Now, the gist of the thing is--Be silent. Be calm.
Be awake. Be on hand on the day.
Be instant to heed the first note of alarm.
And--precisely--exactly--Obey.
AT Howrah, while Mahommed Gunga was employing each chance circumstance
to test the pluck and decision and reliability of Cunningham at almost
every resting-place along the Grand Trunk Road, the armed squire he had
left behind with a little handful of gold mohurs and three horses was
finding time heavy on his hands.
Like his master, Ali Partab was a man of action, to whom the purlieus
of a caravansary were well enough on rare occasions. He could ruffle
it with the best of them; like any of his race, he could lounge
with dignity and listen to the tales that hum wherever many horsemen
congregate; and he was no mean raconteur--he had a tale or two to tell
himself, of women and the chase and of the laugh that he, too, had flung
in the teeth of fear when opportunity arose.
But each new story of the paid taletellers, who squat and drone and
reach a climax, and then pass the begging bowl before they finish
it--each merrily related jest brought in by members of the constantly
arriving trading parties--each neigh of his three chargers--every new
phase of the kaleidoscopic life he watched stirred new ambition in
him to be up, and away, and doing. Many a dozen times he had to remind
himself that “there had been a trust imposed.”
He exercised the horses daily, riding each in turn until he was as lean
and lithe and hard beneath the skin as they were. They were Mahommed
Gunga's horses--he Mahommed Gunga's man; therefore, his honor was
involved. He reasoned, when he took the trouble to, along the good clean
feudal line that lays down clearly what service is: there is no honor,
says that argument, in serving any one who is content with half a
service, and the honor is the only thing that counts.
As day succeeded ever sultrier, ever longer-drawn-out day--as each night
came that saw him peg the horses out wherever what little breezes moved
might fan them--as he sat among the courtyard groups and listened in the
heavy heat, the fact grew more apparent to him that this trust of his
was something after all which a man of worth might shoulder proudly.
There was danger in it.
The talk among the traders--darkly hinted, most of it, and couched in
metaphor--was all of blood, and what would follow on the letting of it.
Now and then a loud-mouthed boaster would throw caution to the winds and
speak openly of a grim day coming for the British; he would be checked
instantly by wiser men, but not before Ali Partab had heard enough to
add to his private store of information.
Priests came from a dozen cities to the eastward, all nominally after
pilgrims for the sacred places, but all strangely indifferent to their
quest. They preferred, it would seem, to sit in rings with chance-met
ruffians--with believers and unbelievers alike--even with men of no
caste at all--and talk of other things than pilgrimages.
“Next year, one hundred years ago the English conquered India. Remember
ye the prophecy? One hundred years they had! This, then, is the last
year. Whom the gods would whelm they first deprive of reason; mark ye
this! The cartridges they serve out to the sepoys now are smeared with
the blended fat of cows and pigs. Knowing that we Hindoos hold the cow
a sacred beast, they do this sacrilege--and why? They would make us bite
the cartridges and lose our caste. And why again? Because they would
make us Christians! That is the truth! Else why are the Christian
missionaries here in Howrah?”
The listeners would nod while the little red fires glowed and purred
above the pipes, and others not included in the circle strained forward
through the dark to listen.
“The gods get ready now! Are ye ready?”
Elsewhere, a hadji--green-turbaned from the pilgrimage to Mecca--would
hold out to a throng of true believers.
“Ay! Pig's fat on the cartridges! The new drill is that the sepoy bites
the cartridge first, to spill a little powder and make priming. Which
true believer wishes to defile himself with pig's fat? Why do they
this? Why are the Christian missionaries here? Ask both riddles with one
breath, for both two are one!”
“Slay, then!”
“Up now, and slay!”
There would be an instant, eager restlessness, while Ali Partab would
glance over to where the horses stood, and would wonder why the
word that loosed him was so long in coming. The hadji would calm his
listeners and tell them to get ready, but be still and await the sign.
“There were to be one hundred years, ran the prophecy; but ninety-nine
and a portion have yet run. Wait for the hour!”
Then, for perhaps the hundredth time, Ali Partab would pretend that
movement alone could save one or other of his horses from heat apoplexy.
He would mount, and ride at a walking pace through the streets that
seemed like a night view of a stricken battle-field, turn down by the
palace wall, and then canter to the schoolhouse, where the hag--wiser
than her mistress--would be sleeping in the open.
“Thou! Mother of a murrain! Toothless one! Is there no word yet?”
The hag would leer up through the heavy darkness--make certain that
he had no lance with him with which to prod her in the ribs--scratch
herself a time or two like a stray dog half awakened--and then leer
knowingly.
“Hast thou the gold mohurs?” she would demand.
“Am I a sieve?”
“Let my old eyes see them, sahib.”
He would take out two gold coins and hold them out in such a way that
she could look at them without the opportunity to snatch.
“There is no word yet,” she would answer, when her eyes had feasted on
them as long as his patience would allow.
“Have they no fear then?”
“None. Only madness!”
“See that they bite thee not! Keep thy wits with thee, and be ready to
bring me word in time, else--”
“Patience, sahib! Show me the coins again--one little look--again once!”
But Ali Partab would wheel and ride away, leaving her to mumble and
gibber in the road and curl again on to her blanket in the blackest
corner by the door.
Once, on an expedition of that kind, he encountered Duncan McClean
himself. The lean, tall Scotsman, gray-headed from the cares he had
taken on himself, a little bowed from heat and hopelessness, but showing
no least symptom of surrender in the kind, strong lines of a rugged
face, stood, eyes upward, in the moonlight. The moon, at least, looked
cool. It was at the full, like a disk of silver, and he seemed to drink
in the beams that bathed him.
“Does he worship it?” wondered Ali Partab, reining from an amble to a
walk and watching half-reverently. The followers of Mohammed are most
superstitious about the moon. The feeling that he had for this man of
peace who could so gaze up at it was something very like respect, and,
with the twenty-second sense that soldiers have, he knew, without a word
spoken or a deed seen done, that this would be a wielder of cold steel
to be reckoned should he ever slough the robes of peace and take it into
his silvered head to fight. The Rajput, that respects decision above all
other virtues, perhaps because it is the one that he most lacks, could
sense firm, unshakable, quick-seized determination on the instant.
Duncan McClean acknowledged the fierce-seeming stare with a salute,
and Ali Partab dismounted instantly. He who holds a trust from such as
Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust. He leaned,
then, against the horse's withers, wondering how far he ought to let
politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt for the
Christian's creed.
“Is there any way, I wonder,” asked the Scotsman, the clean-clipped
suspicion of Scots dialect betraying itself even through the Hindustanee
that he used, “of getting letters through to some small station?”
“I know not,” said the Rajput.
“You are a Mohammedan?” The Scotsman peered at him, adjusting his
viewpoint to the moon's rays. “I see you are. A Rajput, too, I think.”
“Ha, sahib.”
“There was a Rangar here not very long ago.” This man evidently knew the
proper title to give a he true believer of the proudest race there is.
Ali Partab's heart began to go out to him--“an officer, I think, once
of the Rajput Horse, who very kindly carried letters for me. Perhaps you
know of some other gentleman of your race about to travel northward? He
could earn, at least, gratitude.”
“So-ho!” thought Ali Partab to himself. “I have known men of his race
who would have offered money, to be spat on!--Not now, sahib,” he
answered aloud.
“Mahommed Gunga was the officer's name. Do you know him, or know of him,
by any chance?”
“Ha, sahib, I know him well. It is an honor.”
The Scotsman smiled. “He must be very far away by this time. How many
are there, I wonder, in India who have such things said of them when
their backs are turned?”
“More than a few, sahib! I would draw steel for the good name of more
than a hundred men whom I know, and there be many others!”
“Men of your own race?”
“And yours, sahib.”
There was no bombast in the man's voice; it was said good-naturedly, as
a man might say, “There are some friends to whom I would lend money.”
No man with any insight could mistake the truth that underlay the boast.
The Scotsman bowed.
“I am glad, indeed, to have met you. Will you sit down a little while?”
“Nay, sahib. The hour is late. I was but keeping the blood moving in
this horse of mine.”
“Well, tell me, since you won't stay, have you any notion who the man
was whom Mahommed Gunga sent to get my letters? My daughter handed them
to him one evening, late, at this door.”
“I am he, sahib.”
“Then--I understood--perhaps I was mistaken--I thought it was his man
who came?”
“Praised be Allah, I am his man, sahib!”
“Oh! I wonder whether my servants praise God for the privilege!” McClean
made the remark only half-aloud and in English. Ali Partab could not
have understood the words, but he may have caught their meaning, for he
glanced sideways at the old hag mumbling in the shadow and grinned into
his beard. “Are you in communication with him? Could you get a letter to
him?”
“I have no slightest notion where he is, sahib.”
“If my letters could once reach him, wherever he might be, I would feel
confident of their arriving at their destination.”
“I, too, sahib!”
“I sent one letter--to a government official. It cannot have reached
him, for there should have been an answer and none has come. It had
reference to this terrible suttee business. Suttee is against the law
as well as against all dictates of reason and humanity; yet the Hindoos
make a constant practice of it here under our very eyes. These native
states are under treaty to observe the law. I intend to do all in my
power to put a stop to their ghoulish practices, and Maharajah Howrah
knows what my intentions are. It must be a Mohammedan, this time, to
whom I intrust my correspondence on suttee!”
Now, a Rangar is a man whose ancestors were Hindoos but who
became converts to Islam. Like all proselytes, they adhere more
enthusiastically to their religion than do the men whose mother creed
it is; and the fact that the Rangars originally became converts under
duress is often thrown in their teeth by the Hindoos, who gain nothing
in the way of brotherly regard in the process. A Rangar hates a Hindoo
as enthusiastically as he loves a fight. Ali Partab began to drum his
fingers on his teeth and to exhibit less impatience to be off.
“There is no knowing, sahib. I, too, am no advocate of superstitious
practices involving cruelty. I might get a letter through. My commission
from the risaldar-sahib would include all honorable matters not
obstructive to the main issue. I have certain funds--”
“I, too, have funds,” smiled the missionary.
“I am not allowed, sahib, to involve myself in any brawl until after my
business is accomplished. It would be necessary first to assure me on
that point. My honor is involved in that matter. To whom, and of what
nature, would the letter be?”
“A letter to the Company's Resident at Abu, reporting to him that Hindoo
widows are still compelled in this city to burn themselves to death
above their husbands' funeral pyres.”
The Rajput grinned. “Does the Resident sahib not know it, then?”
“There will be no chance of his not knowing should my report reach him!”
“I will see, sahib, what can be done, then, in the matter. If I can find
a man, I will bring him to you.”
The missionary thanked him and stood watching as the Rajput rode away.
When the horseman's free, lean back had vanished in the inky darkness
his eyes wandered over to a point where tongues of flame licked upward,
casting a dull, dancing, crimson glow on the hot sky. Here and there,
silhouetted in the firelight, he could see the pugrees and occasional
long poles of men who prodded at the embers. Ululating through the din
of tom-toms he could catch the wails of women. He shuddered, prayed a
little, and went in.
That day even the little bazaar fosterlings, whom he had begged, and
coaxed, and taught, had all deserted to be present at the burning of
three widows. Even the lepers in the tiny hospital that he had started
had limped out for a distant view. He had watched a year's work
all disintegrating in a minute at the call of bestial, loathsome,
blood-hungry superstition.
And he was a man of iron, as Christian missionaries go. He had been
hard-bitten in his youth and trained in a hard, grim school. In the Isle
of Skye he had seen the little cabin where his mother lived pulled down
to make more room for a fifty-thousand-acre deer-forest. He had seen his
mother beg.
He had worked his way to Edinburgh, toiled at starvation wages for the
sake of leave to learn at night, burned midnight oil, and failed at the
end of it, through ill health, to pass for his degree.
He had loved as only hard-hammered men can love, and had married after
a struggle the very thought of which would have melted the courage of an
ordinary man, only to see his wife die when her child was born. And even
then, in that awful hour, he had not felt the utterness of misery such
as came to him when he saw that his work in Howrah was undone. He had
given of his best, and all his best, and it seemed that he had given it
for nothing.
“Who was that man, father?” asked a very weary voice through which
courage seemed to live yet, as the tiniest suspicion of a sweet refrain
still lives through melancholy bars.
“The man who took your home letters to Mahommed Gunga.”
“And--?”
“He has promised to try to find a man for me who will take my report on
this awful business to the Resident at Abu.”
“Father, listen! Listen, please!” Rosemary McClean drew a chair for him
and knelt beside him. Youth saved her face from being drawn as his, but
the heat and horror had begun to undermine youth's powers of resistance.
She looked more beautiful than ever, but no law lays down that a wraith
shall be unlovely. She had tried the personal appeal with him a hundred
times, and argument a thousand; now, she used both in a concentrated,
earnest effort to prevail over his stubborn will. Her will was as strong
as his, and yielded place to nothing but her sense of loyalty. There
were not only Rajputs, as the Rajputs knew, who could be true to a high
ideal. “I am sure that whoever that man is he must be the link between
us and the safety Mahommed Gunga spoke of. Otherwise, why does he stay
behind? Native officers who have servants take their servants with them,
as a rule.”
“Well?”
“Give the word! Let us at least get in touch with safety!”
“For myself, no. For you, yes! I have been weak with you, dear. I have
let my selfish pleasure in having you near me overcome my sense of
duty--that, and my faithless fear that you would not be properly
provided for. I think, too, that I have never quite induced myself
to trust natives sufficiently--even native gentlemen. You shall go,
Rosemary. You shall go as soon as I can get word to Mahommed Gunga's
man. Call that old woman in.”
“Father, I will not go without you, and you know it! My place is with
you, and I have quite made up my mind. If you stay, I stay! My presence
here has saved your life a hundred times over. No, I don't mean just
when you were ill; I mean that they dare not lay a finger on me! They
know that a nation which respects their women would strike hard and
swiftly to avenge a woman of its own! If I were to go away and leave
you they would poison you or stab you within a day, and then hold a mock
trial and hang some innocent or other to blind the British Government. I
would be a murderess if I left you here alone! Come! Come away!”
He shook his head. “It was wrong of me to ever bring you here,” he said
sadly. “But I did not know--I would never have believed.” Then wrath
took hold of him--the awful, cold anger of the Puritan that hates evil
as a concrete thing, to be ripped apart with steel. “God's wrath shall
burst on Howrah!” he declared. “Sodom and Gomorrah were no worse!
Remember what befell them!”
“Remember Lot!” said Rosemary. “Come away!”
“Lot stayed on to the last, and tried to warn them! I will warn the
Resident! Here, give me my writing things--where are they?”
He pushed her aside, none too gently, for the fire of a Covenanter's
anger was blazing in his eyes.
“There are forty thousand British soldiers standing still, and
wrong--black, shameful wrong--is being done! For a matter of gold--for
fear of the cost in filthy lucre--they refrain from hurling wrong-doers
in the dust! For the sake of dishonorable peace they leave these native
states to misgovern themselves and stink to high heaven! Will God allow
what they do? The shame and the sin is on England's head! Her statesmen
shut their eyes and cry 'Peace, peace!' where there is no peace. Her
queen sits idle on the throne while widows burn, screaming, in the
flames of superstitious priests. Men tell her, 'All is well; there is
British rule in India!' They are too busy robbing widows in the
Isle of Skye to lend an ear to the cries of India's widows!
Corruption--superstition--murder--lies--black wrong--black
selfishness--all growing rank beneath the shadow of the British
rule--how long will God let that last?”
He was pacing up and down like a caged lion, not looking at Rosemary,
not speaking to her--speaking to himself, and giving rein to all the
rankling rage at wrong that wrong had nurtured in him since his boyhood.
She knelt still by the chair, her eyes following him as he raged up and
down the matted floor. She pitied him more than she did India.
When he took the one lamp at last and set it where the light would
fall above his writing pad, she left the room and went to stand at the
street-door, where the sluggish night air was a degree less stifling
than in the mud-plastered, low-ceilinged room. As she stood there, one
hand on either door-post to remind her she was living in a concrete
world, not a charred whisp swaying in the heat, a black thing rose out
of the blackness, and the toothless hag held out a bony hand and touched
her.
“Is it not time yet for the word to go?” she asked.
“No. No word yet, Joanna.”