Читать книгу Miss Stuart's Legacy - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 6

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Early morning in the big bazaar at Faizapore. So much can be said; but who with pen alone could paint the scene, or who with brush give the aroma, physical and moral, which, to those familiar with the life of Indian streets, remains for ever the one indelible memory? The mysterious smell indescribable to those who know not the East; the air of sordid money-getting and giving which pervades even the children; the gaily-dressed, chattering stream of people drifting by; but from the grey-bearded cultivator come on a lawsuit from his village, to the sweeper, besom in hand, propelling the black flood along the gutter, the only subject sufficiently interesting to raise one voice above the universal hum, is money. Even the stalwart herdswomen with their kilted skirts swaying at each free bold step, their patchwork bodices obeying laws of decency antipodal to ours, even they, born and bred in the desert, talk noisily of the ghee they are bringing to market in the russet and black jars poised on their heads; and if ghee be not actually money, it is inextricably mixed up with it in the native mind.

All else may fade from the memory; the glare of sunlight, the transparent shadows, the clustering flies and children round the cavernous sweetmeat-shops, the glitter of brazen pots, and the rainbow-hued overflow from the dyers' vats staining the streets like a reflection of the many-tinted cloths festooned to dry overhead. Even the sharper contrasts of the scene may be forgotten; the marriage procession swerving to give way to the quiet dead, swathed in muslins and bound with tinsel, carried high on the string bed, or awaiting sunset and burial in some narrow by-way among green-gold melons and piles of red wheat. But to those who have known an Indian bazaar well, the chink of money, and the smell of a chemist's shop, will ever remain a more potent spell to awaken memory than any elaborate pictures made by pen or pencil.

On this particular morning quite a little crowd was collected round the doorway leading to the house of one Shunker Dâs, usurer, contractor, and honorary magistrate; a man who combined those three occupations into one unceasing manufacture of money. In his hands pice turned to annas, annas to rupees, and rupees in their turn to fat. For there is no little truth in the assertion that the real test of a buniah's (money-lender's) wealth is his weight, and the safest guard for income-tax his girth in inches.

Nevertheless a skeleton lay hidden under Shunker Dâs's mountain of prosperous flesh; a gruesome skeleton whose bones rattled ominously. Between him and the perdition of a sonless death stood but one life; a life so frail that it had only been saved hitherto by the expedient of dressing the priceless boy in petticoats, and so palming him off on the dread Shiva as a girl. At least so said the zenana women, and so in his inmost heart thought Shunker Dâs, though he was a prime specimen of enlightened native society. But on that day the fateful first decade during which the Destroyer had reft away so many baby-heirs from the usurer's home was over; and amid countless ceremonies, and much dispensation of alms, the little Nuttu, with his ears and nose pierced like a girl's, had been attired in the pugree and pyjamas of his sex. Hence the crowd closing in round the Lâlâ's Calcutta-built barouche which waited for its owner to come out. Hence the number of professional beggars, looking on the whole more fat and well-liking than the workers around them, certainly more so than a small group of women who were peeping charily from the door of the next house,--a very different house from Shunker Dâs's pretentious stucco erection with its blue elephants and mottled tigers frescoed round the top storey, and a railway train, flanked by two caricatures of the British soldier, over the courtyard doorway. This was a tall, square, colourless tower, gaining its only relief from the numerous places where the outer skin of bricks had fallen away, disclosing the hard red mortar beneath; mortar that was stronger than stone; mortar that had been ground and spread long years before the word "contractor" was a power in India. Here in poverty, abject in all save honour, dwelt Mahomed Lateef, a Syyed of the Syyeds;^[1] and it was his hewers of wood and drawers of water who formed the group at the door, turning their lean faces away disdainfully when the baskets of dough cakes, and trays of sweet rice were brought out for distribution from the idolater's house.

The crowd thickened, but fell away instinctively to give place to a couple of English soldiers who came tramping along shoulder to shoulder, utterly unconcerned and unsympathetic; their Glengarry caps set at the same angle, the very pipes in their mouths having a drilled appearance. Such a quiet, orderly crowd it was; not even becoming audible when Shunker Dâs appeared with little Nuttu, the hero of the day, who in a coat of the same brocade as his father's, and a pugree tied in the same fashion, looked a wizened, changeling double of his unwieldy companion. The barouche was brilliant as to varnish, vivid as to red linings, and the bay Australians were the best money could buy; yet the people, as it passed, took small notice of the Lâlâ, lolling in gorgeous attire against the Berlin-wool-worked cushion which he had bought from the Commissioner's wife at a bazaar in aid of a cathedral. They gave far more attention to a hawk-eyed old man with a cruel, high-bred face, who rode by on a miserable pony, and after returning the Lâlâ's contemptuous salutation with grave dignity, spat solemnly into the gutter.

This was Mahomed Lateef, who but the day before had put the talisman-signet on his right hand to a deed mortgaging the last acre of his ancestral estate to the usurer. Yet the people stood up with respectful salaams to him, while they had only obsequious grins for the other. Indeed, one old patriarch waiting for death in the sun, curled up comfortably, his chin upon his knees, on a bed stuck well into the street, nodded his head cheerfully and muttered "Shunker's father was nobody," over and over again till he fell asleep; to dream perchance of the old order of things.

Meanwhile the Lâlâ waited his turn for audience at the District Officer's bungalow. There were many other aspirants to that honour, seated on a row of cane-bottomed chairs in the verandah, silent, bored, uncomfortable. It is an irony of fate which elevates the chair in India into a patent of position, for nowhere does the native look more thoroughly out of place than in the coveted honour. As it is he clings to it, notably with his legs; those thin legs round whose painful want of contour the tight cotton pantaloons wrinkle all too closely, and which would be so much better tucked away under dignified skirts in true Eastern fashion. But the exotic has a strange fascination for humanity. Waiting there for his turn, the Lâlâ inwardly cursed the Western morality which prevented an immediate and bribe-won entry; but the red-coated badge-wearers knew better than to allow even a munificent shoe-money to interfere with the roster. The harassed-looking, preoccupied official within had an almost uncanny quickness of perception, so the rupees chinked into their pockets, but produced no effect beyond whining voices and fulsome flattery.

"Well, Lâlâ-ji! and what do you want?" asked the representative of British majesty when, at last, Shunker Dâs's most obsequious smile curled out over his fat face. There was no doubt a certain brutality of directness in the salutation, but it came from a deadly conviction that a request lay at the bottom of every interview, and that duty bade its discovery without delay. The abruptness of the magistrate was therefore compressed politeness. As he laid down the pen with which he had been writing a judgment, and leant wearily back in his chair, his bald head was framed, as it were, in a square nimbus formed by a poster on the wall behind. It was four feet square, and held, in treble columns, a list of all the schedules and reports due from his office during the year to come. That was his patent of position; and it was one which grows visibly, as day by day, and month by month, law and order become of more consequence than truth and equity in the government of India.

The Lâlâ's tact bade him follow the lead given. "I want, sahib," he said, "to be made a Rai Bâhâdur."

Now Rai Bâhâdur is an honorific title bestowed by Government for distinguished service to the State. So without more ado Shunker Dâs detailed his own virtues, totalled up the money expended in public utility, and wound up with an offer of five thousand rupees towards a new Female Hospital. The representative of British majesty drew diagrams on his blotting-paper, and remarked, casually, that he would certainly convey the Lâlâ's liberal suggestion about the hospital to the proper authorities; adding his belief that one Puras Râm, who was about to receive the coveted honour, had offered fifteen thousand for the same purpose.

"I will give ten thousand, Huzoor" bid the usurer, with a scowl struggling with his smile; "that will make seventy-five thousand in all; and Tôta Mull got it for building the big tank that won't hold water. If it cost him fifty thousand, may I eat dirt; and I ought to know for I had the contract. It won't last, Huzoor; I know the stuff that went into it."

"Tôta Mull had other services."

"Other services!" echoed Shunker fumbling in his garments, and producing a printed book tied up in a cotton handkerchief. "See my certificates; one from your honour's own hand."

Perhaps the District Officer judged the worth of the others by the measure of his own testimonial, wherein, being then a "griff" of six months' standing, he had recorded Shunker's name opposite a list of the cardinal virtues, for he set the book aside with a sad smile. Most likely he was thinking that in those days his ambition had been a reality, and his liver an idea, and that now they had changed places. "I am glad to see your son looking so well," he remarked with pointed irrelevance. "I hear you are to marry him next month, and that everything is to be on a magnificent scale. Tôta Mull will be quite eclipsed; though his boy's wedding cost him sixty-five thousand,--he told me so himself. Accept my best wishes on the occasion."

"Huzoor! I will give fifteen thou--" British majesty rose gravely with the usual intimation of dismissal, and a remark that it was always gratified at liberality. Shunker Dâs left the presence with his smile thoroughly replaced by a scowl, though his going there had simply been an attempt to save his pocket; for he knew right well that he had not yet filled up the measure of qualification for a Rai Bâhâdur-ship.

While this interview had been going on, another of a very different nature was taking place outside a bungalow on the other side of the road, where Philip Marsden stood holding the rein of his charger and talking to Mahomed Lateef, whose pink-nosed pony was tied to a neighbouring tree.

The old man, in faded green turban and shawl, showed straight and tall even beside the younger man's height and soldierly carriage. "Sahib," he said, "I am no beggar to whine at the feet of a stranger for alms. I don't know the sahib over yonder whose verandah, as you see, is crowded with such folk. They come and go too fast these sahibs, nowadays; and I am too old to tell the story of my birth. If it is forgotten, it is forgotten. But you know me, Allah be praised! You feel my son's blood there on your heart where he fell fighting beside you! Which of the three was it? What matter? They all died fighting. And this one is Benjamin; I cannot let him go. He is a bright boy, and will give brains, not blood, to the Sirkar, if I can only get employment for him. So I come to you, who know me and mine."

Philip Marsden laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. "That is true. Khân sahib. What is it I can do for you?"

"There is a post vacant in the office, Huzoor! It is not much, but a small thing is a great gain in our poor house. The boy could stay at home, and not see the women starve. It is only writing-work, and thanks to the old mullah, Murghub Admed is a real khush nawis (penman). Persian and Arabic, too, and Euclidus, and Algebra; all a true man should know. If you would ask the sahib."

"I'll go over now. No, no, Khân sahib! I am too young, and you are too old."

But Mahomed Lateef held the stirrup stoutly with lean brown fingers. "The old help the young into the saddle always, sahib. It is for you boys to fight now, and for us to watch and cry 'Allah be with the brave!'"

So it happened that as Shunker Dâs drove out of the District Officer's compound, Major Marsden rode in. Despite his scowl, the usurer stood up and salaamed profusely with both hands, receiving a curt salute in return.

British majesty was now in the verandah disposing of the smaller fry in batches. "Come inside," it said, hastily dismissing the final lot. "I've only ten minutes left for bath and breakfast, but you'll find a cigar there, and we can talk while I tub."

Amid vigorous splashings from within Major Marsden unfolded his mission, receiving in reply a somewhat disjointed enquiry as to whether the applicant had passed the Middle School examination, for otherwise his case was hopeless.

"And why, in Heaven's name?" asked his hearer impatiently.

The magistrate having finished his ablutions appeared at the door in scanty attire rubbing his bald head with a towel. "Immutable decree of government."

"And loyalty, family, influence--what of them?"

A shrug of the shoulders,--"Ask some one else. I am only a barrel-organ grinding out the executive and judicial tunes sent down from headquarters."

"And a lively discord you'll make of it in time! But you are wrong. A man in your position is, as it were, trustee to a minor's estate and bound to speak up for his wards."

"And be over-ridden! No good! I've tried it. Oh lord! twelve o'clock and I had a case with five pleaders in it at half-past eleven. Well, I'll bet the four-anna bit the exchange left me from last month's pay, that my judgment will be upset on appeal."

"I pity you profoundly."

"Don't mention it; there's balm in Gilead. This is mail-day, and I shall hear from my wife and the kids. Good-bye!--I'm sorry about the boy, but it can't be helped."

"It strikes me it will have to be helped some day," replied Major Marsden as he rode off.

Meanwhile a third interview, fraught with grave consequences to this story, had just taken place in the Commissariat office whither Shunker Dâs had driven immediately after his rebuff, with the intention of robbing Peter to pay Paul; in other words, of getting hold of some Government contract, out of which he could squeeze the extra rupees required for the purchase of the Rai Bâhâdur-ship; a proceeding which commended itself to his revengeful and spiteful brain. As it so happened, he appeared in the very nick of time; for he found Colonel Stuart looking helplessly at a telegram from headquarters, ordering him to forward five hundred camels to the front at once.

Now the Faizapore office sent in the daily schedules, original, duplicate, and triplicate, with commendable regularity, and drew the exact amount of grain sanctioned for transport animals without fail; nevertheless a sudden demand on its resources was disagreeable. So, as he had done once or twice before in this time of war and rumours of wars, the chief turned to the big contractor for help; not without a certain uneasiness, for though a long course of shady transactions had blunted Colonel Stuart's sense of honour towards his equals, it had survived to an altogether illogical extent towards his inferiors. Now his private indebtedness to the usurer was so great that he could not afford to quarrel with him; and this knowledge nurtured a suspicion that Shunker Dâs made a tool of him, an idea most distasteful both to pride and honour. No mental position is more difficult to analyse than that of a man, who having lost the desire to do the right from a higher motive, clings to it from a lower one. Belle's father, for instance, did not hesitate to borrow cash from monies intrusted to his care; but he would rather not have borrowed it from a man with whom he had official dealings.

Shunker Dâs, however, knew nothing, and had he known would have credited little, of this survival of honour. It seemed impossible in his eyes that the innumerable dishonesties of the Faizapore office could exist without the knowledge of its chief. Bribery was to him no crime; nor is it one to a very large proportion of the people of India. To the ignorant, indeed, it seems such a mere detail of daily life that it is hard for them to believe in judicial honesty. Hence the ease with which minor officials extort large sums on pretence of carrying the bribe to the right quarter; and hence again comes, no doubt, many a whispered tale of corruption in high places.

"I shall lose by this contract, sahib," said the Lâlâ, when the terms had been arranged; "but I rely on your honour's generous aid in the future. There are big things coming in, when the Protector of the Poor will doubtless remember his old servant, whose life and goods are always at your honour's disposal."

"I have the highest opinion of,--of your integrity, Lâlâ sahib," replied the Colonel evasively, "and of course shall take it,--I mean your previous services--into consideration, whenever it--it is possible to do so." The word integrity had made him collapse a little, but ere the end of the sentence he had recovered his self-esteem, and with it his pomposity.

The Lâlâ's crafty face expanded into a smile. "We understand each other, sahib, and if--!" here he dropped his voice to a confidential pitch.

Five minutes after Colonel Stuart's debts had increased by a thousand rupees, and the Lâlâ was carefully putting away a duly stamped and signed I.O.U. in his pocket-book; not that he assigned any value to it, but because it was part of the game. Without any distinct idea of treachery, he always felt that Lukshmi, the goddess of Fortune, had given him one more security against discomfiture when he managed to have the same date on a contract and a note of hand. Not that he anticipated discomfiture either. In fact, had any one told him that he and the Colonel were playing at cross-purposes, he would have laughed the assertion to scorn. He had too high an opinion of the perspicacity of the sahib-logue, and especially of the sahib who shut his eyes to so many irregularities, to credit such a possibility.

So he drove homewards elate, and on the way was stopped in a narrow alley by an invertebrate crowd, which, without any backbone of resistance, blocked all passage, despite the abuse he showered around. "Run over the pigs! Drive on, I say," he shouted to the driver, when other means failed.

"Best not, Shunker," sneered a little gold-earringed Rajpoot amongst the crowd, "there's a sepoy in yonder shooting free."

The Lâlâ sank back among his cushions, green with fear. At the same moment an officer in undress uniform rode up as if the street were empty, the crowd making way before him. "What is it, havildar (sergeant)?" he asked sharply, reining up before an open door where a sentry stood with rifle ready.

"Private Afzul Khân run amuck, Huzoor!"

Major Marsden threw himself from his horse and looked through the door into the little court within. It was empty, but an archway at right angles led to an inner yard. "When?"

"Half an hour gone--the guard will be here directly, Huzoor! They were teasing him for being an Afghan, and saying he would have to fight his own people."

"Any one hurt?"

"Jeswunt Rai and Gurdit Singh, not badly; he has--seven rounds left, sahib, and swears he won't be taken alive."

The last remark came hastily, as Major Marsden stepped inside the doorway. He paused, not to consider, but because the tramp of soldiers at the double came down the street. "Draw up your men at three paces on either side of the door," he said to the native officer. "If you hear a shot, go on the house-top and fire on him as he sits. If he comes out alone, shoot him down."

"Allah be with the brave!" muttered one or two of the men, as Philip Marsden turned once more to enter the courtyard. It lay blazing in the sunshine, open and empty; but what of the dim archway tunnelling a row of buildings into that smaller yard beyond, where Afzul Khân waited with murder in his heart, and his finger on the trigger of his rifle? There the Englishman would need all his nerve. It was a rash attempt he was making; he knew that right well, but he had resolved to attempt it if ever he got the opportunity. Anything, he had told himself, was better than the wild-beast-like scuffle he had witnessed not long before; a hopeless, insane struggle ending in death to three brave men, one of them the best soldier in the regiment. The remembrance of the horrible scene was strong on him as his spurs clicked an even measure across the court.

It was cooler in the shadow, quite a relief after the glare. Ah! … just as he had imagined! In the far corner a crouching figure and a glint of light on the barrel of a rifle. No pause; straight on into the sunlight again; then suddenly the word of command rang through the court boldly. "Lay down your arms!"

The familiar sound died away into silence. It was courage against power, and a life hung on the balance. Then the long gleam of light on the rifle wavered, disappeared, as Private Afzul Khân stood up and saluted. "You are a braver man than I, sahib," he said. That was all.

A sort of awed whisper of relief and amazement ran through the crowd as Philip Marsden came out with his prisoner, and gave orders for the men to fall in. Two Englishmen in mufti had ridden up in time for the final tableau; and one of them, nodding his head to the retreating soldiers, said approvingly, "That is what gave, and keeps us India."

"And that," returned John Raby pointing to Shunker Dâs who with renewed arrogance was driving off, "will make us lose it."

"My dear Raby! I thought the moneyed classes--"

"My dear Smith! if you think that when the struggle comes, as come it must, our new nobility, whose patent is plunder, will fight our battles against the old, I don't."

They argued the point all the way home without convincing each other, while Time with the truth hidden in his wallet passed on towards the Future.