Chapter III (3)

"Give her the baby--only for a minute," pleaded Julia with tears in her eyes. _Mai_ Gungo frowned; but a neighbour broke in hastily--

"Ay! give it to her, gossip, lest in her evil ways she returns for it when she is dead."

So they laid the baby beside her; but the restless head went on turning restlessly from side to side.

"My doll! my doll! I like my doll best."

Before they could fetch it from the Mission compound Kirpo was dead.

"LONDON."

The rains had fallen late, bringing unusual greenness to the stretches of waste-land, and unusual promise of harvest to the bare, brown fields where man and beast were hard at work, day and night, ploughing, harrowing, sowing, watering. Waiting--that integral part of Indian husbandry--had yet to come, but the memory, almost the dread of it, lurked ever in the slow brains of the labourers. In mine also, alien and uninterested though it was; for surely no one who has seen a Jât cultivator, tall, meagre, soft eyed, wandering amongst his green wheat, waiting for Râm to send rain, can ever forget the incarnate tragedy of the sight.

The sun was setting cloudless in a sea of light, that still flooded the scene with the brightness of noon, though the shadows lengthened in swift strides. I was sitting on a wide flight of steps leading down into a small tank closed in on all sides by masonry. Viewed thus, with the mass of brick work surrounding it, this square of placid water reflecting back the lemon-coloured sky, the fringe of dull _farâsh_ trees, and the gilded spires of the temple rising above them, showed like a small Dutch picture set in a heavy, deep-recessed frame. On the opposite side a woman in a saffron veil was filling her brass pot, and on the trumpery stucco arcades of the temple-plinth were painted blue elephants, gingerbread tigers, and spidery monkeys. Round and round the central spire the iridescent breasts of the whirling pigeons glinted in the level rays.

It was peaceful, colourful, almost in its way beautiful, especially after a long day's work in the office tent which rose a few hundred yards away. Suddenly the clear-cut silence of the scene was marred by a deprecatory voice behind me.

"The Presence will not think it so fine as '_Ide Park_, doubtless?"

"So fine as what?" I echoed carelessly, being accustomed to the thousand and one interruptions of a district officer's life.

"So fine as your '_Ide Par-k_ in the town of London."

"Hyde Park!--why! what the deuce do you know of Hyde Park?"

Intense surprise had replaced my indifference, for there was nothing to account for the strangeness of his words either in the face or figure of the man who stood behind me leaning on a long staff over which his hands were crossed. It was just such a face and figure as I saw every day. A typical Jât--in other words, a farmer by race and heritage--tall, high-shouldered, lank, with a bushy-shaped turban adding to his height, and straight folds of heavy, unbleached cotton cloth suggesting the lean, bony frame beneath. A face well cut, but not refined, marked, but not strong, in which the most noticeable features were the large dreamy eyes like those of Botticelli's Moses in the Sistine Chapel.

Immovable from the knee downwards he squatted, as the Americans say, "in his tracks," keeping his submissive face towards mine like a dog awaiting his master's pleasure.

"By the mercy of the Presence I have seen 'Ide Park. Yes, I have been there--in the city of London--where the _sahibs_ and the _mem-sahibs_ sit and walk."

A vision of the figure before me planted out amongst flower-decked mashers and powdery belles aroused such a sense of incongruity in my mind that I could only echo feebly--

"So you have been to London!"

"Yes!" he replied cheerfully, "I've been to London to see the great Queen."

For the life of me I could not help reverting to the sequence of childish days: "_Pussy cat, pussy cat, what saw you there?_" and his reply fitted in so neatly that my query lost its lightness and became serious.

"I saw the _Sikattar_ (secretary) who sits in her chair."

I laughed then; I could not help it, for I felt convinced that no other words could have expressed the whole incident more truthfully.

"I went to London, O Protector of the Poor!" continued the stranger softly, "because I wanted, to get back the land. The Presence knows we Jâts cannot live without our land."

Involuntarily his eyes turned to a neighbouring field, where a couple of plough bullocks were slowly scoring the levels into feeble furrows, whilst the ploughman--just such a man as the one before me--held his hookah in one hand, his goad in the other.

"So you did not get the land after all? How was that?" God knows I was not always so ready of access to the native (as the departmental pastorals put it), but then one does not meet a Jât who has been to Hyde Park every day.

"Perhaps if it had not been a _Sikattar_," replied the low soft voice--"perhaps if it had been the great Queen herself--" Here the plough bullocks he was watching turned too sharply, and his hand closed mechanically on the stick he held between his knees, as if he were responsible for the mistake. "If the Presence has not heard it all before, I will tell it why Dewa Râm the Jât went to London."

I give the story in his own words, for mine might fail to transmit the perfection of his patience.

"The land was my father's, and my father's father from Mahratta times. In those days no one could sell the land or prevent the sons from following the father's plough. To begin with, no one wanted to sell good land, and then they could not if they would. That was before the great Sirkâr--life and prosperity be with it always--came to lift the hearts of the poor and set their heads high. There was much land, and on some of it in olden days a mortgage had been put. The Presence will know the kind of mortgage, where for a hundred rupees or so of loan another man is allowed to till the soil worth thousands. Only if it is wanted back, then the owner returns the hundred rupees. That is all. It is done when a family is small and has too much land to till properly. So the village accountant's people held the land because they were relations by marriage. It was in my father's time that the great Sirkâr came, and we began paying the dues to it instead of to the Maharajah. Then, when my father fell into evil ways because of drugs, my mother took her sons--we were twins, Sewa Râm and I--if the Presence pleases, back to her people far away beyond Amritsar. For she was of a high, proud family, and when the hemp gets into a man's head he does unclean things. So my father was alone, and the accountant made him do as he liked, bribing him with drugs. That was how it happened, as the Presence will doubtless perceive. So when my father neglected his own land, the accountant's people cultivated it for him and gave him what was due. My mother heard of this, but she said nothing, because we were but little lads, and the land could not run away--it was better that it should be tilled than left to rack and ruin. At last my father died, but they sent no word to Amritsar, because the great Sirkâr was coming to count the village, and make a map of it with all the holdings of the proper shape, and all the fields coloured green. If the Protector of the Poor will forgive his dust-like slave, he will remember that fields are not green always, and so likewise the holdings are not always right, no matter how carefully they are put on the map. There was the old mortgage, a man who lied tilling the soil, and no one to come to the Sirkâr and say, 'Here is the hundred rupees, give us back the land and write it in our names,' because, as I have said, Sewa Râm and I were away beyond Amritsar, and our mother thought the land could not run away. It was no wonder the Sirkâr was deceived, no wonder at all, but when we came to claim the land even our names were not on the list. They had written the wrong thing because the mortgage had been foreclosed, and there were no heirs. After this one judge--may he become the _Lât Sahib_--said he would put it right, but the accountant was rich and made it into an appeal. The Presence knows what an appeal is, doubtless, and how, when a little thing like this--just a mistake in a map--gets up amongst the pleaders and the _Sikattars_, it is sometimes too small for them to see. It would have been different if the Sirkâr had seen two big noisy boys when it counted the village. Then Sewa Râm was set free from the prison of life, and I was alone; for the Presence knows a Jât cannot marry without land, or have sons when there is no plough to keep the furrow of existence straight. So I sold my mother's jewels and went to show the great Queen herself that my father really had a son. Thus I came to 'Ide Park in London city, and saw the _Sikattar_."

"Then you did not succeed?"

"The Presence knows that the _vizier_ is not as the _badshah_. He was very kind, sending me back by ship P. and O. And writing! God knows how many letters he wrote, and he bade me wait. That is two years gone, so I am waiting still."

"Have you a case in my Court?"

He shook his head with a certain pride. "Oh no! it is in the big Court, or with the Financial, or a _Sikattar_ just now; but it will come to the Presence sooner or later. That is why I journey with the Protector of the Poor. When that day comes the Presence will remember how Dewa Râm the Jât went to 'Ide Park."

As I strolled back to the tent he followed at a discreet distance. Afterwards, as I sat smoking outside, I saw him wandering in the fields listlessly, his tall figure standing out against the sky as he paused to look at the sprouting wheat. When I questioned my underlings as to his story, they smiled obsequiously, as the native will smile before the master's face. The case, it appeared, had grown to be quite a standing joke in the office, nor was this the first cold weather that Dewa Râm had haunted the camp of the Deputy Commissioner and waited for news of his land. They hemmed and hawed, however, over the rights and wrongs of his claim, until I asked them point blank what their own impressions were; then habit gave way to truth, and they frankly declared their belief in some miscarriage of justice. A man, they said, would not go all the way to London for nothing. As I inclined to the same view, I took the trouble to try working the oracle by the back stairs--a method no less successful in India than elsewhere. Replies, more or less hopeful as to some ultimate settlement of the question, came from various friends in high places. Some of these I communicated, in a guarded way, to "London," who as the sowing time passed fell a victim to fever and deferred hope. It was impossible for mortal man to see those dreamy eyes of his watching the crops of other men without feeling an insane desire to bring the promised land within his reach. He was very grateful. So condescending a Presence, he said, had never before dwelt in the tents of the great Sirkâr; and often on Sunday afternoons, when the camp was at rest, he would steal ostentatiously to a spot about thirty yards from where I was sitting, and if opportunity offered, enter into conversation--generally beginning by some apologetic allusion to 'Ide Park, but ending with a vast amount of information. He was a perfect mine of folk-lore, and many a half hour did he beguile by old-world stories and traditions. One, in particular, I will retail in his own words, because it seems to me to give insight into the nature of the man and of his race.

I had been having my Sunday cup of afternoon tea in the shade of a huge banian tree, and was idly amusing myself by throwing crumbs to a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed palm squirrel, that had crept down the trunk not two yards from me. Attracted, partly by hunger, but more by the sheer light-hearted cussedness which makes the Indian squirrel so charming a companion, the little creature came nearer and nearer, its tail in an aggressive pluff, its large eyes scanning my face knowingly. A pause, a dart, and it was chirruping on the branch above my head with the crumb in its deft fingers.

"The Presence is a friend of Râm's," said "London" deferentially, "that is why the heart of the Presence is so soft."

"And why do you say I am a friend of Râm's?" I asked.

"Because the Presence is a friend to Râm's friend. Has the _Huzoor_ never heard how the squirrel people come to have four black marks on their golden backs? Then I will tell. It was in the old days when Râm's parents fastened the silken bracelet on his wrist, and sent him out to find Seeta his wife. The Presence will have heard of that, and how each year our women folk tie the _râm rukkhi_ to our wrists for luck. Well, when Râm, the King of all men, came to Sanderip, he found the great Monkey had carried off Seeta the Queen of women. Then, being in distress, he bid all the birds and beasts and fishes come to help him, for great Râm was the Lord of the whole earth. Now the first to answer his call was the squirrel. In those days it was all golden, like corn in the sunlight, and light-hearted beyond all mortal things, as it is now. It leapt on to Râm's sword and cried, 'Master! I am ready.' But the great god's eyes grew soft as he saw the little thing's slender beauty, and perceived that it had the bravest heart of all his creatures. So he laid his hand on it in blessing, saying softly--

"'Nay! tender little warrior! thou art too pretty for strife and death. Live on, brave and careless for ever, so that weary men may see the beauty of the life great Râm has given.'

"But, lo! when he raised his hand the squirrel's shining coat bore the shadow of Râm's tired fingers, for even golden life is dimmed by the touch of care."

This and many another tale he told to me, while the green pigeons bustled about in the branches, and the squirrels lay yawning amongst the mango flowers. For the winter had flown, the camping season was at an end, and still "London" was waiting. He never complained; only when rain fell, or when there was a heavy dew, or a good winnowing wind,--anything, in short, calculated to gladden the heart of a farmer,--he used to talk of 'Ide Park, and bewail the fact that _Sikattar sahibs_ had penetrated even there. The hot weather passed, as usual, in a stagnation of mind and body more or less modified by individual energy, and during it "London" paid me but occasional visits, and was fairly cheerful. No sooner, however, did the stir of coming cultivation begin again in the high, unirrigated soils, than he followed suit with a growing restlessness. And still no answer came. Just then a small piece of Government land,--that is to say, land in which no cultivator had a vested interest,--fell vacant in a village not far from "London's" ancestral home, and I bethought me of putting him in as tenant if I could. But it is no easy task to find soil to cultivate in India, since farms are not "to be let" as they are in England, and the State, though in reality owner, has no power to turn out one man or his heirs in favour of another, or in any way to manipulate the holdings of hereditary cultivators. Why, knowing this, it could have delegated the power to the money lender, in giving the right of alienation by sale or mortgage to the cultivator, is one of those abstruse mysteries over the elucidation of which volumes have been and are still to be written. A mystery, moreover, which is responsible for half the growing poverty of those whose patient labour is the bulwark of the State.

The particular village in which I hoped to find a more or less temporary outlet for poor "London's" hereditary instinct--which made the sight of a plough have much the same effect on him as a clutch of eggs has on a broody hen--had earned an unenviable notoriety from the number of mutineers it produced in the '57. Nearly one-half of the land had come under direct Government control by confiscation, and as the country settled down, had been leased, at fixed rentals, to the loyal families, or in many cases to the heirs of the dead offenders.

One of these, the son of a notorious mutineer, had just died childless, and it was into his place that I determined, if possible, to put "London." The case "Dewa Râm _versus_ the Empress and others" had come back to me for the third time, with a request for further inquiry and evidence. There was none to give, for in a country where birth and marriage certificates are unknown quantities, and registers of all kinds are inaccurate, legal proof of a case like "London's" is almost impossible. As he himself invariably said, it was no wonder the Sirkâr had been deceived by the foreclosed mortgage, and the lying man who tilled the soil, joined to the newly-invented theory that the peasant proprietor had a right to alienate the ancestral property of his descendants. So, with the prospect of another cold weather camp before me, I felt an almost morbid desire to get rid of "London," and those patient eyes that seemed to me as if they were ever on the look-out for the promised land.

I was told afterwards by my superiors, in set terms, that my behaviour was illegal and indiscreet, and that I should have gone round the mutinous crew one by one, giving them the option of leasing the land, before offering it to any one else, above all, before putting in a man whose claim to other ground was "in course of settlement." I believe my superiors to have been quite right theoretically, and I know that, practically, my philanthropic experiment proved a disastrous failure. Not a week after "London," glowing with gratitude, set out for the village in which his new holding was situated, he was brought back to the hospital on a stretcher with a broken arm and several clouts on the head. Indeed, I have always felt it to be the crowning mercy of my career, that no one was actually killed in the free fight which ensued on my protégé's arrival in the mutineers' village; for he had some friends, stalwart as himself, and the Jâts, once aroused from their usual calm placidity, fight like devils with their long quarterstaves. On this occasion they gave the truculent crew as good as they got, until overpowered by numbers. When the incident occurred I was in a very out of the way part of the district, and I well remember having to send a special messenger thirty miles with an urgent telegram in order to allay still more urgent inquiries as to the "serious agrarian riot in B----."

When I returned to head-quarters I found "London" convalescent and distinctly cheerful. He was sitting on the hospital steps whittling a new staff, and expressed his determination of going back to the village as soon as possible with a larger supply of friends. I felt constrained, however, to deny him his revenge. To begin with, my official reputation could not have stood another agrarian riot; in addition, the mutineering village had appealed against my action "_en masse_," so the matter had passed beyond my control. "London" was sorrowful, but sympathetic, seeming to enjoy the idea that I too might become a prey to _Sikattars_ ere long. He took great pride in his broken arm and new stick, and more than once suggested that if the great Queen only knew how he had clouted the heads of the misbegotten, unfaithful devils, she might believe that his father had indeed left a son.

After this I made several attempts to bring a plough handle within "London's" reach, but my philanthropy was guarded, and my efforts uniformly unsuccessful. Once, a small atom of land on which I had my eye was taken up by a newly-made Municipal Committee as a public institute. It was Jubilee year, and various things of the kind were being started. When I saw this particular one last, a stuffed crocodile, two spinning wheels, some tussar silk cocoons, and a specimen card of aniline dyes, occupied what they were pleased to call the Industrial Department. In the reading room opposite an interesting collection of seditious journalism lay on the table, and a chromo of the "Kaiser-i-Hind" hung over the fireplace.

Then once again, when I thought I had found a resting-place for those dreamy eyes, the Military Department stepped between hope and fruition with a stout Subadar-major who had done the State good service. Finally, sick leave--the end of so many kindly plans and hopes for those who, living amongst the peasantry learn to admire them as they deserve to be admired--came to put an end to all my plans for "London."

He bore the tidings with gentle regret. The Presence, he said, had not been well for some time; It would be the better of seeing 'Ide Park again, and perhaps as It was to be away so long--a whole year he was told--there would be a chance of seeing not only the _Sikattar_, but the great Queen herself.

"And if," he continued, standing up and leaning on his staff as I had first seen him, whilst his eyes followed the ploughing for yet another harvest,--"and if the Presence is so fortunate, perhaps It might find time to remember that Dewa Râm the Jât is waiting for his land."

The reason for my writing this absolutely true experience is one of those distressing inconsistencies which are part and parcel of poor humanity. One might have thought the facts sufficient to excuse a resort to pen, ink, and paper on the part of one really interested in that peasant life of which the rulers and governors know so little. But it needed an unreality, a mere feverish fancy to supply the motive power.

I was in Hyde Park yesterday at the close of a bright afternoon. No need to describe what I saw. To those who live in London the scene is as familiar as their own faces, while those who do not, have at their disposal a thousand descriptions far better than any I could give. An unusually thick sprinkling of clerical attire among the crowd testified to the attraction of missionary meetings when combined with London at its best. Indeed, as I had come down Piccadilly the vast number of sandwich men advertising lectures, meetings, and addresses on every conceivable subject, struck me as favourable evidence of the growing intelligence and sympathy of the many for things beyond the daily round of English life.

I sat down, and being a comparative stranger, amused myself, as many have done before me, in listening to the scraps of conversation which fell from the lips of the passers by--the flotsam-jetsam left by the stream of humanity; and as usual my initial curiosity and interest died down before the growing perception of some strange likeness underlying all the atoms of thought and speech.

Slowly, uncertainly, as the confused tints of a child's magic lantern focus into some horrid monster, or as the ebbing tide discloses the drowned face of a victim, the half-heard assertions, denials, protestations of the pleasure-seeking crowd, gave up their individual form and colour, and were lost in the one unchangeable, indestructible characteristic of humanity--its selfishness. On every face an interest, a smile, a frown, a thought; below these, the one source of all. Inevitable, no doubt, but depressing in the masks are men and women claiming to be the cream of culture and civilisation. I wondered if, when the best was said and done, the art of widening our vitality by our sympathies had made much progress.

A stir in the crowd, a murmur, a look of expectation roused me from idle moralisings. A couple of outriders in red came down the drive, and people paused to look.

"By Jove! it's the Queen herself," said some one hurriedly, as a brougham drove past giving a glimpse from behind closed windows of grey hair and a widow's cap. The murmur swelled to a roar, almost a cheer. Every hat was off, and some country cousins stood up in their chairs in order to see better.

Now, what followed will, I know, be set down to the attack of Indian fever which some ten minutes afterwards sent me home to shiver in bed. Nevertheless, I am prepared to swear that there, amongst the flower-decked mashers and the powdery belles, I saw the tall, gaunt form of "London" leaning on his quarterstaff. The gentle, deprecatory smile I had so often seen when he spoke of 'Ide Park was on his face, as if he knew the incongruity of his own appearance in such a scene. His eyes were not on the modest carriage in which the _Kaiser-i-Hind_ was being partially displayed to her faithful subjects. They were fixed on me! On me, the tape-tied, sealing-waxed representative of a paternal despotism in India. The myriad tongues resumed their civilised shibboliths, but above them came a well-known cadence, "And if the Presence is so fortunate, perhaps it might find time to remember that Dewa Râm the Jât is waiting for his land."

As I said before, I went home to bed. What else could I do? Perhaps if other people could have seen what I saw, Dewa Râm and his kind would not be so often in difficulties about their land.

LÂL.

Who was Lâl? What was he? This was a question I asked many times; and though it was duly answered, Lâl remained, and remains still, an unknown quantity--an abstraction, a name, and nothing more. L A L. The same backwards and forwards, self-contained, self-sufficing.

The first time I heard of Lâl was on a bright spring morning, one of those mornings when the plains of Northern India glitter with dew-drops; when a purple haze of cloud-mountain bounds the pale wheat-fields to the north, and a golden glow strikes skywards from the sand-hills in the south. I was in a tamarisk jungle on the banks of the Indus, engaged in the decorous record of all the thefts and restitutions made during the year by that most grasping and generous of rivers. For year after year, armed by the majesty of law and bucklered by foot-rules and maps, the Government of India, in the person of one of its officers, came gravely and altered the proportion of land and water on the surface of the globe, while the river gurgled and dimpled as if it were laughing in its sleeve.

Strange work, but pleasant too, with a charm of its own wrought by infinite variety and sudden surprise. Sometimes watching the stream sapping at a wheat-field, where the tender green spikes fringed the edges of each crack and fissure in the fast-drying soil. A promise of harvest,--and then, sheer down, the turbid water gnawing hungrily. Every now and again a splash, telling that another inch or two of solid earth had yielded. Sometimes standing on a mud bank where the ever watchful villagers had sown a trial crop of coarse vetch; thus, as it were, casting their bread on the water in hopes of finding it again some day. But when? Would it be there at harvest-time? Grey-bearded patriarchs from the village would wag their heads sagely over the problem, and younger voices protest that it was not worth while to enter such a flotsam-jetsam as a field. But the ruthless iron chain would come into requisition, and another green spot be daubed on the revenue map, for Governments ignore chance. And still the river dimpled and gurgled with inward mirth; for if it gave the vetch, had it not taken the wheat?

So from one scene of loss or gain to another, while the sun shone in the cloudless sky overhead. Past pools of shining water where red-billed cranes stood huddled up on one leg, as if they felt cold in the crisp morning air. Out on the bare stretches of sand where glittering streams and flocks of white egrets combined to form a silver embroidery on the brown expanse. Over the shallow ford where the bottle-nosed alligators slipped silently into the stream, or lay still as shadows on the sun-baked sand. Down by the big river, where the swirling water parted right and left, and where the greybeards set their earthen pots a-swimming to decide which of the two streams would prove its strength by bearing away the greater number,--a weighty question, not lightly to be decided, since the land to the west of the big stream belonged to one village, and the land eastward to another. Back again to higher ground through thickets of tamarisk dripping with dew. The bushes sparse below with their thin brown stems, so thick above where the feathery pink-spiked branches interlaced. Riding through it, the hands had to defend the face from the sharp switch of the rosy flowers as they swung back disentangled; such tiny flowers, too, no bigger than a mustard seed, and leaving a pink powder of pollen behind them.

It was after forcing my way through one of these tamarisk jungles that I came out on an open patch of rudely ploughed land, where a mixed crop of pulse and barley grew sturdily, outlining an irregular oval with a pale green carpet glistening with dew. In the centre a shallow pool of water still testified to past floods, and from it a purple heron winged its flight, lazily craning its painted neck against the sky.

The whole _posse comitatus_ of the village following me broke by twos and threes through the jungle, and gathered round me as I paused watching the bird's flight.

"Take the bridle from his honour's pony," cried a venerable pantaloon breathlessly. "Let the steed of the Lord of the Universe eat his fill. Is not this the field of Lâl?"

Twenty hands stretched out to do the old headman's bidding; twenty voices re-echoed the sentiment in varying words. A minute more, and my pony's nose was well down on the wet, sweet tufts of vetch, and I was asking for the first time, "Who is Lâl?"

Lâl, came the answer, why, Lâl was--Lâl. This was his field. Why should not the pony of the Protector of the Poor have a bellyful? Was it not more honourable than the parrot people and the squirrel people, and the pig people who battened on the field of Lâl?

It was early days yet for the flocks of green parrots to frequent the crops, and the dainty squirrels were, I knew, still snugly a-bed waiting for the sun to dry the dew; but at my feet sundry furrows and scratches told that the pig had already been at work.

"Is Lâl here?" I asked.

A smile, such as greets a child's innocent ignorance, came to the good-humoured faces around me.

Lâl, they explained, came when the crop was ripe, when the parrot, the squirrel, and the pig people--and his honour's pony too--had had their fill. Lâl was a good man, one who walked straight, and laboured truly.

"But where is he?" I insisted.

Face looked at face half puzzled, half amused. Who could tell where Lâl was? He might be miles away, or in the next jungle. Some one had seen him at Sukkhur a week agone, but that was no reason why he should not be at Bhukkur now, for Lâl followed the river, and like it was here to-day, gone to-morrow.

Baulked in my curiosity, I took refuge in business by inquiring what revenue Lâl paid on his field. This was too much for the polite gravity of my hearers. The idea of Lâl's paying revenue was evidently irresistibly comic, and the venerable pantaloon actually choked himself between a cough and a laugh, requiring to be held up and patted on the back.

"But some one must pay the revenue," I remarked a little testily.

Certainly! the Lord of the Universe was right. The village community paid it. It was the village which lent Lâl the field, and the bullocks, and the plough. It was the village which gave him the few handfuls of seed-grain to scatter broadcast over the roughly-tilled soil. So much they lent to Lâl. The sun and the good God gave him the rest. All, that is to say, that was not wanted for the parrot, the pig, and the squirrel people, and, of course, for the pony of the Lord of the Universe.

There are so many mysteries in Indian peasant life, safe hidden from alien eyes, that I was lazily content to let Lâl and his field slip into the limbo of things not thoroughly understood, and so, ere long, I forgot all about him. Spring passed ripening the crops; summer came bringing fresh floods to the river; and autumn watched the earth once more make way against the water; but Lâl was to me as though he had not been.

It was only when another year found me once more in the strange land which lies, as the natives say, "in the stomach of the river," that memory awoke with the words, "This is the field of Lâl." There was, however, no suggestion made about loosening my pony's bridle as on the former occasion, the reason for such reticence being palpable. Lâl had either been less fortunate in his original choice of a field this year, or else the sun and the good God had been less diligent care-takers. A large portion of the land, too, bore marks of an over-recent flood in a thick deposit of fine glistening white sand. A favourite trick of the mischievous Indus, by which she disappoints hope raised by previous gifts of rich alluvial soil--a trick which has given her a bad name, the worst a woman can bear, because she gives and destroys with one hand. Here and there, in patches, the sparse crop showed green; but for the most part the ground lay bare, cracking into large fissures under the noonday sun, and peeling at the top into shiny brown scales.

"A bad lookout for Lâl," I remarked.

Bad, they said, for the squirrel people and the parrot people, no doubt; but for Lâl--that was another matter. L&I did not live by bread alone. The river gave, the river took away; but to Lâl at any rate it gave more than it stole.

"What does it give?" I asked.

It gave crocodiles. Of all things in the world crocodiles! Not a welcome gift to many, but Lâl, it seemed, was a hunter of crocodiles. Not a mere slayer of alligators, like the men of the half-savage tribes who frequent the river land; who array themselves in a plethora of blue beads, and live by the creeks and _jheels_ on what they can catch or steal; who track the cumbersome beasts to their nightly lair in some narrow inlet, and, after barring escape by a stealthy earthwork, fall on the helpless creature at dawn with spears and arrows. Lâl was not of these; he was of another temper. He hunted the crocodile in its native element, stalked it through the quicksands, knife in hand, dived with it into the swift stream, sped like a fish to the soft belly beneath, and struck upwards with unerring hand, once, twice, thrice, while the turbid orange water glowed crimson with the spouting blood.

I heard this tale curiously, but incredulously. Why, I asked, should Lâl run such risks? What good were crocodiles to him when they were slain? There was not so much risk, after all, they replied, for it was only the bottle-nosed ones that he hunted, and though, of course, the snub-nosed ones lived in the river also--God destroy the horrid monsters!--still they did not interfere in the fight. And Lâl was careful, all the more careful, because he had but two possessions to guard, his skin and his knife. As to what Lâl did with the crocodiles, why, he ate them, of course. Not all; he spared some for his friends, for those who were good to him, and gave him something in return. Had the Presence never heard that the poor ate crocodile flesh? They themselves, of course, did not touch the unclean animal; and their gifts to Lâl were purely disinterested. He was a straight-walking, a labourful man, and that was the only reason why they lent him a field. Even the Presence would acknowledge that crocodile flesh without bread would be uninteresting diet; but as a rule the pig, the parrots, the squirrels left enough for Lâl to eat with his jerked meat. The village lent him the sickle, of course, and the flail, and the mill, sometimes even the girdle on which to bake the unleavened bread; but all for love, only for love. Yet if the Presence desired it they could show him the jerked meat, some that Lâl had left for the poor. It was dry? Oh, yes! Lâl cut the great beasts into strips, and laid them in the sun on the dry sand, sitting beside them to scare away the carrion birds. Sometimes there would be a crowd of vultures, and Lâl with his knife sitting in the midst. "He will have to sell some of his jerked crocodile to pay his revenue this year," I remarked, just to amuse them. Again the idea was comic; evidently Lâl and money were incompatible, and the very idea of his owning any caused them to chuckle unrestrainedly amongst themselves. Then, growing grave, they explained at length how Lâl had nothing in the world but his knife. All the rest--the sun, the river, the crocodiles, the field, the bullocks, the plough, and the seed-grain--were lent to him by them and the good God; lent to him and to the other people who ate of the field of Lâl.

As I rode away a brace of black partridges rose from one of the green patches, and close to the tamarisk shelter a brown rat sat balancing a half-dried stalk of barley. The river gleamed in the distance, a wedge-shaped flight of _coolin_ cleft the sky. All that day, when the shadow-like crocodiles slipped into the sliding water, I thought of Lâl and his knife. Was it a crocodile, after all; or was it a man, stealthy, swift, and silent? Who could tell, when there was nothing but a shadow, a slip, and then a few air bubbles on the sliding river? Or was that Lâl yonder where the vultures ringed a sand-bank far on the western side? Why not? None knew whence he came or whither he went, what he hoped, or what he feared; only his field bare witness to one human frailty--hunger; and that he shared with the pig, and the parrot, and the squirrel people. But though my thoughts were full of Lâl for a day or two, the memory of him passed as I left the river land, and once more spring, summer, and autumn brought forgetfulness.

There were busy times for all the revenue officers next year. The fitful river had chosen to desert its eastern bank altogether, and concentrate its force upon the western; so while yard after yard of ancestral land was giving way before the fierce stream, amidst much wringing of hands on the one side, there was joy on the other over long rich stretches ready for the plough and the red tape of measurement. In the press of work even the sight of the river land failed to awake any memory of Lâl. It was not until I was re-entering the outskirts of the village at sundown that something jogged my brain, making me turn to the _posse comitatus_ behind me and ask,--

"And where, this year, is the field of Lâl?"

We were passing over an open space baked almost to whiteness by the constant sun,--a hard resonant place set round with gnarled _jhand_ trees, and dotted over with innumerable little mud mounds.

"There," wheezed the venerable pantaloon, pressing forward and pointing to one newer than the rest. "That is the field of Lâl."

Then I saw that we were in the village burial-ground. I looked up inquiringly.

"_Huzoor!_" repeated a younger man, "that is Lâl's field. It is his own this time; but for all that the Sirkâr will not charge him revenue." The grim joke, and the idea of Lâl's having six feet of earth of his own at last, once more roused their sense of humour.

"And the other people who ate of the field of Lâl?" I asked, half in earnest, for somehow my heart was sad.

"The good God will look after them, as He has after the crocodiles."

Since then, strangely enough, the memory of Lâl has remained with me, and I often ask myself if he really existed, and if he really died. Does he still slip silently into the stream, knife in hand? Does he still come back to his field under the broad harvest moon, to glean his scanty share after the other people have had their fill? I cannot say; but whenever I see a particularly fat squirrel I say to myself, "It has been feeding in the field of Lâl."

A DEBT OF HONOUR.

A flood of yellow sunshine on yellow sand, and a horse at the gallop. A horse guided by an English boy, in blue spectacles, sitting squarely enough, but somewhat stiffly, in his saddle, as if too independent to give himself away even to the joyous swing of the handsome little beast beneath him. A big boy undoubtedly; but a boy for all his size, and despite the fact that he was an Assistant Commissioner of the third grade. In other words, one appointed to administer justice to the ignorant heathen--those ignorant heathen who seemed to have such odd ideas of life, and to require such immediate regeneration--at the hands of English boys.

In front, across the foreground, the glaring white high road for which he was steering; to the left centre a gnarled, knotted old _jhand_ tree hung with coloured threads and patches, proclaiming it to be still sacred to some effete modern form of serpent-worship--one of those mysterious Indian cults of which no one, not even the disciples themselves, know anything. Young Jones, or Smith--what matters the name when a character has but to figure before the footlights of a single scene?--noticed these threads and patches with the quick but incomprehensive eye of superiority. A not uncommon feeling of contemptuous interest came over him, which prolonged itself even when the cause changed into a wonder why the brute he was riding would not keep its head at the proper angle. Then darkness, and silence!

Smith-Jones's horse had put its foot into a rat-hole and given him a bad fall, about as bad a fall as could well have been, short of those curious plunges over the edge of one world into the next. He lay white and still on the yellow sand, neither in time nor eternity, for a long while. How long matters no more than his name, for this is the story of Smith-Jones, and it is through his eyes and his thoughts that it must be seen and told; therefore until he began to gain consciousness the scene remained, as it were, a blank, despite the fact that there were other actors on the stage.

Most people when coming to themselves (to use a popular, but confusing phrase) meet first of all with a sound of slow, storm-spent breakers rolling in on some unknown shore. Is it the one they are leaving, or the one to which they seek return? Who knows--for the vague wonder is stilled by a whispering _hush!_ growing louder and louder as if both worlds were waiting, finger on lip, for a decision. Then, as a rule, comes a kindly, familiar voice or touch to settle the question in favour of this earth; perhaps some day it may come to summon us to another. Again, who knows?

Smith-Jones, however, felt something so distinctly unfamiliar that he opened his eyes in a fright, relieved to find himself in that unmistakable flood of sunshine which does not exist out of India. Briefly he felt, or thought he felt, a kiss upon his lips. Now Smith-Jones, like most well-trained, unemotional English boys, had a strong dislike to kisses. He lumped them, with many other things, under the generic term _bosh_, and confined himself to reserved pecks at the foreheads of his mother, his sisters, his aunts, and an occasional, a very occasional, cousin. Even when they had all stood round in tears while Robin the gardener hoisted the brand-new cabin-trunk on to the fly, which from the large white placards on the luggage was evidently destined to carry Smith-Jones part of the way to Bombay, he had only got as far as a kiss on the cheek, despite a choke in his throat, and a distinct inclination to cry.

And now? It was startling in the extreme!

Lying on his back, a prey to somewhat alarmed surprise, he became aware through his nose of a pleasant scent, and through his eyes, of the pendant mistletoe-like twigs of the _jhand_ tree. Mistletoe,--yes, that might account for the kiss; but what about the perfume of roses? There it was again, in company with an old peacock's feather fan which looked as if it were half through a severe moulting. Some one was fanning him, positively fanning him! for the feathers swooped again and again just above his face in composed curves suggestive of leisure and perpetual motion. He tried to find out more by turning his head--an effort which made him realise that he had been within an ace of breaking his neck, and sobered him to acquiescence for a time. Not for long, however, seeing that the boy was a pertinacious boy. So, at the expense of a fearful rick, he discovered a hand and arm belonging to the fan--at least if it was a hand and arm after all, and not merely a withered brown branch. Smith-Jones's blue eyes came to the conclusion that it was at any rate the skeleton of a hand and arm, and what is more a curiously graceful skeleton. Then, being still confused out of speech, he tried to arrest the arm by catching hold of it; but either he had not yet recovered a just estimate of distance, or it eluded his grasp, for the even monotony of the curve continued. And, on the whole, it was pleasant enough to lie on one's back in the yellow sand and be fanned sleepily, gracefully. An enjoyment, however, which could not be allowed long continuance when there was a horse to be caught, a camp to be reached, a judgment to be written; the whole burden of a world, in short, on Smith-Jones's young shoulders.

"I could get up now, if you would remove that fan," he said at last, weakly surprised at his own difficulty in stringing two words together in a foreign tongue.

"There is no hurry, _Huzoor_," came in immediate reply. "The Protector of the Poor being so very young, there is naturally plenty of time for all things ere he has to leave life; yea, plenty of time."

What a remarkable voice! Soft as the cooing of the doves in the _jhand_ tree, and no louder; the far-away echo of a voice, toneless, yet mellow. But then the whole experience was remarkable, and he lay trying to piece common-sense into it with his brain still muddled by the jar which had so nearly sent him to still more novel environments, until his hatred of _bosh_ made him sit up suddenly, unsteadily, one hand supporting himself, the other averting the sweep of the fan. There was no doubt as to the place; yonder was the white road, there the responsible hole, the wallow in the sand where his horse had rolled, the _jhand_ tree gay in its shreds and patches.

But what was that to one side of him? Some one, either half-fledged girl or shrunken old woman, seated in one of those flat baskets which packmen use for carrying their burdens. It was, in effect, a pack-basket, since cords attached it to one end of a _banghy_, or yoke, which was resting against a net-full of small earthern pots fastened to the other extremity of the pliant lever. The sight of a human being in a pack-basket was unusual, but Smith-Jones during the last six months (that is to say, during his service in India) had seen so many strange things that he set it down as yet another eccentricity of an eccentric people. The occupant of the basket, however, disturbed him more; he even thought (with a certain sense of shame, which would have been wanting had he been older, or younger) of fairy godmothers--as if such banalities could be considered by Smith-Jones, Assistant Commissioner of the third grade! And yet he was not without excuse. Mr. Rider Haggard has described what "She" became when the fire scorched the charm out of a face and form which, but for magic, would have mouldered and been remoulded to fresh beauty centuries and centuries before. The figure in the pack-basket was as shrunken, as shrivelled, as any "She." Extreme old age had driven womanhood away; it had stolen every curve, every contour, every colour; and yet, possibly because the slow furnace of natural life is kinder than its artificial fires, there was nothing unlovely in the wizened face or form. On the contrary, Smith-Jones, despite the memory of that fancied kiss still haunting his brain, looked at her without a shudder. She was dressed in a way which even his ignorance of the gala costumes of respectable females told him was unusual. A very full red silk petticoat bordered with gay colours was half tucked into the basket, half displayed over the edge in coquettish quillings and frillings of the bright embroidery. A loose sacque of the same stuff, many times too large for the bones it covered, lay in wrinkles on arms and bust with here and there a glint of tarnished tinsel, while a veil of like material, faded to a purplish tint, its heavy gold thread tracings torn, frayed, or wanting, hid all but the tiny hand and arm swaying the fan, and a shrunken, waxen face whence a pair of bright black eyes looked at him wisely.

"The Presence would do well to repose once more," came the worn-out voice. "He is not to die this time. He has broken nought save his blue spectacles, and that is well. Spectacles are not for the young; and, as this slave said but now, my Lord is in possession of such great youth that he can afford to rest till Dittu returns from pursuing the Presence's horse, which, conceiving that the Protector had no immediate need of its services, hath retired, after the manner of beasts, to gorge in a _gram_ field. But I, being Dittu's relation, can affirm that he will of a surety return ere long; therefore rest is within reach, and if the Presence will lie down again I will keep the fly-people from settling on the Presence's face."

To tell the truth, the effort to rise had made Smith-Jones feel decidedly queer, so without more ado he lay back on the pillow which the strange watcher had evidently improvised from the coarse outside veil she had worn over her finery. He guessed this by the lingering smell of roses which clung to the fabric.

"You might tell me how I came to fall off, and who you are," said he after a pause, a little fretfully, for he was unused to inaction, and impatient at things he did not understand.

"_Huzoor!_ rat-holes are very simple things. Or perhaps it was a snake-hole. If my Lord had gone a pace farther from the tree, he would not have been on sacred ground, and then the serpent might not have revenged himself."

Smith-Jones gave a little wriggle. "What bosh!" he muttered; adding aloud, as if to change the subject, "And who are you, mother?"

"If my Lord dislikes old wives' tales," came the cooing voice, "he will not care for mine. He is so young. If the Presence's great-grandfather--"