An old man dreaming of a past day and night as he sat waiting, and
these were his dreams.
* * * * *
Darkness, save for the light of the stars in the sky and the flare of
blazing roof-trees on earth. Two shadowy figures out in the open, and
through the parched silence of the May night a man's voice feeble, yet
strenuous in appeal.
"Dhurm Singh?"
"_Huzoor!_"
The kneeling figure bent closer over the other, waiting.
"The _mem sahiba_, Dhurm Singh."
"_Huzoor--dhurm nal_."[9]
Then silence, broken only by the long howl of jackals gathering before
their time round that scene of mutiny and murder.
* * * * *
Darkness once more. The darkness of daylight shut out by prisoning
walls. The sweltering heat of July oozing through the shot-cracked
walls; the horrors of starvation, and siege, and sickness round two dim
figures. And once again a strenuous voice--this time a woman's.
"Dhurm Singh!"
"_Huzoor_."
The answer came as before--broad, soft, guttural, in the accent of the
north--
"Sonny _baba_, Dhurm Singh!"
"_Huzoor--dhurm nal_."
Then silence, broken only by the _whist-ch-t_ of a wandering bullet
against the wall of the crumbling fort, where one more victim had found
peace.
* * * * *
Both the May night and the July day were in old Dhurm Singh's thoughts
as he sat on his heels looking out from the Apollo Bunder at Bombay
across the Black Water, waiting, after long years, for Sonny _baba's_
ship to loom over the level horizon. A stranger figure among the
slight, smooth coolies busy around him with bales and belaying pins
than he would have been among the dockers at Limehouse. Tall, gaunt,
his long white beard parted over the chin and bound backwards over his
ears, his broad mustache spreading straight under his massive nose, his
level eyebrows like a white streak between the open brown forehead and
the open brown eyes. A faded red tunic, empty of the left arm, a
solitary medal on the breast, and above the unseen coils of white
hair--long as a woman's--the high wound turban bearing the sacred steel
quoit of the Sikh devotee.
Such was Dhurm Singh, _Akali_; in other words, Lion of the Faith and
member of the Church Militant. Pensioner to boot for an anna or so a
day to a Government which he had also served _dhurm nal_ as he had
served his dead captain, his dead mistress, and, last of all, Sonny
_baba!_
Twenty years ago. Yes! twenty years since he had answered those
strenuous appeals by his favourite word-play on his own name. He had
used it for many another promise during those long years; as a rule,
truthfully. For Dhurm Singh, as a rule, did things _dhurm nal_--partly
because a slow, invincible tenacity of purpose made all chopping and
changing distasteful, partly because fidelity to the master is sucked
in with the mother's milk of the Sikh race: very little, it is to be
feared, from conscious virtue. Twenty years ago he had carried Sonny
_baba_ through the jungles by night on his unhurt arm, and hidden as
best he could in the tiger-grass by day, because of his promise. And
now, as he sat waiting for Sonny _baba_ to come sailing over the edge
of his world again, the broad simple face expanded into smiles at the
memory. He passed by all the stress and strains of that unforgotten
flight in favour of a little yellow head nestling back in alarm against
the bloodstains on the old tunic, when the white _mems_ in the big
cantonment of refuge had held out their arms to the child.
Sonny _baba_ had known his friends in those days; ay! and he had
remembered them all these years: he and the _mem's_ sister, who had
taken charge of the boy in the foreign land across the Black Waters
whence the masters came--a gracious Miss who wrote regularly once a
year to ex-_duffadar_ Dhurm Singh, giving him the last news of Sonny
_baba_ and as regularly urging her correspondent to safeguard himself
against certain damnation by becoming an infidel. For this, briefly,
crudely, was the recipient's view of the matter as he sat staring at
the little picture texts and tracts in the Punjabi character which
invariably accompanied the letters. They puzzled him, those picture
cards in the sacred characters which were printed so beautifully in the
far off land by people who knew nothing of him or his people, and who
yet wrote better than any _mohunt_.[10] Puzzled him in more ways than
one, since duty and desire divided as to the method of their disposal.
Respect for the _captan-sahib_, whom he had left lying dead at the back
of the native lines on that May night, forbade his destroying them;
respect for his own religious profession forbade his disseminating the
pictures, irrespective of the letterpress, as playthings among the
village children. So he tied them up in a bundle with his pension
papers, and kept them in the breast pocket of the old tunic under the
bloodstains and the solitary medal which was beginning to fray through
its parti-coloured ribbon--an odd item in that costume of a Sikh
devotee which he had assumed when the final loss of his arm forced him
into peace and a pension. As a rule, however, the tunic was hidden
under the orthodox blue and white garments matching the turban, just as
the huge steel bracelets on his arms matched the steel quoit on his
head; but on this day loyalty to the dead had spoken in favour of the
old uniform. It may seem a strange choice, this of devoteeship, but to
the old swash-buckler it was infinitely more amusing, even in these
degenerate days when _Akali-dom_ had lost half its power, to go
swaggering about from fair to festival, from festival to fair,
representing the Church Militant, than to lounge about the village
watching the agricultural members of the family cultivate the ancestral
lands. They did it admirably without his help, as they had done it
always; so Dhurm Singh, at a loose end now legitimate strife was over,
took to cultivating his hair with baths of buttermilk instead, adopted
the quoit and the bracelets, and used the most pious of Sikh oaths as
he watched the wrestlers wrestle, or played singlestick for the honour
of God and the old regiment. And there were other advantages in the
profession. A man might take a more than reasonable amount of opium
occasionally without laying himself open to a heavier accusation than
that of religious enthusiasm; since opium is part of the _Akali's_
stock in trade.
As he sat among the tarred ropes with his back against a consignment of
beer and rum for the British soldier, he broke off quite a large corner
of the big black lump he kept in the same pocket with the tracts, and
swallowed it whole. Sonny _baba's_ ship was not due, they told him, for
some hours to come, so there would be time for quiet dreams both of
past and future. The latter somewhat confused, since the Miss-_sahib's_
letters had not always been adequately translated by the village
schoolmaster. Only this was sure: Sonny _baba_ was three and twenty,
and he was coming out to Hindustan once more as an officer in the great
army. In fact, he was a _captan_ already, which was big promotion for
his few years. So Dhurm Singh--who to say sooth, was becoming somewhat
tired of the Church Militant now that younger men began to beat him at
singlestick--had returned to the old allegiance and made his way down
country, like many another old servant, to meet his master's son and
take service with him. You see them often, these old, anxious-looking
retainers, waiting on the Apollo Bunder, or coming aboard in the steam
launches with wistful, expectant faces.
And some beardless youth, fresh from Eton or Harrow, says with a laugh,
"By George! are you old Munnoo or Bunnoo? Here! look after my traps,
will you?" And the traps are duly looked after, while the Philosophical
Radical on the rampage is taking the opportunity afforded by baggage
parade to record in his valuable diary the pained surprise at the want
of touch between the rulers and the ruled, which is, alas! his first
impression of India. In all probability it will be his last also, since
it is conceivable that both rulers and ruled may be glad to get rid of
him on the approach of the hot weather. Mosquitoes are troublesome, and
cholera is disconcerting, but they are bearable beside the man who
invariably knows the answers to his own questions before he asks them.
Dhurm Singh's dreams, however, if confused, were pleasant; full of
strong meats and drinks, and men in buckram. He could not, of course,
serve the Sirkar again with the chance of _batta_ and _loot_, but he
could serve the _chota sahib_ and wear a badge. After all, a
badge-wearer had his opportunities of hectoring. And then, how he could
talk round the camp fires! What tales he could tell!--bearing in mind,
of course, the advancement of God and the _Gurus_. He fell asleep
finally in the sunshine, blissfully content. The tide ebbed in the
backwaters, the guardship lay white and trim in the open, the tram
horses clattered up and down, the Royal Yacht Club pennant flew out
against the blue sky, a match was being played on the links hard by,
and the very coolies, as they hauled and heaved, used a polyglot of
sailors' slang. Only the palm-trees on the point over the bay gave an
Oriental touch to the scene.
* * * * *
"Dhurm Singh! my dear, dear old friend! Look, comrades, this is the man
who carried me to safety in his arms even as the Good Shepherd carries
His lambs."
The speech had that unreal sound which is the curse of the
premeditated, except in the mouth of a born actor, which Sonny _baba_
was not. And yet the young curves of the lips quivered. Perhaps the
commonplace exclamation of the British boy mentioned before would have
come more naturally to them, but Staff-captain Sonny _baba_ of the
Salvation Army was on parade, and bound to keep up his character.
Nevertheless there was no lack of warmth in the grip he got of the old
man's reluctant hand.
"_Huzoor_," faltered Dhurm Singh, taken aback at this condescension,
and letting the sword he was about to present fall back on its belt
with a clatter. The fact being that the said sword had been an occasion
of much mental distress; as an actual ex-_duffadar_ it was irregular,
but as a possible bodyguard it was strictly _de rigueur_. Perhaps,
however, times had changed in this as in other ways during those twenty
years. The very uniform worn by the score or so of men drawn up on the
deck was strange; and what did that squad of _mem sahibs_ mean? Their
dress did not seem so strange to the old _Akali_, since in those palmy
days before the Mutiny the fashions were not so far removed from the
costume of a Salvation lass; but the tambourines!
"Come and speak to the General," said Sonny _baba_ somewhat hurriedly.
He spoke in English; but just as the formula, "Look after my traps" is
"understanded of the common people" at once, so the word "General"
brought a relieved comprehension to the old Sikh's face. There were
blessed frogs on this one's coat also, which, like the word
Mesopotamia, were charged with consolation.
The General looked at him with that curious philanthropic smile which,
while it welcomes the object, has a kind of circumambient beam of
mutual congratulation for all spectators of the benevolence.
"You have seen service, my good old friend," he exclaimed in fluent
Urdu, as he pointed with a declamatory wave of his hand to the solitary
medal, "but it was poor service to what we offer you now. Come to us,
be our first-fruit, and help to carry the colours of the Great Army in
the van of the fight."
A speech meant palpably for the gallery.