Part 8
I felt quite nettled. Her Majesty's lieges must not be intimidated in this fashion. "Well! you must think of the person whom you consider most fitted to fulfil all the many duties which will devolve on him, and put down his name," I said, for in these days when we really wished to get at the wishes of the people, we were not so strict about nominations and proposings and secondings as we are now, "and I will speak again to the Khân Bahadur and see if I cannot induce him to stand." (I meant to do so by threats of exposure for using force to Her Majesty's lieges!)
As I rode off, my horse picking its way through the piles of melons, the bags of corn, the jars of milk, the nets of pottery and all the _olla podrida_ of trivial daily merchandise which finds pause for a few minutes about an active gate at dawn time, the patient sat up straight from his backboard and yawned, then asked for another violet drink. But the hakeem was absorbed in the problem of voting.
I happened that day to have business in the city in the evening also, but I entered by another gate, so that the sun was nigh setting when, on my homeward way, I saw my old friend the Yunani hakeem sitting with his pile of little medicine bottles and tiny earthenware goglets of pills and ointments beside him.
He was pounding away at something in a minute jade mortar and looked no longer disturbed, but weary utterly.
"Have you settled that knotty point, hakeem sahib?" I asked.
He gave a sigh of relief, but pounded away faster than ever. "I give God thanks I have been led into the way of wisdom," he replied, "else would I be harried, indeed! Never, within the memory of man, have so many gentlemen of rank been sick as during this day. I am but now compounding the 'Thirty-six-ingredient-drug' for one honourable house, and have but just finished the 'Four-great-things' for another. 'Tis anxiety about the elections, methinks, for they talk of nothing else. Hardly had your Honour left this morning, than Gunpat-Lal sent to say he had a belly-ache which his idolatrous miracle-monger could not touch. I had it away in half an hour with cucumber and lemon juice. Cold things to cold. And Lala-ji full of compliments and regrets that the Aga Sahib would not be elected." A faintly worried air crept over the high old face.
"Did he ask you to give him your vote?" I enquired, with a sinking at my heart.
"Yea!" replied the Yunani hakeem cheerfully, "and offered me five rupees for it."
Ye Gods above! How soon political corruption seizes on the innocent, I thought.
"But others have offered more," continued the old man, with a certain self-satisfaction. Then his face clouded. "Yonder pasty-faced knock-kneed student, who calls himself 'Hedditerlile--jackdaw'" (Editor Loyal Objector) "told me it was his by right, since he and his like were Hindustan. But I told the lad God had ordained otherwise--for look you, Huzoor, we Mussalmans came from the north many long years before the _sahib-logue_ came from the west. So I let him talk, having, by God's mercy, come to a decision."
"What is that, hakeem-ji?" I asked, curious to know what had influenced the old man.
He salaamed quite simply. "The Huzoor bade me think who could best do the work, so I decided to vote for him. He is noble, and he knows what has to be done. He knows _santation_ and _inspekshon-conservance_. Also _new-tense_, and _karl-ra-pre-kar-sons_, and"--he added, with the most beautiful supplementary salaam of pure flattery--"all other noble arts and philosophies." It quite gave me a pang to tell him that this scheme of his would not work. That I was _ex officio_ president of the Municipal Committee, and thus beyond the reach of voters.
His face was illumined by a vast relief even amidst his perplexities.
"That is as it should be," he said simply. "The Sirkar then, has not, as they say, quite lost its head; the Huzoor retains it still. But what am I to do?"
I left him looking the picture of woe, absolutely unheeding of two patient travellers who had been awaiting my departure with that calm stolid disregard of the passing hour which brings with it to the Western such a sense of personal grievance; whereas to the Eastern it only emphasises his trust in Providence by proving the omnipotence of Fate.
Next morning, however, the whole aspect of affairs had been changed. Hakeem-ji was alert, spry, surrounded by quite a congregation of would-be patients, to whom he was giving out his _dicta_ with quite a lordly air.
There was no need to ask him if he had settled his vexed question. That was apparent. I simply asked him what he had done about the paper.
"Huzoor," he said again, with that lucid candour which--was so marked a feature of the man himself, "the Lord mercifully directed me. Therefore I ate it, and it hath done me much good."
"Ate it?" I echoed. "You don't mean to say----"
"Huzoor!" he interrupted cheerfully, "this is how it was. After your Honour left, it was the time of evening prayer. So I went, after my usual custom, to the House of God, to await the cry of the Muazzim and prepare myself for the presence of the Most High by the necessary ablutions. And as I sat squatted on the edge of the Pool of Purification, my hands in the cool water, I felt as if naught could cleanse me from that accursed paper that lay folded in my breast. So I cried in my heart to the prophet that he should show me a way, and then in one moment I saw where the error lay. I was arrogating to myself decisions that should be left to the Almighty. So I did what I do ever when life and death are at issue; when even the mighty skill of medicine has to stand on one side and do nothing.
"I took my stylus, and I wrote all over that paper the attributes of the Most High--His mercy, His truth, His wisdom, His great loving-kindness. And then, Huzoor, I crushed it into the form of a bolus, covered it with silver foil, and swallowed it as a pill.
"It hath done me much good. I am now free from anxiety. The decision of all things rests with the Most Mighty."
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
"The Huzoor is the salt of the earth," said Hoshyari Mull, submissively. He had been educated, he asserted, at a mission school: thus the words of Scripture came handy to him. So also did a variety of other things.
"And you are the biggest scoundrel unhung. I know that, though I can't find you out--yet," retorted the Boy, almost savagely. He was really a Boy, a round-faced, fresh-coloured English Boy, though his years numbered twenty-four, and he was a full-blown Salt Patrol on the Great Customs Hedge, which, in the 'fifties and 'sixties, still stretched between the river Indus, as it flows to the Arabian Sea, and the Mahanuddi river that finds its way to the Bay of Bengal; in other words, stretched for fifteen hundred miles across the vast continent of India. It was a strange, weird barrier, this vast hedge of cactus and thorny acacia, of prickly palms, and still more prickly agaves, that thrust out their spiked swords boldly from a buckler of spine-set thicket. It was fully fourteen feet high, and of its width one could only guess, in passing through the break, every ten miles or so, where some first-class road claimed a long passage-way through it. Here it was that the Patrols had their bungalows, and it was at one of these that the Boy lived. It was a very important post, because it was, so to speak, the gateway between the South-West and the North-East; that is to say, between Bombay and the Central Provinces, and Delhi, Oude, Bengal. Then, lying as it did, right in the Rajputana Desert, with no other roadway within twenty miles of it on either side, it needed a sharp look out all along the line to prevent isolated attempts at smuggling. But the Boy was quick at his work, and spent all his youthful energy in preserving the intactness of his Customs Hedge. The life, however, was as strange and weird as was the barrier. Absolute loneliness, absolute isolation. For long months together not one word of your mother-tongue. With luck, a weekly post. No books, no newspapers, no civilisation of any kind. On the other hand there was endless sport, unfailing interest for those who loved wild things. And the Boy had never been one for books. Harrow had left him, one may say, uncontaminated by them; examinations had passed him by; so, though both his grandfathers had been high Indian officials, he had drifted naturally into the Salt Department; the last refuge, not of the incompetent, but the unlearned. There, to be a man was all that was asked of you. Without manhood the salt had lost its savour; there was no possibility of salting it with all the 'ologies in existence.
Hoshyari Mull paused in his deft winding-on of the Huzoor's putties, to say submissively, "The Salt of the Earth speaks truth." Whereat the Boy laughed.
He and Hoshyari were at once friends and enemies. The latter was chief native supervisor, a man of about forty, above middle height, smooth faced and lissome. There was nothing, the Boy soon found out, which he could not do; which, in fact, he did not do. An excellent accountant, he was also an excellent shot. If he knew, or said he knew, every smuggler of salt between Attock and Cuttack, he also knew every bird and beast and butterfly by name, and could tell you the habits of all and sundry. He knew the history of Ancient India by heart, and could pour forth legend and tale by the yard. He was a magnificent swordsman, and could teach the Boy, who had learnt singlestick, many cuts and thrusts.
In short, he was all things to the Boy; without him, life in the Patrol bungalow would, indeed, have lost its savour. And yet the Boy mistrusted him, for no reason, except vaguely that he was too clever by half. Hoshyari, for his part, regarded the Boy as he had regarded no other master. He had been, as it were, _impresario_ of amusement to several Huzoors of the ordinary type. This one was different. This one was as the Angels of God. That is how Hoshyari put it to himself, and, on the whole, it was a sufficiently comprehensive description, and led to thoroughly wholesome treatment. Here was no necessity for _itr_ of rose, no distilled waters of any description, save the dew of heaven, as it gathered on the gram fields where the black buck lay, or hung like a diamond on a cactus flower over which some rare butterfly hovered.
But there was no dew this hot May dawn, when Hoshyari Mull, with the deftness of an expert, was putting the woollen bandages on the Huzoor's long legs. It was not his work; but then half the things he did were not that. "I thought you were a Brahman; but I don't believe you are even a Hindu," the Boy had said scornfully to him one day, when, foraging for breakfast in a village, Hoshyari had come back, triumphantly, with half a dozen eggs in his high caste hand. Hoshyari had smiled. "I am a Srimali Brahman, Huzoor," he had replied tolerantly. "The Maharajah of Jaipur salaams to me. There are none here in the wilderness able to say Hoshyari hath defiled himself."
So he made no ado about this putting on of putties. They were, as he had proved to the Boy, the best of all protection against snake bite. With them on you might almost venture on trying to find a gap in the Great Salt Hedge; without them it was madness; for is not the prickly pear called in the vernaculars, _naga-pan_, or serpent shelter? And on these hot May mornings, as well as at noontide, were there not along the Customs line many pairs of watching, unwinking eyes lying in wait for the unwary, beside those of the fourteen thousand humans who patrolled its long length day and night?
Truly there were. As they cantered along it, after passing through the gateway, many a faint rustle among the colocynth apples at its base told of death among the flowers. For the Hedge was at its blossom time. Thorny salmon-coloured capers began it, with here and there a yellow cactus bloom, or, perhaps, a rare red one, on whose stems the wild cochineal insect lay like tiny spots of blood. Above it, a wilderness of these same cactus flowers, big as a tea cup, primrose within, the white stamens ranged sedately round the whiter star-pistil; then yellow without, shading to purple. Above them the violet-scented puff-balls of the thorny mimosa, with every now and again a great lance of aloe blossom, brown and white, all set with flower bells.
And above all, butterflies, dragon flies, moths, flitting in myriads. "That is the gap, Huzoor, where the ill-begotten hound of a Poorbeah managed to smuggle in a back-load of salt last week. He was going to carry it all the way to Kashi (Benares) he said. As the Salt of the Earth will see, it is now thoroughly mended," remarked Hoshyari, with a debonair smile of superiority.
The Boy frowned. There was too much, to his liking, of these petty discoveries. That long line of Hedge had not been planted, was not kept up, to prevent the smuggling of a poor back-load of salt. He looked at Hoshyari with dissatisfaction in his face.
"When are we going to find something worth finding out?" he asked cavalierly.
"If it is God's will, before long, Huzoor," was the reply, and there was a curious undertone of certainty about it. "Look, my lord! yonder are the buck. They are on the move already; we must hasten."
They were off at a gallop, rifles crossed on the saddle bow, over the hard white _putt_ ground that was interspersed by ribbed drifts of fine white sand. Hoshyari sate his horse like an Englishman. Indeed, the Boy, looking at him, used often to think that, barring his colour, he seemed of kindred race; as, in truth, he was, since the Srimali Brahman is Aryan of the Aryans. There was, in fact, only that vague distrust to keep them apart; and that always vanished before sport.
It was a hot day, they followed the buck far, then, the Boy having a sudden headache from the sun, paused by Hoshyari's advice at some wandering goatherd's thatch for a hearth-baked cake, a drink of milk, and a rest till noon should have passed.
A very hot day; and the Boy rested in the shade of _jund_ tree on a string bed, and slept profoundly.
When he woke, the shadows were lengthening, and Hoshyari, squatted on the ground beside him, had a new look on his face; a look of anxiety mingled with satisfaction.
"Huzoor!" he said, "I have news for you! What I have always prophesied, what I have always told you would happen if the Sirkar were not more careful, has come to pass. The native troops in Meerut have mutinied; they have gone to Delhi and murdered the _Sahib-logue_. I rode back to the depôt while the Salt of the Earth slept, to see all was right, and--and I heard it at the gate."
"At the gate," echoed the Boy, still stupid with sleep. "Who brought the news--has the post come in?"
Hoshyari's face was a study. He must break this thing gently to the Boy, who was a full-blown Salt Patrol, or he would see red, try to kill and be killed. And that must not be; quite a pang at the very thought shot through heart and brain, making him realise that this Boy of an alien race had grown dear to him.
"The post had not come in, Salt of the Earth," he said evasively. "Men brought it from the South."
"The South," echoed the Boy again, with a relieved yawn; "then it's a lie. How could they know, if we didn't?"
How? Hoshyari could have answered that question easily; he knew the strange wordless rapidity with which news travels in India; in Delhi to-day, in Peshawur to-morrow. A mystery that has passed undiscovered with the coming of telegraphs and telephones that do it for pennies and twopences.
Yes! he knew, but his task was to prevent this Angel of God from putting his life into the hands of men who, at best, were devils; as he was, himself, at bottom. He knew that also. Most men with brains did.
"It is not a lie, Huzoor," he said, simply. "These men are mutineers themselves. They are going to join those at Delhi, murdering all the Sahibs they can on the way."
He had laid his plan while the Salt of the Earth slept, and watched the effect of his words upon the Boy narrowly; hoping that even the defence of a post might take second place before the duty of giving a warning-- and that would mean being out of danger--for the time.
The Boy's face blanched. He had been away to the nearest station, fifty miles off, for a three days' holiday at Christmas, and the remembrance of a laughing girl with blue eyes came back to him now with a rush. Hoshyari saw his chance, and went on----
"The plans were laid for later on, Huzoor, so they are taken by surprise themselves; yet it gives them advantage also, since everywhere the Sahibs are taken by surprise also; if only they had been prepared it might be different."
The cunning told; the Boy's face hardened into thought. Fifty miles on, along the road. He might do it.
"When did they come in? I suppose they forced the guard," he added, his voice almost breaking in its resentment.
"About noon, Huzoor," came the wily tones. "They were wearied out."
So much the better; they would not start, likely, till just before dawn next day. If he could give warning. He rose and looked round for his horse.
Hoshyari rose also. "The Salt of the Earth cannot ride through the gate," he said--the time for dissuasion had come now. "He will only be killed in the attempt."
The Boy rounded on him instantly. "Didn't I always tell you you were the greatest scoundrel unhung? Now I've found you out, you skunk!"
"Has this slave not always said the Huzoor was as the Salt of the Earth," came the instant rapid reply. "My lord, listen! This is the Hand of Fate. Wise men bow to it. You are here, safe, alone, none know of you. Come with this slave and he will save you ..."
"D--n you, you scoundrel," shouted the Boy blindly, and fumbled for the stirrups.
"Huzoor! that is useless!" came Hoshyari's voice, quiet now; all entreaty gone. In its place almost command. "You cannot force the barrier. Where we had one man, they have ten."
"I will try," muttered the Boy, doggedly. "I can but try."
"The Huzoor can do better," said Hoshyari. "He can come with me. I know a way."
Even in his excitement the full meaning of this came home to the Boy.
"You know?" he echoed under his breath, "didn't I always say you were the greatest scoundrel unhung?"
"And the Huzoor is the Salt of the Earth," came the unfailing reply.
The rapid Indian dusk was falling as they made their way on foot to a village which, though almost exactly opposite the barrier, still lay the orthodox half mile from the Hedge, within which, by rule of the Salt Department, no building might be erected. The Boy was now in native dress, for Hoshyari had utilised the interval of time in arranging for the former's midnight ride of warning.
In reporting on these arrangements, he had given scope to his imagination as to their difficulty. In reality, he had only had to ride up to the barrier, give the password, and enter, to be welcomed as one of the party within. Whether he was at heart one of them, or whether, all things considered, his cleverness had come to the conclusion that it was best for his purpose to fall in with their mood for the time being, is uncertain; but that purpose was clear, namely, to get the Boy out of the danger zone if he could. So he raised no objection to the looting of the Salt Patrol's bungalow--the little Salt Patrol who, doubtless, had run away into the jungle in the hope of escape, being but a mere boy--but the office must be let alone. There must be no tampering with books and registers, since he, Hoshyari Mull, Srimali Brahman, whose father--God rest him--had been Prime Minister to a Prince, was accountable for them to the powers that be--be they John Company or the Badshah. Therefore the doors must be locked and the keys given to him. And that Kathyawar mare in the stable was his; so that was an end of it. Whoever laid hands on the beast would rue the deed. But all this was past: now he had to get the Boy through the Hedge, incredible though it seemed. "The furthermost house in the village is mine, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, gravely. "It is thence that, in disguise, I penetrate the evil designs of the smugglers."
The Boy ground his teeth, and was silent. He knew what he would say; but this was not the time to say it; this was the time to warn his countrymen.
They found the tiny hamlet deserted; as all knew, half India fled before the mutineers.
"It is as well," remarked Hoshyari, hardily, "since they might talk, though none know of the secret save this slave and Suchet Singh, the waiting--house keeper."
But as they came upon what was called the waiting-house, since here salt that arrived without proper papers, or that failed to pay the toll, was held up, they found Suchet Singh the Sikh lying dead at his post. The Boy ground his teeth again. So would he be lying but for his desire not only to die, but to do.
"Look sharp, will you," he said, roughly, to his companion, "we lose time. The moon will be up ere long."
Hoshyari led the way across a yard; an ordinary village house yard with a row of three or four native corn granaries standing against one wall. These are huge basketwork erections, each taller than a man, in shape not unlike a big pickle bottle, fixed to the ground and carefully plastered over with mud and cow dung.
"They are all full," said Hoshyari, with a curious smile, as he passed one; and, sure enough, as he lifted the little sliding door at the bottom, a tiny moraine of wheat fell forward in the half light. But the next instant, with a dexterous twist of his hand, the whole _kothe_ slid round as on a pivot, disclosing a round well-like hole.
"We shall need a light," said Hoshyari in a matter-of-fact tone, and produced a tinder box and a candle from a niche at his feet.
Once again the Boy ground his teeth. So this was the way, was it? and all the time this biggest scoundrel that ever went unhung was discovering miserable back-loads of smuggling! Words had failed him long since; now thought failed him also; he plodded on, his head bent, down the narrow subterranean passage that scarcely showed in the flickering candle light.
But here, surely, there was less gloom and more room. He stood upright and glanced above him. A star showed through a tangle of branches.
"We are under the Great Hedge, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, deferentially, in answer to his look. "The passage needed air, and we also required to have a store closer at hand." He held up the light, and it fell faintly on rows on rows of sacks of salt ranged round a central space. "It is quite light here in the daytime, Huzoor," he went on cheerfully. "Sometimes the sun actually shines in; and the snakes do not fall down now that we have put a net across the opening."
So this was one of the things concealed in the great width of the Hedge. Who would have dreamt of it? Who _could_ have dreamt it? Something of the comicality of the whole affair was beginning to filter into the Boy's brain; he caught himself wondering where the passage ended--under his bed, maybe!
It was almost as bad. "We are there, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, mounting some steep steps, and then swung a panel blocking the passage backwards. It had shelves on it, and books. He heard the turning of a key, he followed his leader, and the next minute stood in the growing light which presages a rising moon, inside the office room, looking stupidly at what lay behind him; only a cupboard in the mud wall where the ledgers were kept.
Dazed as he was, he yet realised partly how it was done. The wall must be thicker than it seemed--twice, three times, perhaps four times as thick--but who would have dreamed! And for the rest? He looked at Hoshyari defiantly--the latter answered in words.
"It was quite easy, Huzoor," he replied, lightly. "We could always replace salt that was taken from the Government storehouse next door with salt from our storehouse yonder. And that paid nothing."