handful of coppers for a group of children I passed on the road. I
could not help it when I remembered a certain paper I had sent up to
the Administrator-General that day, showing the way in which a certain
sinner had spent his last pay.
"Tea is ready in the drawing-room," said the bearer; and even in my
preoccupation I thought there was something odd in his voice.
But a look into the big bare room was sufficient. I shouldn't have
known it, women have such a way of altering the whole character of a
house by a yellow silk bow. She had taken the little camp bed and made
a couch out of it with cushions and phulkarees. The five fateful
windows, like the five senses looking out on the garden of the soul,
were tucked and festooned, and through one of them came the familiar
sound of a pair of bellows, and then a still more familiar exclamation:
"There! That's really boiling at last."
The next instant my wife was in my arms, tearful, tender, triumphant.
Cheerful letters were all very well, but she knew; so she had just left
the babies in charge of some super-excellent creature, and run away
down to see I was really comfortable.
"And, after all," she said, nodding her head as she poured out the tea,
"it is as well I did come, for really there seems to be nothing in the
house except the Bechstein."
I looked over to it dully, and noticed that it was now ornamented by my
photograph in a filigree frame.
"Yes," I said--I hope I kept some of the regret out of my voice--"only
the Bechstein."
And as we sat and talked of the children, and our own happiness, and
the seeds we were going to sow in the garden, the five windows grew
lighter as the shadows deepened.
But the spirit of the room was silent.
SEGREGATION
"I've got the plague, sir, upon my sam, I 'ave. I'll show yer the spot,
sir, same as they 'ad in 1666 w'en the Tower o' London was burnt down,
an' Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul's--so 'elp me Gawd."
The speaker was a plausible loafer of the usual type. He was dressed in
white, or what had once been white raiment. A gilt button or two hung
round the coat; mute testimony to its having once belonged to a man who
did some work of some kind for the Government. He was not a Eurasian,
that you could see by the line of white on his forehead above the tan,
as he stood apologetically in the court room holding his helmet before
him with both hands as if he meant to offer it up as a bribe. It was
certainly the most valuable thing about him, for it had a wadded
quilted cover and looked, what the rest of him did not--respectable.
"The plague!" echoed the magistrate (I am the magistrate). "Nonsense,
man! you're drunk--that's what's the matter with you. Inspector, remove
that man: put him into the lock-up if he gives trouble."
The inspector approached, but the loafer stood his ground, not without
quiet dignity; the dignity that comes to some people in the first stage
of intoxication. "Excuse of me, sir," he said, "but I ain't going to
make myself a noosance to nobody. That's w'y I came 'ere. That's w'y I
spent my last bloomin' _hart hanner_ (eight annas) in takin' a _ticca
ghari_ (hired carriage) to the 'orspitals, every one of 'em, so as
there might be no infections. Bless your 'art, I don't want to do no
'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, that's all, afore I does
any."
The magistrate smiled faintly: there was something likeable in the
man's face.
"So you've been to the hospitals, have you? What did the doctors say!"
"Same as you, sir," he replied cheerfully, "as I was drunk; but if I
am, Job Charnock--that's me, sir--never got real on afore with one
glass o' _harrack_--an' beastly bad stuff it was, too--smelt like a
dead dorg an' tasted like a tannery."
Perhaps the name, Job Charnock, awoke memories of the founder of
Calcutta, who, before his fortunes were made, must have been more or
less of a friendless wanderer in an eastern land; perhaps it was
because the magistrate was waiting for a file to be brought from the
record office; but the spirit of cross-examination entered into him.
"One glass of arrak--is that all you've had?"
The loafer paused, an expression of the utmost candour came to his
face. "All I've 'ad to-day, sir, s'elp me, 'cos I 'adn't a pice more
left ter buy a bit o' food with. Only the _hart hanner_ I spent
Christian-like on a _ticca ghari_ ter try an' get seggergated afore it
was too late. An' they said I was drunk!"
The mournful cadence of his voice was irresistible.
"Chaprassi, take that man to the serai, and tell the _darogah_ to give
him some breakfast. I'll pay for it. Now you go quietly, my man, and
sleep it off. You'll have got rid of the plague by morning."
The file had come in from the record office, I was immersed in the
endless, hopeless attempt to drag truth from the bottom of the well in
a land suit; so I thought no more of Job Charnock until I met the civil
surgeon at tennis in the evening.
"Yes," he replied to my query, "Segregation was on his rounds again
this morning. You're new, but he is a regular institution here. He gets
the funks on board, generally about a month after a bout, and comes to
every one of us in turn to be segregated. I think he is a bit looney on
the plague--has a real _phoby_ about it. He'll get it, I expect, some
day, from sheer fright--but there's none about at present."
The something likeable in the man's face, however, returned to memory
with the obvious fact that he had appeared chiefly concerned to "do no
'arm to anyone." So the next morning, having ten minutes to spare on my
way from the city, I called in at the _serai_. It was like all other
_serais_: a dreary cloistered square, deserted absolutely between five
a.m. until eight p.m.; that is to say, the hours during which
travellers are on the road. Now, close on nine o'clock, only the muck
of last night's bivouac remained. A sweeper, with a broom and a basket,
was busy removing some of the more salient rubbishes. Otherwise all was
still as the grave. But, seated on a rush stool in one of the little
octagonal turret rooms, which, built on either side of the gateway, are
reserved for European wayfarers, I found Job Charnock. He had evidently
paid a visit to the well, for he looked cleaner and was distinctly
sober, but he was more voluble than ever.
"I give 'arf the breakfast you stood me away to the sweeper, sir," he
said, "an' 'e brought me some _omum_ water as cured me in a jiffy.
That's all I was wantin', sir, an' none o' them doctors could spare me
'arf a pint. It seems strange, don't it, sir? And ter think the 'arm as
I might do going about with the plague spot under my harm, as it's all
writ truthful in that book by Mr. 'Arrison Hainsworth, Esquire. 'Ave
you read it, sir?" he asked blandly.
I assured him I had, told him he was a fool, advised him to go north to
the new railway to find work, gave him five rupees to find his way
there. It was indiscreet and quite contrary to the rules of the Charity
Organisation Society, but as I have said, something in the man's face
appealed to me.
Thereafter he passed from my memory under the usual pressure of work
and worry which is the lot of an Indian official.
It was in the middle of the hot weather, when the civil surgeon rushed
into me at my office with a telegram in his hand.
"Will you arrange with Spiller for my work," he said excitedly, "I must
be off at once. Read that--you see, I gave the assistant surgeon at the
Bimariwallah dispensary a few days' leave off my own bat, and there's
only a dresser in charge; so there will be the devil of a row if
anything goes wrong."
The telegram read as follows: "Outbreaks of much plague amongst
European gentlemen here. Please arrange for supplies of sufficient
brandy."
"But there are no Europeans at Bimariwallah," I began.
"I know that," broke in the doctor, "and, of course, brandy isn't the
right treatment; but that's just where it is. The fool of a dresser
doesn't know English, doesn't know anything, so I'm bound to go."
"Well, if you'll curb your impatience for two hours, till I've finished
this case, I'll motor you so far down the Trunk road, and _dak_ you on.
I have an Executive Municipal Council to-morrow morning at Raipur, and
it's all on the way."
There had been a shower of rain--an advance scout of the coming monsoon
to spy out the dryness of the land--so our spin of thirty miles down
the road was pleasant enough, though the great wains of corn and straw
that still defy the network of railways which has immeshed India, had
possession of a large portion of the highway. But, to my mind, there is
always something "satisfactory" in finding that no amount of
preliminary hooting changes the path of the slow-moving wheels, and
that, in the end, even a Siddeley-Wolsey car must either hold up until
comprehension comes to the carter who moves as slowly as the wheels, or
else pass by on a side-walking. It seems to presage safety; to give
assurance that India will not, after all, run off the rails.
The buggy and horse were waiting at the cross roads, and it only needed
a _detour_ of three miles to drop the doctor at the very door of the
dispensary.
Feeling some curiosity as to what was really the matter, I withstood
his prayer to be set down and allowed to make his way on foot. I was
glad I did; for the first glimpse I had of the dispensary compound
assured me that something very unusual was taking place. To begin with,
a long low reed shed, such as is used in cholera epidemics, had been
hastily run up on the opposite side of the road, and in it were to be
seen patients lying in their beds or out of them. Posts, each carrying
a yellow streamer, were set up every ten yards around the compound
itself, and at each gate stood a village watchman complete with speared
staff and bells.
As we drove up, the dresser--pallid of face, but full of a vast
importance--rushed out from a small hut which had been erected inside.
"Many, many thanks to Supreme Almighty," he ejaculated; then added,
with distinct complacency, "you will find all things necessarily in
order, sir. Segregationalism is being much carried out. Patient having
passed through p--neumonic deliriums is now comatic and in _articulo
mortis_."
I followed the doctor, who looked, as well he might, completely
bewildered.
The dispensary was cleared out: saucers of disinfectants positively
littered the ground. White sheets saturated with the same hung at every
door; the smell of them stank in the nostrils, and, as I followed, a
dank disagreeable wet flap from one of them on my cheek made me shiver;
but the sight which met my eyes in the central room set me literally
shaking with laughter. It was so inexpressibly comic.
Propped high on pillows, his face placid, composed, lay Job Charnock,
snoring contentedly, while an empty brandy bottle beside him on the bed
showed one cause at least of his somnolence. There he lay, peaceful as
a baby, while the doctor, frowning at my inopportune laughter, turned
angrily to the dresser.
"You cursed fool! The man's drunk. What the deuce do you mean by being
such an ass." Then the comic side of the situation took him also, and
he joined me in my merriment.
"By Jove," he chortled, "Segregation has done it this time."
There was no use attempting to awaken him for the moment, so the doctor
turned on the dresser again. How had it come about? How had he allowed
himself to be so imposed upon?
It was quite simple, even when clothed in the babu's best "middel-fail"
English.
Segregation had come, had seen, had conquered. He had declared himself
sick of the plague, and defied the dresser to deny it. He had thereupon
taken possession of the dispensary, ordered the erection of the
temporary sheds by enforced labour, cleared out the patients, used up
all the disinfectants, and had then, but not till then, taken to his
bed and drunk all the brandy! So "cometic symptoms supervening, and
supplies of brandy exhausting," the dresser had appealed "through
authentic sources for aid of the Almighty."
"Anyway, by Jove!" said the doctor, as he noted all the arrangements,
"I couldn't have done it better myself. He has even"--he pointed to a
row of men, evidently of the semi-savage Sansiya race, who were
squatting in front of the village accountant's house--"set them to
killing rats!"
And, in truth, each of these hardy hunters, bore a bamboo on which were
strung the dead bodies of many rodents, young and old. Undoubtedly Job
Charnock had a genius for organisation; and, with a mournful prescience
of what would be the answer, I asked the nearest Sansi what he was to
get for his rats.
It was half the Government rate: but the broad grin on the man's
face showed him satisfied. Yes! Job Charnock had the gift of the
Empire-builder!
"Look here!" I said to the doctor, "that man hasn't committed an
indictable offence. He diagnosed his complaint as plague--that is not
indictable; he went to your Department for advice and got confirmation
of his suspicions; that was not his fault; and all he's done since
then, is what _ought_ to have been done under the circumstances."
"Except the brandy," expostulated the doctor. "Brandy is not in the
dietary for plague, and he's drunk up the year's supply! That amounts
to stealing."
"Pardon me! You can have the dresser up for misuse of supplies, if you
like," I said stoutly, "but every drop of that brandy was drunk out of
one of your blessed measuring glasses." I pointed to the inverted
crystal cone with cabalistic signs on it which lay beside the bottle.
"He couldn't have taken more than an ounce at a time, and that to a man
of his habits is strictly a medicinal dose, and for that your dresser
is responsible. No! send him in to me when he sobers. I'll settle him
up."
I did so to the best of my ability, but there was no question that Job
Charnock was, as the doctor had said, "a bit looney" at times,
especially when he had any drink on board, though no one could have
called him a habitual drunkard. Still, there was little use in getting
him employment. He always drifted out of it again. Then, for a while,
he would disappear, only to return after a few months with his usual,
"I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, for
I've got the plague, so 'elp me Gawd I 'ave." He was always, then, at
the last point of destitution; more than once even the "_hart banner_"
for the _ticca ghari_ was not his, and he would come skulking into the
office almost starving and barefoot. For he looked on me as a friend in
need; and, indeed, I used sometimes to wonder if hunger were not as
much responsible for the recurrence of his delusion as drink.
Then I was transferred to Rajputana, and apparently left Job Charnock
behind me, until one hot weather morning when, in order to catch a
train, I was galloping across a short cut of the wild Bar land which
lay between the railway and the out-of-the-way-place where I was
stationed. It is a strange desert, this Bar land, of wild caper bushes,
stunted _jund_ trees, and hard resilient limestone soil, baked by the
sun to whiteness. A horse's hoofs resounds over it for miles, but a
man, if he left visible path, might, without the aid of the sun, lose
his way in it almost any moment. Even I had to glance at the
whereabouts of that luminary when a few moment's abstraction caused me
to divert my eye from the faint traces of previous passages which was
all there was of path.
As I did so, my eye was caught by something curious in the gnarled
branches of a _jund_ tree some fifty yards further away. It looked like
a red cross. Instinctively I rode towards it. It was a red cross. Two
strips of red Turkey cotton had been carefully tied crosswise between
the branches. What did it mean? And why had that shallow trench--a mere
scraping on the hard soil--been traced between that tree and the next!
And--yes!--that was another red cross in its branches also! I rode on
only to find that here again the trench trended at right angles towards
a further tree where yet another red cross showed.
The grey, green, leafless triangle of caper bushes, all set with tiny
coral bud-flowers, had so far prevented my seeing anything within the
traced square; but now I came upon a definite opening. Across it,
however, from bush to bush, stretched a pair of men's braces, and
pinned to this was a bit of paper on which something was written in
what looked suspiciously like blood.
I jumped off my horse and bent to look at it. Though written in large
characters it was barely decipherable, and seemed to have been drawn
with difficulty by a pointed stick. This much I could read:
"_Trespussers will be persecuted_
_No Thoroughfare_
_Case of Plague within s'elp me Gawd_."
Segregation! by all that was holy!
I tied my horse to the inarched root of a _jund_ tree, set aside the
braces, and made my way through the bushes.
It was quite a comfortable secluded spot. The grey-green
set-with-scarlet brocade of the caper bushes formed a curtain round it,
the floor of it was hard and white as marble; but in the middle of the
little open space there was, as one sees so often in this Bar land, a
tiny hillock of sand that had been whirled thither and left by the wild
dust storms which sweep over the Rajputana desert. And on this sand Job
Charnock lay, his face turned up to the sky. He cannot have been dead
long, for his body was untouched by wild birds or beasts, but he was
quite dead. Perhaps though, the sleeves of his turkey-red shirt--the
rest of it having evidently gone to the making of crosses--which were
hung on sticks set in the sand at his head and his feet might, so far,
have frightened away the animals. They might have been put there for
the purpose; on the other hand they might have been meant as a last
danger signal, not to prevent harm being done to him, but to prevent
him from "'arming anybody." His bare body showed terribly emaciated;
but his face was calm; it almost had a smile upon it.
Had he really died of the plague; or, in coming, it might be, to see
me, had he lost his way, as a stranger might well do, in the pathless
Bar, and fallen a victim to starvation? And had the recurrence of
hunger brought on his curious hallucination once more?
Who could say? Plague was very prevalent. It might be one; it might be
the other.
I stood looking at the peaceful face for a minute or two; then I made
up my mind. He should have his wish; no one this time should interfere
with his desire to "do no 'arm to nobody."
So, covering the body for the time with the doubled blanket I always
use as a saddle cloth, I rode off to the nearest village, some six
miles off, and returned with two men, pickaxes and shovels.
It took some time to dig a grave in that hard white soil; but when the
coolies had done patting down the dry dust and limestone nodules into
the long mound of earth which is the outward sign that a human body
lies beneath, I lingered to peg one of the red crosses over it.
So he found Segregation at last. There was no more fear of his doing
any harm to anyone.
SLAVE OF THE COURT
I sate in the sunshine of Delhi as it blazed down upon the trellised
tombs of a dead dynasty. I was very tired; as police officers are apt
to be when Crowned Heads travel in India. But my particular Monarch was
away from my jurisdiction laying foundation stones elsewhere, so I had
an off four-and-twenty hours. Not knowing Delhi as it should be known,
I utilised my holiday for slow, solitary, silent sight-seeing, in the
course of which I had driven out to the Kutb-minar, had bidden the
carriage return to await me by Humayon's Tomb, so, with lunch in my
pocket, had set out systematically to reconstruct old India out of the
crowding ruins.
It is a fascinating occupation; but one provocative of dreams, and, as
I rested, idly smoking, in the shade of a gnarled _jhund_ tree, I was
more than half asleep. Around me lay the graves of Kings who had once
ruled in the flesh. I had been trying, as it were, to live their lives,
to see with their eyes, and the conclusion had been forced in upon me
that though the monarchy had changed (and my particular Crowned Head
was certainly not to pattern of the Old Indian autocrat) the country
and the people had altered but little.
For instance, the pageant through the city streets of a few days past,
with the brazen sunlight setting silks and satins aflame with vivid
colours, and painting every shadow dark with the purple gloom of night,
was, as it were, of all time; the faces of the crowd through which it
cleft its way, were in type, in character, permanent.
I closed my eyes to visualize how the dapper Viceroy would have looked
had he been scattering golden pistachios, silver almonds and enamelled
rose leaves amongst the lieges, instead of sitting his horse
purposefully, like an ill-fitting statue and inwardly rehearsing the
detail of up-to-date benefits he had to proclaim at the end of his
ride? Were they, I wondered, more satisfactory than the older largesse?
When I opened my eyes, I saw a naked old man squatted forlornly
among the latticed graves. He held a flat basket--a gardener's
basket--between his knees; it contained only one compact posy of
closely crushed flowers--the _gul_ this and _gul_ that--beloved of
natives; but I saw that a similar bunch had been laid on several of the
tombs.
The man, however, was palpably _not_ a gardener. No one of Indian
experience who on real hot-weather evenings had wandered round his back
premises could have hesitated as to vocation. Either as _chef_ or
scullion, the figure belonged to the cook-room; there was that in its
very nakedness (save for a tight-wound waist cloth), that in the very
polish of the close-shaved head, which was quaintly reminiscent of
full-starched raiment and high-piled turban.
Now, I always speak to a native when I get him alone--it is a useful
habit for a police officer--so I said casually:
"On what tomb, friend, are you going to put that bunch?"
The old figure turned, profuse--of course!--in _salaam_; it showed a
wrinkled toothless face, overlaid with the smiles and subtlety of
centuries of service. But its reply was dazed, forlorn.
"This slave of the Court," it mumbled, "seeks for a tomb that was but
is not. God send some miscreant hath not taken the marble slab thereof
for his idolatrous curry-stone! Lo! I can find it nowhere, and the
inscription thereof is lost--is lost!"
A world of angry apprehension crept into the tired blear old eyes; the
tired old hand shook visibly.
"What inscription?" I asked idly.
"My inscription, Protector of the Poor!" came the tired old voice.
"Yea! whatever this slave of the Court said, the writer Abd-un-Nubbi
copied it."
I sate up more alert, vaguely reminiscent of something I had seen
lately. "What was it about?" I queried; this time curiously.
"About the Heaven-Nestled Kings the slave of the Court served," came
the reply, less wearily; and, as if some stored memory cylinder had
been set going by keywords, the voice went on, gaining strength: "This
old slave of the Court does not feel any shame in serving the Kings and
the Nobles! This old slave of the Court, Mahmud, supplicates God that
the name of the Heaven-Nestled Emperor Humayon and the Heaven-Nestled
Emperor Akbar may be perpetuated for all time! Lo! may they have been
given the robe of Paradise! This old slave of the Court honoured by the
Earth-Cherished Emperor Jahangir was told, 'You have grown old. Serve
in the tomb of the Heaven-Nestled One at Delhi.'
"Humbly says Mahmud, old slave of the Court! He has come nigh to ninety
years, he has come nigh his end. He has passed his life in luxury and
ease through the kindness of Kings. Oh! Mahmud! no desire is left
unfulfilled. Of giving and taking, buying and selling, bargainings in
the bazaar, all is done with now!
"Lo! in this seat of Delhi, the rulers and the landholders, the elders
and the neighbours should entrust this tomb and shrine (of which the
total amount of expenses, including all necessary articles and
allowances was 290,000 tankas) to those who are my heirs and who
deserve to possess it, as it was built with my honestly-earned money."
The long-drawn-out quaintly ungrammatical Persian phrases ceased in a
melancholy refrain: "But it has gone, Huzoor! Someone has taken away my
tombstone."
I knew now what he was talking about; knew why that faint message of
memory had come to me. I had seen this inscription, or something like
it, in the Delhi Museum, on a square slab of white marble which the
catalogue said had been found amongst some ruins not far from where we
were sitting.