He sat, cuddled up in a cream-coloured cotton blanket, edged with
crimson, shoo-ing away the brown rats from the curved cobs of Indian
corn. The soft mists of a northern November hung over the landscape in
varying density. Heavy over the dank sugar-cane patch by the well,
lighter on the green fodder crop, dewy among the moisture-loving
leaves of the sprouting vetches, and here, in the field of ripening
maize, scarcely visible between the sparse stems. He was an old man
with a thin white beard tucked away behind his ears and a kindly look
on his high-featured face. Every now and then he took up a little clod
of earth from the dry, crumbling ridge of soil which divided the field
he was watching from the surrounding ones, and threw it carefully
among the maize, saying in a gentle, grumbling voice, "_Ari_,
brothers! Does no shame come to you?"
It had no perceptible effect on the rats, who, owing to the extreme
sparsity of the crop, could be seen every here and there deliberately
climbing up a swaying stem to seat themselves on a cob and begin
breakfast systematically. In the calm, windless silence you could
almost hear the rustle and rasp of their sharp white teeth. But Nanuk
Singh--as might have been predicted from his seventy and odd years of
life in the fields--was somewhat hard of hearing; somewhat near of
vision also. For when so many years have been spent watching the
present furrow cling to the curves of the past one, in sure and
certain hope of similar furrows in the future, or in listening to the
endless lamentations of a water-wheel ceasing not by day or night to
proclaim an eternity of toil and harvest, both eyes and ears are apt
to grow dull towards new sights and sounds. Nanuk's had, at any rate,
even though the old familiar ones no longer occupied them; fate having
decreed that in his old age the peasant farmer should have neither
furrows nor water-wheel of his own. How this had come about needs a
whole statute book of Western laws to understand. Nanuk himself never
attempted the task. To him it was, briefly, the will of God. His
district-officer, however, when the case fell under his notice by
reason of the transfer of the land, thought differently; and having a
few minutes' leisure from office drudgery to spare for really
important work, made yet one more representation regarding the
scandalous rates of interest, the cruelty of time-foreclosures, and
the general injustice of applying the maxim "_caveat emptor_" to
transactions in which one party is practically a child and the other a
Jew. A futile representation, of course, since the Government, so
experts affirm, is not strong enough to attack the Frankenstein
monster of Law which it has created.
In a measure, nevertheless, old Nanuk was right in attributing his
ruin to fate, since it had followed naturally from the death of his
three sons. One, the eldest, dying of malarial fever in the prime of
life, leaving, alas! a young family of girls. Another, the youngest,
swept off by cholera just as his hand began to close firmly round his
dead brother's plough-handle. The third, when on the eve of getting
his discharge from a frontier regiment in order to take his brothers'
places by his father's side, being struck down ingloriously in one of
the petty border raids of which our Punjab peasant soldiers have
always to bear the brunt.
And this loss of able hands led inevitably to the loss of ill-kept
oxen; while from the lack of well-cattle came that gradual shrinkage
of the irrigated area where some crop is certain--rain or no
rain--which means a less gradual sinking further and further into
debt; until, as had been the case with Nanuk, the owner loses all
right in the land save the doubtful one of toil. Even this had passed
from the old man's slackening hold after his wife died, and the
daughters-in-law, with starvation staring them in the face, had
drifted away back to their own homes, leaving him to live as best he
could on the acre or so of unirrigated land lent to him out of sheer
charity. For public opinion still has some power over the usurer in a
village of strong men, and all his fellows respected old Nanuk, who
stood six feet two, barefoot, and had tales to tell of the gentle art
of singlestick as applied to the equitable settling of accounts in the
old days, before Western laws had taken the job out of the creditor's
hands.
Strangely enough, however, Nanuk, as he sat coping inadequately with
the brown rats, felt less resentment against the usurer who had robbed
him, or the law which permitted the robbery, than he did against the
weather. The former had made no pretence of favouring him; the latter,
year after year, had tempted his farmer's soul to lavish sowings by
copious rain at seed time, and thereinafter withheld the moisture
necessary for a bare return of measure for measure. Briefly, he had
gambled in grain, and he had lost. Lost hopelessly in this last
harvest of maize, since, when the sound cobs should be separated from
those which the wanton teeth had spoilt, they would not yield the
amount of Government revenue which the old man had to pay; certainly
would not do so if the cobs became scarcer day by day and the rats
more throng. In fact, the necessity for action ere matters grew worse
appeared to strike Nanuk, making him, after a time, draw out a small
sickle and begin to harvest the remaining stalks one by one.
"_Bullah!_ neighbour Nanuk," cried the new man who, better equipped
for the tasks with sons and cattle, was driving the wheel and curving
the furrows for the usurer, "I would, for thy sake, the task was
harder. And as if the crop were not poor enough, the dissolute rats
must needs play the wanton with the half of it. But, 'tis the same all
over the land, and between them and the revenue we poor folk of the
plough will have no share."
Nanuk stood looking meditatively at a very fine cob out of which a
pair of sharp white teeth were taking a last nibble, while a pair of
wicked black eyes watched him fearlessly.
"They are God's creatures also, and have a right to live on the soil
as we others," he said slowly.
"Then they should pay the revenue," grumbled Dittu. "Why should _you_,
who have no crop whereon to pay? _Ai teri!_" he added sharply to one
of the oxen he was driving to their work, "sleepest thou? and the well
silent! Dost want to bring me to Nanuk's plight?"
So with a prod of the goad, he passed on, leaving old Nanuk still
looking at the brown rat on the corncob. Why, indeed, should he have
to pay for God's other creatures? In the old days justice would have
been meted out to such as he. The crop would have been divided into
heaps, so many for the owner of the soil, so many for the tiller, so
many for the State. Then if _Purameshwar_[24] sent rats instead of
rain the heaps were smaller. That was all. And if the equity of this
had been patent to those older rulers, who had scarcely given a
thought in other ways to the good of their subjects, why should it not
be patent to those new ones who, God keep them! gave justice without
respect of persons, so far as in them lay? There must be a mistake
somewhere; the facts could not have been properly placed before the
_Lat-sahib_--that vice-regent of God upon earth. This conviction came
home slowly to the old man as he finished his harvesting; slowly but
surely, so that when he had spread the cobs out to dry on his cotton
blanket he walked over to the well, and, between the whiffs of the
general pipe, hinted that he thought of laying the matter before the
authorities. "I will take the produce of my field," he said, "in my
hand--it will not be more than five _seers_ when the good is sifted
from the bad--and I will say to the _Lat-sahib_, 'This is because
_Purameshwar_ sent rats instead of rain. Take your share, and ask no
more.'"
---------------------
[Footnote 24: The Great God.]
---------------------
Dittu, the new man, laughed scornfully. "Better take a rat also, since
all parties to the case must be present by the law."
He intended it as a joke, but Nanuk took it quite seriously. "That is
true," he assented; "I will take a rat also; then there can be no
mistake."
That evening, when he sat with his cronies on the mud dais beneath the
_peepul_ tree, where he was welcome to a pull out of anybody's pipe,
he spoke again of his intention. The younger folk laughed, but the
seniors thought that it could at least do no harm. Nanuk's case was a
hard one; it was quite clear he could not pay the revenue, and it was
better to go to the fountain-head in such matters, since underlings
could do nothing but take fees. So, while the stars came out in the
evening sky, they sat and told tales of Nausherwan, and many another
worthy whose memory lingers in native minds by reason of perfectly
irrational acts of despotic clemency, such as even Socialists do not
dream of now-a-days. The corn-cobs then being harvested, dried, and
shelled, he set to work with the utmost solemnity on rat-traps; but
here at once he realised his mistake. By harvesting his own crop he
had driven the little raiders further afield; and though he could
easily have caught one in his neighbour's patch, a desire to deal
perfectly fair with those who, in his experience, dealt perfectly
fairly with facts, made him stipulate for a rat out of his own.
This necessitated the baiting of his property with some of the corn in
order to attract the wanton creatures again; and even then, though he
sat for hours holding the cord by which an earthen dish was to be made
to fall upon the unsuspecting intruder, he was unsuccessful.
"Trra! not catch rats!" cried a most venerable old pantaloon to whom
he applied for advice, remembering him in his boyhood as one almost
godlike in his supreme knowledge of such things. "Wait awhile; 'tis a
trick--a mere trick--but when you once know it you cannot forget it."
All that day the old men sat together in the sunshine, profoundly
busy, and towards evening they went forth together to the field,
chattering and laughing like a couple of schoolboys. It was long after
dusk ere they returned, full of mutual recrimination. The one had
coughed too much, the other had wheezed perpetually; there was no
catching of rats possible under such circumstances. Then the old
pantaloon went a-hunting by himself, full of confidence, only to
return dejected; then Nanuk, full of determination, sat up all one
moonlight night in the field where--now that he had no crop to benefit
by it--the night-dew gathered heavily on every leaf and blade, on
Nanuk, too, as he sat crouched up in his cotton blanket, thinking of
what he should say to the _Lat-sahib_ when the rat was caught, which
it was not. Finally, with angry misgivings as to the capabilities of
the present generation of boys, the old pantaloon suggested the
offering of one whole anna for the first rat captured in Nanuk's
maize-field. Before the day was over a score or two of the village
lads, long-limbed, bright-eyed, were vociferously maintaining the
prior claims of as many brown rats, safely confined in little earthen
pipkins with a rag tied round the top. They stood in a row, like an
offering of sweets to some deity, round Nanuk's bed, for--as was not
to be wondered at after his night-watch--he was down with an attack of
the chills. That was nothing new. He had had them every autumn since
he was born; but he was not accustomed to be surrounded on such
occasions by brown rats appealing to him for justice. It ended in his,
with feverish hands, giving one anna to each of the boys, and
reserving his selection until he was in a more judicial frame of mind.
Still, it would not do to starve God's creatures, so every morning
while the fever lingered--for it had got a grip on him somehow--he
went round the pipkins and fed the rats with some of the maize. And
every morning, rather to his relief, there were fewer of them to feed,
since they nibbled their way out once they discovered that the top of
their prison was but cloth. So as he lay, sometimes hot, sometimes
cold, the idea came to him, foolishly enough, that this was a process
of divine selection, and that if he only waited the day when but one
rat should remain, his mission would bear the seal of success. An idea
like this only needs presentation to a mind, or lack of mind, like old
Nanuk's. So what with the harvesting and the rat-catching, and the
fever and the omen-awaiting, it was close on the new year when, with a
brown rat, now quite tame, tied up in a pipkin, some five _seers_ of
good grain tied up in the corner of his cotton blanket, and Heaven
knows what a curious conglomeration of thought bound up in his still
feverish brain, the old man set out from his village to find the
_Lat-sahib_. Such things are still done in India, such figures are
still to be seen, making some civilised people stand out of the road
bareheaded, as they do to a man on his way to the grave--a man who has
lived his life, whose day is past.
Owing also to the fever and the paying for rats, etc., old Nanuk's
pockets were ill-provided for the journey, but that mattered little in
a country where a pilgrimage on foot is in itself presumptive evidence
of saintship. Besides, the brown rat--to which Nanuk had attached a
string lest one of the parties to the suit might escape him on the
road--was a perpetual joy to the village children, who scarcely knew
if it were greater fun to peep at it in its pipkin or see it peeping
out of the old man's cotton blanket, when in the evenings it nibbled
away at its share of Nanuk's dinner. They used to ask endless
questions as to why he carried it about, and what he was going to do
with it, until, half in jest, half in earnest, he told them he was the
_muda-ee_ (plaintiff) and the rat the _mudee-ala_ (defendant) in a
case they were going to lay before the _Lat-sahib_; an explanation
perfectly intelligible to even the babes and sucklings, who in a
Punjabi village now-a-days lisp in numbers of petitions and pleaders.
So the _muda-ee_ and _mudee-ala_ trampled along together amicably,
sometimes by curving wheel-tracks among the furrows--ancient
rights-of-way over the wide fields, as transient yet immutable as the
furrows themselves; and there, with the farmer's eye-heritage of
generations, he noted each change of tint in the growing wheat, from
the faintest yellowing to the solid dark green with its promise of a
full ear to come. Sometimes by broad lanes, telling yet once more the
strange old Indian tale of transience and permanence, of death and
renewed birth, in the deep grass-set ruts through which the traffic of
centuries had passed rarely, yet inevitably. And here with the same
knowledgeable eye he would mark the homing herds of village cattle,
and infer from their condition what the unseen harvest had been which
gave them their fodder. Finally, out upon the hard white high-road, so
different from the others in its self-sufficient straightness, its
squared heaps of nodular limestone ready for repairs, its elaborate
arrangements for growing trees where they never grew before, and where
even Western orders will not make them grow. And here Nanuk's eyes
still found something familiar in the great wains creaking along in
files to add their quota of corn sacks to the mountain of wheat
cumbering the railway platforms all along the line. Yet even this was
in its essence new, provoking the wonder in his slow brain how it
could be that the increased demand for wheat and its enhanced price
should have gone hand-in-hand with the financial ruin of the grower.
To say sooth, however, such problems as these flitted but vaguely
through the old man's thought, and even his own spoliation was half
forgotten in the one great object of that long journey which, despite
his cheerful patience, had sapped his strength sadly. To find the
_Lat-sahib_, to make his salaam, and bid the _mudee-ala-jee_ do so
likewise, to lay the produce of the field at the sahib's feet, and say
that _Purameshwar_ had sent rats instead of rain--that in itself was
sufficient for the old man as he trudged along doggedly, his eyes
becoming more and more dazed by unfamiliar sights as he neared the big
city.
"_Bullah!_" said the woman of whom he begged a night's lodging. "If we
were to house and feed the wanderers on this road, we should have to
starve ourselves. And thou art a Sikh. Go to thine own people. 'Tis
each for each in this world." That was a new world to Nanuk.
"Doth thy rat do tricks?" asked the children critically. "What, none?
Trra! we can see rats of that mettle any day in the drains, and there
was a man here yesterday whose rat cooked bread and drew water. Ay!
and his goat played the drum. That was a show worth seeing."
So Nanuk trudged on.
"See the _Lat-sahib_" sneered the yellow-legged police constable when,
after much wandering through bewildering crowds, the old Sikh found
himself at a meeting of roads, each one of which was barred by a
baton. "Which _Lat-sahib_--the big one or the little?"
"The big one," replied Nanuk stoutly. There was no good in underlings;
_that_ he knew.
Police Constable number seventy-five called over to his crony number
ninety-six on the next road.
"_Ari_, brother! Here is another _durbari_. Canst let him in on thy
beat? I have no room on mine." And then they both laughed, whereat old
Nanuk, taking courage, moved on a step, only to be caught and dragged
back, hustled, and abused. What! was the Great Durbar for the like of
him--the Great Durbar on which lakhs and crores had been spent--the
Great Durbar all India had been thinking of for months? _Wah!_ Whence
had he come if he had not heard of the Great Durbar, and what had he
thought was the meaning of the Venetian masts and triumphal arches,
the flags and the watered roads? Did he think such things were always?
_Ari!_ if it came to such ignorance as that, mayhap he would not know
what _this_ was coming along the road.
It was a disciplined tramp of feet, an even glitter of bayonets, a
straight line of brown faces, a swing and a sweep, as a company of the
Guides came past in their _kakhi_ and crimson uniform. Old Nanuk
looked at it wistfully.
"Nay, brother," he said, "I know that. 'Twas my son's regiment, God
rest him!"
"Thou shouldst sit down, old man," said a bystander kindly. "Of a
truth thou canst go no further till the show is over. Hark! there are
the guns again. 'Twill be Bairanpore likely, since Hurriana has gone
past. _Wah!_ it is a show--a rare show!"
So down the watered road, planted out in miserable attempts at
decoration with barbers' poles unworthy of a slum in the East End,
came a bevy of Australian horses, wedged at a trot between huge
kettledrums, which were being whacked barbarically by men who rose in
their stirrups with the conscientious precision of a newly imported
competition-_wallah_. Then more Australian horses again in an
_orfeverie_ barouche lined with silver, where, despite the glow of
colour, the blinding flash of diamonds in an Indian sun, despite even
the dull wheat-green glitter of the huge emerald tiara about the
turban, the eye forgot these things to fix itself upon the face which
owned them all; a face haggard, sodden, superlatively handsome even in
its soddenness; indifferent, but with an odd consciousness of the
English boy who--dressed as for a flower show--sat silently beside his
charge. Behind them with a clatter and flutter of pennons came a great
trail of wild horsemen, showing as they swept past, dark, lowering
faces among the sharp spear points.
And the guns beat on their appointed tale, till, with the last, a
certain satisfaction came to that sodden face, since there were none
short in the salute--_as yet_. The measure of his misdoings was not
full _as yet_.[25]
---------------------
[Footnote 25: A reduction in the number of guns is the first
punishment for bad administration.]
---------------------
The crowd ebbed and flowed irregularly to border the straight white
roads, where at intervals the great tributary chiefs went backwards
and forwards to pay their State visits, but Nanuk and his rat--the
plaintiff and the defendant--waited persistently for their turn to
pass on. It was long in coming; for even when the last flash and dash
of barbaric splendour had disappeared, the roar of cannon began
louder, nearer, regular to a second in its even beat.
"That is the _Lat_-salute" said one man to another in the crowd. "Let
us wait and see the _Lat_, brother, ere we go."
Nanuk overheard the words, and looked along the road anxiously, then
stood feeling more puzzled than ever; for there was nothing to see
here but a plain closed carriage with a thin red and gold trail of the
body-guard behind it and before. The sun was near to its setting, and
sent a red angry flare upon a bank of clouds which had risen in the
east, and the dust of many feet swept past in whirls before a rising
wind.
"It will rain ere nightfall," declared the crowd, contentedly, as it
melted away citywards. "And the crops will be good, praise to God."
Once more Nanuk overheard, and this time a glad recognition seemed to
rouse him from a dream. Yes! the crops would be good. Down by the
well, on the land he and his had ploughed for so many years, the wheat
would be green--green as those emeralds above that sodden face.
"The _Lat_ has gone out," joked Constable Seventy-five as he went off
duty; "but there are plenty of other things worth seeing to such an
ignoramus as thou."
True; only by this time Nanuk was almost past seeing aught save that
all things were unfamiliar in those miles and miles of regiments and
rajahs, electric lights and newly macadamised roads, tents and
make-believe gardens, all pivoted, as it were, round the Royal
Standard of England, which was planted out in the centre of the
Viceroy's camp. As he wandered aimlessly about the vast canvas city,
hustled here, sent back there, the galloping orderlies, the shuffling
elephants, the carriages full of English ladies, the subalterns
cracking their tandem whips, and the native outriders had but one word
for him.
"_Hut! Hut!_" (Stand back--stand back!)
A heavy drop of rain came as a welcome excuse to his dogged
perseverance for sheltering awhile under a thorn bush. He was more
tired than hungry, though he had not tasted food that day; and it
needed a sharp nip from the defendant's teeth, as it sought for
something eatable in the folds of his blanket, to remind him that
others of God's creatures had a better appetite than he. But what was
he to give? There was the five _seers_ of grain still, of course; but
who was to apportion the shares; who was to say, "This much for the
plaintiff, this much for the defendant, this much for the State?" The
familiar idea seemed to give him support in the bewildering inrush of
new impressions, and he held to it as a drowning man in a waste of
unknown waters clutches at a straw.
Nevertheless, the parties to the suit must not be allowed to starve
meanwhile, and if they took equal shares surely that would be just?
The rain now fell in torrents, and the _kikar_-bush scarcely gave him
any shelter as, with a faint smile, he sat watching the brown rat at
work upon the corn, and counting the number of grains the wanton teeth
appropriated as their portion. For so much, and no more, would be his
also. It was not a sumptuous repast, but uncooked maize requires
mastication, and that took up time. So that it was dark ere he stood
up, soaked through to the skin, and looked perplexedly at the long
lines of twinkling lights which had sprung up around him. And hark!
what was that? It was the dinner bugle at a mess close by, followed,
as by an echo, by another and another and another--quite a chorus of
cheerful invitations to dinner. But Nanuk knew nothing of such feasts
as were spread there in the wilderness. He had lived all his life on
wheat and lentils, though, being a Sikh, he would eat wild boar or
deer if it could be got, or take a tot of country spirits on occasion
to make life seem less dreary. He stood listening, shivering a little
with the cold, and then went on his way, since the _Lat-sahib_ must be
found, the case decided, before this numbing forgetfulness crept over
everything.
Sometimes he inquired of those he met. More often he did not, but
wandered on aimlessly through the maze of light, driven and hustled as
he had been by day. And as he wandered the bands of the various camps
were playing, say, the march in "Tannhaeuser," or "Linger longer, Loo."
But sooner or later they all paused to break suddenly into a stave or
two of another tune, as the colonel gave "The Queen" to his officers.
Of all this, again, Nanuk knew nothing. Even at the best of times, he
had been ignorant as a babe unborn of anything beyond his fields, and
now he remembered nothing save that he and the brown rat were suitors
in a case against _Purameshwar_ and the State.
So the night passed. It was well on into the chilliest time before the
dawn, when the slumber, which comes to all the world for that last
dead hour of darkness having rid him of all barriers, he found himself
beneath what had been the goal of his hopes ever since he had first
seen its strange white rays piercing the night--the great ball of
electric light which crowned the flagstaff whereon the Standard of
England hung dank and heavy; for the wind had dropped, the rain had
ceased, and a thick white mist clung close even to the round bole of
the mast, which was set in the centre of a stand of chrysanthemums.
The colours of the blossoms were faintly visible in the downward gleam
of the light spreading in a small circle through the mist.
So far good. This was the "_Standard of Sovereignty_," no doubt--the
"_Lamp of Safety_"--the guide by day and night to faithful subjects
seeking justice before the king. This Nanuk understood; this he had
heard of in those tales of Nausherwan and his like, told beneath the
village _peepul_ tree.
Here, then, he would stay--he and the defendant--till the dawn brought
a hearing. He sat down, his back to the flowers, his head buried in
his knees. And as he sat, immovable, the mist gathered upon him as it
had gathered in the field. But he was not thinking now what he should
say to the _Lat-sahib_. He was past that.
He did not hear the jingle and clash of arms which, after a time, came
through the fog, or the voice which said cheerfully--
"'Appy Noo Year, to you, mate!"
"Same to you, Tommy, and many of 'em; but it's rather you nor I, for
it's chillin' to the vitals."
They were changing guards on this New Year's morning, and Private
Smith, as he took his first turn under the long strip of canvas
stretched as a sun-shelter between the two sentry-boxes, acknowledged
the truth of his comrade's remark by beating his arms upon his breast
like any cabman. Yet he was hot enough in his head, for he had been
singing "Auld Lang Syne" and drinking rum for the greater part of the
night, and, though sufficiently sober to pass muster on New Year's
Eve, was drunk enough to be intensely patriotic. So, as he walked up
and down, there was a little lilt in his step which attempted to keep
time to the stave of "God Save our Gracious Queen," which he was
whistling horribly out of tune. On the morrow--or, rather, to-day,
since the dawn was at hand--there was to be the biggest review in
which he had ever taken part; six and twenty thousand troops marching
up to the Royal Standard and saluting! They had been practising it for
weeks, and the thrill of it, the pride and power of it, had somehow
got into Private Smith's head--with the rum. It made him take a turn
beyond that strip of canvas, round the flagstaff he was supposed to
guard.
"'Alt! 'oo goes there?"
The challenge rang loudly, rousing Nanuk from a dream which was
scarcely less unreal than the past twelve hours of waking had been to
his ignorance. He stumbled up stiffly--a head taller than the
sentry--and essayed a salaam.
"'Ullo! What the devil are you doin' here? _Hut_, you nigger!
Goramighty! wot's that?"
It was the defendant, which Nanuk had brought out to salaam also, and
which, alarmed at the sudden introduction, began darting about wildly
at the end of its string. Private Smith fell back a step, and then
pulled himself together with a violent effort, uncertain if the rat
were real; but the cold night air was against him.
"Wash'er-mean?--Wash'er doin'--'ere?--Wash'er-got?" he asked,
conglomerately, and Nanuk, understanding nothing, went down on his
knees the better to untie the knot in the corner of his blanket.
"_Poggle_,"[26] commented Private Smith, recovering himself as he
looked down at the heap of maize, the defendant, and the old man
talking about _Purameshvar_. Then, being in a benevolent mood, he
wagged his head sympathetically. "Pore old Johnny! wot's 'e want, with
'is rat and 'is popcorn? Fine lookin' old chap, though--but we licked
them Sickies, and, by gum! we'll lick 'em again, if need be!"
---------------------
[Footnote 26: _Pagul_ = mad.]
---------------------
The thought made him begin to whistle once more as he bent unsteadily
to look at something which glittered faintly as the old man laid it on
the top of the pile of corn.
It was his son's only medal.
"Hillo!" said Private Smith, bringing himself up with a lurch, "so
that is it, eh, mate? Gor-save-a-Queen! Now wot's up, sonny? 'Orse
guards been a-doing wot they didn't ought to 'ave done? Well, that
ain't no noos, is it, comrade? But we'll drink the old lady's 'elth
all the same. Lordy! if you've bin doin' extra dooty on the rag all
night you won't mind a lick o' the lap--eh? Lor' bless you!--I don'
want it. I've had as mush as me and Lee-Mitford can carry 'ome without
takin' a day-tour by orderly room--Woy! you won't, won't yer? Come
now, Johnny, don't be a fool--it's rum, I tell yer, and you Sickies
ain't afraid o' rum. Wot! you won't drink 'er 'elth, you mutineering
nigger? Then I'll make yer. Feel that--now then, ''Ere's a 'elth
unto'w her Majesty.'"
Perhaps it was the unmistakable prick of a bayonet in his stomach,
perhaps it was the equally unmistakable smell of the liquor arousing a
craving for comfort in the old man, but he suddenly seized the flask
which Private Smith had dragged from his pocket, and, throwing his
head back, poured the contents down his throat; the action--due to his
desire not to touch the bottle with his lips--giving him an almost
ludicrous air of eagerness.
Private Smith burst into a roar of laughter.
"Gor-save-the-Queen!" And as he spoke the first gun of the hundred and
one which are fired at daybreak on the anniversary of her Most
Gracious Majesty's assumption of the title _Kaiser-i-Hind_ boomed out
sullenly through the fog.
But Nanuk did not hear it. He had stumbled to his feet and fallen
sidewise to the ground.
* * * * *
"I gather, then," remarked the surgeon-captain precisely, "that before
gun-fire this morning you found the old man in a state of collapse
below the flagstaff--is this so?"
Private Smith, sober to smartness and smart to stiffness, saluted; but
there was an odd trepidation on his face. "Yes, sir--I done my best
for 'im, sir. I put 'im in the box, sir, and give 'im my greatcoat,
and I rub 'is 'ands and feet, sir. I done my level best for 'im, not
being able, you see, sir, to go off guard. I couldn't do no more."
"You did very well, my man; but if you had happened to have some
stimulant--any alcohol, for instance."
Private Smith's very smartness seemed to leave him in a sudden
slackness of relief. "Which it were a tot of rum, sir, as I 'appened
to 'ave in my greatcoat pocket. It done 'im no 'arm, sir, did it?"
The surgeon-captain smiled furtively. "It saved his life, probably;
but you might have mentioned it before. How much did he take?"
"About 'arf a pint, sir--more nor less." Private Smith spoke under his
breath with an attempt at regret; then he became loquacious. "Beggin'
your pardon, sir, but I was a bit on myself, and 'e just poured it
down like as it was milk, and then 'e tumbled over and I thought 'e
was dead, and it sobered me like. So I done my level best for 'im all
through."
Perhaps he had; for old Nanuk Singh found a comfortable spot in which
to spend his remaining days when the regimental doolie carried him
that New Year's morning from the flagstaff to the hospital. He lay ill
of rheumatic fever for weeks, and when he recovered it was to find
himself and his rat quite an institution among the gaunt, listless
convalescents waiting for strength in their long dressing-gowns. The
story of how the old Sikh had drunk the Queen's health has assumed
gigantic proportions under Private Smith's care, and something in the
humour and the pathos of it tickled the fancy of his hearers, who,
when the unfailing phrase, "An' so I done my level best for him, I
did," came to close the recital, would turn to the old man and say:
"Pore old Johnny--an' Gord knows what 'e wanted with 'is rat and 'is
popcorn!"
That was true, since Nauuk Singh did not remember even the name of his
own village; and, though he still talked about the plaintiff and the
defendant, _Purameshwar_ and the State, he was apparently content to
await his chance of a hearing at another and greater durbar.