And the chorus said:—

With them there fought who rides so free

With sword and turban red,

The warrior-youth who earns his fee

At peril of his head.

“At peril of his head,” said Wali Dad in English to me. “Thanks to your

Government, all our heads are protected, and with the educational

facilities at my command”—his eyes twinkled wickedly—“I might be a

distinguished member of the local administration. Perhaps, in time, I

might even be a member of a Legislative Council.”

“Don’t speak English,” said Lalun, bending over her _sitar_ afresh. The

chorus went out from the City wall to the blackened wall of Fort Amara

which dominates the City. No man knows the precise extent of Fort Amara.

Three kings built it hundreds of years ago, and they say that there are

miles of underground rooms beneath its walls. It is peopled with many

ghosts, a detachment of Garrison Artillery and a Company of Infantry. In

its prime it held ten thousand men and filled its ditches with corpses.

“At peril of his head,” sang Lalun again and again.

A head moved on one of the Ramparts—the gray head of an old man—and a

voice, rough as shark-skin on a sword-hilt, sent back the last line of

the chorus and broke into a song that I could not understand, though

Lalun and Wali Dad listened intently.

“What is it?” I asked. “Who is it?”

“A consistent man,” said Wali Dad. “He fought you in ’46, when he was a

warrior-youth; refought you in ’57, and he tried to fight you in ’71,

but you had learned the trick of blowing men from guns too well. Now he

is old; but he would still fight if he could.”

“Is he a Wahabi, then? Why should he answer to a Mahratta _laonee_ if he

be Wahabi—or Sikh?” said I.

“I do not know,” said Wali Dad. “He has lost, perhaps, his religion.

Perhaps he wishes to be a King. Perhaps he is a King. I do not know his

name.”

“That is a lie, Wali Dad. If you know his career you must know his

name.”

“That is quite true. I belong to a nation of liars. I would rather not

tell you his name. Think for yourself.”

Lalun finished her song, pointed to the Fort, and said simply: “Khem

Singh.”

“Hm,” said Wali Dad. “If the Pearl chooses to tell you the Pearl is a

fool.”

I translated to Lalun, who laughed. “I choose to tell what I choose to

tell. They kept Khem Singh in Burma,” said she. “They kept him there for

many years until his mind was changed in him. So great was the kindness

of the Government. Finding this, they sent him back to his own country

that he might look upon it before he died. He is an old man, but when he

looks upon this his country his memory will come. Moreover, there be

many who remember him.”

“He is an Interesting Survival,” said Wali Dad, pulling at the _huqa_.

“He returns to a country now full of educational and political reform,

but, as the Pearl says, there are many who remember him. He was once a

great man. There will never be any more great men in India. They will

all, when they are boys, go whoring after strange gods, and they will

become citizens—‘fellow-citizens’—‘illustrious fellow-citizens.’ What is

it that the native papers call them?”

Wali Dad seemed to be in a very bad temper. Lalun looked out of the

window and smiled into the dust-haze. I went away thinking about Khem

Singh, who had once made history with a thousand followers, and would

have been a princeling but for the power of the Supreme Government

aforesaid.

The Senior Captain Commanding Fort Amara was away on leave, but the

Subaltern, his Deputy, had drifted down to the Club, where I found him

and enquired of him whether it was really true that a political prisoner

had been added to the attractions of the Fort. The Subaltern explained

at great length, for this was the first time that he had held Command of

the Fort, and his glory lay heavy upon him.

“Yes,” said he, “a man was sent in to me about a week ago from down the

line—a thorough gentleman, whoever he is. Of course I did all I could

for him. He had his two servants and some silver cooking-pots, and he

looked for all the world like a native officer. I called him Subadar

Sahib; just as well to be on the safe side, y’know. ‘Look here, Subadar

Sahib,’ I said, ‘you’re handed over to my authority, and I’m supposed to

guard you. Now I don’t want to make your life hard, but you must make

things easy for me. All the Fort is at your disposal, from the

flag-staff to the dry ditch, and I shall be happy to entertain you in

any way I can, but you mustn’t take advantage of it. Give me your word

that you won’t try to escape, Subadar Sahib, and I’ll give you my word

that you shall have no heavy guard put over you.’ I thought the best way

of getting at him was by going at him straight, y’know, and it was, by

Jove! The old man gave me his word, and moved about the Fort as

contented as a sick crow. He’s a rummy chap—always asking to be told

where he is and what the buildings about him are. I had to sign a slip

of blue paper when he turned up, acknowledging receipt of his body and

all that, and I’m responsible, y’know, that he doesn’t get away. Queer

thing, though, looking after a Johnnie old enough to be your

grandfather, isn’t it? Come to the Fort one of these days and see him?”

For reasons which will appear, I never went to the Fort while Khem Singh

was then within its walls. I knew him only as a gray head seen from

Lalun’s window—a gray head and a harsh voice. But natives told me that,

day by day, as he looked upon the fair lands round Amara, his memory

came back to him and, with it, the old hatred against the Government

that had been nearly effaced in far-off Burma. So he raged up and down

the West face of the Fort from morning till noon and from evening till

the night, devising vain things in his heart, and croaking war-songs

when Lalun sang on the City wall. As he grew more acquainted with the

Subaltern he unburdened his old heart of some of the passions that had

withered it. “Sahib,” he used to say, tapping his stick against the

parapet, “when I was a young man I was one of twenty thousand horsemen

who came out of the City and rode round the plain here. Sahib, I was the

leader of a hundred, then of a thousand, then of five thousand, and

now!”—he pointed to his two servants. “But from the beginning to to-day

I would cut the throats of all the Sahibs in the land if I could. Hold

me fast, Sahib, lest I get away and return to those who would follow me.

I forgot them when I was in Burma, but now that I am in my own country

again, I remember everything.”

“Do you remember that you have given me your Honour not to make your

tendance a hard matter?” said the Subaltern.

“Yes, to you, only to you, Sahib,” said Khem Singh. “To you because you

are of a pleasant countenance. If my turn comes again, Sahib, I will not

hang you nor cut your throat.”

“Thank you,” said the Subaltern gravely, as he looked along the line of

guns that could pound the City to powder in half an hour. “Let us go

into our own quarters, Khem Singh. Come and talk with me after dinner.”

Khem Singh would sit on his own cushion at the Subaltern’s feet,

drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps, and telling

strange stories of Fort Amara, which had been a palace in the old days,

of Begums and Ranees tortured to death—aye, in the very vaulted chamber

that now served as a Mess-room; would tell stories of Sobraon that made

the Subaltern’s cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of the

Kuka rising from which so much was expected and the foreknowledge of

which was shared by a hundred thousand souls. But he never told tales of

’57 because, as he said, he was the Subaltern’s guest, and ’57 is a year

that no man, Black or White, cares to speak of. Once only, when the

anise-seed brandy had slightly affected his head, he said: “Sahib,

speaking now of a matter which lay between Sobraon and the affair of the

Kukas, it was ever a wonder to us that you stayed your hand at all, and

that, having stayed it, you did not make the land one prison. Now I hear

from without that you do great honour to all men of our country and by

your own hands are destroying the Terror of your Name which is your

strong rock and defence. This is a foolish thing. Will oil and water

mix? Now in ’57——”

“I was not born then, Subadar Sahib,” said the Subaltern, and Khem Singh

reeled to his quarters.

The Subaltern would tell me of these conversations at the Club, and my

desire to see Khem Singh increased. But Wali Dad, sitting in the

window-seat of the house on the City wall, said that it would be a cruel

thing to do, and Lalun pretended that I preferred the society of a

grizzled old Sikh to hers.

“Here is tobacco, here is talk, here are many friends and all the news

of the City, and, above all, here is myself. I will tell you stories and

sing you songs, and Wali Dad will talk his English nonsense in your

ears. Is that worse than watching the caged animal yonder? Go to-morrow,

then, if you must, but to-day such and such an one will be here, and he

will speak of wonderful things.”

It happened that To-morrow never came, and the warm heat of the latter

Rains gave place to the chill of early October almost before I was aware

of the flight of the year. The Captain commanding the Fort returned from

leave and took over charge of Khem Singh according to the laws of

seniority. The Captain was not a nice man. He called all natives

“niggers,” which, besides being extreme bad form, shows gross ignorance.

“What’s the use of telling off two Tommies to watch that old nigger?”

said he.

“I fancy it soothes his vanity,” said the Subaltern. “The men are

ordered to keep well out of his way, but he takes them as a tribute to

his importance, poor old wretch.”

“I won’t have Line men taken off regular guards in this way. Put on a

couple of Native Infantry.”

“Sikhs?” said the Subaltern, lifting his eyebrows.

“Sikhs, Pathans, Dogras—they’re all alike, these black vermin,” and the

Captain talked to Khem Singh in a manner which hurt that old gentleman’s

feelings. Fifteen years before, when he had been caught for the second

time, every one looked upon him as a sort of tiger. He liked being

regarded in this light. But he forgot that the world goes forward in

fifteen years, and many Subalterns are promoted to Captaincies.

“The Captain-pig is in charge of the Fort?” said Khem Singh to his

native guard every morning. And the native guard said: “Yes, Subadar

Sahib,” in deference to his age and his air of distinction; but they did

not know who he was.

In those days the gathering in Lalun’s little white room was always

large and talked more than before.

“The Greeks,” said Wali Dad, who had been borrowing my books, “the

inhabitants of the city of Athens, where they were always hearing and

telling some new thing, rigorously secluded their women—who were fools.

Hence the glorious institution of the heterodox women—is it not?—who

were amusing and _not_ fools. All the Greek philosophers delighted in

their company. Tell me, my friend, how it goes now in Greece and the

other places upon the Continent of Europe. Are your women-folk also

fools?”

“Wali Dad,” I said, “you never speak to us about your women-folk, and we

never speak about ours to you. That is the bar between us.”

“Yes,” said Wali Dad, “it is curious to think that our common

meeting-place should be here, in the house of a common—how do you call

_her_?” He pointed with the pipe-mouth to Lalun.

“Lalun is nothing but Lalun,” I said, and that was perfectly true. “But

if you took your place in the world, Wali Dad, and gave up dreaming

dreams——”

“I might wear an English coat and trouser. I might be a leading

Muhammadan pleader. I might be received even at the Commissioner’s

tennis-parties, where the English stand on one side and the natives on

the other, in order to promote social intercourse throughout the Empire.

Heart’s Heart,” said he to Lalun quickly, “the Sahib says that I ought

to quit you.”

“The Sahib is always talking stupid talk,” returned Lalun with a laugh.

“In this house I am a Queen and thou art a King. The Sahib”—she put her

arms above her head and thought for a moment—“the Sahib shall be our

Vizier—thine and mine, Wali Dad—because he has said that thou shouldst

leave me.”

Wali Dad laughed immoderately, and I laughed too. “Be it so,” said he.

“My friend, are you willing to take this lucrative Government

appointment? Lalun, what shall his pay be?”

But Lalun began to sing, and for the rest of the time there was no hope

of getting a sensible answer from her or Wali Dad. When the one stopped,

the other began to quote Persian poetry with a triple pun in every other

line. Some of it was not strictly proper, but it was all very funny, and

it only came to an end when a fat person in black, with gold

_pince-nez_, sent up his name to Lalun, and Wali Dad dragged me into the

twinkling night to walk in a big rose-garden and talk heresies about

Religion and Governments and a man’s career in life.

The Mohurrum, the great mourning-festival of the Muhammadans, was close

at hand, and the things that Wali Dad said about religious fanaticism

would have secured his expulsion from the loosest-thinking Muslim sect.

There were the rose-bushes round us, the stars above us, and from every

quarter of the City came the boom of the big Mohurrum drums. You must

know that the City is divided in fairly equal proportions between the

Hindus and the Musalmans, and where both creeds belong to the fighting

races, a big religious festival gives ample chance for trouble. When

they can—that is to say when the authorities are weak enough to allow

it—the Hindus do their best to arrange some minor feast-day of their own

in time to clash with the period of general mourning for the martyrs

Hasan and Hussain, the heroes of the Mohurrum. Gilt and painted paper

presentations of their tombs are borne with shouting and wailing, music,

torches, and yells, through the principal thoroughfares of the City,

which fakements are called _tazias_. Their passage is rigorously laid

down beforehand by the Police, and detachments of Police accompany each

_tazia_, lest the Hindus should throw bricks at it and the peace of the

Queen and the heads of her loyal subjects should thereby be broken.

Mohurrum time in a “fighting” town means anxiety to all the officials,

because, if a riot breaks out, the officials and not the rioters are

held responsible. The former must foresee everything, and while not

making their precautions ridiculously elaborate, must see that they are

at least adequate.

“Listen to the drums!” said Wali Dad. “That is the heart of the

people—empty and making much noise. How, think you, will the Mohurrum go

this year. _I_ think that there will be trouble.”

He turned down a side-street and left me alone with the stars and a

sleepy Police patrol. Then I went to bed and dreamed that Wali Dad had

sacked the City and I was made Vizier, with Lalun’s silver _huqa_ for

mark of office.

All day the Mohurrum drums beat in the City, and all day deputations of

tearful Hindu gentlemen besieged the Deputy Commissioner with assurances

that they would be murdered ere next dawning by the Muhammadans.

“Which,” said the Deputy Commissioner in confidence to the Head of

Police, “is a pretty fair indication that the Hindus are going to make

’emselves unpleasant. I think we can arrange a little surprise for them.

I have given the heads of both Creeds fair warning. If they choose to

disregard it, so much the worse for them.”

There was a large gathering in Lalun’s house that night, but of men that

I had never seen before, if I except the fat gentleman in black with the

gold _pince-nez_. Wali Dad lay in the window-seat, more bitterly

scornful of his Faith and its manifestations than I had ever known him.

Lalun’s maid was very busy cutting up and mixing tobacco for the guests.

We could hear the thunder of the drums as the processions accompanying

each _tazia_ marched to the central gathering-place in the plain outside

the City, preparatory to their triumphant re-entry and circuit within

the walls. All the streets seemed ablaze with torches, and only Fort

Amara was black and silent.

When the noise of the drums ceased, no one in the white room spoke for a

time. “The first _tazia_ has moved off,” said Wali Dad, looking to the

plain.

“That is very early,” said the man with the _pince-nez_.

“It is only half-past eight.” The company rose and departed.

“Some of them were men from Ladakh,” said Lalun, when the last had gone.

“They brought me brick-tea such as the Russians sell, and a tea-urn from

Peshawur. Show me, now, how the English _Memsahibs_ make tea.”

The brick-tea was abominable. When it was finished Wali Dad suggested

going into the streets. “I am nearly sure that there will be trouble

to-night,” he said. “All the City thinks so, and _Vox Populi_ is _Vox

Dei_, as the Babus say. Now I tell you that at the corner of the

Padshahi Gate you will find my horse all this night if you want to go

about and to see things. It is a most disgraceful exhibition. Where is

the pleasure of saying ‘_Ya Hasan, Ya Hussain_,’ twenty thousand times

in a night?”

All the processions—there were two and twenty of them—were now well

within the City walls. The drums were beating afresh, the crowd were

howling “_Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!_” and beating their breasts, the brass

bands were playing their loudest, and at every corner where space

allowed Muhammadan preachers were telling the lamentable story of the

death of the Martyrs. It was impossible to move except with the crowd,

for the streets were not more than twenty feet wide. In the Hindu

quarters the shutters of all the shops were up and cross-barred. As the

first _tazia_, a gorgeous erection ten feet high, was borne aloft on the

shoulders of a score of stout men into the semi-darkness of the Gully of

the Horsemen, a brickbat crashed through its talc and tinsel sides.

“Into thy hands, O Lord!” murmured Wali Dad profanely, as a yell went up

from behind, and a native officer of Police jammed his horse through the

crowd. Another brickbat followed, and the _tazia_ staggered and swayed

where it had stopped.

“Go on! In the name of the Sirkar, go forward!” shouted the Policeman;

but there was an ugly cracking and splintering of shutters, and the

crowd halted, with oaths and growlings, before the house whence the

brickbat had been thrown.

Then, without any warning, broke the storm—not only in the Gully of the

Horsemen, but in half a dozen other places. The _tazias_ rocked like

ships at sea, the long pole-torches dipped and rose round them, while

the men shouted: “The Hindus are dishonouring the _tazias_! Strike!

Strike! Into their temples for the Faith!” The six or eight Policemen

with each _tazia_ drew their batons and struck as long as they could, in

the hope of forcing the mob forward, but they were overpowered, and as

contingents of Hindus poured into the streets the fight became general.

Half a mile away, where the _tazias_ were yet untouched, the drums and

the shrieks of “_Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!_” continued, but not for long.

The priests at the corners of the streets knocked the legs from the

bedsteads that supported their pulpits and smote for the Faith, while

stones fell from the silent houses upon friend and foe, and the packed

streets bellowed: “_Din! Din! Din!_” A _tazia_ caught fire, and was

dropped for a flaming barrier between Hindu and Musalman at the corner

of the Gully. Then the crowd surged forward, and Wali Dad drew me close

to the stone pillar of a well.

“It was intended from the beginning!” he shouted in my ear, with more

heat than blank unbelief should be guilty of. “The bricks were carried

up to the houses beforehand. These swine of Hindus! We shall be gutting

kine in their temples to-night!”

_Tazia_ after _tazia_, some burning, others torn to pieces, hurried past

us, and the mob with them, howling, shrieking, and striking at the house

doors in their flight. At last we saw the reason of the rush. Hugonin,

the Assistant District Superintendent of Police, a boy of twenty, had

got together thirty constables and was forcing the crowd through the

streets. His old gray Police-horse showed no sign of uneasiness as it

was spurred breast-on into the crowd, and the long dog-whip with which

he had armed himself was never still.

“They know we haven’t enough Police to hold ’em,” he cried as he passed

me, mopping a cut on his face. “They _know_ we haven’t! Aren’t any of

the men from the Club coming down to help? Get on, you sons of burnt

fathers!” The dog-whip cracked across the writhing backs, and the

constables smote afresh with baton and gun-butt. With these passed the

lights and the shouting, and Wali Dad began to swear under his breath.

From Fort Amara shot up a single rocket; then two side by side. It was

the signal for troops.

Petitt, the Deputy Commissioner, covered with dust and sweat, but calm

and gently smiling, cantered up the clean-swept street in rear of the

main body of the rioters. “No one killed yet,” he shouted. “I’ll keep

’em on the run till dawn! Don’t let ’em halt, Hugonin! Trot ’em about

till the troops come.”

The science of the defence lay solely in keeping the mob on the move. If

they had breathing-space they would halt and fire a house, and then the

work of restoring order would be more difficult, to say the least of it.

Flames have the same effect on a crowd as blood has on a wild beast.

Word had reached the Club, and men in evening-dress were beginning to

show themselves and lend a hand in heading off and breaking up the

shouting masses with stirrup-leathers, whips, or chance-found staves.

They were not very often attacked, for the rioters had sense enough to

know that the death of a European would not mean one hanging, but many,

and possibly the appearance of the thrice-dreaded Artillery. The clamour

in the City redoubled. The Hindus had descended into the streets in real

earnest, and ere long the mob returned. It was a strange sight. There

were no _tazias_—only their riven platforms—and there were no Police.

Here and there a City dignitary, Hindu or Muhammadan, was vainly

imploring his co-religionists to keep quiet and behave themselves—advice

for which his white beard was pulled. Then a native officer of Police,

unhorsed but still using his spurs with effect, would be borne along,

warning all the crowd of the danger of insulting the Government.

Everywhere men struck aimlessly with sticks, grasping each other by the

throat, howling and foaming with rage, or beat with their bare hands on

the doors of the houses.

“It is a lucky thing that they are fighting with natural weapons,” I

said to Wali Dad, “else we should have half the City killed.”

I turned as I spoke and looked at his face. His nostrils were distended,

his eyes were fixed, and he was smiting himself softly on the breast.

The crowd poured by with renewed riot—a gang of Musalmans hard-pressed

by some hundred Hindu fanatics. Wali Dad left my side with an oath, and

shouting: “_Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!_” plunged into the thick of the fight,

where I lost sight of him.

I fled by a side alley to the Padshahi Gate, where I found Wali Dad’s

horse, and thence rode to the Fort. Once outside the City wall, the

tumult sank to a dull roar, very impressive under the stars and

reflecting great credit on the fifty thousand angry able-bodied men

who were making it. The troops who, at the Deputy Commissioner’s

instance, had been ordered to rendezvous quietly near the Fort showed

no signs of being impressed. Two companies of Native Infantry, a

squadron of Native Cavalry, and a company of British Infantry were

kicking their heels in the shadow of the East face, waiting for orders

to march in. I am sorry to say that they were all pleased, unholily

pleased, at the chance of what they called “a little fun.” The senior

officers, to be sure, grumbled at having been kept out of bed, and the

English troops pretended to be sulky, but there was joy in the hearts

of all the subalterns, and whispers ran up and down the line: “No

ball-cartridge—what a beastly shame!” “D’you think the beggars will

really stand up to us?” “’Hope I shall meet my money-lender there. I

owe him more than I can afford.” “Oh, they won’t let us even unsheathe

swords.” “Hurrah! Up goes the fourth rocket. Fall in, there!”

The Garrison Artillery, who to the last cherished a wild hope that they

might be allowed to bombard the City at a hundred yards’ range, lined

the parapet above the East gateway and cheered themselves hoarse as the

British Infantry doubled along the road to the Main Gate of the City.

The Cavalry cantered on to the Padshahi Gate, and the Native Infantry

marched slowly to the Gate of the Butchers. The surprise was intended to

be of a distinctly unpleasant nature, and to come on top of the defeat

of the Police who had been just able to keep the Muhammadans from firing

the houses of a few leading Hindus. The bulk of the riot lay in the

north and north-west wards. The east and south-east were by this time

dark and silent, and I rode hastily to Lalun’s house, for I wished to

tell her to send some one in search of Wali Dad. The house was

unlighted, but the door was open, and I climbed upstairs in the

darkness. One small lamp in the white room showed Lalun and her maid

leaning half out of the window, breathing heavily and evidently pulling

at something that refused to come.

“Thou art late—very late,” gasped Lalun without turning her head. “Help

us now, O Fool, if thou hast not spent thy strength howling among the

_tazias_. Pull! Nasiban and I can do no more. O Sahib, is it you? The

Hindus have been hunting an old Muhammadan round the Ditch with clubs.

If they find him again they will kill him. Help us to pull him up.”

I put my hands to the long red silk waist-cloth that was hanging out of

the window, and we three pulled and pulled with all the strength at our

command. There was something very heavy at the end, and it swore in an

unknown tongue as it kicked against the City wall.

“Pull, oh, pull!” said Lalun at the last. A pair of brown hands grasped

the window-sill and a venerable Muhammadan tumbled upon the floor, very

much out of breath. His jaws were tied up, his turban had fallen over

one eye, and he was dusty and angry.

Lalun hid her face in her hands for an instant and said something about

Wali Dad that I could not catch.

Then, to my extreme gratification, she threw her arms round my neck and

murmured pretty things. I was in no haste to stop her; and Nasiban,

being a handmaiden of tact, turned to the big jewel-chest that stands in

the corner of the white room and rummaged among the contents. The

Muhammadan sat on the floor and glared.

“One service more, Sahib, since thou hast come so opportunely,” said

Lalun. “Wilt thou”—it is very nice to be thou-ed by Lalun—“take this old

man across the City—the troops are everywhere, and they might hurt him,

for he is old—to the Kumharsen Gate? There I think he may find a

carriage to take him to his house. He is a friend of mine, and thou

art—more than a friend—therefore I ask this.”

Nasiban bent over the old man, tucked something into his belt, and I

raised him up and led him into the streets. In crossing from the east to

the west of the City there was no chance of avoiding the troops and the

crowd. Long before I reached the Gully of the Horsemen I heard the

shouts of the British Infantry crying cheeringly: “Hutt, ye beggars!

Hutt, ye devils! Get along! Go forward, there!” Then followed the

ringing of rifle-butts and shrieks of pain. The troops were banging the

bare toes of the mob with their gun-butts—for not a bayonet had been

fixed. My companion mumbled and jabbered as we walked on until we were

carried back by the crowd and had to force our way to the troops. I

caught him by the wrist and felt a bangle there—the iron bangle of the

Sikhs—but I had no suspicions, for Lalun had only ten minutes before put

her arms round me. Thrice we were carried back by the crowd, and when we

made our way past the British Infantry it was to meet the Sikh Cavalry

driving another mob before them with the butts of their lances.

“What are these dogs?” said the old man.

“Sikhs of the Cavalry, Father,” I said, and we edged our way up the line

of horses two abreast and found the Deputy Commissioner, his helmet

smashed on his head, surrounded by a knot of men who had come down from

the Club as amateur constables and had helped the Police mightily.

“We’ll keep ’em on the run till dawn,” said Petitt. “Who’s your

villainous friend?”

I had only time to say: “The Protection of the Sirkar!” when a fresh

crowd flying before the Native Infantry carried us a hundred yards

nearer to the Kumharsen Gate, and Petitt was swept away like a shadow.

“I do not know—I cannot see—this is all new to me!” moaned my companion.

“How many troops are there in the City?”

“Perhaps five hundred,” I said.

“A lakh of men beaten by five hundred—and Sikhs among them! Surely,

surely, I am an old man, but—the Kumharsen Gate is new. Who pulled down

the stone lions? Where is the conduit? Sahib, I am a very old man, and,

alas, I—I cannot stand.” He dropped in the shadow of the Kumharsen Gate

where there was no disturbance. A fat gentleman wearing gold _pince-nez_

came out of the darkness.

“You are most kind to bring my old friend,” he said suavely. “He is a

landholder of Akala. He should not be in a big City when there is

religious excitement. But I have a carriage here. You are quite truly

kind. Will you help me to put him into the carriage? It is very late.”

We bundled the old man into a hired victoria that stood close to the

gate, and I turned back to the house on the City wall. The troops were

driving the people to and fro, while the Police shouted, “To your

houses! Get to your houses!” and the dog-whip of the Assistant District

Superintendent cracked remorselessly. Terror-stricken _bunnias_ clung to

the stirrups of the cavalry, crying that their houses had been robbed

(which was a lie), and the burly Sikh horsemen patted them on the

shoulder, and bade them return to those houses lest a worse thing should

happen. Parties of five or six British soldiers, joining arms, swept

down the side-gullies, their rifles on their backs, stamping, with

shouting and song, upon the toes of Hindu and Musalman. Never was

religious enthusiasm more systematically squashed; and never were poor

breakers of the peace more utterly weary and footsore. They were routed

out of holes and corners, from behind well-pillars and byres, and bidden

to go to their houses. If they had no houses to go to, so much the worse

for their toes.

On returning to Lalun’s door, I stumbled over a man at the threshold. He

was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a goose.

It was Wali Dad, Agnostic and Unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless, and

frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding from

the vehemence with which he had smitten himself. A broken torch-handle

lay by his side, and his quivering lips murmured, “_Ya Hasan! Ya

Hussain!_” as I stooped over him. I pushed him a few steps up the

staircase, threw a pebble at Lalun’s City window, and hurried home.

Most of the streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes before

the dawn whistled down them. In the center of the Square of the Mosque a

man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in by gun-butt

or bamboo-stave.

“It is expedient that one man should die for the people,” said Petitt

grimly, raising the shapeless head. “These brutes were beginning to show

their teeth too much.”

And from afar we could hear the soldiers singing “Two Lovely Black

Eyes,” as they drove the remnant of the rioters within doors.

* * * * *

Of course you can guess what happened? I was not so clever. When the

news went abroad that Khem Singh had escaped from the Fort, I did not,

since I was then living this story, not writing it, connect myself, or

Lalun, or the fat gentleman of the gold _pince-nez_, with his

disappearance. Nor did it strike me that Wali Dad was the man who should

have convoyed him across the City, or that Lalun’s arms round my neck

were put there to hide the money that Nasiban gave to Khem Singh, and

that Lalun had used me and my white face as even a better safeguard than

Wali Dad, who proved himself so untrustworthy. All that I knew at the

time was that when Fort Amara was taken up with the riots Khem Singh

profited by the confusion to get away, and that his two Sikh guards also

escaped.

But later on I received full enlightenment; and so did Khem Singh. He

fled to those who knew him in the old days, but many of them were dead

and more were changed, and all knew something of the Wrath of the

Government. He went to the young men, but the glamour of his name had

passed away, and they were entering native regiments or Government

offices, and Khem Singh could give them neither pension, decorations,

nor influence—nothing but a glorious death with their backs to the mouth

of a gun. He wrote letters and made promises, and the letters fell into

bad hands, and a wholly insignificant subordinate officer of Police

tracked them down and gained promotion thereby. Moreover, Khem Singh was

old, and anise-seed brandy was scarce, and he had left his silver

cooking-pots in Fort Amara with his nice warm bedding, and the gentleman

with the gold _pince-nez_ was told by those who had employed him that

Khem Singh as a popular leader was not worth the money paid.

“Great is the mercy of these fools of English!” said Khem Singh when the

situation was put before him. “I will go back to Fort Amara of my own

free will and gain honour. Give me good clothes to return in.”

So, at his own time, Khem Singh knocked at the wicket-gate of the Fort

and walked to the Captain and the Subaltern, who were nearly gray-headed

on account of correspondence that daily arrived from Simla marked

“Private.”

“I have come back, Captain Sahib,” said Khem Singh. “Put no more guards

over me. It is no good out yonder.”

A week later I saw him for the first time to my knowledge, and he made

as though there were an understanding between us.

“It was well done, Sahib,” said he, “and greatly I admired your

astuteness in thus boldly facing the troops when I, whom they would have

doubtless torn to pieces, was with you. Now there is a man in Fort

Ooltagarh whom a bold man could with ease help to escape. This is the

position of the Fort as I draw it on the sand——”

But I was thinking how I had become Lalun’s Vizier after all.

THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF

PAGETT, M. P.

“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with

their importunate chink while thousands of great cattle, reposed

beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent,

pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only

inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number—or

that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre,

hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”—_Burke_:

“Reflections on the Revolution in France.”

They were sitting in the verandah of “the splendid palace of an Indian

Pro-Consul,” surrounded by all the glory and mystery of the immemorial

East. In plain English it was a one-storied, ten-roomed, whitewashed

mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry garden of dusty tamarisk trees and

divided from the road by a low mud wall. The green parrots screamed

overhead as they flew in battalions to the river for their morning

drink. Beyond the wall, clouds of fine dust showed where the cattle and

goats of the city were passing afield to graze. The remorseless white

light of the winter sunshine of Northern India lay upon everything and

improved nothing, from the whining Persian-wheel by the lawn-tennis

court to the long perspective of level road and the blue, domed tombs of

Mahommedan saints just visible above the trees.

“A Happy New Year,” said Orde to his guest. “It’s the first you’ve ever

spent out of England, isn’t it?”

“Yes. ’Happy New Year,” said Pagett, smiling at the sunshine. “What a

divine climate you have here! Just think of the brown cold fog hanging

over London now!” And he rubbed his hands.

It was more than twenty years since he had last seen Orde, his

schoolmate, and their paths in the world had divided early. The one had

quitted college to become a cog-wheel in the machinery of the great

Indian Government; the other, more blessed with goods, had been whirled

into a similar position in the English scheme. Three successive

elections had not affected Pagett’s position with a loyal constituency,

and he had grown insensibly to regard himself in some sort as a pillar

of the Empire whose real worth would be known later on. After a few

years of conscientious attendance at many divisions, after newspaper

battles innumerable, and the publication of interminable correspondence,

and more hasty oratory than in his calmer moments he cared to think

upon, it occurred to him, as it had occurred to many of his fellows in

Parliament, that a tour to India would enable him to sweep a larger lyre

and address himself to the problems of Imperial administration with a

firmer hand. Accepting, therefore, a general invitation extended to him

by Orde some years before, Pagett had taken ship to Karachi, and only

over-night had been received with joy by the Deputy-Commissioner of

Amara. They had sat late, discussing the changes and chances of twenty

years, recalling the names of the dead, and weighing the futures of the

living, as is the custom of men meeting after intervals of action.

Next morning they smoked the after-breakfast pipe in the verandah, still

regarding each other curiously, Pagett in a light gray frock-coat and

garments much too thin for the time of the year, and a puggried sun-hat

carefully and wonderfully made; Orde in a shooting-coat,

riding-breeches, brown cowhide boots with spurs, and a battered flax

helmet. He had ridden some miles in the early morning to inspect a

doubtful river-dam. The men’s faces differed as much as their attire.

Orde’s, worn and wrinkled about the eyes and grizzled at the temples,

was the harder and more square of the two, and it was with something

like envy that the owner looked at the comfortable outlines of Pagett’s

blandly receptive countenance, the clear skin, the untroubled eye, and

the mobile, clean-shaved lips.

“And this is India!” said Pagett for the twentieth time, staring long

and intently at the gray feathering of the tamarisks.

“One portion of India only. It’s very much like this for 300 miles in

every direction. By the way, now that you have rested a little—I

wouldn’t ask the old question before—what d’you think of the country?”

“’Tis the most pervasive country that ever yet was seen. I acquired

several pounds of your country coming up from Karachi. The air is heavy

with it, and for miles and miles along that distressful eternity of rail

there’s no horizon to show where air and earth separate.”

“Yes. It isn’t easy to see truly or far in India. But you had a decent

passage out, hadn’t you?”

“Very good on the whole. Your Anglo-Indian may be unsympathetic about

one’s political views; but he has reduced ship life to a science.”

“The Anglo-Indian is a political orphan, and if he’s wise he won’t be in

a hurry to be adopted by your party grandmothers. But how were your

companions unsympathetic?”

“Well, there was a man called Dawlishe, a judge somewhere in this

country, it seems, and a capital partner at whist, by the way, and when

I wanted to talk to him about the progress of India in a political sense

[Orde hid a grin which might or might not have been sympathetic], the

National Congress movement, and other things in which, as a Member of

Parliament, I’m of course interested, he shifted the subject, and when I

once cornered him, he looked me calmly in the eye, and said: ‘That’s all

Tommy Rot. Come and have a game at Bull.’ You may laugh, but that isn’t

the way to treat a great and important question; and, knowing who I was,

well, I thought it rather rude, don’t you know; and yet Dawlishe is a

thoroughly good fellow.”

“Yes; he’s a friend of mine, and one of the straightest men I know. I

suppose, like many Anglo-Indians, he felt it was hopeless to give you

any just idea of any Indian question without the documents before you,

and in this case the documents you want are the country and the people.”

“Precisely. That was why I came straight to you, bringing an open mind

to bear on things. I’m anxious to know what popular feeling in India is

really like, y’know, now that it has wakened into political life. The

National Congress, in spite of Dawlishe, must have caused great

excitement among the masses?”

“On the contrary, nothing could be more tranquil than the state of

popular feeling; and as to excitement, the people would as soon be

excited over the ‘Rule of Three’ as over the Congress.”

“Excuse me, Orde, but do you think you are a fair judge? Isn’t the

official Anglo-Indian naturally jealous of any external influences that

might move the masses, and so much opposed to liberal ideas, truly

liberal ideas, that he can scarcely be expected to regard a popular

movement with fairness?”

“What did Dawlishe say about Tommy Rot? Think a moment, old man. You and

I were brought up together; taught by the same tutors, read the same

books, lived the same life, and thought, as you may remember, in

parallel lines. _I_ come out here, learn new languages, and work among

new races; while you, more fortunate, remain at home. Why should I

change my mind—our mind—because I change my sky? Why should I and the

few hundred Englishmen in my service become unreasonable, prejudiced

fossils, while you and your newer friends alone remain bright and

open-minded? You surely don’t fancy civilians are members of a Primrose

League?”

“Of course not, but the mere position of an English official gives him a

point of view which cannot but bias his mind on this question.” Pagett

moved his knee up and down a little uneasily as he spoke.

“That sounds plausible enough, but, like more plausible notions on

Indian matters, I believe it’s a mistake. You’ll find when you come to

consult the unofficial Briton that our fault, as a class—I speak of the

civilian now—is rather to magnify the progress that has been made

towards liberal institutions. It is of English origin, such as it is,

and the stress of our work since the Mutiny—only thirty years ago—has

been in that direction. No, I think you will get no fairer or more

dispassionate view of the Congress business than such men as I can give

you. But I may as well say at once that those who know most of India,

from the inside, are inclined to wonder at the noise our scarcely begun

experiment makes in England.”

“But surely the gathering together of Congress delegates is of itself a

new thing.”

“There’s nothing new under the sun. When Europe was a jungle half Asia

flocked to the canonical conferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the

people have gathered at Puri, Hurdwar, Trimbak, and Benares in immense

numbers. A great meeting, what you call a mass meeting, is really one of

the oldest and most popular of Indian institutions. In the case of the

Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests of the

altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahmanical, and that the whole

thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of Messrs.

Hume, Eardley Norton, and Digby.”

“You mean to say, then, it’s not a spontaneous movement?”

“What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This

seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal

about it; try it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly

trustworthy criterion, and there is scarcely the colour of money in it.

The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for working

expenses, railway fares, and stationery—the mere pasteboard and

scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere

financial inanition.”

“But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too

poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,”

Pagett insisted.

“That is precisely what I _do_ deny. The native side of the movement is

the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin

described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very

interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed

almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have

received an English education.”

“Surely that’s a very important class. Its members must be the ordained

leaders of popular thought.”

“Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in

this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical

work for generations, they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A

ship’s clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an

orderly-room writer, however smart he may be, is not the colonel. You

see, the writer class in India has never till now aspired to anything

like command. It wasn’t allowed to. The Indian gentleman, for thousands

of years past, has resembled Victor Hugo’s noble:

“Un vrai sire

Chatelain

Laisse ecrire

Le vilain.

Sa main digne

Quand il signe

Egratigne

Le velin.”

And the little _egratignures_ he most likes to make have been scored

pretty deeply by the sword.“

“But this is childish and mediæval nonsense!”

“Precisely; and from your, or rather our, point of view the pen _is_

mightier than the sword. In this country it’s otherwise. The fault lies

in our Indian balances, not yet adjusted to civilised weights and

measures.”

“Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural

aspirations and wishes of the people at large, though it may not exactly

lead them, and, in spite of all you say, Orde, I defy you to find a

really sound English Radical who would not sympathise with those

aspirations.”

Pagett spoke with some warmth, and he had scarcely ceased when a

well-appointed dog-cart turned into the compound gates, and Orde rose,

saying:

“Here is Edwards, the Master of the Lodge I neglect so diligently, come

to talk about accounts, I suppose.”

As the vehicle drove up under the porch Pagett also rose, saying with

the trained effusion born of much practice:

“But this is also _my_ friend, my old and valued friend, Edwards. I’m

delighted to see you. I knew you were in India, but not exactly where.”

“Then it isn’t accounts, Mr. Edwards,” said Orde cheerily.

“Why, no, sir; I heard Mr. Pagett was coming, and as our works were

closed for the New Year I thought I would drive over and see him.”

“A very happy thought. Mr. Edwards, you may not know, Orde, was a

leading member of our Radical Club at Switchton when I was beginning

political life, and I owe much to his exertions. There’s no pleasure

like meeting an old friend, except, perhaps, making a new one. I

suppose, Mr. Edwards, you stick to the good old cause?”

“Well, you see, sir, things are different out here. There’s precious

little one can find to say against the Government, which was the main of

our talk at home, and them that do say things are not the sort o’ people

a man who respects himself would like to be mixed up with. There are no

politics, in a manner of speaking, in India. It’s all work.”

“Surely you are mistaken, my good friend. Why, I have come all the way

from England just to see the working of this great National movement.”

“I don’t know where you’re going to find the nation as moves, to begin

with, and then you’ll be hard put to it to find what they are moving

about. It’s like this, sir,” said Edwards, who had not quite relished

being called “my good friend.” “They haven’t got any grievance—nothing

to hit with, don’t you see, sir; and then there’s not much to hit

against, because the Government is more like a kind of general

Providence, directing an old-established state of things, than that at

home, where there’s something new thrown down for us to fight about

every three months.”

“You are probably, in your workshops, full of English mechanics, out of

the way of learning what the masses think.”

“I don’t know so much about that. There are four of us English foremen,

and between seven and eight hundred native fitters, smiths, carpenters,

painters, and such like.”

“And they are full of the Congress, of course?”

“Never hear a word of it from year’s end to year’s end, and I speak the

talk, too. But I wanted to ask how things are going on at home—old Tyler

and Brown and the rest?”

“We will speak of them presently, but your account of the indifference

of your men surprises me almost as much as your own. I fear you are a

backslider from the good old doctrine, Edwards.” Pagett spoke as one who

mourned the death of a near relative.

“Not a bit, sir, but I should be if I took up with a parcel of babus,

pleaders, and schoolboys, as never did a day’s work in their lives, and

couldn’t if they tried. And if you was to poll us English railway-men,

mechanics, tradespeople, and the like of that all up and down the

country from Peshawur to Calcutta, you would find us mostly in a tale

together. And yet you know we’re the same English you pay some respect

to at home at ’lection time, and we have the pull o’ knowing something

about it.”

“This is very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and perhaps

you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will talk things over

at leisure. And about all old friends and old times,” added Pagett,

detecting with quick insight a look of disappointment in the mechanic’s

face.

Nodding briefly to Orde, Edwards mounted his dog-cart and drove off.

“It’s very disappointing,” said the Member to Orde, who, while his

friend discoursed with Edwards, had been looking over a bundle of

sketches drawn on gray paper in purple ink, brought to him by a

_Chuprassee_.

“Don’t let it trouble you, old chap,” said Orde sympathetically. “Look

here a moment, here are some sketches by the man who made the

carved-wood screen you admired so much in the dining-room, and wanted a

copy of, and the artist himself is here too.”

“A native?” said Pagett.

“Of course,” was the reply, “Bishen Singh is his name, and he has two

brothers to help him. When there is an important job to do, the three go

into partnership, but they spend most of their time and all their money

in litigation over an inheritance, and I’m afraid they are getting

involved. Thoroughbred Sikhs of the old rock, obstinate, touchy,

bigoted, and cunning, but good men for all that. Here is Bishen

Singh—shall we ask _him_ about the Congress?”

But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had never

heard of it, and he listened with a puzzled face and obviously feigned

interest to Orde’s account of its aims and objects, finally shaking his

vast white turban with great significance when he learned that it was

promoted by certain pleaders named by Orde, and by educated natives. He

began with laboured respect to explain how he was a poor man with no

concern in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but

presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound of

which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as he

denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with words who

filched his field from him, the men whose backs were never bowed in

honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the Bengali. He and one of his

brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there, had Bengali

carpenters given to them as assistants.

“Those carpenters!” said Bishen Singh. “Black apes were more efficient

workmates, and as for the Bengali babu—tchick!” The guttural click

needed no interpretation, but Orde translated the rest, while Pagett

gazed with interest at the wood-carver.

“He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali,” said

the M. P.

“Yes, it’s very sad that for ages outside Bengal there should be so

bitter a prejudice. Pride of race, which also means race-hatred, is the

plague and curse of India and it spreads far.” Orde pointed with his

riding-whip to the large map of India on the verandah wall.

“See! I begin with the North,” said he. “There’s the Afghan, and, as a

highlander, he despises all the dwellers in Hindustan—with the exception

of the Sikh, whom he hates as cordially as the Sikh hates him. The Hindu

loathes Sikh and Afghan, and the Rajput—that’s a little lower down

across this yellow blot of desert—has a strong objection, to put it

mildly, to the Maratha, who, by the way, poisonously hates the Afghan.

Let’s go North a minute. The Sindhi hates everybody I’ve mentioned. Very

good, we’ll take less warlike races. The cultivator of Northern India

domineers over the man in the next province, and the Behari of the

North-West ridicules the Bengali. They are all at one on that point. I’m

giving you merely the roughest possible outlines of the facts, of

course.”

Bishen Singh, his clean-cut nostrils still quivering, watched the large

sweep of the whip as it travelled from the frontier, through Sindh, the

Punjab and Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of the Jumna.

“Hate—eternal and inextinguishable hate,” concluded Orde, flicking the

lash of the whip across the large map from East to West as he sat down.

“Remember Canning’s advice to Lord Granville, ‘Never write or speak of

Indian things without looking at a map.’”

Pagett opened his eyes; Orde resumed. “And the race-hatred is only a

part of it. What’s really the matter with Bishen Singh is class-hatred,

which, unfortunately, is even more intense and more widely spread.

That’s one of the little drawbacks of caste, which some of your recent

English writers find an impeccable system.”

The wood-carver was glad to be recalled to the business of his craft,

and his eyes shone as he received instructions for a carved wooden

doorway for Pagett, which he promised should be splendidly executed and

despatched to England in six months. It is an irrelevant detail, but in

spite of Orde’s reminders, fourteen months elapsed before the work was

finished. Business over, Bishen Singh hung about, reluctant to take his

leave, and at last joining his hands and approaching Orde with bated

breath and whispering humbleness, said he had a petition to make. Orde’s

face suddenly lost all trace of expression. “Speak on, Bishen Singh,”

said he, and the carver in a whining tone explained that his case

against his brothers was fixed for hearing before a native judge,

and—here he dropped his voice still lower till he was summarily stopped

by Orde, who sternly pointed to the gate with an emphatic Begone!

Bishen Singh, showing but little sign of discomposure, salaamed

respectfully to the friends and departed.

Pagett looked inquiry; Orde, with complete recovery of his usual

urbanity, replied: “It’s nothing, only the old story: he wants his case

to be tried by an English judge—they all do that—but when he began to

hint that the other side were in improper relations with the native

judge I had to shut him up. Gunga Ram, the man he wanted to make

insinuations about, may not be very bright; but he’s as honest as

daylight on the bench. But that’s just what one can’t get a native to

believe.”

“Do you really mean to say these people prefer to have their cases tried

by English judges?”

“Why, certainly.”

Pagett drew a long breath. “I didn’t know that before.” At this point a

phaeton entered the compound, and Orde rose with “Confound it, there’s

old Rasul Ali Khan come to pay one of his tiresome duty-calls. I’m

afraid we shall never get through our little Congress discussion.”

Pagett was an almost silent spectator of the grave formalities of a

visit paid by a punctilious old Mahommedan gentleman to an Indian

official; and was much impressed by the distinction of manner and fine

appearance of the Mahommedan landholder. When the exchange of polite

banalities came to a pause, he expressed a wish to learn the courtly

visitor’s opinion of the National Congress.

Orde reluctantly interpreted, and with a smile which even Mahommedan

politeness could not save from bitter scorn, Rasul Ali Khan intimated

that he knew nothing about it and cared still less. It was a kind of

talk encouraged by the Government for some mysterious purpose of its

own, and for his own part he wondered and held his peace.

Pagett was far from satisfied with this, and wished to have the old

gentleman’s opinion on the propriety of managing all Indian affairs on

the basis of an elective system.

Orde did his best to explain, but it was plain the visitor was bored and

bewildered. Frankly, he didn’t think much of committees; they had a

Municipal Committee at Lahore and had elected a menial servant, an

orderly, as a member. He had been informed of this on good authority,

and after that committees had ceased to interest him. But all was

according to the rule of Government, and, please God, it was all for the

best.

“What an old fossil it is!” cried Pagett, as Orde returned from seeing

his guest to the door; “just like some old blue-blooded hidalgo of

Spain. What does he really think of the Congress after all, and of the

elective system?”

“Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election is

a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the most

masterful and powerful minority in the country, to contemplate their own

extinction with joy. The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists,

who are many, and the landed proprietors, also of Hindu race, are

frightened and put out by this election business and by the importance

we have bestowed on lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have,

up to now, been in abject submission to them. They say little, but after

all they are the most important faggots in the great bundle of

communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for

their estrangement. They have controlled the land.”

“But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your

municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the principle

is accepted in your centres, don’t you know, it is bound to spread, and

these important—ah’m—people of yours would learn it like the rest. I see

no difficulty at all,” and the smooth lips closed with the complacent

snap habitual to Pagett, M. P., the “man of cheerful yesterdays and

confident to-morrows.”

Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.

“The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn from

scores of municipalities, others have had to be summarily suppressed,

and, outside the Presidency towns, the actual work done has been badly

performed. This is of less moment, perhaps—it only sends up the local

death-rates—than the fact that the public interest in municipal

elections, never very strong, has waned, and is waning, in spite of

careful nursing on the part of Government servants.”

“Can you explain this lack of interest?” said Pagett, putting aside the

rest of Orde’s remarks.

“You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every

thousand of our population can spell. Then they are infinitely more

interested in religion and caste questions than in any sort of politics.

When the business of mere existence is over, their minds are occupied by

a series of interests, pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like,

based on centuries of tradition and usage. You, perhaps, find it hard to

conceive of people absolutely devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the

daily paper, and the printed speech are unknown, and you would describe

their life as blank. That’s a profound mistake. You are in another land,

another century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family

merely, and not the community, is all-important. The average Oriental

cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His life, too, is more

complete and self-sufficing and less sordid and low-thoughted than you

might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never

empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to

forget that it is the man that is elemental, not the book.

“The corn and the cattle are all my care,

And the rest is the will of God.”

Why should such folk look up from their immemorially appointed round of

duty and interests to meddle with the unknown and fuss with

voting-papers? How would you, atop of all your interests, care to

conduct even one-tenth of your life according to the manners and customs

of the Papuans, let’s say? That’s what it comes to.”

“But if they won’t take the trouble to vote, why do you anticipate that

Mahommedans, proprietors, and the rest would be crushed by majorities of

them?”

Again Pagett disregarded the closing sentence.

“Because, though the landholders would not move a finger on any purely

political question, they could be raised in dangerous excitement by

religious hatreds. Already the first note of this has been sounded by

the people who are trying to get up an agitation on the cow-killing

question, and every year there is trouble over the Mahommedan Muharrum

processions.”

“But who looks after the popular rights, being thus unrepresented?”

“The Government of Her Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, in which, if

the Congress promoters are to be believed, the people have an implicit

trust; for the Congress circular, specially prepared for rustic

comprehension, says the movement is ‘_for the remission of tax, the

advancement of Hindustan, and the strengthening of the British

Government._’ This paper is headed in large letters—‘MAY THE PROSPERITY

OF THE EMPRESS OF INDIA ENDURE.’”

“Really!” said Pagett, “that shows some cleverness. But there are things

better worth imitation in our English methods of—er—political statement

than this sort of amiable fraud.”

“Anyhow,” resumed Orde, “you perceive that not a word is said about

elections and the elective principle, and the reticence of the Congress

promoters here shows they are wise in their generation.”

“But the elective principle must triumph in the end, and the little

difficulties you seem to anticipate would give way on the introduction

of a well-balanced scheme capable of indefinite extension.”

“But is it possible to devise a scheme which, always assuming that the

people took any interest in it, without enormous expense, ruinous

dislocation of the administration and danger to the public peace, can

satisfy the aspirations of Mr. Hume and his following, and yet safeguard

the interests of the Mahommedans, the landed and wealthy classes, the

conservative Hindus, the Eurasians, Parsees, Sikhs, Rajputs, native

Christians, domiciled Europeans and others, who are each important and

powerful in their way?”

Pagett’s attention, however, was diverted to the gate, where a group of

cultivators stood in apparent hesitation.

“Here are the twelve Apostles, by Jove!—come straight out of Raffaele’s

cartoons,” said the M. P., with the fresh appreciation of a new-comer.

Orde, loath to be interrupted, turned impatiently towards the villagers,

and their leader, handing his long staff to one of his companions,

advanced to the house.

“It is old Jelloo, the Lumberdar or head-man of Pind Sharkot, and a very

intelligent man for a villager.”

The Jat farmer had removed his shoes and stood smiling on the edge of

the verandah. His strongly marked features glowed with russet bronze,

and his bright eyes gleamed under deeply set brows, contracted by

life-long exposure to sunshine. His beard and moustache, streaked with

gray, swept from bold cliffs of brow and cheek in the large sweeps one

sees drawn by Michael Angelo, and strands of long black hair mingled

with the irregularly piled wreaths and folds of his turban. The drapery

of stout blue cotton cloth thrown over his broad shoulders and girt

round his narrow loins, hung from his tall form in broadly sculptured

folds and he would have made a superb model for an artist in search of a

patriarch.

Orde greeted him cordially, and after a polite pause the countryman

started off with a long story told with impressive earnestness. Orde

listened and smiled, interrupting the speaker at times to argue and

reason with him in a tone which Pagett could hear was kindly, and,

finally checking the flux of words, was about to dismiss him when Pagett

suggested that he should be asked about the National Congress.

But Jelloo had never heard of it. He was a poor man, and such things, by

the favour of his Honour, did not concern him.

“What’s the matter with your big friend that he was so terribly in

earnest?” asked Pagett, when he had left.

“Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next village, who

have had smallpox and cattle plague pretty badly, and by the help of a

wizard, a currier, and several pigs have passed it on to his own

village. ’Wants to know if they can’t be run in for this awful crime. It

seems they made a dreadful charivari at the village boundary, threw a

quantity of spell-bearing objects over the border, a buffalo’s skull and

other things; then branded a _chamar_—what you would call a currier—on

his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into Jelloo’s

village. Jelloo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard

directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft,

arson, cattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him

punished for bewitching them and inflicting smallpox.”

“And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?”

“Lunatic! the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground

of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would like a native

superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he

objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than small-pox and

criminal tribes put together.”

“Criminal tribes—er—I don’t quite understand,” said Pagett.

“We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack ante-British

days became robbers, in various kind, and preyed on the people. They are

being restrained and reclaimed little by little, and in time will become

useful citizens, but they still cherish hereditary traditions of crime,

and are a difficult lot to deal with. By the way, what about the

political rights of these folk under your schemes? The country people

call them vermin, but I suppose they would be electors with the rest.”

“Nonsense—special provision would be made for them in a well-considered

electoral scheme, and they would doubtless be treated with fitting

severity,” said Pagett with a magisterial air.

“Severity, yes—but whether it would be fitting is doubtful. Even those

poor devils have rights, and, after all, they only practise what they

have been taught.”

“But criminals, Orde!”

“Yes, criminals with codes and rituals of crime, gods and godlings of

crime, and a hundred songs and sayings in praise of it. Puzzling, isn’t

it?”

“It’s simply dreadful. They ought to be put down at once. Are there many

of them?”

“Not more than about sixty thousand in this province, for many of the

tribes broadly described as criminal are really vagabond and criminal

only on occasion, while others are being settled and reclaimed. They are

of great antiquity, a legacy from the past, the golden, glorious Aryan

past of Max Müller, Birdwood and the rest of your spindrift

philosophers.”

An orderly brought a card to Orde, who took it with a movement of

irritation at the interruption, and handed it to Pagett: a large card

with a ruled border in red ink, and in the centre in school-boy

copper-plate, _Mr. Dina Nath_. “Give salaam,” said the civilian, and

there entered in haste a slender youth, clad in a closely fitting coat

of gray homespun, tight trousers, patent-leather shoes, and a small

black velvet cap. His thin cheek twitched, and his eyes wandered

restlessly, for the young man was evidently nervous and uncomfortable,

though striving to assume a free-and-easy air.

“Your honour may perhaps remember me,” he said in English, and Orde

scanned him keenly.

“I know your face, somehow. You belonged to the Shershah district, I

think, when I was in charge there?”

“Yes, sir, my father is writer at Shershah, and your honour gave me a

prize when I was first in the Middle School examination five years ago.

Since then I have prosecuted my studies, and I am now second year’s

student in the Mission College.”

“Of course: you are Kedar Nath’s son—the boy who said he liked geography

better than play or sugar-cakes, and I didn’t believe you. How is your

father getting on?”

“He is well, and he sends his salaam, but his circumstances are

depressed, and he also is down on his luck.”

“You learn English idioms at the Mission College, it seems.”

“Yes, sir, they are the best idioms, and my father ordered me to ask

your honour to say a word for him to the present incumbent of your

honour’s shoes, the latchet of which he is not worthy to open, and who

knows not Joseph; for things are different at Shershah now, and my

father wants promotion.”

“Your father is a good man, and I will do what I can for him.”

At this point a telegram was handed to Orde, who, after glancing at it,

said he must leave his young friend, whom he introduced to Pagett, “a

member of the English House of Commons who wishes to learn about India.”

Orde had scarcely retired with his telegram when Pagett began:

“Perhaps you can tell me something of the National Congress movement?”

“Sir, it is the greatest movement of modern times, and one in which all

educated men like us _must_ join. All our students are for the

Congress.”

“Excepting, I suppose, Mahommedans, and the Christians?” said Pagett,

quick to use his recent instruction.

“These are some _mere_ exceptions to the universal rule.”

“But the people outside the College, the working classes, the

agriculturists; your father and mother, for instance.”

“My mother,” said the young man, with a visible effort to bring himself

to pronounce the word, “has no ideas, and my father is not

agriculturist, nor working class; he is of the Kayeth caste; but he had

not the advantage of a collegiate education, and he does not know much

of the Congress. It is a movement for the educated young-man”—connecting

adjective and noun in a sort of vocal hyphen.

“Ah, yes,” said Pagett, feeling he was a little off the rails, “and what

are the benefits you expect to gain by it?”

“Oh, sir, everything. England owes its greatness to Parliamentary

institutions and we should _at once_ gain the same high position in

scale of nations. Sir, we wish to have the sciences, the arts, the

manufactures, the industrial factories, with steam-engines and other

motive powers and public meetings and debates. Already we have a

debating club in connection with the college and elect a Mr. Speaker.

Sir, the progress _must_ come. You also are a Member of Parliament and

worship the great Lord Ripon,” said the youth, breathlessly, and his

black eyes flashed as he finished his commaless sentences.

“Well,” said Pagett, drily, “it has not yet occurred to me to worship

his Lordship, although I believe he is a very worthy man, and I am not

sure that England owes quite all the things you name to the House of

Commons. You see, my young friend, the growth of a nation like ours is

slow, subject to many influences, and if you have read your history

aright——”

“Sir, I know it all—all! Norman Conquest, Magna Charta, Runnymede,

Reformation, Tudors, Stuarts, Mr. Milton and Mr. Burke, and I have read

something of Mr. Herbert Spencer and Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’

Reynolds’ ‘Mysteries of the Court,’ and——”

Pagett felt like one who had pulled the string of a shower-bath

unawares, and hastened to stop the torrent with a question as to what

particular grievances of the people of India the attention of an elected

assembly should be first directed. But young Mr. Dina Nath was slow to

particularise. There were many, very many demanding consideration. Mr.

Pagett would like to hear of one or two typical examples. The Repeal of

the Arms Act was at last named, and the student learned for the first

time that a license was necessary before an Englishman could carry a gun

in England. Then natives of India ought to be allowed to become

Volunteer Riflemen if they chose, and the absolute equality of the

Oriental with his European fellow-subject in civil status should be

proclaimed on principle, and the Indian Army should be considerably

reduced. The student was not, however, prepared with answers to Mr.

Pagett’s mildest questions on these points, and he returned to vague

generalities, leaving the M. P. so much impressed with the crudity of

his views that he was glad on Orde’s return to say good-bye to his “very

interesting” young friend.

“What do you think of young India?” asked Orde.

“Curious, very curious—and callow.”

“And yet,” the civilian replied, “one can scarcely help sympathising

with him for his mere youth’s sake. The young orators of the Oxford

Union arrived at the same conclusions and showed doubtless just the same

enthusiasm. If there were any political analogy between India and

England, if the thousand races of this Empire were one, if there were

any chance even of their learning to speak one language, if, in short,

India were a Utopia of the debating-room, and not a real land, this kind

of talk might be worth listening to, but it is all based on false

analogy and ignorance of the facts.”

“But he is a native and knows the facts.”

“He is a sort of English schoolboy, but married three years, and the

father of two weaklings, and knows less than most English schoolboys.

You saw all he is and knows, and such ideas as he has acquired are

directly hostile to the most cherished convictions of the vast majority

of the people.”

“But what does he mean by saying he is a student of a mission college?

Is he a Christian?”

“He meant just what he said, and he is not a Christian, nor ever will he

be. Good people in America, Scotland, and England, most of whom would

never dream of collegiate education for their own sons, are pinching

themselves to bestow it in pure waste on Indian youths. Their scheme is

an oblique, subterranean attack on heathenism; the theory being that

with the jam of secular education, leading to a University degree, the

pill of moral or religious instruction may be coaxed down the heathen

gullet.”

“But does it succeed; do they make converts?”

“They make no converts, for the subtle Oriental swallows the jam and

rejects the pill; but the mere example of the sober, righteous, and

godly lives of the principals and professors, who are most excellent and

devoted men, must have a certain moral value. Yet, as Lord Lansdowne

pointed out the other day, the market is dangerously overstocked with

graduates of our Universities who look for employment in the

administration. An immense number are employed, but year by year the

college mills grind out increasing lists of youths foredoomed to failure

and disappointment, and meanwhile trade, manufactures, and the

industrial arts are neglected and in fact regarded with contempt by our

new literary mandarins _in posse_.”

“But our young friend said he wanted steam-engines and factories,” said

Pagett.

“Yes, he would like to direct such concerns. He wants to begin at the

top, for manual labour is held to be discreditable, and he would never

defile his hands by the apprenticeship which the architects, engineers,

and manufacturers of England cheerfully undergo; and he would be aghast

to learn that the leading names of industrial enterprise in England

belonged a generation or two since, or now belong, to men who wrought

with their own hands. And, though he talks glibly of manufacturers, he

refuses to see that the Indian manufacturer of the future will be the

despised workman of the present. It was proposed, for example, a few

weeks ago, that a certain municipality in this province should establish

an elementary technical school for the sons of workmen. The stress of

the opposition to the plan came from a pleader who owed all he had to a

college education bestowed on him gratis by Government and missions. You

would have fancied some fine old crusted Tory squire of the last

generation was speaking. ‘These people,’ he said, ‘want no education,

for they learn their trades from their fathers, and to teach a workman’s

son the elements of mathematics and physical science would give him

ideas above his business. They must be kept in their place, and it was

idle to imagine that there was any science in wood or iron work.’ And he

carried his point. But the Indian workman will rise in the social scale

in spite of the new literary caste.”

“In England we have scarcely begun to realise that there is an

industrial class in this country, yet, I suppose, the example of men

like Edwards, for instance, must tell,” said Pagett thoughtfully.

“That you shouldn’t know much about it is natural enough, for there are

but few sources of information. India in this, as in other respects, is

like a badly kept ledger—not written up to date. And men like Edwards

are, in reality, missionaries who by precept and example are teaching

more lessons than they know. Only a few, however, of their crowds of

subordinates seem to care to try to emulate them, and aim at individual

advancement; the rest drop into the ancient Indian caste groove.”

“How do you mean?” asked Pagett.

“Well, it is found that the new railway and factory workmen, the fitter,

the smith, the engine-driver, and the rest are already forming separate

hereditary castes. You may notice this down at Jamalpur in Bengal, one

of the oldest railway centres; and at other places, and in other

industries, they are following the same inexorable Indian law.”

“Which means——?” queried Pagett.

“It means that the rooted habit of the people is to gather in small

self-contained, self-sufficing family groups with no thought or care for

any interests but their own—a habit which is scarcely compatible with

the right acceptation of the elective principle.”

“Yet you must admit, Orde, that though our young friend was not able to

expound the faith that is in him, your Indian army is too big.”

“Not nearly big enough for its main purpose. And, as a side issue, there

are certain powerful minorities of fighting folk whose interests an

Asiatic Government is bound to consider. Arms is as much a means of

livelihood as civil employ under Government and law. And it would be a

heavy strain on British bayonets to hold down Sikhs, Jats, Bilochis,

Rohillas, Rajputs, Bhils, Dogras, Pathans, and Gurkhas to abide by the

decisions of a numerical majority opposed to their interests. Leave the

‘numerical majority’ to itself without the British bayonets—a flock of

sheep might as reasonably hope to manage a troop of collies.”

“This complaint about excessive growth of the army is akin to another

contention of the Congress party. They protest against the malversation

of the whole of the moneys raised by additional taxes as a Famine

Insurance Fund to other purposes. You must be aware that this special

Famine Fund has all been spent on frontier roads and defences and

strategic railway schemes as a protection against Russia.”

“But there was never a special famine fund raised by special taxation

and put by as in a box. No sane administrator would dream of such a

thing. In a time of prosperity a finance minister, rejoicing in a

margin, proposed to annually apply a million and a half to the

construction of railways and canals for the protection of districts

liable to scarcity, and to the reduction of the annual loans for public

works. But times were not always prosperous, and the finance minister

had to choose whether he would hang up the insurance scheme for a year

or impose fresh taxation. When a farmer hasn’t got the little surplus he

hoped to have for buying a new waggon and draining a low-lying field

corner, you don’t accuse him of malversation if he spends what he has on

the necessary work of the rest of his farm.”

A clatter of hoofs was heard, and Orde looked up with vexation, but his

brow cleared as a horseman halted under the porch.

“Hello, Orde! just looked in to ask if you are coming to polo on

Tuesday: we want you badly to help to crumple up the Krab Bokhar team.”

Orde explained that he had to go out into the District, and while the

visitor complained that though good men wouldn’t play, duffers were

always keen, and that his side would probably be beaten, Pagett rose to

look at his mount, a red, lathered Biloch mare, with a curious lyre-like

incurving of the ears. “Quite a little thoroughbred in all other

respects,” said the M. P., and Orde presented Mr. Reginald Burke,

Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Bank, to his friend.

“Yes, she’s as good as they make ’em, and she’s all the female I

possess, and spoiled in consequence, aren’t you, old girl?” said Burke,

patting the mare’s glossy neck as she backed and plunged.

“Mr. Pagett,” said Orde, “has been asking me about the Congress. What is

your opinion?” Burke turned to the M. P. with a frank smile.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, sir, I should say, Damn the

Congress, but then I’m no politician, but only a business man.”

“You find it a tiresome subject?”

“Yes, it’s all that, and worse than that, for this kind of agitation is

anything but wholesome for the country.”

“How do you mean?”

“It would be a long job to explain, and Sara here won’t stand, but you

know how sensitive capital is, and how timid investors are. All this

sort of rot is likely to frighten them, and we can’t afford to frighten

them. The passengers aboard an Ocean steamer don’t feel reassured when

the ship’s way is stopped and they hear the workmen’s hammers tinkering

at the engines down below. The old Ark’s going on all right as she is,

and only wants quiet and room to move. Them’s my sentiments, and those

of some other people who have to do with money and business.”

“Then you are a thick-and-thin supporter of the Government as it is.”

“Why, no! The Indian Government is much too timid with its money—like an

old maiden aunt of mine—always in a funk about her investments. They

don’t spend half enough on railways, for instance, and they are slow in

a general way, and ought to be made to sit up in all that concerns the

encouragement of private enterprise, and coaxing out into use the

millions of capital that lie dormant in the country.”

The mare was dancing with impatience, and Burke was evidently anxious to

be off, so the men wished him good-bye.

“Who is your genial friend who condemns both Congress and Government in

a breath?” asked Pagett, with an amused smile.

“Just now he is Reggie Burke, keener on polo than on anything else, but

if you went to the Sind and Sialkote Bank to-morrow you would find Mr.

Reginald Burke a very capable man of business, known and liked by an

immense constituency North and South of this.”

“Do you think he is right about the Government’s want of enterprise?”

“I should hesitate to say. Better consult the merchants and chambers of

commerce in Cawnpore, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. But though these

bodies would like, as Reggie puts it, to make Government sit up, it is

an elementary consideration in governing a country like India, which

must be administered for the benefit of the people at large, that the

counsels of those who resort to it for the sake of making money should

be judiciously weighed and not allowed to overpower the rest. They are

welcome guests here, as a matter of course, but it has been found best

to restrain their influence. Thus the rights of plantation labourers,

factory operatives, and the like, have been protected, and the

capitalist, eager to get on, has not always regarded Government action

with favour. It is quite conceivable that under an elective system the

commercial communities of the great towns might find means to secure

majorities on labour questions and on financial matters.”

“They would act at least with intelligence and consideration.”

“Intelligence, yes; but as to consideration, who at the present moment

most bitterly resents the tender solicitude of Lancashire for the

welfare and protection of the Indian factory operative? English and

native capitalists running cotton mills and factories.”

“But is the solicitude of Lancashire in this matter entirely

disinterested?”

“It is no business of mine to say. I merely indicate an example of how a

powerful commercial interest might hamper a Government intent in the

first place on the larger interests of humanity.”

Orde broke off to listen a moment. “There’s Dr. Lathrop talking to my

wife in the drawing-room,” said he.

“Surely not; that’s a lady’s voice, and if my ears don’t deceive me, an

American.”

“Exactly; Dr. Eva McCreery Lathrop, chief of the new Women’s Hospital

here, and a very good fellow forbye. Good morning, Doctor,” he said, as

a graceful figure came out on the verandah; “you seem to be in trouble.

I hope Mrs. Orde was able to help you.”

“Your wife is real kind and good; I always come to her when I’m in a

fix, but I fear it’s more than comforting I want.”

“You work too hard and wear yourself out,” said Orde, kindly. “Let me

introduce my friend, Mr. Pagett, just fresh from home, and anxious to

learn his India. You could tell him something of that more important

half of which a mere man knows so little.”

“Perhaps I could if I’d any heart to do it, but I’m in trouble, I’ve

lost a case, a case that was doing well, through nothing in the world

but inattention on the part of a nurse I had begun to trust. And when I

spoke only a small piece of my mind she collapsed in a whining heap on

the floor. It is hopeless!”

The men were silent, for the blue eyes of the lady doctor were dim.

Recovering herself, she looked up with a smile half sad, half humorous.

“And I am in a whining heap too; but what phase of Indian life are you

particularly interested in, sir?”

“Mr. Pagett intends to study the political aspect of things and the

possibility of bestowing electoral institutions on the people.”

“Wouldn’t it be as much to the purpose to bestow point-lace collars on

them? They need many things more urgently than votes. Why, it’s like

giving a bread-pill for a broken leg.”

“Er—I don’t quite follow,” said Pagett uneasily.

“Well, what’s the matter with this country is not in the least

political, but an all-round entanglement of physical, social, and moral

evils and corruptions, all more or less due to the unnatural treatment

of women. You can’t gather figs from thistles, and so long as the system

of infant marriage, the prohibition of the remarriage of widows, the

lifelong imprisonment of wives and mothers in a worse than penal

confinement, and the withholding from them of any kind of education or

treatment as rational beings continues, the country can’t advance a

step. Half of it is morally dead, and worse than dead, and that’s just

the half from which we have a right to look for the best impulses. It’s

right here where the trouble is, and not in any political considerations

whatsoever.”

“But do they marry so early?” said Pagett, vaguely.

“The average age is seven, but thousands are married still earlier. One

result is that girls of twelve and thirteen have to bear the burden of

wifehood and motherhood, and, as might be expected, the rate of

mortality both for mothers and children is terrible. Pauperism, domestic

unhappiness, and a low state of health are only a few of the

consequences of this. Then, when, as frequently happens, the boy-husband

dies prematurely, his widow is condemned to worse than death. She may

not re-marry, must live a secluded and despised life, a life so

unnatural that she sometimes prefers suicide; more often she goes

astray. You don’t know in England what such words as ‘infant-marriage,

baby-wife, girl-mother, and virgin-widow’ mean; but they mean

unspeakable horrors here.”

“Well, but the advanced political party here will surely make it their

business to advocate social reforms as well as political ones,” said

Pagett.

“Very surely they will do no such thing,” said the lady doctor,

emphatically. “I _wish_ I could make you understand. Why, even of the

funds devoted to the Marchioness of Dufferin’s organisation for medical

aid to the women of India, it was said in print and in speech that they

would be better spent on more college scholarships for men. And in all

the advanced parties’ talk—God forgive them—and in all their programmes,

they carefully avoid all such subjects. They will talk about the

protection of the cow, for that’s an ancient superstition—they can all

understand that; but the protection of the women is a new and dangerous

idea.” She turned to Pagett impulsively:

“You are a member of the English Parliament. Can you do nothing? The

foundations of their life are rotten—utterly and bestially rotten. I

could tell your wife things that I couldn’t tell you. I know the

life—the inner life that belongs to the native, and I know nothing else;

and, believe me, you might as well try to grow golden-rod in a

mushroom-pit as to make anything of a people that are born and reared as

these—these things are. The men talk of their rights and privileges. I

have seen the women that bear these very men, and again—may God forgive

the men!”

Pagett’s eyes opened with a large wonder. Dr. Lathrop rose

tempestuously.

“I must be off to lecture,” said she, “and I’m sorry that I can’t show

you my hospitals; but you had better believe, sir, that it’s more

necessary for India than all the elections in creation.”

“That’s a woman with a mission, and no mistake,” said Pagett, after a

pause.

“Yes; she believes in her work, and so do I,” said Orde. “I’ve a notion

that in the end it will be found that the most helpful work done for

India in this generation was wrought by Lady Dufferin in drawing

attention—what work that was, by the way, even with her husband’s great

name to back it!—to the needs of women here. In effect, native habits

and beliefs are an organised conspiracy against the laws of health and

happy life—but there is some dawning of hope now.”

“How d’you account for the general indifference, then?”

“I suppose it’s due in part to their fatalism and their utter

indifference to all human suffering. How much do you imagine the great

province of the Punjab, with over twenty million people and half a score

rich towns, has contributed to the maintenance of civil dispensaries

last year? About seven thousand rupees.”

“That’s seven hundred pounds,” said Pagett quickly.

“I wish it was,” replied Orde; “but anyway, it’s an absurdly inadequate

sum, and shows one of the blank sides of Oriental character.”

Pagett was silent for a long time. The question of direct and personal

pain did not lie within his researches. He preferred to discuss the

weightier matters of the law, and contented himself with murmuring:

“They’ll do better later on.” Then, with a rush, returning to his first

thought:

“But, my dear Orde, if it’s merely a class movement of a local and

temporary character, how d’you account for Bradlaugh, who is at least a

man of sense, taking it up?”

“I know nothing of the champion of the New Brahmans but what I see in

the papers. I suppose there is something tempting in being hailed by a

large assemblage as the representative of the aspirations of two hundred

and fifty millions of people. Such a man looks ‘through all the roaring

and the wreaths,’ and does not reflect that it is a false perspective,

which, as a matter of fact, hides the real complex and manifold India

from his gaze. He can scarcely be expected to distinguish between the

ambitions of a new oligarchy and the real wants of the people of whom he

knows nothing. But it’s strange that a professed Radical should come to

be the chosen advocate of a movement which has for its aim the revival

of an ancient tyranny. Shows how even Radicalism can fall into academic

grooves and miss the essential truths of its own creed. Believe me,

Pagett, to deal with India you want first-hand knowledge and experience.

I wish he would come and live here for a couple of years or so.”

“Is not this rather an _ad hominem_ style of argument?”

“Can’t help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not

to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and upbringing

of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he

trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange

want of imagination and the sense of humour.”

“No, I don’t quite admit it,” said Pagett.

“Well, you know him and I don’t, but that’s how it strikes a stranger.”

He turned on his heel and paced the verandah thoughtfully. “And, after

all, the burden of the actual, daily unromantic toil falls on the

shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He enjoys all the

privileges of recommendation without responsibility, and we—well,

perhaps, when you’ve seen a little more of India you’ll understand. To

begin with, our death-rate’s five times higher than yours—I speak now

for the brutal bureaucrat—and we work on the refuse of worked-out cities

and exhausted civilisations, among the bones of the dead.”

Pagett laughed. “That’s an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde.”

“Is it? Let’s see,” said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara, striding into

the sunshine towards a half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the

man’s hoe, and went to a rain-scarped bank at the bottom of the garden.

“Come here, Pagett,” he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil. After three

strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half of a

clanking skeleton that settled at Pagett’s feet in an unseemly jumble of

bones. The M. P. drew back.

“Our houses are built on cemeteries,” said Orde. “There are scores of

thousands of graves within ten miles.”

Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a man

who has but little to do with the dead. “India’s a very curious place,”

said he, after a pause.

“Ah? You’ll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch,” said

Orde.

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