"Let me give the boys five stripes each with the bamboo, _Huzoor!_"
suggested the Deputy Inspector with a stifled yawn, when I had wasted
much time and more unction, "it is good for boys at all times, and
these are but boys--as yet."
It would have been the wisest plan, but I could not make up my mind to
it, so I went to bed that night certain of but one thing--either Mungal
or Bungal was a thief. The question was--which?
It kept me awake until I made up my mind that somehow, by hook or by
crook, I would find out. Twenty-four hours was after all too short a
time for a character study; but I was to be on tour for six weeks at
least, and if I took the boys with me I should have ample opportunity
of settling the question. Besides, they would be invaluable as
trackers.
They proved themselves useful in many ways, and even the old khansaman
grudgingly admitted their skill in the capture of chickens. The
spectacle of a half-plucked fowl defying all the resources of the camp
became a thing of the past, for Mungal or Bungal had it fast by the leg
in a trice.
"_Sobhan ullah!_" (Power of the Lord) the old man would say piously.
"But there! they were made for such work from the beginning. We all
have our uses."
My first desire was naturally to distinguish Mungal from Bungal. The
camp, it is true, had no such ambition. It was content to speak of them
as "_Yeh_" or "_Dusra_" (This or the Other), to which they answered
alternately. Thinking to effect my purpose, I gave one a necklace of
blue, the other a necklace of red beads; but they were evidently
suspicious of some plot, for I caught them exchanging decorations
several times. Evidently no reliance was to be placed on beads, so I
had a brass bangle riveted on the arm of one, and an iron bangle on the
arm of the other. That succeeded for a week. At least so I thought,
till I discovered that they had utilised my English files to cut
through the metal so that they could slip their flexible hands in and
out quite easily. Then I became annoyed, and pierced the ears of one
boy. Next day the other had his pierced also. So I got the two alone by
themselves, and asked them why they objected to the manifest
convenience of individuality. It took me some time to worm the idea out
of their small brains, but when I did, it touched me. Briefly, no one
had ever made a difference between them before, not even the mysterious
Creator, and in the village no one had cared. Personally, they never
thought if Mungal was really Mungal, or Bungal. It was a joint-stock
company doing business under the name of Mungal-Bungal. As they said
this they stood, as usual when before me, in the attitude of the
praying Samuel, but I noticed their shoulders seemed glued to each
other, and that the whole balance of their lithe brown bodies was
towards each other. In truth the tie between them was strong indeed. By
day they and my big dog hunted together, and by night the trio slept in
each other's arms like puppies of one litter. When they pilfered, they
pilfered in pairs, and when they lied, they lied in pairs; still,
through it all, the idea clung to me that perhaps only one lied and
stole. But punishment of some sort being imperative, I gave in to the
impartial bamboo--for which, to say sooth, neither of them seemed to
care very much.
In fact, the experiment appeared so successful, the boys so happy, that
the demon of self-complacency entered into me on my return to
headquarters, and I determined to send Mungal and Bungal to school, and
so differentiate them by their intellects. It was a disastrous
experiment, both to the clothes in which I had to dress them, and to
the peace of the compound; but it proved one thing, that neither Mungal
nor Bungal had any aptitude for learning the alphabet. Then, as the
recognised way of reclaiming the predatory tribes is to make them
tillers of the soil, I set my boys to work weeding in the garden. It
was a large garden, full of blossoming shrubs and shady fruiting trees,
where the squirrels loved to chatter, the birds to sing, and I to watch
them both. Within a fortnight neither fur nor feather was to be seen
anywhere. On the other hand, Mungal, Bungal, and Co. had killed five
cobras, two iguanas, and some dozens of cockroaches, rats, and
mice--all of which they had eaten. It was when, failing other game, a
pet parrot of the _khansaman's_ house disappeared, that I solemnly
thrashed both boys myself, after giving them a moral lecture on cruelty
to animals. The next morning the bird's cage contained a new and most
highly-educated parrot,--which must have been stolen from some one,--
and when I went out into the verandah, I found a whole family of young
squirrels, and two bul-buls with their wings cut, dotted about the
flower stands. One of the culprits was evidently bent on restitution
and amendment. Perhaps both; that was the worst of it. One never could
tell; for in speech they both clung to virtue and disclaimed vice. My
Commissioner's wife, who lived next door, and was a very philanthropic
woman, told me she thought they needed female influence to soften and
subdue their wild nature; so they used to be sent over to her twice a
week. She found them quite affable, until the _khitmutghar_ accused one
of them of sampling the lunch which had been set down on the verandah
steps on its way to the cook-room. Then, instead of beating them, she
locked them up without food for twenty-four hours, and begged me to
continue the like discipline whenever the offence was repeated. Hunger,
she said, had a gentle and humanising influence on all wild animals,
who might thus be brought to eat from the hand of authority. So it
seemed; for one night the lady's pet Persian kitten disappeared
mysteriously from her room. I tried to persuade myself it could not be
the boys, because "cat is heating to the blood," etc., etc.; but I knew
they had been hungry, and that game was scarce in both gardens. And,
sure enough, the police in searching their hut found some gnawed bones,
poor pussy's white skin neatly stretched on a board to dry, and, of
course, both the boys. They always were found together. This time they
attempted excuse, the one for the other. Mungal or Bungal had been
hungry; must have been hungry, or he would not have eaten cat, seeing
that cat, etc., etc. So they were sentenced judicially to so many
stripes apiece, and I resolved on sending them back to the walled
village as incurable.
"It is a good word, indeed," said the old _khansaman_ pompously. "Thus
the _Huzoor's_ compound will be free from all kinds of vermin; for, as
I live, the boy hath killed a snake in his Honour's henhouse every
night, save the last; and that, methinks, is because there are no more
to kill."
"The boy? which boy?" I asked, suddenly curious. Then it came out that
every one in the place knew that either "Yeh" or "Dusra" had been
locked up in the hen-house from dusk till dawn every night for a
week or more, because some vermin was carrying off the chickens. Locked
up from daylight to daylight! without a possibility of cat_icide_. The
fact revived all my old curiosity, all my old determination to
differentiate these boys. I shall not easily forget the Deputy
Inspector's face of incredulous horror when I told him that
Mungal-Bungal was to remain for another trial. Even the Commissioner's
wife told me she thought it conceited on my part, seeing that female
influence had failed so signally.
And, as a matter of fact, I gained nothing in the end by my
perseverance.
The nights were growing warm, so I slept with the doors open; secure,
however, so I deemed, from fear of any kind by reason of the mastiff
which was chained in the verandah,--a most ferocious beast to all save
his friends. They were moonless nights, too, dark as pitch in the
central room, where I slept in order to enjoy the full current of air.
Hopelessly dark for the eyes as I woke one night to the touch of a
small flexible hand on mine.
"Hullo! who are you?" I cried in the half-drowsy alertness which comes
with a sudden decisive awakening.
"_Huzoor, main Bowriah hone_."
I seem to hear the answer as I write--confident, contented, cheerful.
And then my attention shifted absolutely to a streak of light
glimmering under the closed door of my office. Thieves! thieves in the
house! I was among them in an instant, getting a glimpse of dark
figures at my cash box before the light was put out. One oily body
slipped from my hold, another fled past me. But my shouts had roused
the sleeping servants, and, as the cressets came flickering up like
stars from the huts, I heard the well-known cry, "_Bowriah logue!
Bowriah logue_." And then, of course, in the centre of the posse of
indignant retainers I saw Mungal-Bungal led by the ears, caught
in the very act of running away in the rear of those adult members
of their tribe whose accomplices they had been; for the mastiff was
dead--brutally, skilfully strangled by some fiend of a friend whom the
poor dog had trusted to slip a noose round its neck.
One of those two, of course; who else could it have been?
But then that small warning hand on mine! That answer I knew so
well:--
"_Huzoor! main Bowriah hone_."
Great God! what a tragedy lay in these words!
I was too sick at heart to question those infant Samuels again; I knew
the double-barrelled denial too well. However, as I had been roused in
time to prevent actual theft, I managed to hush the matter up by
promising the Deputy Inspector to send the boys back to their village
without further delay, there to await due registration as adult male
members of a predatory tribe, and thus gain the privilege of being
within the cognizance of the police. I think my decision gave
satisfaction to every one concerned, except myself, for as I watched
Mungal-Bungal go from my gate in charge of the constable who was to
conduct it back to the hereditary place in life to which it had,
apparently, pleased God to call the firm, I knew that if one-half was
already a habitual criminal, the other half was an embryo saint.
The question remains--which?