were the best of friends,

as a rule. "Let me go!"

"Where to, Father Adam?" He was quivering like a new-haltered

colt.

"To the well. I have been beaten. I have been beaten before

women! Let me go!" He tried to bite my hand.

"That is a small matter," I said. "Men are horn to beatings."

"Thou hast never been beaten," he said savagely.

"Indeed I have. Times past counting."

"Before women?"

"My mother and the ayah saw. By women too, for that matter. What

of it?"

"What didst thou do?" He stared beyond my shoulder up the long

drive.

"It is long ago, and I have forgotten. I was older than thou art;

but even then I forgot, and now the thing is but a jest to be

talked of"

Adam drew one big breath and broke down utterly in my arms. Then

he raised his head, and his eyes were Strickland's eyes when

Strickland gave orders.

"Ho! Imam Din."

The fat orderly seemed to spring out of the earth at our feet,

crashing through the bushes, and standing to attention.

"Hast thou ever been beaten?" said Adam."Assuredly. By my father

when I was thirty years old. He beat me with a plough-beam before

all the women of the village.""Wherefore?"

"Because I had returned to the village on leave from the

Government service, and had said of the village elders that they

had not seen the world. Therefore he beat me, to show that no

seeing of the world changed father and son."

"And thou?"

"I stood up. He was my father."

"Good," said Adam, and turned on his heel without another word.

Imam Din looked after him. "An elephant breeds but once in a

lifetime, but he breeds elephants. Yet I am glad I am no father

of tuskers," said he.

"What is it all?" I asked.

"His father beat him with a whip no bigger than a reed. But the

child could not have done what he desired to do without leaping

through me. And I am of some few pounds weight. Look!"

Imam Din stepped back through the bushes, and the pressed grass

showed that he had been lying curled round the mouth of the dry

well.

"When there was talk of beating I knew that one who sat among

horses, such as ours, was not like to kiss his father's hand. So

I lay down in this place." We both stood still looking at the

well-curb.

Adam came back along the garden path to us. "I have spoken to my

father," he said simply. "Imam Din, tell thy Naik that his woman

is dismissed my service."

"Huzoor!" said Imam Din, stooping low.

"For no fault of hers."

"Protector of the Poor!"

And to-day."

"Khodawund!"

"It is an order! Go!"

Again the salute, and Imam Din departed, with that same set of

the back which he wore when he had taken an order from

Strickland. I thought that it would be well to go too, but

Strickland beckoned me from the verandah. When I came up he was

perfectly white, and rocking to and fro in his chair, repeated

"Good God!" half a dozen times.

"Do you know that he was going to chuck himself down the well -

because I tapped him just now ~" he said helplessly.

"I ought to," I replied. "He has just dismissed his nurse - on

his own authority, I suppose?"

"He told me just now that he wouldn't have her for a nurse any

more. I never supposed he meant it for an instant. I suppose

she'll have to go."

It is written elsewhere that Strickland was feared through the

length and breadth of the Punjab by murderers, horse-thieves,

and cattle-lifters.

Adam returned, halting outside the verandah, very white about the

lips.

"I have sent away Juma because she saw that - that which

happened. Until she is gone I do not come in the house," he

said.

But to send away thy foster-mother ~" said Strickland, with

reproach.

"I do not send her away. It is thy blame, and the small

forefinger was pointed to Strickland. "I will not obey her; I

will not eat from her hand, and I will not sleep with her. Send

her away."

Strickland stepped out and lifted the child into the verandah.

"This folly has lasted long enough," he said. "Come, now, and be

wise."

"I am little, and you are big," said Adam, between set teeth.

"You can beat me before this man or cut me to pieces. But I will

not have Juma for my ayah any more. I will not eat till she goes.

I swear it by - my father's head."

Strickland sent him indoors to his mother, and we could hear

sounds of weeping, and Adam's voice saying nothing more than,

"Send Juma away." Presently Juma came in and wept too, and Adam

repeated, "It is no fault of thine, but go!"

And the end of it was that Juma went, with all her belongings,

and Adam fought his own way alone into his little clothes until

a new ayah came. His address of welcome to her was rather

amazing. In a few words it ran: "If I do wrong send me to my

father. If you strike me I will try to kill you. I do not wish my

ayah to play with me. Go and eat rice."

>From that day Adam forswore the society of ayahs and small

native girls as much as a small boy can, confining himself to

Imam Din and his friends of the police. The Naik, Juma's

husband, had been presuming not a little on his position, and

when Adam's favour was withdrawn from his wife he judged it best

to apply for a transfer to another post. There were too many

companions anxious to report his shortcomings to Strickland.

Towards his father Adam kept a guarded neutrality. There was not

a touch of sulkiness in it, for the child's temper was as clear

as a bell. But the difference and the politeness worried

Strickland.

If the other men had loved Adam before the affair of the well,

they worshipped him now.

He knows what honour means," said Imam Din; "he has justified

himself upon a point thereof. He has carried an order through

his father's household as a child of the blood might do.

Therefore he is not altogether a child any longer. Wah! He is a

tiger's cub." The next time that Adam made his little

unofficial inspection of the line, Imam Din, and by consequence

all the others, stood upon their feet, with their hands to their

sides, instead of calling out from where they lay, "Salaam,

Babajee," and other disrespectful things.

But Strickland took long counsel with his wife, and she with the

cheque-book and their lean bank-account, and they decided that

Adam must go "home" to his aunts. But England is not home to a

child that has been born in India, and it never becomes

home-like unless he spends all his youth there. The bank-book

showed that if they economised through the summer by going to a

cheap hill-station instead of to Simla, where Mrs. Strickland's

parents lived, and where Strickland might be noticed by the

powers, they could send Adam home in the next spring. It would be

hard pinching, but it could be done. In India all the money that

people in other lands save against a rainy day runs off in loss

by exchange, which to-day cuts a man's income down almost exactly

to one-half There is nothing to show for money when all is put

by, and that is what makes married life there so hard. Strickland

used to say, sometimes, that he envied the convicts in the jail.

They had no position to keep up, and the ball and chain that the

worst of them wore was only a few pounds weight of iron.

Dalhousie was chosen as being the cheapest of the hill-stations;

Dalhousie and a little five-roomed cottage full of mildew,

tucked away among the rhododendrons.

Adam had been to Simla three or four times, and knew by name the

most of the Tonga drivers from Kalka to Tara Deva; but this new

plan disquieted him. He came to me for information, his hands

deep in his knickerbocker pockets, walking, step for step, as

his father walked.

"There will be none of my bhai-bund [Brotherhood] up there," said

he, disconsolately, "and they say that I must lie still in a

doolie for a day and a night, being carried like a sheep. I wish

to take some of my mounted men to Dalhousie."

I told him that there was a small boy called Victor, at

Dalhousie, who had a calf for a pet, and was allowed to play

with it on the public roads. After that Adam could not

sufficiently hurry the packing.

"First," said he, "I shall ask that man Victor to let me play

with the cow's child. If he is mug-gra [ill-conditioned] I shall

tell my policemen to take it away."

"But that is unjust," said Strickland, "and there is no order

that the police should do injustice."

"When the Government pay is not sufficient, and low-caste men are

promoted, what can an honest man do?" he replied, in the very

touch and accent of Imam Din, and Strickland's eyebrows went up.

"You talk too much to the police, my son," he said.

"Always, about everything," said Adam, promptly. "They say that

when I am an officer I shall know as much as my father." "God

forbid, little one!"

"They say, too, that you are as clever as Shaitan to know

things."

"They say that, do they?" said Strickland, looking pleased. His

pay was small, but he had his reputation, and that was dear to

him.

"They say also - not to me, but to one another when they eat rice

behind the wall - that in your own heart you esteem yourself as

wise as Suleiman, who was cheated by Shaitan."

This time Strickland did not look so pleased. Adam, in all

innocence, launched into a long story about Suleiman-bin-Daoud,

who once, out of vanity, pitted his wits against Shaitan, and

because God was not on his side Shaitan sent "a little devil of

low caste," as Adam put it, who cheated him utterly, and put him

to shame before "all the other Rajas."

"By Jove!" said Strickland, when the tale was done, and went

away, while Adam took me to task for laughing at Imam Din's

story. I did not wonder that he was called Huzrut Adam, for he

looked old as all time in his grave childhood, sitting

cross-legged, his battered little helmet far at the back of his

head, his forefinger wagging up and down, native fashion, and

the wisdom of serpents on his unconscious lips.

That May he went up to Dalhousie with his mother, and in those

days the journey ended in fifty or sixty miles of uphill travel

in a doolie or palanquin, along a road winding through the

Himalayas. Adam sat in the doolie with his mother,and Strickland

rode and tied with me, a spare doolie following. The march began

after we got out of the train at Pathankot, in a hot night among

the rice - and poppy-fields.

It was all new to Adam, and he had opinions to advance - notably

about a fish that jumped on a wayside pond.

"Now I know," he shouted, "how Khuda puts them there. First He

makes them and then He drops them down. That was a new one."

Then, lifting his head to the stars, he cried, "O God, do it

again, but slowly, that I, Adam, may see."

But nothing happened, and the doolie-bearers lit the noisome,

dripping rag torches, and Adam's eyes shone big in the dancing

light, and we smelt the dry dust of the plains that we were

leaving after eleven months' hard work.

At stated times the men ceased their drowsy, grunting tune, and

sat down for a smoke. Between the guttering of their water-pipes

we could hear the cries of the beasts of the night, and the wind

stirring in the folds of the mountain ahead. At the changing

stations the voice of Adam, the first of men, would be lifted to

rouse the sleepers in the huts till the fresh relays of bearers

shambled from their cots, and the relief-pony with them.

Then we would re-form and go on, and by the time the moon rose

Adam was asleep, and there was no sound in the night except the

grunting of the men, the husky murmur of some river a thousand

feet down in the valley, and the squeaking of Strickland's

saddle. So we went up from the date-palm to deodar, till the dawn

wind came round a corner all fresh from the snows, and we

snuffed it. I heard Strickland say: "Wife, my overcoat, please,"

and Adam, fretfully: "Where is Dalhousie, and the cow's child?"

and then I slept till Strickland turned me out of the warm doolie

at seven o'clock, and I stepped into the splendour of a cool hill

day, the plains sweltering twenty miles back and three thousand

feet below.

Adam waked too, and needs must ride in front of me to ask a

million questions, and shout at the monkeys, and clap his hands

when the painted pheasants bolted across our road, and hail

every wood-cutter and drover and pilgrim within sight, till we

halted for breakfast at a staging-house. After breakfast, being a

child, he went out to play with a train of bullock-drivers

haltered by the road-side, and we had to chase him out of a

native liquor-shop where he was bargaining with a naked

seven-year-old for a mynah in a bamboo cage.

Said he, wriggling on my pommel, as we went on again: "There were

four men behosh [insensible] at the back of that house.

Wherefore do men grow behosh from drinking?"

"It is the nature of the water," l said, and calling back:

"Strick, what's that grog-shop doing so close to the road? It's

a temptation to any one's servants."

"Dun'no," said a sleepy voice in the doolie. "This is Kennedy's

district. 'Twasn't here in my time."

"Truly the water smells bad," Adam went on. "I smelt it, but I

did not get the mynah even for six annas. The woman of the house

gave me a love-gift, that I found, playing near the verandah."

"And what was the gift, Father Adam?"

"A nose-ring for my ayah. Ohe! ohe! Look at that camel with a

bag on his nose." A string of loaded camels came cruising round

the corner, as a fleet rounds a cape.

"Ho, Malik! why does not a camel salaam like an elephant? His

neck is long enough," Adam cried.

"The Angel Jibrail made him a fool from the beginning," said the

driver, as he swayed on the top of the led beast, and laughter

ran all along the line of red-bearded men.

"That is true," said Adam, and they laughed again.

At last, in the late afternoon, we came to Dalhousie, loveliest

of the hill-stations, and separated.Adam hardly could be

restrained from setting out at once to find Victor and the

"cow's child." I found them both, something to my trouble, next

morning. The two young sinners had a calf on a taut line just at

a sharp turn in the Mall, and were pretending that he was a

Raja's elephant who had gone mad. But it was my horse that

nearly went mad, and they shouted with delight. Then we began to

talk, and Adam, by way of crushing Victor's repeated reminders

that he and not "that other" was the owner of the calf, said:

"It is true I have no cow's child, but a great dacoity has been

done on my father."

"We came up together yesterday. There could have been nothing," I

said.

"It was my mother's horse. She has been dacoited with beating

and blows, and now it is so thin." He held his hands an inch

apart. "My father is at the tar-house sending tars. Imam Din

will cut off all their heads. I desire your saddle-cloth for a

howdah to my elephant. Give it me."

This was exciting, but not lucid. I went to the telegraph-office

and found Strickland in a bad temper among many telegraph-forms.

A dishevelled, one-eyed groom stood in a corner, whimpering at

intervals. He was a man whom Adam invariably addressed as

"Be-shakl be-ukl, be-ank" - ugly, stupid, eyeless. It seemed,

according to Strickland, that he had sent his wife's horse up to

Dalhousie by road, a fortnight's march. This is the custom in

Upper India. Among the foot-hills near Dhunnera or Dhar, horse

and man had been violently set upon in the night by four men, who

had beaten the groom (his leg was bandaged from knee to ankle in

proof), had incidentally beaten the horse, and had robbed the

groom of the bucket, and all his money eleven rupees, nine

annas, three pie. Last, they had left him for dead by the

wayside, where wood-cutters had found and nursed him. Then the

one-eyed howled with anguish, thinking over his bruises. "They

asked me if I was Strickland Sahib's servant, and I, thinking the

protection of the name would be sufficient, spoke the truth.

Then they beat me grievously."

"Hm!" said Strickland. "I thought they wouldn't dacoit as a

business on the Dalhousie road. This is meant for me personally

- sheer badmashi [impudence]. All right."

In justice to a very hard-working class, it must be said that the

thieves of Upper India have the keenest sense of humour. The

last compliment that they can pay a Police officer is to rob

him, and if, as once they did, they can loot a Deputy

Inspector-General of Police, on the eve of his retirement, of

everything except the clothes on his back, their joy is

complete. They cause letters of derision and telegrams of

condolence to be sent to the victim; for of all men, thieves are

most compelled to keep up with modern progress.

Strickland was a man of few words where his business was

concerned. I had never seen a Police officer robbed before, and

I expected some excitement; but Strickland held his tongue. He

took the groom's deposition and retired into himself for a time,

evolving thieves. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Pathankot charge,

an official letter and an unofficial note. Kennedy's reply was

purely unofficial, and it ran thus: "This seems a compliment

solely intended for you. My wonder is, you didn't get it before.

The men are probably back in your district by this time. The

Dhunnera and foot-hill people are highly respectable cultivators,

and seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and I can't trust my

Inspector out of my sight, I am not going to turn their harvest

upside down with a police investigation. I am run off my feet

with vaccination police work. You'd better look at home. The

Shubkudder Gang were through here a fortnight back. They laid up

at the Amritsar Serai, and then worked down. No cases against

them in my charge, but remember you lagged their malik for

receiving in Prub Dyal's burglary. They owe you one."

"Exactly what I thought," said Strickland. "I had a notion it was

the Shubkudder Gang from the first. We must make it pleasant

for them at Peshawur, and in my district too. They are just the

kind that would lie up under Imam Din's shadow."

>From this point onward the wires began to he worked heavily.

Strickland had a very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder Gang,

gathered at first hand.

They were the same syndicate that had once stolen a Deputy

Commissioner's cow, put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty

miles into the jungle before they lost interest in the joke.

They added insult to insult by writing that the Deputy

Commissioner's cows and horses were so much alike that it took

them two days to find out the difference, and they would not

lift the like of such cattle any more.

The District Superintendent at Peshawur replied to Strickland

that he was expecting the gang, and Strickland's Assistant in

his own district, being young and full of zeal, sent up the most

amazing clues.

"Now that's just what I want that young fool not to do," said

Strickland. "He hasn't passed the lower standard yet, and he's

an English boy born and bred, and his father before him. He has

about as much tact as a bull, and he won't work quietly under my

Inspector. I wish the Government would keep our service for

country-born men. Those first five or six years give a man a

pull that lasts him his life. Adam, if you were only old enough

to be my 'Stunt"!" He looked down at the little fellow on the

verandah. Adam was deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike

a child, did not lose interest after the first week. On the

contrary, he would ask his father every evening what had been

done, and Strickland had drawn him a picture on the white wall of

the verandah showing the different towns in which policemen were

on the lookout for the thieves. They were Amritsar, Jullundur,

Phillour, Gurgaon, in case the gang were moving south; Rawal

Pindi and Peshawur, with Multan. Adam looked up at the picture

as he answered:

"There has been great dikh [trouble] in this case."

"Very great trouble. I wish thou wert a young man and my

assistant to help me."

"Dost thou need help, my father?" Adam asked curiously, with his

head on one side.

"Very much."

"Leave it all alone. It is bad. Let loose everything."

"That must not be. Those beginning a business continue to the

end."

"Thou wilt continue to the end? Dost thou not know who did the

dacoity?"

Strickland shook his head. Adam turned to me with the same

question, and I answered it in the same way.

"What foolish people!" he said, and turned his back on us. He

showed plainly in all our dealings afterwards how we had fallen

in his opinion. Strickland told me that he would sit at the

door of his work-room and stare at him for half an hour at a

time as he went through his papers. Strickland seemed to work

harder over the case than if he had been in office on the

plains.

"And sometimes I look up and I fancy the little chap's laughing

at me. It's an awful thing to have a son. You see, he's your own

and his own, and between the two you don't know quite how to

handle him," said Strickland. "I wonder what in the world he

thinks about?"

I asked Adam this on my own account. He put his head on one side

for a moment and replied: "In these days I think about great

things; I do not play with Victor and the cow's child any more.

He is only a baba."

At the end of the third week of Strickland's leave the result of

Strickland's labours - labours that had made Mrs. Strickland

more indignant against dacoits than any one else - came to hand.

The police at Peshawur reported that half the Shubkudder Gang

were held at Peshawur to account for the possession of some

blankets and a horse-bucket. Strickland's Assistant had also

four men under suspicion in his charge; and Imam Din must have

stirred up Strickland's Inspector to investigations on his own

account, for a string of incoherent telegrams came in from the

Club Secretary, in which he entreated, exhorted, and commanded

Strickland to take his "mangy havildars" off the club premises.

"Your men, in servants' quarters here, examining cook. Marker

indignant. Steward threatens resignation. Members furious.

Saises stopped on roads. Shut up, or my resignation goes to

committee."

"Now, I shouldn't in the least wonder," said Strickland,

thoughtfully, to his wife, "if the club was not just the place

where a man would lie up. Bill Watson isn't at all pleased,

though. I think I shall have to cut my leave by a week and go

down there. If there's anything to be told, the men will tell me.

It will never do for the gang to think they can dacoit my

belongings."

That was in the forenoon, and Strickland asked me to tiff in to

leave me some instructions about his big dog, with authority to

rebuke those who did not attend to her. Tietens was growing too

old and too fat to live in the plains in summer. When I came,

Adam had climbed into his high chair at the table, and Mrs.

Strickland seemed ready to weep at any moment over the general

misery of things.

"I go down the hill to-morrow, little son," said Strickland.

"Wherefore?" said Adam, reaching out for a ripe mango and burying

his head in it.

"Imam Din has caught the men who did the dacoity, and there are

also others at Peshawur under suspicion. I must go to see."

"Bus!" said Adam, between the sucks at his mango, as Mrs.

Strickland tucked the napkin round his neck. "It is enough.

Imam Din speaks lies. Do not go."

"It is necessary. There has been great dikhdari

(trouble-giving]."

Adam came out of the fruit for a minute and laughed. Then,

returning, he spoke between slow and deliberate mouthfuls.

"The dacoits live in Beshakl's head. They will never be caught.

All people know that. The cook knows, and the scullion, and

Rahim Baksh here."

"Nay," said the butler behind his chair, hastily. "What should I

know? Nothing at all does the servant of the Presence know."

"Accha," said Adam, and sucked on. "Only it is known."

"Speak, then," said Strickland. "What dost thou know? Remember

the sais was beaten insensible."

"That was in the bad-water shop where I played when we came here.

The boy who would not sell me the mynah for six annas told me

that a one-eyed man had come there and drunk the bad waters and

gone mad. He broke bedsteads. They hit him with a bamboo till he

fell senseless, and, fearing he was dead, they nursed him on

milk like a little baba. When I was playing first with the cow's

child I asked Beshakl if he were that man, and he said no. But I

knew, because many wood-cutters asked him whether his head were

whole now."

"But why," I interrupted, "did Beshakl tell lies?"

"Oh! he is a low-caste man, and desired consideration. Now he is

a witness in a great law-case, and men will go to the jailkhana

on his account. It was to give trouble and obtain notice."

"Was it all lies?" said Strickland,

"Ask him," said Adam, cheerily, through the mango-juice.

Strickland passed through the door; there was a howl of despair

in the servants' quarters up the hill, and he returned with the

one-eyed groom.

"Now," said Strickland, "it is known. Declare!" "Beshakl," said

Adam, while the man gasped. "Imam Din has caught four men, and

there are some more at Peshawur. Bus! Bus! Bus! Tell about the

mare and how she rolled."

"Thou didst get drunk by the wayside, and didst make a false case

to cover it. Speak!"

Like many other men, Strickland, in possession of a few facts,

was irresistible. The groom groaned.

"I - I did not get drunk - till - till - Protector of the Poor,

the mare rolled."

"All horses roll at Dhunnera. The road is too narrow before

that, and they smell where the other horses have rolled. This

the bullock-drivers told me when they came there," said Adam.

"She rolled. The saddle was cut, and the curb-chain was lost."

"See!" said Adam, tugging a curb-chain from his pocket. "That

woman in the shop gave it to me for a love-gift. Beshakl said

it was not his when I showed it. But I knew."

"Then they in the grog-shop, knowing that I was the servant of

the Presence, said that unless I drank and spent money they

would tell."

"A lie. A lie," said Strickland. "Son of an owl, speak truth

now at least."

"Then I was afraid because I had lost the curb-chain, so I cut

the saddle across and about."

"She did not roll, then?" said Strickland, bewildered and very

angry.

"It was the curb-chain that was lost. That was the beginning of

all. I cut the saddle to look as though she had rolled, and

went to drink in the shop. I drank, and there was a fray. The

rest I have forgotten, till I was recovered."

"And the mare the while? What of the mare?"

The man looked at Strickland, and collapsed. "I will speak truth.

She bore fagots for a wood-cutter for a week."

"Oh, poor Diamond!" said Mrs. Strickland.

"And Beshaki was paid four annas for her hire three days ago by

the wood-cutter's brother, who is the left-hand man of the

jhampanis here," said Adam, in a loud and joyful voice. "We all

knew. We all knew. I and all the servants."

Strickland was silent. His wife stared helplessly at the child -

the soul called out of the Nowhere, that went its own way alone.

"Did no man help thee with the lies?" I asked of the groom.

"None, Protector of the Poor - not one."

"They grew, then?"

"As a tale grows in the telling. Alas! I am a very bad man," and

he blinked his one eye dole-fully.

"Now four men are held at my station on thy account, and God

knows how many more at Peshawur, besides the questions at

Multan, and my izzat is lost, and the mare has been pack-pony to

a wood-cutter. Son of devils, what canst thou do to make

amends?"

There was just a little break in Strickland's voice, and the man

caught it. Bending low, he answered in the abject, fawning whine

that confounds right and wrong more surely even than most modern

creeds, "Protector of the Poor, is the police service shut to an

honest man?"

"Out!" cried Strickland, and swiftly as the groom departed he

must have heard our shout of laughter behind him.

"If you dismiss that man, Strick, I shall engage him. He's a

genius," I said. "It will take you months to put this mess

right, and Billy Watson won't give you a minute's peace."

"You aren't going to tell him?" said Strickland, appealingly.

"I couldn't keep this to myself if you were my own brother. Four

men held in your district -four or forty at Peshawur - and what

was that you said about Multan?"

"Oh, nothing. Only some camel men there have been -"

"On account of a curb-chain. Oh, my aunt!"

"And whose memsahib was thy aunt?" said Adam, with the mango

stone in his fist. We began to laugh again.

"But here," said Strickland, pulling his face together, "is a

very bad child who has caused his father to lose honour before

all the policemen of the Punjab."

"Oh, they know," said Adam. "It was only for the sake of show

that they caught the people. Assuredly they all knew it was

bunao [make-up]."

"And since when hast thou known?" said the first policeman in

India to his son.

"Four days after we came here - after the wood-cutter had asked

Beshakl of the health of his head. Beshaki all but slew a

wood-cutter at that bad-water place."

"If thou hadst spoken then, time and money and trouble to me and

to others had all been spared. Baba, thou hast done a wrong

greater than thy knowledge, and thou hast put me to shame, and

set me out upon false words, and broken my honour. Thou hast

done very wrong. But perhaps thou didst not think?"

"Nay, but I did think. Father, my honour was lost when that

happened that - that happened in Juma's presence. Now it is made

whole again."

And, with the most enchanting smile in the world, Adam climbed on

to his father's lap.

End of "THE SON OF HIS FATHER"

End of "THE DAY'S WORK" - PART I