Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “If I can get them priests to curse me reg’lar, once a month,” he said to Moses, “I’ve a notion I can run this job to suit my sense o’ what’s what.”

  “Oh, sir, priestlee cursing is a veree deadlee sin,” said Moses.

  “Shucks. Ain’t you a Christian?”

  “Certainlee. But so were all the holee saints who died in torment. It is necessaree not to be a sinner, but it is not necessaree to be made a martyr.”

  Quorn stuck a spoon into curry and rice. “I’m agin that too,” he answered. “I’m too ornery to burn meek. Reckon, for a martyr, I’d be kind o’ cantankerous. If they can martyr me, they’re welcome, but — it’s swell curry. You’re a good cook.”

  “Oh, sir, do not be irreverent,” said Moses.

  XII

  “I Fear No Foe In Funny Underwear.”

  Things went so smoothly that Quorn took a nap in the afternoon. There were no orders for the elephants. Except that during certain seasons of the year they had to haul a little lumber in the hills, it appeared that there never was much for them to do. Every other day or so a few of them would haul grass, but most of the grass was delivered in ox-carts by contractors. There were now and then public processions, and more rarely a royal ceremony in which the elephants had to take part, but on the whole it was a lazy life they led, chained to their pickets, with a bath and a scrub in the river whenever they needed it.

  The shed that Quorn appropriated to his own use backed against a high wall. There was a narrow door in the wall that looked as if it had not been opened for a hundred years. He discovered that Chullunder Ghose had a locker in the shed, and a cot too. However, the job was his, so the shed was his; he set the babu’s cot against a side wall and had his own put opposite, with a table between.

  “I’m hospitable. If his nibs don’t like it, he can pull freight.”

  He liked the shed. It had a sort of hide-out atmosphere, exactly suiting Quorn’s observant, solitary disposition. From the small veranda, and through the little windows at both ends, he could overlook the entire compound. It was so close to Asoka’s picket that he could call to him and get him used to the sound of his voice. There was a shelf where he could keep his five-cent books. All he lacked was a daily paper to make conditions perfect.

  Having had his nap and made his rounds, he sat and read a book on the Failure of Christian Missions, by McCabe, whose bitter advocacy of eternal ignorance of anything but blood and brains precisely suited the occasion. He enjoyed the thought that intellectuals are sometimes more stupid than other people. It helped to make his own bewilderment a bit less irritating.

  “There are more learned fools in the world than you could shake a stick at,” he commented. He had given many a nickel to Christian missions. He refused to believe he had been choused of his money. He felt he needed all his confidence in Christianity to help him keep a cool head in the midst of all this heathen hocus-pocus. As a lay custodian of mission property, he felt he belonged to the Christian camp. As one who had been publicly cursed by a heathen, he felt that he was bound in common honesty to take a stiff view; and he wished he had a Bible with him, that he might read up about the whoredoms of the Jews, who brought the truth into the world. He knew there was an angle there that he had never thoroughly considered. Careful study of it might enable him to understand his duty to religion — and the Princess.

  He was aware of two exactly opposite opinions about the Princess, each of which was equally convincing. Was she a Jezebel? Was she a “whoore o’ Babylon”? Was she an unfilial, immodest vixen, treacherously plotting, with a rogue who boasted of his immorality, to seize her father’s throne and play old Harry with established law and order? It seemed that way. Or was she an honest youngster, too well educated for her station in life, and too high spirited to submit to conventional cruelties, determined, at whatever risk, to try to make a change? That seemed true, too. Had her governesses taught her a corrupt idealism? Quorn mistrusted foreigners of all sorts; he had read of governesses who were used as spies in international intrigues.

  “I wouldn’t put it past them Roossians to have stirred her up, deliberate, with Red ideas. That fat babu said he was in Roossia — said he was run out o’ Roossia. Saying’s easier than doing. Maybe he was told to say he had been run out. Roossians who were sending him to India to propagand a Bolsheviki upset o’ the government ‘ud hardly ship him to the border in a nickel-plated special.”

  Then there was the Maharajah to consider. Quorn held no brief for hereditary despotisms. He had even less use for polygamy, in theory or practice. But as Master of the Elephants his boss was certainly the Maharajah. That was an awkward predicament. To do his duty by the elephants was not enough to offset a conspiracy against their owner. To desert the mission was an equally doubtful proposition. Hadn’t he better have thought a bit before making the jump?

  “Bughouse Bill’s not serious. He’s ugly, but he’s no more dangerous than one o’ them there fish that make faces at you in the aquarium. But who’s this British Resident that’s coming? What’ll he say to a white man on the Maharajah’s pay-roll? Seems to me I’ve heard the British know their onions at raising hell for anyone they didn’t okay. They’d be running the United States this minute if it weren’t for having raised such hell that nobody could stand it. Say he ships me. He could do it. He could run me out of India like Emma Goldman getting the air from the U.S. Then where’d I be? No job. No credentials that a nigger ‘ud look at. Unemployment. Breadline. Not so rosy!”

  Moses brought his dinner. Moses’ one eye almost looked astonished not to find him dead already. After dinner he sent Moses home with a flea in his ear, then took his chair and went and sat beside Asoka, comforted by the big brute’s proximity. That set him thinking about elephants and wondering again why elephants and he were on such naturally good terms. He could almost feel Asoka’s satisfaction when he sat down near him.

  The compound was a marvel of beauty. The mahouts were cooking, and their fires glowed crimson through the trees. Enormous shadows moved amid the gloom. The stars looked as large as saucers, on a sky whose blackness held the whole range of blue and purple. There was audible silence — feather-footed secrets stealthily confiding in each other until night seemed one vast secret of tomorrow’s plans. There were good smells, earthy and indistinguishable without an effort from sight and sound. The senses all led to the same emotion. They were one experience. Their effect was feeling. It was psychic — dreamy. Quorn dozed until his pipe dropped and awoke him — smoked again until he dozed. And it was midnight.

  Asoka had lain down to sleep, but was up again, fidgeting. There were some sounds behind the high wall. Quorn heard Asoka’s new steel picket-ring clink on the chain as he tested its strength. There was no moon. It was too dark to see details; Asoka was a big black shadow, not now swaying as he did in the daytime, but erect, alert, each movement definite and ominous. Staring, Quorn could see the monster’s trunk extended and the huge ears moving. There was something wrong. He spoke. Asoka grumbled, turning sideways, testing with his trunk suspicious smells that reached him, so it seemed, upwind and from over the wall. There were signs of a tantrum brewing. Other elephants apparently had sensed a general alarm and some of the mahouts were reassuring them, commanding them to lie down. Had not Quorn been a natural elephant man there might have been disaster on a big scale. There was the markings of a panic. He had no experience, but he seemed to know intuitively what to do.

  He dragged his chair a little closer to Asoka, and sat just out of reach of the flailing trunk. He relighted his pipe. Gruffly he commanded good behavior, leaning backward in an attitude of calm indifference. He started humming to himself. At the first sign of returning calm he commanded Asoka to lie down. He was obeyed. When the elephant moved, Quorn’s voice broke the silence gruffly but without the least note of alarm. Presently Quorn called for a helper and commanded a little smoke-smudge to be made — a smoldering fire of dampened dung that spread familiar and undisturbing smell betwee
n Asoka and the high wall. All was quiet by the time the lock creaked in the high door in the wall, then the unoiled hinges screamed and Chullunder Ghose emerged, not stealthily but not making much noise for a man of his weight.

  “When do you sleep?” Quorn asked him, yawning.

  “Slept this afternoon. Like Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, and other great calamities, can cat-nap any time or sleep ad lib as indicated. Am bee-hive of a lot of mixed emotions just now. All of same are acrimonious.”

  “Disturb my elephants at night again, and me and you’ll be plenty acrimonious,” said Quorn. “There might ha’ been a stampede, durn you. What’s up?”

  “Down to hard tacks — naturally. Do you think I get a chit for eleemosynary tiger tame from infancy, and do not cash same before Jains disgust him so with milk that he becomes an anarchist? An anarchistic tiger is a bad ingredient.”

  “Ingredient of what?”

  “A miracle. Get me some meat. Not too much. A young kid. Kill him and let me have him.”

  “This time o’ night? I can get you a hen.”

  “Holocaust me three hens.”

  Quorn sent the man who had built the fire to bring three hens from the chicken-shed that a mahout’s wife tended. “Take ’em and kill ’em — you hear me? I’ll pay at daybreak.” Then he turned to the babu. “Spill it. What’s the low-down?”

  “Low-down blackguard of a carter has exacted rupees fifty, simply to convey a cage containing tigers one, and no gossip, from thence to thither, secrecy improbable but stipulated. Same is now voraciously billeted in dark shed on the other side of this wall. Cage is weak and wooden — therefore necessary to reduce voracity of tiger and increase his sleepiness with chicken diet, simultaneously causing an association of ideas. Henceforth, to the tiger you will mean meat.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Nice red, fresh, raw, bloody meat. The very sight of milk arouses him to anger. He will love you.”

  “Like hell he will.”

  “Unless he chews his way out of that wooden cage before the chickens get here. Did I tell you she is wonderful?”

  “She-tiger, is it.”

  “She-exasperator! She-young monkey with a mischievous imagination! She is worse than her mother, who died of trying to adapt polygamy to theories of matriarchy. Rumor mentions arsenic, but I say belladonna, knowing local methods. Should it be acceptable to other ladies in a populous zenana, to be matriarchied by a moralist, whose qualification simply is that she is mother of the boozy monarch’s one child? Women are all witches. Princess Sankyamuni is ten, and the devil as well. She has set that whole zenana by the ears. No sooner had we left her than she sent word through the palace that the Maharajah is not her father at all. She said her late lamented lady mother was concubinated by a he-god, as per legendary custom. Consequently, she herself is only semi-human. That means she is not reducible to human categories. She is free to do as she jolly well dam-pleases, and is superior to priests or anybody else.”

  “She complained she couldn’t go mad. Is that her trouble? Is she nutty?” Quorn asked. “Bats in her belfry?”

  “If so,” said the babu, “They are brickbats of Machiavellian gray-stuff. I am over-stout and elderly to trip the light fantastic on a mental tight-rope. Teach her to be a heterodox — she preanticipates the unexpectedness that was antepenultimate trump up sleeve of this babu. She forces pace. Her inexperience eliminates a fat man’s sense of step by step from this to that. And youth — so practical — so unromantic — sees absurdity of superstitions and immediately uses same to put the superstitionees in a hell of a fix. She is a genius. She gives me a Freudian inferiority qualm. I hate her. She did what I ought to have done. It is a finesse.”

  “Do you mean,” said Quorn, “That she believes she’s only half o’ this world?”

  “She is red-hot realist,” the babu answered. “She jolly well knows that nobody believes such Santaclausian stupidity, except tax-paying proletariat that sighs for fresh frauds to endure, like Alexander asking for a higher income tax. No matter why. Truth is too unpalatable to be interesting, so they buy lies for cash in advance. Not even priests believe such imbecility. But priests have taught it, haven’t they, since the first priest found the way to toil not that he might be comfortable? The Maharajah knows it isn’t true. But what can he do? What can he say? Isn’t he descended from the gods, according to the legend which repudiates his duty to be decent and explains his privilege to live like pig in clover? None of his wives believe it. Why should they? Don’t they know him? He is human, much too human. They will raise hell. Hell in a zenana is a little too much even for a Christian imagination. That is why Christians oppose polygamy. They will say she is an illegitimate impostor; a scandalous stain on nobility’s fame and dignity; an infamy in impudent apparel; to hell with her; to a dungeon with her; to oblivion. But you may do as you please with people’s rights, provided you respect the superstitions, and the Maharajah knows it. The priests know it. The proletariat has seen you and her on the elephant. It loves the Gunga sahib story as the English love a Lord Mayor’s coachman — as the U.S.A. Americans love liberty in winkers.”

  “Does she aim to set up as a goddess?” Quorn asked, scratching his forehead. “I’d say she’ll have difficulties. Bughouse Bill — the head man of the holy Joes who came and blessed the elephants this morning — him with a naked face like nobody’s sweet poppa — he’ll act peevish, if I know a bob-cat when I see him. He’s a monopolist, that guy. I’ve seen bankers at funerals, burying bond hogs, who were liker him than bunk is like boloney.”

  The babu suddenly sat down in Quorn’s chair, holding his sides. He giggled silently, the silence only emphasizing mirth that shook him like a hiccough. The helper was on the way with the chickens before he could speak without spluttering. Then he grew as suddenly serious, self-controlled and dramatic. He stood up and laid a hand on Quorn’s arm.

  “Did you know,” he asked, “That phrases are the chemistry of fate? No? Let me show it to you. ‘Made in Germany’ set competition going that produced the crash in August 1914, didn’t it? ‘The little corporal’ was invincible; the ‘emperor’ was old stuff, self-defeated. Ben Quorn is a nobody; the Gunga sahib is an idea! Do you get that? Gunpat Rao — the great Gunpat — is a high priest, terrible with secret power, throned on mystery and almost too much as an adversary even for an opportunist such as I am. But Bughouse Bill? I fear no foe in funny underwear! I accolade you! Let us take the chickens to the tiger. He, too, needs a change of viewpoint.”

  They groped their way into a dark shed on the far side of the wall; and through the opened door the starlight shone on eyes that scared Quorn. There was a smell that stirred instinctive dread. There was a sound that crouched — a tension that tightened the skin on Quorn’s neck and forearms. Suddenly the thing behind the eyes smelt blood. There was a snarling whine that swelled into the short, explosive kill-roar of a famished tiger.

  “Quick!” said the babu. “Wooden boards do not a fortress make!”

  Quorn found a stick and shoved three chickens through the bars. The tiger struck them off the stick, savagely snarling. Then the crunching began.

  “Feathers and all? Bones and all?”

  “Yes,” said the babu. “Better for him than a physic. He is constipated. Animals in cages die of sentimentalism feeding them politely. Come on.” He led the way out and shut the door. “Darkness, appetite, a good meal for the first time in months — he is happy.”

  “Anything you don’t know?” Quorn asked.

  “Not much. Sadly ignorant, however, about Bughouse Bill. Have always thought of him as Gunpat Rao. Verb sap indicated but is lost in maze of relativity. Must study Bughouse Bill. Must study him — study him. You pardon me, if I sit here and meditate?”

  XIII

  “I Will Tell Her You Funked It!”

  Quorn shredded some tobacco, rammed it in his pipe, lighted it and then looked dourly at the babu. It was four in the morning, and as a matter of fact Quorn h
ad fallen asleep in his chair, but he chose not to admit that, even to himself. To pretend to have been thinking seemed more dignified, although he knew what millions have learned, including Edison, that forty winks are usually better than a full day’s worry.

  “Now you listen to me,” he began, and the babu sat bolt-upright. “I’m an ignorant man, but I know my likes and dislikes. Plain talk, and each to his job, is two o’ my notions. Nothing gets my nanny worse than a lot o’ bull without no meaning to it. If I buy me a can that’s labeled corn beef, all I expect is weary Willy on the inside. If it’s salmon, I want my money back, even if salmon’s more respectable or maybe better for me. Don’t you interrupt. It’s my turn, and I’m loaded.”

  “Two shots for a nickel,” said the babu. “Am an easy target.”

  “I’m a man o’ my word, or I aim to be. I told a princess I was for her, and I meant I’d go my limit. But there is a limit. Christianity’s my camp, no matter what my private doubts about it may be. Christianity don’t hold with goddesses, and I don’t aim to give a goddess no more recognition than I would an atheist. Goddesses and atheists are two sides of a Bolsheviki heathen heresy. I’m set agin ’em. Do you get that?”

  “Now the other barrel,” said the babu.

  “I’m signed up to watch a mission property. It’s my job. I’d be acting treacherous and ungrateful, if I was to abandon them buildings on account o’ my liking for elephants. I like ’em fine; I grant you that. I’m cut out for a job o’ minding ’em. But a contract’s a contract, and the trustees back in Philadelphia have confidence in me to protect their property for the full term o’ the agreement.”

  “How does it feel to break a promise?” asked the babu.