Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares, I wrote some
tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab Police (who married Miss
Youghal), and Adam, his son. Strickland has finished his Indian Service,
and lives now at a place in England called Weston-super-Mare, where his
wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Semi-occasionally he comes
up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends.
Otherwise he plays golf and follows the harriers for his figure's sake.
If you remember that Infant who told a tale to Eustace Cleever the
novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with a vast estate.
He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses
his friends. I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital
for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal
nurses and a specialist in “Sprue.” Another time the place was full of
schoolboys--sons of Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the
holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper's heart.
But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire, and I
fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L. Corkran, so that
the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet
terminated the Delights, nor separated the Companions.
Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a
native Infantry regiment on the border: “The Stricks are coming for
to-night-with their boy.”
“I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about,” I said. “Is
he in the Service?”
“No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate. He's
Assistant-Commissioner at Dupé--wherever that is. Somaliland, ain't it,
Stalky?” asked the Infant.
Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. “You're only three thousand
miles out. Look at the atlas.”
“Anyhow, he's as rotten full of fever as the rest of you,” said the
Infant, at length on the big divan. “And he's bringing a native servant
with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable
room.”
“Why? Is he a Yao--like the fellow Wade brought here--when your
housekeeper had fits?” Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some
odd things.
“No. He's one of old Strickland's Punjabi policemen--and quite
European--I believe.”
“Hooray! Haven't talked Punjabi for three months--and a Punjabi from
Central Africa ought to be amusin'.”
We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was
Agnes Strickland, whom the Infant makes no secret of adoring.
He is devoted, in a fat man's placid way, to at least eight designing
women; but she nursed him once through a bad bout of Peshawur fever, and
when she is in the house, it is more than all hers.
“You didn't send rugs enough,” she began. “Adam might have taken a
chill.”
“It's quite warm in the tonneau. Why did you let him ride in front?”
“Because he wanted to,” she replied, with the mother's smile, and we
were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the
shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Mohammedan.
“That is all that came home of him,” said his father to me. “There
was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Dalhousie
centuries since.”
“And what is this uniform?” Stalky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who
came to attention on the marble floor.
“The uniform of the Protectorate troops, Sahib. Though I am the Little
Sahib's body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended
by folk dressed altogether as servants.”
“And--and you white men wait at table on horseback?” Stalky pointed to
the man's spurs.
“These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England,” said Imam
Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember,
and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how
much leave he had, and he said “Six months.”
“But he'll take another six on medical certificate,” said Agnes
anxiously. Adam knit his brows.
“You don't want to--eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is
doing.” Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs.
“Ah!” said the Infant. “I've only a few thousand pheasants to look
after. Come along and dress for dinner. We're just ourselves. What
flower is your honour's ladyship commanding for the table?”
“Just ourselves?” she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall.
“Then let's have marigolds--the little cemetery ones.”
So it was ordered.
Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death.
That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally
fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those
who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay
window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the
hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the
moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember.
Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched
his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam
Din--shoeless, out of respect to the floors--brought him his medicine,
poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders.
“Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary,” said his mother, and
Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits.
“Now what d'you expect to get out of your country?” the Infant asked,
when--our India laid aside we talked Adam's Africa. It roused him at
once.
“Rubber--nuts--gums--and so on,” he said. “But our real future is
cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District.”
“My District!” said his father. “Hear him, Mummy!”
“I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester chaps
said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on the market.”
“But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?” she asked.
“My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and
he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of
black soil that was just the thing for cotton.”
“Ah! What was your Chief like?” Stalky asked, in his silkiest tones.
“The best man alive--absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose
yourself. The people call him”--Adam jerked out some heathen
phrase--“that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know.”
“I'm glad of that. Because I've heard--from other quarters”--Stalky's
sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long
delayed. “Other quarters!” Adam threw out a thin hand. “Every dog has
his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!” The shake of his head was
as I remembered it among his father's policemen twenty years before, and
his mother's eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I
kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man's first love or
loyalty.
A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.
“I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our
shirts,” said the voice of Imam Din.
“Does he know as much English as that?” cried the Infant, who had
forgotten his East.
We all admired the cotton for Adam's sake, and, indeed, it was very long
and glossy.
“It's--it's only an experiment,” he said. “We're such awful paupers we
can't even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box
on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that”--he patted the
stuff--“by a pure fluke.”
“How much did it cost?” asked Strickland.
“With seed and machinery--about two hundred pounds. I had the labour
done by cannibals.”
“That sounds promising.” Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette.
“No, thank you,” said Agnes. “I've been at Weston-super-Mare a little
too long for cannibals. I'll go to the music-room and try over next
Sunday's hymns.”
She lifted the boy's hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across the
acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the Infant's
ancestors' banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress disappeared under
the musicians' gallery; two electrics broke out, and she stood backed
against the lines of gilded pipes.
“There's an abominable self-playing attachment here!” she called.
“Me!” the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. “That's how I
play Parsifal.”
“I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps.”
We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor.
“Now for the direct expression,” said Stalky, and moved on the Burgundy
recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned blood.
“It's nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me
ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven't been able to prove
cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli
offers you four pounds of woman's breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered
up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you--”
“Naturally burn the villages before lunch,” said Stalky.
Adam shook his head. “No troops,” he sighed. “I told my Chief about it,
and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man. He advised me if
ever I felt like it not to commit a--a barren felo de se, but to let the
Sheshaheli do it. Then he could report, and then we could mop 'em up!”
“Most immoral! That's how we got--” Stalky quoted the name of a province
won by just such a sacrifice.
“Yes, but the beasts dominated one end of my cotton-belt like anything.
They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for analysis--me and
Imam Din.”
“Sahib! Is there a need?” The voice came out of the darkness, and the
eyes shone over Adam's shoulder ere it ceased.
“None. The name was taken in talk.” Adam abolished him with a turn of
the finger. “I couldn't make a casus belli of it just then, because my
Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north.
Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn Makarrah? He precious nearly
lost us the Protectorate at one time, though he's an ally of ours now.”
“Wasn't he rather a pernicious brute, even as they go?” said Stalky.
“Wade told me about him last year.”
“Well, his nickname all through the country was 'The Merciful,' and he
didn't get that for nothing. None of our people ever breathed his
proper name. They said 'He' or 'That One,' and they didn't say it aloud,
either. He fought us for eight months.”
“I remember. There was a paragraph about it in one of the papers,” I
said.
“We broke him, though. No--the slavers don't come our way, because our
men have the reputation of dying too much, the first month after they're
captured. That knocks down profits, you see.”
“What about your charming friends, the Sheshahelis?” said the Infant.
“There's no market for Sheshaheli. People would as soon buy crocodiles.
I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn Makarrah dropped down on
'em once--to train his young men--and simply hewed 'em in pieces.
The bulk of my people are agriculturists--just the right stamp for
cotton-growers. What's Mother playing?--'_Once in royal_'?”
The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe
restored, steadied to a tune.
“Magnificent! Oh, magnificent!” said the Infant loyally. I had never
heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant
morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond.
“How did you get your cannibals to work for you?” asked Strickland.
“They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn
Makarrah--just at the time I wanted 'em. You see my Chief had promised
me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he would not bag it
for his roads this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only
needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues didn't run to it.”
“What is your revenue?” Stalky asked in the vernacular.
“With hut-tax, traders' game and mining licenses, not more than fourteen
thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months ahead.” Adam
sighed.
“Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib's camp. Last year
it exceeded three rupees,” Imam Din said quietly.
“Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather strict on
fines. I worked up my native clerk--Bulaki Ram--to a ferocious pitch
of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton-scheme
to three points of decimals, after office. I tell you I envied your
magistrates here hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed
to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about meet, and I
was crazy to get the odd two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of
thing grows on a chap when he's alone--and talks aloud!”
“Hul-lo! Have you been there already?” the father said, and Adam nodded.
“Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of 'Marmion' to a tree, sir.
Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking nigger came in
towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to little things like that.)
He said he'd found it, and please would I identify, because if it
was one of Ibn Makarrah's men there might be a reward. It was an old
Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab--a smallboned, bald-headed chap,
and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our climate when it
sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted
like--like the dog in 'Tom Sawyer,' when he sat on the what's-its-name
beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I could
see it had been sarkied. (That's a sort of gum-poison, pater, which
attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer is writing a
monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out the corpse one time,
with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder, and hot water.
“I'd seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off his feet,
and he stopped sneezing, I knew he'd live. He was bad, though; lay like
a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged the paralysis out of him.
Then he told us he was a Hajji--had been three times to Mecca--come in
from French Africa, and that he'd met the nigger by the wayside--just
like a case of thuggee, in India--and the nigger had poisoned him. That
seemed reasonable enough by what I knew of Coast niggers.”
“You believed him?” said his father keenly.
“There was no reason I shouldn't. The nigger never came back, and the
old man stayed with me for two months,” Adam returned. “You know what
the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater? He was that.”
“None finer, none finer,” was the answer.
“Except a Sikh,” Stalky grunted.
“He'd been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote
poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess--you don't know what
that meant to me--like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration
of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the
sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery,
of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That's why
he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by
cotton-growing, you know.”
“You talked of that too?” said Strickland.
“Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don't know what it meant to me.
A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?”
“Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the money
for our cotton-play.” Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland's
chair.
“Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He brought me
news when I was down with fever at Dupé that one of Ibn Makarrah's men
was parading through my District with a bunch of slaves--in the Fork!”
“What's the matter with the Fork, that you can't abide it?” said Stalky.
Adam's voice had risen at the last word.
“Local etiquette, sir,” he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky's
atrocious pun. “If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he
ought to pretend that they're his servants. Hawkin' 'em about in the
Fork--the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know--is
insolence--same as not backing your topsails in the old days. Besides,
it unsettles the District.”
“I thought you said slavers didn't come your way,” I put in.
“They don't. But my Chief was smoking 'em out of the North all that
season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could
find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but
open slave-dealing in--the--Fork, was too much. I couldn't go myself, so I
told a couple of our Makalali police and Imam Din to make talk with
the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been
expensive, but it turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with
the slaver (he didn't show fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and
we tried him in my bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you
how demoralized the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a
defeat), he'd snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and
was offering 'em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered 'em
to you, didn't he, Imam Din?”
“I was witness that he offered man-eaters for sale,” said Imam Din.
“Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed him both ways. You see, he
had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant
the double fine if I could get it out of him.”
“What was his defence?” said Strickland, late of the Punjab Police.
“As far as I remember--but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the
time--he'd mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he was in French
territory. Said he'd never do it again, if we'd let him off with a fine.
I could have shaken hands with the brute for that. He paid up cash like
a motorist and went off one time.”
“Did you see him?”
“Ye-es. Didn't I, Imam Din?”
“Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the Sahib
also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and they swore
to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play. The Sahib leaned on
his own servant's shoulder the while.”
“I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me the
papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in
the safe--two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don't
know what that meant to me! I believe it cured my fever; and as soon
as I could, I staggered off with the Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli
about labour. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work! It
wasn't gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned
out a week or two before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me
for a job. I gave it 'em.”
“And so you were very happy?” His mother had stolen up behind us. “You
liked your cotton, dear?” She tidied the lump away.
“By Jove, I was happy!” Adam yawned. “Now if any one,” he looked at
the Infant, “cares to put a little money into the scheme, it'll be the
making of my District. I can't give you figures, sir, but I assure--”
“You'll take your arsenic, and Imam Din'll take you up to bed, and I'll
come and tuck you in.”
Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands joined
across his dark hair, and “Isn't he a darling?” she said to us, with
just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break
of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year '84. We
were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imam Din returned to us
from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.
“Now,” said Strickland, “tell us what truly befell, son of my servant.”
“All befell as our Sahib has said. Only--only there was an
arrangement--a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play.”
“Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant,” said Strickland.
But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din hunker
down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at attention.
“When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupé,” he
began, “the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected the names
of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue was beyond
belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this cotton-play. Being
at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our Sahib's forehead, to sink
into his brain news concerning a slave-dealer in his district who had
made a mock of the law. Sahib,” Imam Din turned to Strickland, “our
Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to
the spur. He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the
slavedealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him.”
“Alone--servant of my son, and son of my servant?” said his father.
“There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come in
with the Hajji's money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our Sahib died,
she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given me orders to
depart.”
“Being mad with fever--eh?”
“What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart's desire. He
talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his heart's desire that
the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji could have given him money
enough out of hand for ten cotton-plays; but in this respect also our
Sahib's virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange
moneys. Therefore the Hajji said--and I helped with my counsel--that we
must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with
the English Law. It was great trouble to us, but--the Law is the Law.
And the Hajji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if
our Sahib died. So I accompanied the Hajji.”
“Knowing who he was?” said Strickland.
“No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue
of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the
seat of government at Dupé till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji,
because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures
at five thousand rupees upon any slave-block. The Hajji then said to
me: 'Come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my
delight's delight.' The Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father
for his son, of a saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One.
But I said: 'We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred
rifles. We have here five.' The Hajji said: 'I have untied as knot in my
head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a thousand.' I saw that
he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew
that he was a Great One with virtue in him.
“We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the second
day--about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Hajji walked
delicately across the open place where their filth is, and scratched
upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I saw the man-eaters lying
on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose
up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their
faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate
guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: 'I am here once
again. Give me six and yoke up.' They zealously then pushed to us with
poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: 'Fetch
fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.' The wind is strong
on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of
fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town
roared into flame, and all went. The Hajji then said: 'At the end of
a time there will come here the white man ye once chased for sport. He
will demand labour to plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and
your spawn after you.' They said, lifting their heads a very little from
the edge of the ashes: 'We are that labour, and our spawn after us.'
The Hajji said: 'What is also my name?' They said: 'Thy name is also
The Merciful.' The Hajji said: 'Praise then my mercy'; and while they did
this, the Hajji walked away, I following.”
The Infant made some noise in his throat, and reached for more Burgundy.
“About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only frights Sahib! None
had--none could--touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of
the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for some heathen to do
what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The Hajji
said: 'What do ye see? They said: 'Oh, our Lord, we neither see nor
hear.' The Hajji said: 'But I command ye to see and to hear and to say.'
They said: 'Oh, our Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves
stood in a Fork.' The Hajji said: 'So testify before the officer who
waits you in the town of Dupé.' They said: 'What shall come to us
after?' The Hajji said: 'The just reward for the informer. But if ye do
not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds to fall from
the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.' Hearing this,
the Angari men hastened to Dupé. The Hajji then said to me: 'Are those
things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village
full?' I said that three witnesses amply established any case, but as
yet, I said, the Hajji had not offered his slaves for sale. It is true,
as our Sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and
yet another for making to sell them. And it was the double fine that
we needed, Sahib, for our Sahib's cotton-play. We had fore-arranged
all this with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the
Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: 'O God, Refuge of
the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this dog's meat by the
roadside to gain his delight for my heart's delight?' None the less, he
admitted it was the English Law, and so he offered me the six--five--in
a small voice, with an averted head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour
milk as heathen should. They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because
they eat men.”
“Maybe,” said Strickland. “But where were thy wits? One witness is not
sufficient to establish the fact of a sale.”
“What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji's reputation to consider.
We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing. And,
moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this
case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law
of evidence well enough.
“So then we went to Dupé, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari
men, I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his
mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened
her hair for death. The Hajji said: 'Be quick with my trial. I am not
Job!' The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound
of soothing voices round the bed. Yet--yet, because no man can be sure
whether a Sahib of that blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly
in the manner of the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and
the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose's sake.”
“Then he did not see the prisoner?” said Strickland.
“I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by
God's favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true
he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the
safe--two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite true that the
gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner,
and having speech with the man-eaters--the Hajji breathed all that on
his forehead to sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard,
has remained.... Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib called
for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from Europe with
the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and cotton-mills--ah, then he
laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart's desire, this
cotton-play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little,
little arrangement, Sahib, of which--is it necessary to tell all the
world?”
“And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?” said Strickland.
“Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their
visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our Sahib says, the
man-eaters lay flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate
cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the Hajji said
to me: 'I go to my own place, though God knows whether the Man with the
Stone Eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.' I said: 'Thou art
then That One?' The Hajji said: 'I am ten thousand rupees reward into
thy hand. Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines
for the boy?' I said: 'What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy
life a thousand years!' The Hajji said: 'Who has seen to-morrow? God has
given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise Him. See that the
breed is not lost!'
“He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib's office-table under
the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of Service
newly come in by runner from the North. At this, fearing evil news for
the Hajji, I would have restrained him, but he said: 'We be both Great
Ones. Neither of us will fail.' Our Sahib looked up to invite the Hajji
to approach before he opened the letter, but the Hajji stood off till
our Sahib had well opened and well read the letter. Then the Hajji said:
'Is it permitted to say farewell?' Our Sahib stabbed the letter on the
file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The Hajji said:
'I go to my own place,' and he loosed from his neck a chained heart
of ambergris set in soft gold and held it forth. Our Sahib snatched
it swiftly in the closed fist, down turned, and said 'If thy name be
written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my
heart.' The Hajji said: 'And on mine also is a name engraved; but there
is no name on the amulet.' The Hajji stooped to our Sahib's feet, but
our Sahib raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with
his shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and so he went away.”
“And what order was in the Service letter?” Stalky murmured.
“Only an order for our Sahib to write a report on some new cattle
sickness. But all orders come in the same make of envelope. We could not
tell what order it might have been.”
“When he opened the letter--my son--made he no sign? A cough? An oath?”
Strickland asked.
“None, Sahib. I watched his hands. They did not shake. Afterward he
wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heat.”
“Did he know? Did he know who the Hajji was?” said the Infant in
English.
“I am a poor man. Who can say what a Sahib of that get knows or does not
know? But the Hajji is right. The breed should not be lost. It is not
very hot for little children in Dupé, and as regards nurses, my sister's
cousin at Jull--”
“H'm! That is the boy's own concern. I wonder if his Chief ever knew?”
said Strickland.
“Assuredly,” said Imam Din. “On the night before our Sahib went down to
the sea, the Great Sahib--the Man with the Stone Eyes--dined with him in
his camp, I being in charge of the table. They talked a long while and
the Great Sahib said: 'What didst thou think of That One?' (We do not
say Ibn Makarrah yonder.) Our Sahib said: 'Which one?' The Great Sahib
said: 'That One which taught thy man-eaters to grow cotton for thee. He
was in thy District three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked
by every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head.' Our Sahib said:
'If his head had been needed, another man should have been appointed to
govern my District, for he was my friend.' The Great Sahib laughed and
said: 'If I had needed a lesser man in thy place be sure I would have
sent him, as, if I had needed the head of That One, be sure I would have
sent men to bring it to me. But tell me now, by what means didst thou
twist him to thy use and our profit in this cotton-play?' Our Sahib
said: 'By God, I did not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was
my friend.' The Great Sahib said: 'Toh Vac! (Bosh!) Tell!' Our Sahib
shook his head as he does--as he did when a child--and they looked at
each other like sword-play men in the ring at a fair. The Great Sahib
dropped his eyes first and he said: 'So be it. I should perhaps have
answered thus in my youth. No matter. I have made treaty with That One
as an ally of the State. Some day he shall tell me the tale.' Then I
brought in fresh coffee, and they ceased. But I do not think That One
will tell the Great Sahib more than our Sahib told him.”
“Wherefore?” I asked.
“Because they are both Great Ones, and I have observed in my life
that Great Ones employ words very little between each other in their
dealings; still less when they speak to a third concerning those
dealings. Also they profit by silence.... Now I think that the
mother has come down from the room, and I will go rub his feet till he
sleeps.”
His ears had caught Agnes's step at the stair-head and presently she
passed us on her way to the music room humming the Magnificat.