_COLONEL CLIVE'S MESSAGE_
So now my career in the East Indies was over, and I set my face to
return home.
The first person to whom I communicated my intention was Colonel
Clive. He was at first astonished, and told me so.
"Why do you mean to leave me now, when all our affairs are prospering,
and you have nothing to do but to stay on and enrich yourself? I have
had it in my mind to promote you; indeed, I think you know that I am
your good friend."
"I do, indeed, sir," I answered, "and I am most grateful for all your
kindness to me. But it is right that I should tell you I am here in
consequence of wrong-doing, which has, as I can now see, pursued my
steps and caused me to be harassed with troubles and misfortunes from
the very beginning to this hour."
"Why, what wrong have you been guilty of?" asked the Colonel, much
interested. "I could have sworn you were the most honest young man in
my company."
"I have run away from my home, sir. I have deceived and disobeyed my
father and, I fear, caused great sorrow to my loving mother. I allowed
myself to be tempted to leave them secretly, under cover of a
falsehood, and to join a crew of privateers, who turned out to be
pirates, the comrades of those whom you destroyed at Gheriah. In their
company I fell into evil courses, and finally plunged into a murderous
contest with one of my own flesh and blood. These things have long sat
heavy on my mind. I have perceived their evil consequences, I have
been visited with a bitter punishment, and I am now determined to go
back to my parents and to obtain their forgiveness before it is too
late."
Colonel Clive looked at me with some sympathy, mingled with wonder.
"I believe you have decided rightly," he said at last, when I had
finished. "God forbid that I should keep you from making your peace
with those who love you." His tone softened as he added: "My story is
different to yours. I didn't run away; I was driven, pitchforked out
of doors, and stuck into a miserable billet at Madras, where I nearly
ate my heart out with loneliness and repining. When I returned to
England it was not to ask forgiveness, but to give it, if a son can
take it upon himself to forgive his parent. No matter, all that is
past now, and I believe my family have found out that I am worth the
love they have to give me. Look here, my boy, I have no business to
talk like this to you; but, after all, we can't be always thinking of
rupees and Moorish tricks. Since you are bent on going to England, you
shall start in the ship which I am sending from Calcutta with the news
of our late proceedings, and I will give you a letter, which you are
to deliver privately into the hands of Mr. Pitt."
At this name I looked up with flushing cheeks.
"The great Mr. Pitt?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, the great Mr. Pitt," returned Colonel Clive, with a slight
inflection of bitterness in his tone. "But you are right, Ford, he is
a very great man, and though his battles have been won within the four
walls of St. Stephen's Chapel, while we lesser men have to fight in
very different scenes, far be it from me to grudge all honour to the
man who was the first to do honour to me. He is fortunate in having
for his theatre the senate of a great kingdom of Europe, I unfortunate
in having for mine a remote country of which half Europe has never
heard. Still, I recognise his merits, and it is for that reason I am
addressing myself to him on a subject which is near to my heart."
The Colonel paused for a few moments.
"But I cannot have you return to England empty-handed," he resumed.
"What is your share of the gratuity promised to the army I do not yet
know, but I tell you what you shall do: go into the treasury, and
help yourself while there is time."
I stared at this permission, but Colonel Clive merely nodded his head,
and turned to write the letter he had spoken of. Perceiving that he
was in earnest, I went off to the Nabob's palace, and made my way to
the treasury, where I found Mr. Watts and some others busily engaged
in taking an inventory of everything it contained, which was to be
shipped down the river in boats to Calcutta.
I walked through the rooms looking about me. Never in my life have I
seen, nor am I like to see such a sight again. So much treasure was
there scattered around me, that I could scarce believe it when Mr.
Watts told me that the whole was insufficient to meet the sums pledged
by Meer Jaffier. In every room I feasted my eyes upon the light of
countless jewels. Silver was heaped on every floor, and gold on every
shelf. Great green jade jars contained nothing but uncut gems. All
kinds of weapons were there, their very shapes disguised under the
gold and jewel-work which loaded them. There were chairs of ivory, and
a table of solid agate-stone. Massy chains of gold trailed from
drawers, and bricks of silver were built up into banks along the
walls. It was a confusion of magnificence, a very litter of precious
things.
I informed Mr. Watts of the permission which Colonel Clive had given
me to help myself, and he confirmed it.
"Take what you please," he said carelessly. "You will find the
emeralds run larger than any other stone, but some of them are flawed.
There is a pretty string of rubies somewhere that it might be worth
while to choose. The biggest diamond is already promised, but there
are several lesser ones, uncut, which I should judge to be worth from
twenty to forty thousand rupees each."
He returned to his catalogue, and I to my exploration. After rejecting
many necklaces and crowns that I did not deem to be of sufficient
splendour, I finally fixed upon a tulwar, which I found in a box of
mother-of-pearl by itself. The handle was set with an enormous
sapphire, and the hilt incrusted with diamonds, some of them as big as
my thumbnail. I was afterwards offered three thousand pounds for it by
a Gentoo merchant in Calcutta, but preferred to bring it home with me,
where it afterwards fetched more than double that sum at a goldsmith's
in Covent Garden.
Nor was this all that I brought away with me, for when I went to take
leave of Meer Jaffier, he presented me, as a mark of his esteem, with
a very handsome dress of gold cloth, and a string of pearls, valued
afterwards at a thousand pounds. So that I was now become a rich man.
We buried Marian at night, by the Nabob's permission, in a corner of
the garden of the seraglio. The chaplain of the thirty-ninth regiment
conducted the service, and I caused a slab of marble to be set up to
mark the grave, inscribed simply with her name and the date of her
death. This tomb, I have been told, still stands, and is pointed out
to English visitors to Moorshedabad as the grave of the Englishwoman
who was imprisoned in the Black Hole.
The following day, having received Colonel Clive's letter, and bidden
him an affectionate farewell, I embarked with Rupert upon one of the
barges which were carrying the treasure down to Calcutta. The fleet
started in procession, and went down the river, with music playing on
deck, flying flags by day, and coloured lanterns by night, till we
reached the English settlement. There I found old Muzzy, patiently
waiting for me, and full of pride in the victory, in which he was
prone to attribute a great share to me.
Five months later we sailed up the Thames, and set foot once more on
English soil.
One thing only detained me in London. This was the delivery of the
letter which Colonel Clive had entrusted to me for Mr. Pitt.
It was a privilege which I could not rate too highly to be thus made
the intermediary between the two greatest Englishmen of my time, men
of a type that seems now to be lost among us. Since Colonel Clive we
have had no victorious captain, and since Mr. Pitt, no mighty
minister, and hence it is that our country, which under the rule of a
Cromwell or a Pitt, hath risen to be the arbiter of Europe, and held
all nations in awe, is now sunk, under the sway of feeble intellects,
to a precarious position, the mock of every power, and saved only by
her fleets from absolute destruction.
I do not find it easy to describe my sensations when I was ushered
into the presence of the Great Commoner, and saw before me that
majestic figure, with the profile of a Roman conqueror, and a glance
hardly less terrible to encounter than the full blaze of the sun. When
I have stood before the Nabob of Bengal, throned in the midst of his
Court, I have seen in front of me nothing but a peevish, debauched
young man, but when I came into the room where Mr. Pitt was I felt
that I was in the presence of a ruler of men. His attitude, his
commanding gestures, and the stately manner he had of slowly moving
his head round upon his neck to look at you, made a most tremendous
impression; and I found it easy to believe the stories of men having
risen to speak against him in the House of Commons, and then shrunk
back miserably into their seats at a mere look from this extraordinary
person.
Mr. Pitt's manner of reading Colonel Clive's despatch further
impressed me. He broke the seals, seemed to do no more than give it a
few devouring glances, and then laid it aside as though he were
already master of its contents.
"You are Ensign Ford?" he demanded abruptly, fixing his eye upon me.
"I am, sir."
"Colonel Clive tells me in this letter that you possess his
confidence. Do you think, if I were to tell you my sentiments
verbally, you could transmit them faithfully to your employer?"
"I will do my best, sir," I replied, not a little astonished at this
proposal. But I have considered the matter since, and I can see that
there were many things which Mr. Pitt might not wish to write with his
own hand, though he had no objection to their being repeated by me.
"In this letter," he proceeded, "Colonel Clive makes a very startling
proposal, which is no less than that English troops should be sent out
sufficient to conquer the whole of Bengal, and that thereafter the
administration of all the Indian territories should be taken out of
the hands of the Company and brought immediately under the Crown. Now
what I wish you to tell him from me in reply is this, that I am bound
to consider his proposal not merely as it affects our situation
abroad, but also as it bears upon our government at home. I am the
minister, not of a despotic empire like France or Spain, but of a free
people, and I must not suffer anything which may assist the Crown to
encroach upon our liberties. Those liberties rest upon the necessity
which our kings are under of asking us to tax ourselves for their
support. Give them a foreign empire like that of Spain in the
Americas, and you run a danger of rendering them independent. The
wealth arising from the revenues of Indostan would enable the Crown to
keep up a standing army in time of peace, without the consent of
Parliament. Moreover, the administration of these territories would
give occasion for the creation of great numbers of offices and
pensions, by means of which our people might be fatally corrupted.
"I would have you further point out to Colonel Clive on my behalf,"
continued Mr. Pitt, "that those Indians, whom he proposes to make our
fellow subjects, are accustomed to be the slaves of a despot, and
being such, they may become dangerous instruments to make slaves of
us. I should dread to see the sovereigns of this country calling
themselves emperors in the Indies, and valuing that character above
that of kings of Great Britain. Believe me, young man, it is not easy
for a nation to play the despot abroad without losing its freedom at
home; as I have frequently observed that those who had returned to
this country after holding great places in the East, have shown
themselves indifferent to the rights of the subject here."
All this, and much more, did Mr. Pitt say to me, of which I have
preserved only these meagre recollections. But how feeble an image do
the written words preserve of the eloquence with which he spoke, the
enthusiasm which kindled in his eye when he touched upon our
liberties, and the warning emphasis he laid upon his expressions about
the power of the Crown! I felt almost as though I had been the bearer
of propositions for some unnatural treason, and I was not a little
relieved when Mr. Pitt finally concluded by bidding me thank Colonel
Clive very heartily for his civility in writing to him, and promised
to carefully consider of his suggestions.
To this he added some very high compliments to the Colonel's great
abilities and military glory, all of which I transmitted in a letter
to Mr. Clive shortly afterwards. And I have set down the above warning
of the great patriot minister in this place, for the instruction of
posterity, in case a time should ever arrive when the people of this
country, in their too eager grasping after foreign conquests contrary
to the nature of an island, which is to rest content within the
borders of its own seas, shall find they have bartered away the
priceless heritage of their own freedom, and sunk into a mere unheeded
fraction of a dominion which they no longer wield.