mean? I was told you and your fellows had wantonly destroyed Mool
Raj's monkey. Is this true?"
The old man rode up from behind, his martial dignity undimmed by the
discipline he respected and understood.
"I am no scholar myself, _Huzoor_," he said, saluting, "but I am a
just man for all that. I injure neither man nor beast wantonly. Let
the _Huzoor_ ask the blue monkey if it or its master hath aught
against me. Of these"--here he gave a contemptuous wave of his hand to
the pleaders on their ponies--"I know naught, nor did my fathers."
Then he rode forward. "Oh, _bunder-jee!_ speak for thyself and for thy
master."
"By the Lord Harry," shrieked the policeman, as the figure on the
pedestal rose slowly and salaamed, "it's old Mool Raj himself!"
"My lord!" faltered Hunuman, "this is irrelevant--this is contempt of
court."
"Peace! oh Hunuman! and respect the voice of thy parent," began the
blue monkey.
Then a roar of inextinguishable laughter played the mischief with
majesty.
Half an hour afterwards, when Chand Kor in tears was washing the blue
distemper off her lord and master's shrivelled limbs, he repeated his
injunction regarding the fifth commandment to his son, who sat
haranguing on liberty, freedom, public spirit, equality, fraternity,
and a host of other duties and privileges.
"They are good, my son," he said, "but money is good also, and peace
best of all. Ask no more. I am content, and thou hast naught to do
with it. The temple is, and the blue monkey was mine--at least I was
the blue monkey."
Then Hunuman Sing swore.
That evening the deputy commissioner held a friendly inquiry, and
everybody shook hands all round, excepting Hunuman Sing and his
friend, who left by _ekka_ before the proceedings commenced, vowing
vengeance on all summary justice. He was a full-blown pleader before
the famous case of "Mool Raj and a Conch _versus_ Azmutoollah Khan and
Others" came up before the chief court of appeal. On that occasion he
argued most eloquently on various subjects for half an hour, and was
about to resume his seat, covered with perspiration and honour, when a
voice from the body of the court cried:
"Respect thy parent, O Hunuman! Remember the things that are behind."
Coiled up neatly on his chair was a blue tail, and once more laughter
played the mischief with majesty.
Some people say that was why the appeal was dismissed. Anyhow, it is
certain that shortly afterwards Hunuman set up as a pleader in another
province.
So Jehadpore brought up its troopers, and paid or did not pay its
debts in peace. And when Mool Raj died, the folk wagged their heads,
saying, "Well, he was not much to speak of as a man, but he was a
first-rate monkey."
SHAH SUJAH'S MOUSE.
He had no name. The village folk, it is true, called him Baba; but so
they called all such as he. Nor did he ever show that he identified
the word as anything more personal than the rest of the strange sounds
to which he listened serenely as if he had no part or lot in them.
Perhaps he was deaf, perhaps he was dumb. Perhaps he was neither.
Nobody knew, nor for the matter of that cared. He was one of Shah
Sujah's mice; no more, no less. In that lay the difference between him
and other men. A small difference in some ways; in others illimitable.
To the level of the brows he was as fine a young fellow as you could
meet; of middle height, with clean, straight limbs. Above that
nothing--nothing but a skull narrowed to the contours of a new-born
babe's, conical, repulsive, like a rat's. Whence the name Shah Sujah's
mouse.
The learned among us call such poor creatures microcephalous, and talk
glibly of joined sutures and osseous formation. The natives of upper
India have a different theory. These mouselike ones belong to Shah
Sujah's shrine, because they are the firstlings of barren women made
fruitful by the saints' intercession. Therefore, from their birth they
bear the token of the mother's vow, dedicating them to his service.
The seal is set on them from the beginning in mute witness to the
truth.
Whatever that truth may be; whether, as some say, the new-born babes
brought to be reared, like Samuel in the temple, are born as other
babies, and the typical distortion produced by slow pressure--as in
lesser degree the coveted bomblike foreheads of the Sindhi women are
produced--or whether, as others hold, a tradition favourable to the
wealth of the shrine is kept up, and additional gain assured by the
secret exchange, through agents all over India, of the normal babies
for that percentage of microcephalous infants which Nature makes--this
much is certain: all children dedicated to Shah Sujah are his mice.
There are hundreds of them; growing up at the shrine, dying there, and
during the cold months spreading over the length and breadth of India
begging with unvarying success of all women, fruitful and unfruitful;
living meanwhile on the broken food given them, but hoarding the money
with an odd unconsciousness of all save that in some mysterious way it
belongs to the saint; then, as the heat returns, wandering back like a
homing pigeon to the insignificant little shrine at Gujrat, which
means so much to so many.
Most of the mice are repulsive; some are more or less deformed, more
or less idiotic, making idiotic noises as they dawdle through the
village alleys carrying their hollow gourds in their outstretched
hands. He was not repulsive, and he made no sound of any kind; whether
from inability, or from some lingering consciousness that his sounds
would not be as those he heard, no one knew. In fact, no one knew
anything about him, save that he was a mouse; too naked to be dirty in
that country of canals and tanks, and seemingly quite content with a
beggar's staff and gourd as his only tie to this world. Here to-day,
gone to-morrow, secure of a meal, and of a sand blanket to sleep in if
the nights were cold.
Perhaps he had more sense than others of his kind. Perhaps the theory
of deliberate distortion was true, and his fine physique had struggled
against it more successfully than some. But all such things were idle
speculations, and there was nothing to be learned even from the big,
luminous eyes, somewhat over-prominent, which looked at everything so
serenely. At the children running out to him with their mother's dole,
at the lean dogs following him in hopes of a scrap, at the birds and
squirrels watching for the crumbs he might leave behind. Down by some
water-cut, his feet buried in the warm sand, his naked body covered
with the fairy garments made of sunbeams, the very minnows and
sticklebacks gathered round him in radiating stars, expectant of bread
cast on the water beneath the arching plumes of the date-palm
thickets--plumes almost touching the surface, and sending lanceolate
shadows, like the fishes themselves, through the sliding water as the
breeze stirred the leaflets.
It sounds idyllic viewed from our standpoint. From his, with that
osseous formation of the learned closing in like an egg-shell round
the embryon, God knows what it was. Until one day something happened.
Sonny baba went amissing. Fuzli, the _ayah_, prone on her stomach,
beating her palms in the dust, called God to witness that he had never
been out of her sight except for one single minute when she took a
pull at the gardener's pipe. This was down in the Taleri Bagh, where
the English roses blossomed madly beneath the mango-trees, and the
well-wheel under the big peepul-tree had the oddest habit of creaking
the first two bars of "Home, Sweet Home" as the slow zebus circled
round and round--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
Then a silence, save for the twitterings of birds and the soft thud of
a peepul fig falling, rifled, to the ground, until the bullocks were
back to the old spot. Then it began again--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
If there was no place like home, Sonny baba evidently did not think
so. Anyhow, he had left it. Had disappeared utterly in that luxuriant
little world down by the big canal, which was a maze of sunlight and
shadow, of thickets of sweet lime and groves of date-palms
interspersed with patches of tomatoes and gourds, and plantations of
pomegranates laden with leaf and flower and fruit--such ugly,
ill-humoured fruit, after all that beauty of blossom!
Yes, he was gone, and the solitary bungalow a mile up the road, nearer
the city, where the assistant commissioner in charge of the
subdivision lived, was in a lethargy of despair; for a child means
much when it has been waited for during long years. Every one, from
the highest to the lowest, was away searching; save only for the
mother walking up and down the pretty drawing-room clasping her hands
tighter and tighter as the hours went by, and the _ayah_, numb with
grief and remorse, in the dust outside. It was growing late. The sun
sent its picture of the _shisham_-trees to decorate the blank side
wall of the house; the wilderness of wild petunia, usurping the place
of the fast-yielding English annuals, began to send out a faint
perfume. And Sonny had been out all day alone, under the hot sun,
among the treacherous canal-cuts and the lurking snakes--Sonny, who
since his birth, three years ago, had never known what it was to be
alone.
"Thath way, manth."
It was a sweet little voice full of liquid labials. The _ayah_ gave an
inarticulate skirl of joy as she sprang from the dust.
"Leave me l'alone, l'_ayah_--I'th all light. Puth me down now, pleath,
man."
A cry came from within, a woman's figure came flying to the veranda, a
child bubbling over with glee went flying to meet it and bury a little
mop of golden curls in mother's dress.
"O Mummie, Mummie, he'th got 'quilth!'"
Then, after a time, with dignity: "Don'th, pleath; them kitheth hurth.
And, Mummie, don'th l'oo hear?--he'th got 'quilth.' Oh! l'ever tho
many 'quilth.'--Hathn't l'oo, man?"
The man was Shah Sujah's mouse. He stood as he had set the child down,
obedient to Heaven knows what understanding of the little voice. Now
he seemed to hear nothing as he looked serenely, almost brightly, at
those three out of his large soft eyes.
"_Ayah!_" cried the mother, clasping her darling tighter as by
instinct. "Who--what is he? Ask him--ask him about it all."
Not only the _ayah_, but many others, asked him, fruitlessly--people
running in from the court-house close by, hearing the news of Sonny's
safe return; wanderers coming in disheartened from the search.
Finally, Sonny's father, with an odd catch in his voice. But there was
no answer, and the child's tongue went no further than "Loths and
loths to eat, an' loths an' loths of quilth."
"Loh!" said the _ayah_, indignantly. "He is nothing but a mouse--a
_janowar_.[8] Give him a rupee, _Mem sahiba_, and let him go; if the
_Huzoor_, indeed, will not hang him for stealing my king of kings."
---------------------
[Footnote 8: _Janwar_, animal.]
---------------------
"Don'th, l'_ayah_--them kitheth hurth.--O Mummie, don'th l'oo know
he'th goth 'quilth,' l'ever tho many 'quilth?'"
"Can't _you_ make out _any_thing, dear?" asked Mummie, almost
aggrievedly; it was dreadful to lose a whole long day of Sonny's life.
"No, dearest," replied her husband, meekly aware of the offence. "No
more than you can make out what 'quilth' means. Except, of course,
that the _tahsildar_ tells me that he--the man or the mouse, as you
please--has been begging right away to the river's meet and is now, no
doubt, on his way back to the shrine. Possibly he will meet an agent
at Mooltan; they are seldom later than this in calling in their
itinerants. He must have been in the gardens, and either met the child
after he had lost himself, or--or stole him. That is all, unless Sonny
remembers something when he is less excited. At any rate, _he_ brought
him back, unharmed, and--and--I should like to reward him."
"Reward him! Why, of course we must reward him. Think--only think what
might----" She paused, able to think, not to speak of it.
"Just so. But how? The _tahsildar_ says he will put any money into his
bag and never touch it. And--and it does seem mean to reward a man for
saving your son's life with broken victuals."
There was no help for it, however; though, just for the sake of
appearances and proprieties, they gave him five whole rupees for the
bag. He slipped them into it as if they had been pice, took up his
gourd and went away, his beggar's staff making little round holes in
the dust as he walked down the petunia-edged path, serenely, as if
nothing unusual had happened.
So that was an end of Sonny's adventure for the time, since ere he
woke, like a young bird at dawn next day, the child seemed to have
forgotten all about Shah Sujah's mouse; but only for a time.
At first they thought it nothing but a touch of sun fever from being
out all day which made the darling of their hearts so languid. He was
down in the heat a little later, too, than was perhaps quite wise, but
those holidays at the end of the month, which would give father the
chance of settling mother and son in the wee house among the Himalayan
pines, and of getting a whiff of fresh air himself, had been so
tempting.
But a week after, the doctor, summoned from headquarters, looked into
their scared faces and said "Typhoid," ere, loath to leave them to
this knowledge, he had to ride back, promising to arrange his work so
as to be there as often as possible. He stood talking in undertones to
the native doctor in the veranda before mounting, and the sound of
their voices made the mother shiver. It was soon after this that the
little voice began:
"O Mummie, he had 'quilth'--lovely, lovely 'quilth.' Whereth he
gone--the 'quilth'--man? I wanth to thee the 'quilth' again.--Dada,
will l'oo shend for the 'quilth'--man?"
"Can't you send for him--somehow?" She had Sonny in her arms, and the
heat of him struck through to her own breast. Yet she shivered again.
Two days after, when the cot was set out in the veranda for the sake
of the cool evening air, she bent over the child, who lay more languid
than suffering among the toys he liked to see even while he did not
care to play with them.
"Sonny, the 'quilth'-man has come. Dada has brought him."
Whence, is no matter. The fiat had gone forth, as fiats do go forth.
The order had been given to find and, if possible, to bring back one
of Shah Sujah's mice, who had wandered on northward through the
villages. They had found him, and he had returned with them peaceably,
contentedly, serenely.
"Thath's jolly," sighed Sonny. "Now, Mummie, l'oo'l thee the 'quilth,'
too."
He wanted to be carried out in those brown arms as before, and
stretched his hands to Shah Sujah's mouse, who stood just as he had
stood before, silent, uncomprehending, incomprehensible--except,
perhaps, to Sonny; but they took him, cot and all, as he lay, across
the petunias, and set him down under one of the great _shisham_-trees,
backed by palms and a wide-spreading banyan. The air was dry and
balmy; he was as well there as elsewhere until the dew should begin to
fall.
"Spec'ths l'oo'l flighten them, Mummie; 'quilths' is flightful fings.
'Posing l'oo an' Dada an' l'_ayah_ thits light away--light away."
So they sat right away, over the petunias once more, upon the veranda
steps, and two pairs of strained, anxious eyes looked at the group
under the trees. The third pair looked also, doubtfully. It was an odd
sight, certainly. The child's soft curls on the pillow, his flushed
cheek seen sidewise, his little hot hands clasped round the bars of
the cot. Beside him, on the grass, like a bronze statue, Shah Sujah's
mouse.
"Now, manth! if l'oo pleath," murmured Sonny. And, as before, he
seemed obedient to the liquid voice. A strange sound indeed! Not a
cry, not a whistle. More like the croon of wind through tall
tiger-grass. Scarcely audible, and yet a hush fell on the trees, as if
they stopped to listen. Jack, the fox-terrier, cocked his ears. A
horse neighed from the stables. Then came a rustle, as of leaves.
"I know," whispered Mummie, touching Dada on the arm. "He means
squirrels. How stupid of me! Look!"
Along the branches they came, circling shyly down the trunks, now with
a swift patter, now hanging splayed against the bark, petrified by
curious timidity. Odd little mortals these, with the mark of Great
Ram's fingers on their shining coats, and barred tails a-bristle. Soft
little mortals, not much bigger than a mouse, their round ears cocked,
their bright eyes watchful. Nearer and nearer, by fits and starts,
hopping from distant trees through the short grass as through a
thicket, while the croon went on, and Sonny's eyes grew heavy with
sheer satisfaction.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth.'--Go on, pleath, manth."
Nearer and nearer; a dozen or more sitting up with the scattered
crumbs in their odd little fingers. Dainty over the feast, nibbling a
bit here and a bit there, and growing fearless, climbing on to the
bronze limbs, looking into the dark, serene eyes.
Sonny's grew heavier and heavier.
"I think he is asleep," said Dada, indistinctly, through a lump in his
throat. But Mummie could not speak at all.
"Dew fallin', _mem sahiba_" remarked the _ayah_, in a dissatisfied
tone. "Time Sonny baba leave _janowars_ alone."
It was a slow fever, as it often is with the little ones in India, and
every day for many days Sonny would rouse himself when the sun left
the air cooler and ask for his 'quilth.'
"It will not hurt him," said the doctor, who looked graver at each
visit. "Our best chance is to keep him going somehow. If you were on
the railway, I'd risk all and have him in the hills to-morrow; but
that long _dhooli_ journey--it is not to be thought of. We must keep
him going--keep hold on life as best we can."
So they used to carry him out under the trees to the quilth and Shah
Sujah's mouse. And some sort of a comprehension seemed to come to the
_janowars_, as the _ayah_ called them scornfully, of what was required
of them, for day by day the crumbs were scattered nearer the cot, and
day by day the timid courage grew into some new venture, rousing a
languid smile from Sonny.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he would say, as the bright eyes looked at
him knowingly, and the patter, patter of the little feet came nearer.
But the sheer content came quicker and he slept sooner and sooner,
until one day when they were racing over the cot and playing
gymnastics with the bars, he made up his mind that there could be
nothing more to wake for, and fell asleep once and for all.
"Take her away at once," said the doctor, as in the early dawn they
drove back without the little coffin on the back seat of the dog-cart,
from the graveyard where Dada had read the service without a break in
his voice. There was no lump in his throat now; nothing but an angry
despair in his heart. "Take her away. I telegraphed for you to the
commissioner last night; that will give you three days. Then furlough,
privilege, urgent, private--anything. She must not come back till the
baby is born. And leave the _ayah_ behind--they will get talking of
the child."
That evening, when the servants were being paid off, and certificates
to character written, while the _dhoolies_ waited in the shade where
Sonny's cot had stood the day before, the _ayah_, whimpering but
indignant, asked what was to be done about the _janowar_.
"I'll look after that," said the doctor, kindly, seeing Dada's look.
"Five rupees, I suppose, and the _tahsildar_ to have him escorted so
far on his way north to the shrine. 'Tis time he were getting back."
Undoubtedly. Even the last few days had brought the heat. The roses
down in the Taleri gardens had dried to _pot-pourri_ as they grew,
smelling almost sweeter than ever. The mangoes grew larger and larger,
and the green parrots clung to them, eating the pulp as it ripened.
That was when the gardeners were away turfing a grave in the little
enclosure opening out of the garden, and planting red and white
quamoclit to twine up a wooden cross. It did not take long, for the
grave was small. So they came back to frighten the parrots, leaving it
to take care of itself; for the rains came early that year, and after
a time there was no need for watering.
So much rain, that three months after, when Dada, back from leave,
walked through the garden at sunsetting, many of the mango-trees were
ankle-deep in water, and a second crop of roses nodded at their own
reflection in the still pools. But the graveyard stood purposely on
higher ground, and its brick wall was backed by a perfect thicket of
date-palms stretching away to the low sand-hills, save on the side
marching with the garden. There oleanders and roses and elephant
creeper massed themselves into a hedge, and clambered over the arched
gateway where Dada paused. The doctor was there too, for fever comes
with heavy rain, and the outlying hospitals needed constant
inspection. As the gate swung open, they paused again, not at the
sight within, but at a sound they seemed to recognize. It was a shady
spot. To begin with, great branches swept over it from the garden, and
then in the far corner a huge peepul stood quivering its silver-lined
leaves. There lay the little grave, solitary in its square of grass,
for the place was divided into four by two narrow gravel walks ending
abruptly at the walls. Two other graves claimed other squares, the
fourth lay vacant. It seemed as if, when that was occupied, the shady
spot would refuse another tenant. Yet there were others even now.
"Who's that?" cried the doctor, sharply.
It was Shah Sujah's mouse. He sate propped against the peepul-tree,
and over the grass and the cross of quamoclits the squirrels were
chasing each other and playing pranks with the crumbs they were
scarcely hungry enough to eat, while the other _janowar_ looked at
them out of hollow serene eyes.
He shifted his gaze to the new-comers, but did not rise. He could not.
"Good God," muttered the doctor, kneeling down beside him, "the man is
a skeleton, and burning with fever. How the mischief-- Well, the first
thing is to get him moved to hospital."
When Dada came back with a string bed and four coolies impressed from
the garden, he found the doctor looking suspiciously at the crumbs, at
a piece of dough-cake and a bag of money. There were ten whole rupees
in it, besides odd coins.
"The poor beggar seems starved, and yet he had this and--he was
feeding the squirrels. There's something deuced odd about it all."
Odd, but simple, especially in the _ayah's_ eyes. "Master, having given
orders for the _janowar_ to go, the police had naturally taken him
away. He had come back again and begged--naturally, when the _mem
sahiba_ had given him sweet rice every day. But she had given nothing,
nothing at all, except information to the police. Then they had taken
him away again miles and miles, quite close to the highroad to the
shrine, and had bidden him to go home. Even a _janowar_ could have
found his way had he chosen; but the obstinate animal had come back
after the sweet rice. So then every one had been told not to give the
disobedient one anything to eat. Indeed, it was past time for alms to
Shah Sujah's mice; they should have been back at the shrine with their
earnings. To linger was sacrilege, nothing less, especially when the
_Huzoor_ had said he was not wanted any longer. But instead of going,
when he was starved out, as every one imagined, he must have hidden in
the damp garden and got fever. As to what he was doing on the little
king of kings' grave, that was mysterious. Perhaps now the master
might believe that _janowars_ were not safe round a sick--"
"_Chuprao_,[9] you fool!" shouted Dada. As the ayah sidled away, still
indignant, the two men sat and looked at each other.
---------------------
[Footnote 9: "Hold your tongue!"]
---------------------
"I'm afraid it's no use," said the doctor. "Starvation and fever are
ill companions; but I'll stay over to-morrow and see what I can do. It
is as much my fault as yours, if any one is to blame, but--"
The doctor, being orthodox, paused.