Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Home again next month! Gad, won’t it be good!”

  “Think of Hurlingham and Ranelagh!”

  “The Shires for me, my son! Forty minutes in the open, over real English grass!”

  “Oh, think of Cowes in June! Can’t you see ’em ‘snorting under bonnets?’ How long, my son, how long?”

  “And where are these places, and what are they?” demanded Ullah Khan.

  “At Hurlingham and Cowes, they tell me men play games — games on horseback and in little boats,” said Boghal Grish. “In what they call the Shires, they hunt.”

  “They think, then, of nothing else?”

  “Of little else! They love neither us nor India.”

  And Ullah Khan grunted. And he too wrote a letter that had certainty in every line of it.

  And there were other things to see and understand. He saw the fat, green fields, where dust had been, and saw the patient ryot humped over his hoe, hurrying to let the gurgling dark-brown water sluice between the rows. And he heard the ryot grumble at the Takkus, which was greater than it had been once — before the water came.

  “So they raise the taxes, do they?” asked Ullah Khan.

  “Always, sahib! Always! For that reason, and no other, they start irrigation works! They charge for the water, and with the money so obtained they pay more bureaucrats from England!”

  “And all this rice? Does it go to England?”

  “Nay. It is eaten here.”

  “The money, then, for which the rice is sold? That goes to England?”

  “Nay.”

  “These farmers have the spending of it?”

  “Of what is left when the tax is paid.”

  “But they must buy their goods in England?”

  “Nay. All goods enter India on an equal tariff.”

  “Why? Why do the English not discriminate?”

  “They are afraid!”

  Four months after the dismissal from his service — on the ground of peculation — of Boghal Grish, two months after a furtive but very shrewd inspection of widely scattered regiments of native cavalry, and one month after a visit to Calcutta where he saw what little can be seen on the outside of the workings of the most amazing government on earth, Ullah Khan met Aga Khan, new-landed from a Peninsular and Oriental Steamship.

  As they stood together on the Apollo Bunder, which faces the harbor of Bombay, they looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, meaningly.

  “What found you?” asked Ullah Khan.

  “Rot everywhere!”

  “And I too!” said Ullah Khan. “The fruit is ripe for the plucking. They have sown themselves, but they are afraid to reap! The country has grown fat and prosperous; there are pickings here for a hundred thousand plunderers, and yet no man moves a finger! They rule like men who are afraid!”

  “No wonder!” growled Aga Khan. “Their soldiers come from depths unspeakable. Their officers detest the service, and are put to great personal expense by it; such men are not dependable! And in England the crowd cares nothing, and knows nothing, and thinks of nothing except beer and bread. No wonder that they rule like men who are afraid!”

  “We will have good tidings for the Emir, thou and I!” said Ullah Khan.

  IV.

  THE back of the Eastern-province famine had been broken, and the plague was dying in the West. The southwest monsoon had burst with a year-late flood on thirsty India, and favorable crop-reports were coming in. The Viceroy and another man whose eyes were more puckered, and whose hair was grayer, and whose sturdy frame had been dried out by more than thirty years in India, sat back, and lit cigars, and smiled at each other.

  “Good times ahead at last, old man?” asked the Commander-in-Chief sympathetically.

  “No, not exactly. Couldn’t hope for that, in this benighted country! But relief’s in sight!”

  “Any chance of screwing out a bigger appropriation for the army?”

  “Not the slightest! The Council wouldn’t pass it, for one thing; and for another, we want every anna we can save for irrigation works. Besides, we’re even cutting down the Civil Service estimates; babus come cheaper than Europeans, and they’re very nearly as dependable in the lower grades. We’re going to appoint natives to about five hundred vacancies next financial year, and spend the money that we save in that way on education.”

  “Aren’t you overdoing it, old man? Taking things a little fast, I mean? They’re learning, of course, but are they digesting it?”

  “They’re not digesting it as fast as the home-drafts do, but they’re learning, all right. One of these days they’ll get hold of the idea, and India will stand on her own feet. Think of it! India self-governed like Australia and Canada, and sending her own representatives to Westminster, perhaps!”

  “It sounds all right, but you and I won’t live to see it!” said the Commander-in-Chief.

  “I know we won’t. But still, we’ve got a long way from the day when a man’s job in India was worth what he could make out of it!”

  “True. We’ve got a long way too from making soldiers out of criminals by flogging them!”

  “Talking of that — are the home-drafts up to standard?” asked the Viceroy.

  “Oh, about the same. Can’t expect too much, you know. Half of ’em hell’s scrapings, and the other half raw country bumpkins. Good enough material.”

  “It’s a pity that we can’t get a better type of man to begin on, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Besides, you couldn’t get ’em at the price. They’re awfully decent men, by the time they’ve scraped the dirt off them in the home-depots, and they get hold of the regimental idea before they come out here; by the time they get here, they’re ripe for the real thing. When they realize that they’re not the lowest thing there is — not the lowest by streets — that there are three hundred million people here, for instance, who regard them as superior beings in at least one way, they begin to show what’s in ’em. Then they see the native cavalry, and get to know about its loyalty. The rest’s easy! They’re not going to be beaten by what they are pleased to describe as ‘niggers’! There’s nothing the matter with the army, or the men, sir!”

  “Back at home,” said the Viceroy, “I’ve often noticed the tremendous difference between a regiment just home from India and one on the eve of departure.”

  “You weren’t the first man to notice it!” said the Commander-in-Chief. “It’ll be a bad day for the British Army when India can stand alone.”

  “Have you gone into your appropriations yet?” asked the Viceroy.

  “Scarcely touched ’em.”

  “Formed any cut-and-dried plans, or anything?”

  “Nothing really definite.”

  “Would it seem like butting in if I made a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead!”

  “The Emir is not exactly making trouble, but he’s thinking of it. The simplest thing, I suppose, would be to let his thoughts come to a head, and then smash him; but with a famine and the plague just off our hands we can’t afford a war. I’d like to teach him a less expensive lesson.”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “Oh, just the usual thing, and he’s been just as owl-eyed and childishly subtle as you’d expect. He’s sent one of his ministers to London incog., and another one on a spying expedition round this country. Aga Khan went to London, with enough letters of introduction to introduce an army. They were all obtained secretly — secretly, you understand! — from civilians and better-class natives and merchants in this country. Ullah Khan, the other man, disguised himself as a horse-trader and made the tour of India.”

  “How did you get on to him?”

  “Oh, the usual way. He engaged an interpreter — happened to be a Government babu who’d been dismissed for peculation — babu stole again — Ullah Khan sacked him, without any noticeable tenderness — babu out for revenge, of course, and incidentally a little pocket-money — offered information to the Government — a ten-rupee note did the
trick!”

  The Commander-in-Chief nodded. “I could fling three army-corps into Afghanistan at the drop of a handkerchief!” he said quietly.

  “That’s good. But the country can’t afford it! On the other hand, the Emir, through these two ministers of his, has had a good look at the seamy side of things; it’s likely to make him restless, if nothing worse happens.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve an idea, that’s all.”

  “I’ve pulled with you ever since you came out here.”

  “I know you have. Yes, and that’s one reason why I don’t want to seem to—”

  “Nonsense! What is it?”

  For the next two hours the Viceroy — who wields more power than any king of England ever did — and the Commander-in-Chief, who really does command in India, were engaged in a quite informal conference. And the result was that an Emir, who was a patriot and a statesman on his own account, received both entertainment and a lesson.

  V.

  IT was as if ten thousand glow-worms lay in lines, in readiness to dance a legion-formed quadrille. Ten thousand tents — each tent with a trench around it, and each to a hair in line — glowed warmly against the pitch-black Indian night. A black, dense mass behind them were the pickets where the tethered horses neighed; and in the center, like a many-mouthed black monster, lay the parked artillery — a grisly, ugly, hydra-headed thing that made no sound.

  On every side were watch-fires, as regularly spaced apart as hours, and, like the minutes of the hours, spaced in between them stood the sentries; once in a while, as someone tossed a log on to a watch-fire or a puff of wind swept down from the hill and fanned it, a flame shot up and lit for a second on a gleaming bayonet that was swallowed promptly by the night again. From a distance it seemed like a fairy-camp, lit up for revelry; but sharp eyes, accustomed to the outer darkness, could have told that it was hedged about with steel.

  From the tents, and from the rows between them, there went up a roar like the night-voice of a city. The cooking pots were cleaned, and the kettles stood ready again in the kitchen-trenches; a many-throated army, well-fed, well-found, and well-controlled, was voicing its contentment, and lay at its ease unbelted, telling tales of fifty counties and five hundred far-flung outposts.

  Above it, on the hillside opposite, there was a smaller, more silent cluster of less regularly spaced-out lights. That was the camp of an Emir and his escort — a pinnacle-set aerie, where a man who had come to see things for himself stroked at his beard and watched.

  No calls had been interchanged as yet, for the Emir had arranged his coming carefully, arriving late on the day before the big review. Allah in his wisdom had seen fit to strike the British Indian Government with madness, to the end that they might show him all their weakness; and who was he that he should decline their invitation and thus let slip a God-sent opportunity?

  His design was to see the review first, and to learn what he might from it before accepting too much hospitality or being trapped into too many expressions of good will. Even kings and emperors and potentates are careful of their spoken word, and like to know before they promise. He had sent an unofficial note, though, by the hand of a mountain chieftain with an escort; and the chieftain had his unofficial orders. He might not ask, and he might not ride from off the beaten path. But he had eyes that were accustomed to keen observation, and he might look and bring report.

  So, while the Emir waited, seated on a pile of rugs before a yak-hair tent, a long, lean, fierce-eyed Afghan came cantering up the hill-track, with an escort of a dozen at his back. He dismounted and bowed profoundly, and held out a sealed envelope.

  “You were long in coming!” said the Emir, opening the letter. It was nothing but a quite informal answer to his note.

  “He slept!” said the princeling messenger.

  “Slept?”

  “Slept! I had to wait while they awakened him! While I waited, I saw many things.”

  “His Excellency slept? The Viceroy? He who rules that host?”

  “Aye! And he sleeps now! When he had read the letter, and had caused his man to write an answer, and had signed it, he went back to bed again. He sleeps!”

  “Sleeps — with that host to watch! A hundred thousand men, and their thousand captains — and he sleeps?”

  “Aye! He sleeps, and so does their commander, for I saw him. I was minded to have a word with him, having spoken with him when he came with the troops to Kabul in the old days, and I rode up to his tent. There was but one sentry posted, and he a common soldier. The flap of the tent was drawn back, and I saw him lying there asleep; and since I would not rob him of that which is sweeter than meat or drink, I rode away again. I saw many other things.”

  “What saw you?”

  “Their guns are as many as their camp-fires!”

  “That I knew. Money, however gotten, will buy guns!”

  “Their horses seem better than our best!”

  “Fool! Go not our best horses in droves, yearly, down the Khyber to be sold to them? How seemed the men? Did they scowl? Were they discontented?”

  “Nay! They smiled at me! When I passed a sentry — and that was often — he saluted. Others, sprawling in the tent-doors, rose and stood upright with their hands beside them while I passed. Everywhere men laughed, smoking those strange, short pipes of theirs, and told each other tales; all seemed contented, and all who saw me regarded me with curiosity.”

  “With naught else?”

  “Unless the saluting and the standing at attention meant respect.”

  “Why should they respect thee?” growled the Emir.

  “Of a truth, I know not! I thought, though, that they did, and I felt no harm from it!”

  “Thy head was turned by their obeisance!” said the Emir with conviction. “The next time I will send an older man!”

  The chieftain bowed, more to hide his thin-lipped grin than out of deference, and retired with his escort to where a camp-fire burned before a tent that humped up irregularly from the blackness. He and a dozen others sat there before their fire, and talked until sleep came over them; then they rolled themselves into their blankets. But the Emir sat on where he was, with his chin resting on his doubled fists, and his eyes staring in deep contemplation at the wondrous sight in front of him.

  He heard a hundred bugles blow, and saw — wonder of wonders! — ten thousand lights go out as if Allah himself had whelmed them all at once. There was silence then, and no light showed at alt except the watch-fires, which flickered, and rose, and fell, and gleamed every now and then on bayonets. Sometimes a sharp challenge broke the stillness of the night, and proved that armed men were watching while the army slept; and every two hours he heard a string of challenges, as officers marched out from the guard-tents and posted the reliefs; but there was no movement beyond that — no other sound.

  And the Emir sat on in silence where he was, and wondered. His camp behind him slept, and his sentries, too, were posted; but there was a difference, and he was wondering wherein the difference lay.

  “Their men are recruited among disaffected Indian tribes,” he muttered; “or else in the slums of London. Their officers dream all of them of home, and the men must dread the thought of it; whence has cohesion come? And yet...

  “‘Dark skins mingle no more with white than oil with water,’ wrote Aga Khan, and Ullah Khan, and both wrote truly. They are conquerors — sons at the least of conquerors — retaining their hold on India by means of what is left of former strength; and they know it, for they govern India like men who are afraid. And yet...

  “Those men there joined the army for their bellies’ sake. Their leaders know it. Those native soldiers read seditious writings daily in the native press, since their leaders fear to muzzle the discontented men who write.

  “His Excellency represents the Queen. In England, where those soldiers come from, men stand at the street corners and declaim against the Queen, and against her Empire. His Excellency knows it, and those men
know it. Those men gain nothing from the Empire, for their leaders are afraid to let them loot. They are many, though; they come from the slums that I have read about, where no ideals or decency exist, or can exist. Wealth lies around them, and their officers are comparatively few; none could prevent them if they chose to loot. And yet...

  “My fighting men are picked from among the best. There is not a man of all my men but held his chin high from his birth. My men can rise to any heights; those men down yonder have no prospect of either wealth or great promotion. Those there are punished when they disobey, by little fines, and light imprisonment — mine with a scimitar. Conquest for those men means risk of life, and afterward oblivion and poverty again; conquest for my men would spell riches.

  “I know each of my men, and each of my men knows me. His Excellency there knows almost none of his, excepting here and there an officer; he has not been in India long enough to know the hundredth part of all his men by sight, and I have lived among my men always. And yet...

  “His Excellency sleeps, and the commander sleeps, and the army sleeps — and I dare not sleep!”

  He had not solved the riddle when a hundred bugles and a hundred trumpets down below him blared out in chorus, to salute the morning, and he looked — from his own men, squabbling sleepy and breakfast-less around the dying embers — to the beehive on the plain, where each of a hundred thousand men was wide awake, and each performing his prearranged, predestined, preconcerted task with easy, almost casual, unhurrying precision. The hundred thousand, and their horses, had all breakfasted before his own men had more than decided what to eat.

  “And they come from the slums?” he wondered.

  VI.

  FOR an hour, as if an unseen finger moved them like pieces on a checker-board, the regiments shifted and marched and shifted — pipe-clay white, and gold, and crimson, tipped with burnished steel — an ever-changing mass of individual units each with the same end in view. Without an accident, without a counter-march, to the intermittent sound of bugles and a quite occasional command, order was evolved — brigade order, out of unbrigaded companies.