by Talbot Mundy
“They have charged that you brought this on deliberately, sahib. They have said your purpose is to bring all of us into difficulty with the British by causing it to seem that we hate missionaries. His Highness believes the tale. They have shown him the bullets you shot at the elephants, and a bottle that once held whisky, which they say the chief mahout declares he had from you!”
“I’ll tell him wilder news than that, if that’s his mood! Lead on,” said Ommony.
The diwan drew assurance from the boast. Not once, ten times, he had seen this man in other days take victory out of utter ruin as a conjurer takes rabbits from a hat. He understood that Ommony had learned a theory from India more faithfully than Indians do. As for practice of it, were the woods and ways not noisy with the tales of this and that amazing feat he had performed? Some even called him a mahatma.
But the faces of attendants on the palace stairs were eloquent. Ill news, a-weaving ill fame, had assailed diwan as well as Ommony. Smiles that should have greeted both were not forthcoming — rather sullenness and nothing said, along with the sidewise glance from eye to eye alert to improve upon another menial’s impudence. Easier than read the wind by weather-vane you can guess your momentary rating at the court of any Eastern king from the demeanor of the flunkies.
The comfort within was absolute. In place of the whirring electric fans that make modern interiors sound and look like the ‘tween-decks of a battleship the old embroidered punkahs moved with leisurely pause and swing that is as peace-conveying and restful as the ticking of old clocks. Carpets were laid three deep to silence footfall.
No new thing, new face, new custom was in evidence to disturb serenity. Colors were time-softened. Even the gold and vermilion on carved screens and the peacock-splendor of embroidery were tamed by the years until no stray tone of rawness broke the harmony. The bird by a stair-head in a lacquered cage whistled with a note as mellow as old wine.
Nevertheless there was an atmosphere of vague discomfort, because men’s thoughts are stronger than the things they heap about them. Normally it was not a trying experience to wait in a teak, vermilion and gilt-lined throne-room until the heir of all the ages came and accepted homage. But the note of restfulness was lacking, and a noise suggestive of the penetrating anger of debate, muffled but not excluded by several doors, contributed to the sensation.
Ommony supposed it was the priests, awaiting their turn, entertaining courtiers with a sacerdotal concept of the crisis. But the strident voice and the protesting ones continued, even after the Maharajah entered the throne-room through ivory doors. Noise at that solemn moment was almost as contrary to precedent as Ommony’s plain tweed shooting-jacket and the pipe, still hot, that nestled in his fist.
As the diwan had told Ommony the day he came, in the Maharajah’s condition there was no change. He was as he had been five and thirty years, and as he would be until he died — too inbred to be educated, too well cared for to be ill, too sure of the past to comprehend the present. He had learned and forgotten nothing.
His face looked like a cameo beneath the old-rose turban, and his hands were those they drew in Persian miniatures six centuries ago. Perhaps he weighed a hundred pounds, and he looked as fragile as old porcelain; not bored, not angry — but obedient to laws and whims and superstitions that were growing ancient when the West was in leading-strings.
He nodded after a suitable pause, when the two attendants had given him the royal sword and target, without which royalty in that State is incognito.
“You may speak,” he said with lips that scarcely moved. They were delicate, blue, sensitive — considerate of custom.
The diwan let go Ommony’s arm and stood erect, no less aware of the advantage of years and stateliness than Ommony was of the virtue of plain dealing. Ever men have paraded their highest conceptions of manhood in all crises, and forever will. The diwan was about to weave of musical old words a cloak of dignity about his sturdy-standing, blunt, too honest friend and leave the argument to him. But all old beacons were adrift that day.
There was interruption — an intrusion, uninvited, unannounced, without the Maharajah’s leave — as good as blasphemy!
Three doors in swift succession were kicked, swung wide and slammed again. A babel of angry protests rose and died away as the enormity of what was happening out-wondered speech.
The bronze doors, facing those of ivory that royalty used, burst open, and an angry man broke in, all white from head to foot, in an old white hat undoffed, his face as livid white as gypsum from expressed emotion, with a staphorn-handled riding-whip in one hand, as if he had come to chastise somebody.
“My name is Craig!”
He doffed the white hat slowly and stood waiting, as if the very announcement of his name should be enough to force all issues. Even as his courage had set armed guards aside and his arrogance had brought him through forbidden doors.
Two deep folds of an arras came to life. Two men armed with scimitars strode forward, one on Craig’s either hand, and paused. At a nod from the Maharajah there would have been blood and entrails on the waxed floor; but it may be he caught Cotswold Ommony’s eye. His right hand, which had been closed a long while on the hilt of the Sword of State, opened, and the two went back, not now behind the arras, but on guard in front of it.
Craig understood that play perfectly, but knew nothing of the etiquette of courts and cared less. He spoke again without waiting for invitation.
“I’m here to demand immediate satisfaction!”
There is a famous admonition to Christians to offer the other cheek, and cheek has become a missionary’s lawful weapon. Craig had his with him.
“I demand compensation in full — an apology — and re-erection of my mission at the State’s expense!” he announced, folding arms across his breast in the attitude of unyielding resolution.
If he had been a pagan defying fanatical invaders, or even a Christian told to swap religion or take the consequences, he might have challenged admiration. As it was he challenged anger.
The Maharajah, lineal descendant from the moon, who knew small English and less bad manners, bit his lip. None had leave to speak yet. Even the diwan’s leave had lapsed.
The Maharajah held trumps. Little and inbred he might be lord of a little kingdom and less revenue, with tug-o’-war on top of him between the British and the priests, and only a nine-gun salute whenever he crossed his borders. But he could outplay Craig.
He made a signal — just a gesture of eye and lip — to an attendant, who at once relieved him of royal sword and target. He was in another world that instant, as immune from approach or address as if invisible. And he rose and yawned and sauntered out as if the veil between himself and lookers-on were actual, not assumed.
“Well, I’ll be—”
“Damned?” suggested Ommony.
“ — sugared!” Craig corrected.
The diwan sighed. He was helpless. Unless he should choose to concede to Parumpadpa and his priests a similar privilege, which they would doubtless multiply and never yield again, he did not dare presume to follow His Highness through the ivory double door.
Like the priests, he could send his unofficial messengers to whisper behind the scenes; but for the remainder of that day and all the next the Maharajah would be within his constitutional rights in refusing to grant audience. It was only another of those devices anciently contrived for taking haste out of affairs of State.
But the men who thought it out had not reckoned with the coming Christian’s other cheek, so Craig stood like the horse-thief who had shot the judge; there was none now to be appealed to against mob law. His enemies had two days’ unobstructed grace.
“Remember! I said a miracle!” the diwan reminded Ommony, touching his arm again.
He would have ordered a chair except for the contingent obligation of offering one to Craig.
“Where’s your wife?” asked Ommony suddenly, and Craig looked at him with gathering resentment.
He
did not consider that he had come there to be questioned sharply by this forester, whom he suspected of being a pagan in league with pagans to oppose good mission-work. But he could not avoid an answer.
“She is superintending the pitching of a tent.”
“To live in it?”
Craig nodded.
“Unsafe! I offered you and her accommodation in my quarters,” Ommony answered, squeezing the diwan’s arm a little more tightly than politeness called for, but watching Craig.
“She objects in the circumstances,” Craig said, making no effort to disguise the iron in his voice.
He was a good, hard fighter, willing enough to come out into the open. But then so was Ommony; and Ommony knew better why he fought. He turned toward the diwan:
“I advise you to order this man’s wife detained under suitable guard for her own protection,” he said deliberately, and turned his head again in time to intercept a look on Craig’s face that was almost comic.
It meant relief from tension. It was almost like a prisoner’s being turned unaccountably out of doors.
The diwan’s old eyes twinkled, but he shifted nervously. Few but such as he can estimate the danger of meeting sword with sword — the zeal of missionaries with the blunter means of law.
By law he might take law into his hands for two days at his own risk; for the Maharajah might repudiate him afterward, that being another safeguard long ago devised to keep the throne in countenance. None but the British, and not even they until the Resident should be informed, could countermand his orders.
There was a rumor that the Resident was ill with abscess and had taken too much morphia to ease the pain. And for what had the diwan sent for Ommony unless to be guided by him?
“That is my order,” he said simply. “I will go and attend to it.”
He left the palace attendants to get rid of Craig as they might see fit. His excuse for withdrawing Ommony was that old age needed a strong arm to lean on.
“Better take up quarters with me,” said Ommony over his shoulder to Craig. “Come whenever you see fit.”
He did not propose to give Craig excuse for accusing him of open enmity. Perfervid zealots with the lid of conjugal restraint removed are capable of wild leaps into the chaos of illusion. He preferred to use Craig’s energy to foil the priests rather than let it burn up in uncomprehending rage against himself; if only for the sake of the trees, which were his life’s business, even as Craig’s was converting Hindus. Besides, he liked the man — admired his courage if nothing else.
So presently he and the diwan found themselves alone together where the carriage waited under the porte-cochère. They were seen, because those Indian palaces are pierced in the recesses of a thousand carvings with eye-holes for the omnipresent spy, but none could overhear them.
“Where will you put her?” asked Ommony.
“Sahib, I—”
The diwan hesitated. Though he trusted Ommony he had the senior’s dislike to lay bare mental processes, and to that was added Eastern unwillingness to be quite frank. Pride of the offensive sort was not in him, but he would have been a poltroon had he no respect for his almost absolute authority.
“I will consider.”
“Do. Consider this. Defeat is to the irresolute; victory to the swift. If she appeals through the Resident to Delhi, that will mean that the British must interfere. And if they must, they’re at the mercy of organized religion as much as you are. Better defy Big Business than the Church.”
“The thing to do is to earn her gratitude. The way to do that is to let her get into the toils. Then get her out again. The way to defeat Parumpadpa and his gang is to compromise them badly. Did you ever go fishing? You should give the fish lots of line always before you strike.”
“Man of enigmas! Just now you warned me to be swift!”
“I did. Are your horses swift? Then let’s go driving.”
It was then, and not until then that the diwan understood.
“Craig will return to his wife and warn her. Yes. But what if they go together to the Resident?”
“My servant told me Craig went there first thing. The Resident is in no condition to see anyone or do anything. The Residency doctor is away. The only immediate danger is that the Resident may have wired for someone to replace him.”
“He has not,” said the diwan, who had his own arrangements for knowing what telegrams were sent.
“He doesn’t want the morphia habit to become official knowledge, no doubt,” Ommony answered.
“But, sahib, what if the Craigs should send a telegram to Delhi? I dare not prevent that. There can be a little delay — an accident — a few hours—”
“Plenty!” said Ommony with confidence. “Listen, diwan sahib: I have your word for it that if Parumpadpa and his gang can find excuse to stir the mob against these missionaries there will be bloodshed — possibly a revolution.”
The diwan nodded — shuddered.
“All India is on the verge of that,” he answered.
“If Craig and his wife should win too handsomely that will be the priest’s next move.”
“Indubitably. See what they did! How swiftly the mob crowded to applaud the elephants: I have reported that was all due to an accident, but the priests are asserting it was due to you, and—”
“We must give them line — go fishing — driving, rather! After you, sir.”
He helped the diwan into the carriage, and in view of as many spies as cared to see they drove off, the diwan fidgeting nervously. But Ommony chuckled. He knew now he had won.
“You recall the Peace Conference in Paris?” he asked.
“I was there,” said the diwan. “I was there and learned nothing new.”
“Few did! But there were master moves made. You recall how the Japanese stampeded the other representatives by packing up one night? They were only moving to another building, but the others jumped to the conclusion they were going home. There’ll be jumping down here within thirty minutes!”
“God send you are right,” said the diwan, “for I see only the jaws of war that open for us!”
“Let us drive as if we were very busy,” Ommony advised him.
“It shall be as you say — for thirty minutes!”
“Your office first. The fact that we do nothing — say nothing — will make it hard for them to draw right conclusions — easy to make mistakes.”
“Then a telegram in code about nothing to nobody! The babu will fail to understand it and either do nothing or else send gibberish along the wire. They may get a copy of the wire—”
“They will!”
“ — and misinterpret it!”
So they drove by a roundabout route to the diwan’s office. The diwan entered. Ommony remained outside. The diwan emerged again, looking serious, and a man who was sitting in the shadow of a doorway got up and hurried in the direction of a temple, where two priests peered under their hands out of gloom into the sunlight.
“You have five more minutes,” said the diwan.
“To the Residency then.”
“We shall not be admitted.”
“Let us hope not.”
“And after that?”
“It is their move. Then ours. And in the end there shall be more trees in your honor’s domain than in all the four neighboring States together,” said Ommony, leaning back on the expensive cushions and looking much less anxious than he actually felt.
CHAPTER 5. “By Jiminy, we’ll now grow trees!”
Mobs never rule. They always think they do, imagining they choose new leaders when the old are trampled underfoot. Cozened and flattered and betrayed, a mob does murder that the rogues who rule may profit, and it sets new feet of clay on its own neck before its head can rise between one master and the next.
No man would choose Barabbas. No mob fails to prefer him. Men — individuals, that is — are stubborn thinkers, liable to err, but each in his own advancing stage a battler for his highest views of right.
; As teams they can accomplish. As a mob they become that fluid horror, gorging flattery as hogs eat swill; that senses no impulse other than self- righteous greed and is manipulated for their own ends by men more evil than the beasts because more intelligent.
An Eastern mob differs in nothing from the rest except in increased subtlety. Its motives are the same; its fear and lust and cruelty are identical.
And as the sea is whipped into a rage by wind, or lulled into a temporary calm, so mobs are managed by the rogues who understand them and imagine that life is only a psalmist’s three-score years and ten. All history is a proof of that, and of the other fact, that one man with his eye fixed on eternity is as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. There is a foretaste of eternity in planting trees.
The priests, and they who pandered to the priests, had lulled the mob’s unrest as suddenly as the cries of children cease. That is done by promises, though not of loot, for they start action, but of something new about to happen. Expectation, veiled and vague, brings on a pause.
Ganesha had expressed his wrath by means of elephants. Now let them wait and see what next he had in store. Something marvelous was coming. There would be a miracle, let none doubt.
So Elsa Craig, unhindered, was ordering the pitching of a big tent in the ruined mission compound; and they who obeyed her were not Christians, for the converts had all decamped — as other converts once did in a famous hour. This and that man from the street had been called in, and was working for coin and curiosity. Some of them were priests’ spies. All were aware they only hastened the undoing of the damned. Word had gone forth through the subtle avenues of Eastern news that the Craigs and all their root and branch were doomed. So there were three-score idlers doing ten’s work, getting in one another’s way and speaking to Elsa civilly.
Into that confusion Howard Craig came hot-foot, brushing sweat from his forehead with three fingers — a vulgarism Elsa hated.
“Girl,” he almost shouted — and she hated to be called that— “you’re to be arrested. Ommony advised the diwan in my hearing to put you under guard in some safe place until—”