Chapter III: The Woman (4)

"Oh, same old game on the same old stage. Same old players. Leading lady and gent changed only. Huge great hideous bungalow, like a Goanese wedding-cake, in a vast garden of symmetrically arranged blue and red glazed 'art' flower-pots. Lofty room decorated with ancestral portraits done by Mr. Guzzlebhoy Fustomji Paintwallah; green glass chandeliers and big blue and white tin balls; mauve carpet with purple azure roses; wall-paper, bright pink with red lilies and yellow cabbages; immense mouldy mirrors, and a tin alarm clock. Big crowd of all the fly-blown rich knaves of the place who have got more than they want out of Government or else haven't got enough. Only novelty was a splendid Pathan chap, got-up in English except for the conical cap and puggri. Extraordinarily like Ross-Ellison, except that he had long black Pathan hair on his shoulders. Been to England; barrister probably, and seemed the most viciously seditious of the lot. Silly ignorant Goslings in the middle saying to Brahmins, 'And you are Muscleman, aren't you, or are you a Dhobi?' and to Parsis, 'I suppose you High Caste gentlemen have to bathe _every_ day?' shoving their awful ignorance under the noses of everybody, and inquiring after the healths of the 'chief wives'. Silly fatuous geese!--and then talking the wildest piffle about the 'burning question of the hour' and making the seditious rotters groan at their ineptitude and folly, until they cheer them up sudden-like with a bit of dam' treason and sedition they ought to be jailed for. _Jailed_. I nearly threw a fit when the old geezer, in a blaze of diamonds and glory, brought up old Phossy and presented him to the Gander, and he murmured:--

"'My _deah_ friend,' as Phossy held on to his paw in transports, 'to think of their casting _you_ into jail,' and old Mother Potiphar squeaked: _'Oh, this is not the forger of that name--but the eminent politeecian'_. But poor Gosly had thought he had been a political prisoner! Meant no offence. And then some little squirt of an editor primed him with lies about the University and the new syllabus, and straightway the Gander tried to get me on the 'embarrass the Government' lay, and talked as though he knew all about it. 'I'll get some of the ladies of my committee sent out here as History-lecturers at your University,' says he. 'They'll teach pure Liberal History and inculcate true ideas of liberty and self-government.' I wanted to go outside and be ill. Good old 'Paget M.P.'--takes up a 'Question' and writes a silly pamphlet on it and thinks he's said the last word.--Written thousands.--Don't matter so long as he does it in England.--Just the place for him nowadays.--But when he feels he's shoved out of the lime-light by a longer-haired Johnny, it's rough luck that he should try and get back by spending his blooming committee's money coming here and deludin' the poor seditionist and seducin' your Hatter from his allegiance to his salt.... Awful old fraud really--no ability whatever. Came to my college to spout once, in my time. Lord! Still he was a guest, and we let him go. Run by his missus really, I think. Why can't she stop at home and hammer windows? They say she went and asked the Begum of Bhopal to join her in a 'mission and crusade'. Teach the Zenana Woman and Purdah Lady to Come Forth instead of Bring Forth. Come Forth and smash windows. Probably true. Silly Goslings. Drop 'em.... What did you think of our bowling yesterday? With anything like a wicket your College should be...."

* * * * *

Entering his lonely and sequestered bungalow that evening Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed changed his Pathan dress for European dining-kit, removed his beard and wig, and became Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison. After dinner he wrote to the eminent Cold weather Visitor to India, Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, as follows--

"DEAR SIR,

"As I promised this afternoon, when you graciously condescended to honour me with your illuminating conversation, I enclose the papers which I guaranteed would shed some light on certain aspects of Indian conditions, and which I consider likely to give you food for thought.

"As I was myself educated in India, was brought up to maturity with Indian students, and have lived among them in many different places, I may claim to know something about them. As a class they are gentle, affectionate, industrious, well-meaning and highly intelligent. They are the most malleable of human metal, the finest material for the sculptor of humanity, the most impressionable of wax. In the right hands they can be moulded to anything, by the right leader led to any height. And conversely, of them a devil can make fiends. By the wrong leader they can be led down to any depth.

"The crying need of India is noble men to make noble men of these fine impressionable youths. Read the enclosed and take it that the writer (who wrote this recently in Gungapur Jail) is typical of a large class of misled, much-to-be-pitied youths, wrecked and ruined and destroyed--their undoing begun by an unspeakably false and spurious educational ideal, and completed by the writings, and the spoken words of heartless unscrupulous scoundrels who use them to their own vile ends.

"Read, Sir, and realize how truly noble, useful and beautiful is your great work of endeavouring to embarrass our wicked Government, to weaken its prestige here and in England, to encourage its enemies, to increase discontent and unrest, to turn the thoughts of students to matters political, and, in short, to carry on the good work of the usual Self-advertising Visitation M.P.

"Humbly thanking your Honour, and wishing your Honour precisely the successes and rewards that your Honour deserves,

"I remain,

"The dust of your Honour's feet,

"ILDERIM DOST MAHOMMED."

And Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., read as follows:--

... And so I am to be hanged by the neck till I am dead, am I? And for a murder which I never committed, and in the perpetration of which I had no hands? Is it, my masters? I trow so. But I can afford to spit--for I did commit a murder, nevertheless, a beautiful secret murder that no one could possibly ever bring to my home or cast in my tooth.

"Well, well! Hang me and grin in sleeve--and I will laugh on other side of face while dancing on nothing--for if you think you are doing me in eye, I know I have done you in eye!

"Yes. _I_ murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Chief Secretary of the Nuddee River Commission.

"As the Latin-and-Greeks used to say, '_Solo fesit_'!

"You think Mr. Spensonly died of plague? So he did. And who caused him to have plague? In short, who _plagued_ him? (Ha! Ha! An infinite jest!) You shall know all about it and about, as Omar says, for I am going now to write my autobiography of myself, as all great so-called Criminals have done, for the admiration of mankind and the benefit of posterity. And my fellow-brothers and family-members shall proudly publish it with my photo--that of a great Patriot Hero and second Mazzini, Robespierre, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Wallace, Charlotte Corday, Kosciusko, and Mr. Robert Bruce (of spider fame).

"And I shall welcome death and embrace the headsman ere making last speech and dying confession. Having long desired to know what lies Beyond, I shall make virtue of necessity and seize opportunity (of getting to know) to play hero and die gamish.

"Not like the Pathan murderer who walked about in front of condemned cell with Koran balanced on head, crying to his Prophet to save him, and defying Englishes to touch him. Of course they cooked his geese, Koran or not. One warder does more than many Prophets in Gungapur Jail. (He! He! Quite good epigram and nice cynicality of educated man.) The degraded and unpolished fellow decoyed two little girls into empty house to steal their jewellery, and cut off fingers and noses and ears to get rings and nose-jewels and ear-drops, and left to die. Holy Fakir, gentleman of course! Pooh! and Bah! for all holy men. I give spurnings to them all for fools, knaves, or hypocrites. There are no gods any more for educated gentleman, except himself, and that's very good god to worship and make offering to (Ha! Ha! What a wit will be lost to the silly world when it permits itself to lose me.)

"Well, to return to the sheep, as the European proverb has it. I was born here in Gungapur, which will also have honour of being my death-and-cremation place, of poor but honest parent on thirty rupees a mensem. He was very clever fellow and sent five sons to Primary School, Middle School, High School and Gungapur Government College at cost of over hundred rupees a month, all out of his thirty rupees a mensem. He always used proverb 'Politeness lubricates wheels of life and palm also,' and he obliged any man who made it worth his while. But he fell into bad odours at hands of Mr. Spensonly owing to folly of bribing-fellow sending cash to office and the letter getting into Mr. Spensonly's post-bag and opening by mistake.

"But the Sahib took me up into his office to soften blow to progenitor and that shows he was a bad man or his luck would not have been to take me in and give chance to murder him.

"My good old paternal parent made me work many hours each night, and though he knew nothing of the subjects he could read English and would hear all my lessons and other brothers', and we had to say Skagger Rack, Cattegat, Scaw Fell and Helvellyn, and such things to him, and he would abuse us if we mis-arranged the figures and letters in CaH2O2 and H2SO4 and all those things in bottles. Before the Matriculation Examination he made a Graduate, whom he had got under his thumb-nail, teach us all the answers to all the back questions in all subjects till we knew them all by heart, and also made us learn ten long essays by heart so as to make up the required essay out of parts of them. He nearly killed my brother by starvation (saving food as well as punishing miscreant) for failing--the only one of us who ever failed in any examination--which he did by writing out all first chapter of Washington Irving for essay, when the subject was 'Describe a sunrise in the Australian back-blocks'. As parent said, he could have used 'A moonlight stroll by the sea-shore' and change the colour from silver to golden. But the fool was ill--so ill that he tried to kill himself and had not the strength. He said he would rather go to the missionaries' hell, full of Englishes, than go on learning _Egbert, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Ethelred the Unready_, and _If two triangles have two sides of the one equal to two angles of the other each to each and the sides so subtended equal then shall the bases or fourth sides be equal each to each or be isosceles_.

"Well, the progenitor kept our noses in the pie night and day and we all hated the old papa piously and wished he and we and all teachers and text-books were burned alive.

"But we were very much loved by everybody as we were so learned and clever, and whenever the Collector or anybody came to School, the Head Master used to put one of us in each room and call on us to answer questions and recite and say capes and bays without the map, and other clever things; and when my eldest brother left I had to change coat with another boy and do it twice sometimes, in different rooms.

"Sometimes the Educational Inspector himself would come, but then nothing could be done, for he would not ask questions that were always asked and were in the book, like the teachers and Deputy Inspectors did, but questions that no one knew and had to be thought out then and there. That is no test of Learning--and any fool who has not troubled to mug his book by heart might be able to answer such questions, while the man who had learnt every letter sat dumb.

"I hated the school and the books I knew by heart, but I loved Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai. He was a clever cunning man, and could always tweak the leg of pompous Head Master when he came to the room, and had beautiful ways of cheating him when he came to examine--better than those of the other teachers.

"Before we had been with him a month he could tell us things while being examined, and no one else knew he was doing it. The initial letters of each word made up the words he wanted to crib to us, and when he scratched his head with the right hand the answer was 'No,' while with the left hand it was 'Yes'. And the clever way he taught us sedition while teaching us History, and appearing to praise the English!

"He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the Government and Members of Council. We knew all about Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pim, and those crappies, and many a boy who had never heard of Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.

"We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too, and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day. He showed always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed. And he gave weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.

"And all the Indian History was about the Mutiny and how and why it failed, when he was not showing us how the Englishes have ruined and robbed India, and comparing the Golden Age of India (when no cow ever died and there was never famine, plague, police nor taxes) with the miserable condition of poor bleeding India to-day.

"He was a fine fellow and so clever that we were almost his worshippers. But I am not writing his autobiography but my own, so let him lapse herewith into posterity and well-merited oblivious.

"At the College when we could work no longer, we who had never learnt crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing in chokey and do _poojah_ to their photos. But the superior members did no _poojah_ to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have assumed, for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.

"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.

"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the next Instrument?

"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.

"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.

"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British Government does for you--educates you to be passed B.A. and educated gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A. work with hands like _maistri_?

"Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-class superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory.

"His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they did much--for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it.

"But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing up of the _bhangi_ by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacred cause and have photo in newspapers and be talked about.

"Besides, as I have said, I am not being done brown, as I murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Engineer.

"How I hated him!

"Why should he be big and strong while I am skinny and feeble--owing to night-and-day burning midnight candle at both ends and unable to make them meet?

"Besides did he not bring unmerited dishonour on grey hairs of poor old progenitor by finding him out in bribe-taking? Did he not bring my honoured father's aforesaying grey hairs in sorrow to reduced pension?

"Did he not upbraid and rebuke, nay, reproach me when I made grievous little errors and backslippers?

"A thousand times Yea.

"But I should never have murdered him had I not caught the Plague, so out of evil cometh good once more.

"The Plague came to Gungapur in its millions and we knew not what to do but stood like drowning man splitting at a straw.

"Superstitious Natives said it was the revenge of Goddess Kali for not sacrificing, and superstitious Europeans said it was a microbe created by their God to punish unhygienic way of living.

"Knowing there are no gods of any sort I am in a position to state that it was just written on our foreheads.

"To make confusion worse dumbfounded the Government of course had to seize horns of dilemma and trouble the poor. They had all cases taken to hospital and made segregation and inspection camps. They disinfected houses and burnt rags and even purdah women were not allowed to die in bosom of family. Of course police stole lakhs of rupees worth of clothes and furniture and said it was infected. And many good men who were enemies of Government were falsely accused of being plague-stricken and were dragged to hospital and were never seen again.

"Terrible calamities fell upon our city and at last it nearly lost me myself. I was seized, dragged from my family-bosom, cast into hospital and cured. And in hospital I learned from fellow who was subordinate-medical that rats get plague in sewers and cesspools and when they die of it their fleas must go elsewhere for food, and so hop on to other rat and give that poor chap plague too, by biting him with dirty mouths from dead rat, and then he dies and so _in adfinitum_, as the poet has it. But suppose no other rat is handy, what is poor hungry flea to do? When you can't get curry, eat rice! When flea can't get rat he eats man--turns to nastier food. (He! He!)

"So when flea from plague-stricken rat jumps on to man and bites him, poor fellow gets plague--_bus_.[58]

[58] Finale, enough, the end.

"Didn't friends and family-members skeddaddle and bunk when they saw rat after I told them all that! But I didn't care, I had had plague once, and one cannot get it twice. Not one man in thousand recovers when he has got it, but I did. Old uneducated fool maternal parent did lots of thanks-givings and _poojah_ because gods specially attentive to me--but I said 'Go to, old woman. It was written on forehead.'

"And when I returned to work, one day I had an idea--an idea of how to punish Mr. Spensonly for propelling honoured parent head first out of job, and idea for striking blow at British prestige. We had our office in private bungalow in those days before new Secretariat was built, and it was unhealthy bungalow in which no one would live because they died.

"Mr. Spensonly didn't care, and he had office on top floor, but bottom floor was clerks' office who went away at night also. Now it was my painful duty to go every morning up to his office-room and see that peon had put fresh ink and everything ready and that the _hamal_ had dusted properly. So it was not long before I was aware that all the drawers were locked except the top right-hand drawer, and that was not used as there was a biggish hole in the front of it where the edge was broken away from the above, some miscreant having once forced it open with tool.

"And verily it came to pass that one day, entering my humble abode-room, I saw a plague-rat lying suffering from _in extremis_ and about to give up ghost. But having had plague I did not trouble about the fleas that would leave his body when it grew stiff and cold, in search of food. Instead I let it lie there while my food was being prepared, and regretted that it was not beneath the chair of some enemy of mine who had not had plague, instead of beneath my own ... that of Mr. Spensonly for example!...

"It was Saturday night. I returned to the office that evening, knowing that Mr. Spensonly was out; and I went to his office-room with idle excuse to the peon sitting in verandah--and in my pocket was poor old rat kicking bucket fast.

"Who was to say _I_ put deceasing rat in the Sahib's table-drawer just where he would come and sit all day--being in the habit of doing work on Sunday the Christian holy day (being a man of no religion or caste)? What do I know of rats and their properties when at death's front door?

"Cannot rat go into a Sahib's drawer as well as into poor man's? If he did no work on Sunday very likely the fleas would remain until Monday, the rat dying slowly and remaining warm and not in _rigour mortuis_. Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed up with old rat--or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, to make humble inquiries on Tuesday, he was reported jolly sickish with Plague--and he died Tuesday night. I never heard of any other Sahib dying of Plague in Gungapur except one missionary fellow who lived in the native city with native fellows.

"So they can hang me for share in bomb-outrage and welcome (though I never threw the bomb nor made it, and only took academic interest in affair as I told the Judge Sahib)--for I maintain with my dying breath that it was I who murdered Mr. Spensonly and put tongue in cheeks when _Gungapur Gazette_ wrote column about the unhealthy bungalow in which he was so foolish as to have his office. When I reflect that by this time to-morrow I shall be Holy Martyr I rejoice and hope photo will be good one, and I send this message to all the world--

"'Oh be....'"

* * * * *

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Gosling-Green, M.P., liked this Pathan gentleman so well after reading his letter and enclosure. Before long they liked him very much less--although they did not know it--which sounds cryptic.

§ 5. MR. HORACE FAGGIT.

"Fair cautions, ain't they, these bloomin' niggers," observed Mr. Horace Faggit, as the train rested and refreshed itself at a wayside station on its weary way to distant Gungapur.

Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley, of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry, apparently did not feel called upon to notice the remark of Horace, whom he regarded as a Person.

"Makes you proud to think you are one of the Ruling Rice to look at the silly blighters, don't it?" he persisted.

"No authority on rice," murmured the Colonel, without looking up from his book.

Stuffy old beggar he seemed to the friendly and genial Horace, but Horace was too deeply interested in India and Horace to be affected by trifles.

For Mr. Horace Faggit had only set foot in his Imperial Majesty the King Emperor's Indian Empire that month, and he was dazed with impressions, drunk with sensations, and uplifted with pride. Was he not one of the Conquerors, a member of the Superior Society, one of the Ruling Race, and, in short, a Somebody?

The train started again and Horace sank back upon the long couch of the unwonted first-class carriage, and sighed with contentment and satisfaction.

How different from Peckham and from the offices of the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt! A Somebody at last--after being office-boy, clerk, strap-hanger, gallery-patron, cheap lodger, and paper-collar wearer. A Somebody, a Sahib, an English gent., one of the Ruling and Upper Class after being a fourpenny luncher, a penny-'bus-and-twopenny--tuber, a waverer 'twixt Lockhart and Pearce-and-Plenty.

For him, now, the respectful salaam, precedence, the first-class carriage, the salutes of police and railway officials, hotels, a servant (elderly and called a "Boy"), cabs (more elderly and called "gharries"), first-class refreshment and waiting rooms, a funny but imposing sun-helmet, silk and cotton suits, evening clothes, deference, regard and prompt attention everywhere. Better than Peckham and the City, this! My! What tales he'd have to tell Gwladwys Gwendoline when he had completed his circuit and returned.

For Mr. Horace Faggit, plausible, observant, indefatigably cunning, and in business most capable ("No bloomin' flies on 'Orris F." as he would confidently and truthfully assure you) was the first tentative tentacle advanced to feel its way by the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, in the mazy markets of the gorgeous Orient, and to introduce to the immemorial East their famous jewellery and wine of Birmingham and Whitechapel respectively; also to introduce certain exceeding-private documents to various gentlemen of Teutonic sympathies and activities in various parts of India--documents of the nature of which Horace was entirely ignorant.

And the narrow bosom of Horace swelled with pride, as he realized that, here at least, he was a Gentleman and a Sahib.

Well, he'd let 'em know it too. Those who did him well and pleased him should get tips, and those who didn't should learn what it was to earn the displeasure of the Sahib and to evoke his wrath. And he would endeavour to let all and sundry see the immeasurable distance and impassable gulf that lay between a Sahib and a nigger--of any degree whatsoever.

This was the country to play the gentleman in and no error! You _could_ fling your copper cash about in a land where a one-and-fourpenny piece was worth a hundred and ninety-two copper coins, where you could get a hundred good smokes to stick in your face for about a couple of bob, and where you could give a black cabby sixpence and done with it. Horace had been something of a Radical at home (and, indeed, when an office-boy, a convinced Socialist), especially when an old-age pension took his lazy, drunken old father off his hands, and handsomely rewarded the aged gentleman for an unswervingly regular and unbroken career of post-polishing and pub-pillaring. But now he felt he had been mistaken. Travel widens the horizon and class-hatred is only sensible and satisfactory when you are no class yourself. When you have got a position you must keep it up--and being one of the Ruling Race was a position undoubtedly. Horace Faggit _would_ keep it up too, and let 'em see all about it.

The train entered another station and drew in from the heat and glare to the heat and comparative darkness.

Yes, he would keep up his position as a Sahib haughtily and with jealousy,--and he stared with terrible frown and supercilious hauteur at what he mentally termed a big, fat buck-nigger who dared and presumed to approach the carriage and look in. The man wore an enormous white turban, a khaki Norfolk jacket, white jodhpore riding-breeches that fitted the calf like skin, and red shoes with turned-up pointed toes. His beard was curled, and his hair hung in ringlets from his turban to his shoulders in a way Horace considered absurd. Could the blighter be actually looking to see whether there might be room for him, and meditating entry? If so Horace would show him his mistake. Pretty thing if niggers were to get into First-Class carriages with Sahibs like Horace!

"'Ere! What's the gaime?" he inquired roughly. "Can't yer see this is Firs-Class, and if you got a Firs-Class ticket, can't yer see there's two Sahibs 'ere? Sling yer 'ook, _sour_.[59] Go on, _jao!_"[60]

[59] Pig.
[60] Go away.

The man gave no evidence of having understood Horace.

"Sahib!" said he softly, addressing Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley.

The Colonel went on reading.

"_Jao_, I tell yer," repeated Horace, rather proud of his grasp of the vernacular. "Slope, _barnshoot_."[61]

[61] An insulting epithet.

"Sahib!" said the man again.

The Colonel looked up and then sprang to his feet with outstretched hand.

"_Bahut salaam_,[62] Subedar Major Saheb," he cried, and wrung the hand of the "big fat buck-nigger" (who possessed the same medal-ribbons that he himself did) as he poured forth a torrent of mingled Pushtu, Urdu, and English while the Native Officer alternately saluted and pressed the Colonel's hand to his forehead in transports of pure and wholly disinterested joy.

[62] Hearty greeting.

"They told me the Colonel Sahib would be passing through this week," he said, "and I have met all the trains that I might look upon his face. I am weary of my furlough and would rejoin but for my law-suit. Praise be to Allah that I have met my Colonel Sahib," and the man who had five war decorations was utterly unashamed of the tear that trickled.

"How does my son, Sahib?" he asked in Urdu.

"Well, Subedar Major Saheb, well. Worthily of his father--whose place in the _pultan_ may he come to occupy."

"Praise be to God, Sahib! Let him no more seek his father's house nor look upon his father's face again, if he please thee not in all things. And is there good news of Malet-Marsac Sahib, O Colonel Sahib?" Then, with a glance at Horace, he asked: "Why does this low-born one dare to enter the carriage of the Colonel Sahib and sit? Truly the _rêlwêy terain_ is a great caste-breaker! Clearly he belongs to the class of the _ghora-log_, the common soldiers." ...

"'Oo was that,--a Rajah?" inquired the astounded Horace, as the train moved on.

"One of the people who keep India safe for you bagmen," replied the Colonel, who was a trifle indignant on behalf of the insulted Subedar Major Mir Daoud Khan Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry.

"No doubt he thought I was another officer," reflected Horace. "They think you're a gent, if you chivvy 'em."

At Umbalpur Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley left the train and Mr. Faggit had the carriage to himself--for a time.

And it was only through his own firmness and proper pride that he had it to himself for so long, for at the very next station a beastly little brute of a black man actually tried to get in--in with _him_, Mr. Horace Faggit of the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, manufacturers of best quality Birmingham jewellery and "importers" of a fine Whitechapel wine.

But Horace settled _him_ all right and taught him to respect Sahibs. It happened thus. Horace lay idly gazing at the ever-shifting scene of the platform in lordly detachment and splendid isolation, when, just as the train was starting, a little fat man, dressed in a little red turban like a cotton bowler, a white coat with a white sash over the shoulder, a white apron tucked up behind, pink silk socks, and patent leather shoes, told his servant to open the door. Ere the stupefied Horace could arise from his seat the man was climbing in! The door opened inwards however, and Horace was in time to give it a sharp thrust with his foot and send the little man, a mere Judge of the High Court, staggering backwards on to the platform where he sprawled at full length, while his turban, which Horace thought most ridiculous for a grown man, rolled in the dust. Slamming the door the "Sahib" leant out and jeered, while the insolent presumptuous "nigger" wiped the blood from his nose with a corner of the _dhoti_ or apron-like garment (which Horace considered idiotic if not improper)....

But Homer nodded, and--Horace went to sleep.

When he awoke he saw by the dim light of the screened roof-lamp that he was not alone, and that on the opposite couch a _native_ had actually made up a bed with sheets, blankets and pillow, undressed himself, put on pyjamas and gone to bed! Gord streuth, he had! He'd attend to him in the morning--though it would serve the brute right if Horace threw him out at the next station--without his kit. But he looked rather large, and Mercy is notoriously a kingly attribute.

In the morning Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed of Mekran Kot, Gungapur, and the world in general, awoke, yawned, stretched himself and arose.

He arose to some six feet and three inches of stature, and his thin pyjamasuit was seen to cover a remarkably fine and robustious figure--provided with large contours where contours are desirable, and level tracts where such are good. As he lay flat back again, Horace noted that his chest rose higher than his head and the more southerly portion of his anatomy, while the action of clasping his hands behind his neck brought into prominence a pair of biceps that strained their sleeves almost to bursting. He was nearly as fair as London-bred Horace, but there were his turbanned conical hat, his curly toed shoes, his long silk coat, his embroidered velvet waistcoat and other wholly Oriental articles of attire. Besides, his vest was of patterned muslin and he had something on a coloured string round his neck.

"What are you doing 'ere?" demanded Horace truculently, as this bold abandoned "native" caught his eye and said "Good-morning".

"At present I am doing nothing," was the reply, "unless passive reclining may count as being something. I trust I do not intrude or annoy?"

"You do intrude and likewise you do annoy also. I ain't accustomed to travel with blacks, and I ain't agoing to have you spitting about 'ere. You got in when I was asleep."

"You were certainly snoring when I got in, and I was careful not to awaken you--but not on account of any great sensation of guilt or fear. I assure you I have no intention of spitting or being in any way rude, unmannerly, or offensive. And since you object to travelling with 'blacks' I suggest--that you leave the carriage."

Did Horace's ears deceive him? Did he sleep, did he dream, and were visions about? _Leave the carriage_?

"Look 'ere," he shouted, "you keep a civil tongue in your 'ead. Don't you know I am a gentleman? What do you mean by getting into a first-class carriage with a gentleman and insulting 'im? Want me to throw you out before we reach a station? Do yer?"

"No, to tell you the truth I did not realize that you are a gentleman--and I have known a great number of English gentlemen in England and India, and generally found them mirrors of chivalry and the pink of politeness and courtesy. And I hope you won't try to throw me out either in a station or elsewhere for I might get annoyed and hurt you."

What a funny nigger it was! What did he mean by "mirrors of chivalry". Talked like a bloomin' book. Still, Horace would learn him not to presoom.

The presumptuous one retired to the lavatory; washed, shaved, and reappeared dressed in full Pathan kit. But for this, there was nothing save his very fine physique and stature to distinguish him from an inhabitant of Southern Europe.

Producing a red-covered official work on Mounted Infantry Training, he settled down to read.

Horace regretted that India provided not his favourite _Comic Cuts and Photo Bits_.

"May I offer you a cigarette and light one myself?" said the "black" man in his quiet cultured voice.

"I don't want yer fags--and I don't want you smoking while I got a empty stummick," replied the Englishman.

Anon the train strolled into an accidental-looking station with an air of one who says, "Let's sit down for a bit--what?" and Horace sprang to the window and bawled for the guard.

"'Ere--ask this native for 'is ticket," he said, on the arrival of that functionary. "Wot's 'e doing in 'ere with _me_?"

"Ticket, please?" said the guard--a very black Goanese.

The Pathan produced his ticket.

"Will you kindly see if there is another empty first-class carriage, Guard?" said he.

"There iss one next a'door," replied the guard.

"Then you can escape from your unpleasant predicament by going in there, Sir," said the Pathan.

"I shall remine where I ham," was the dignified answer.

"And so shall I," said the Pathan.

"Out yer go," said the bagman, rising threateningly.

"I am afraid I shall have to put you to the trouble of ejecting me," said the Pathan, with a smile.

"I wouldn't bemean myself," countered Horace loftily, and didn't.

"One often hears of the dangerous classes in India," said the Pathan, as the train moved on again. "You belong to the most dangerous of all. You and your kind are a danger to the Empire and I have a good mind to be a public benefactor and destroy you. Put you to the edge of the sword--or rather of the tin-opener," and he pulled his lunch-basket from under the seat.

"Have some chicken, little Worm?" he continued, opening the basket and preparing to eat.

"Keep your muck," replied Horace.

"No, no, little Cad," corrected the strange and rather terrible person; "you are going to breakfast with me and you are going to learn a few things about India--and yourself."

And Horace did....

"Where are you going?" asked the Pathan person later.

"I'm going to work up a bit o' trade in a place called Gungerpore," was the reply of the cowed Horace.

But in Gungapur Horace adopted the very last trade that he, respectable man, ever expected to adopt--that of War.