Selected Stories (27 page)

‘“Go!” says I. “Go to Hell, Dan! I'm with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk.”

‘“I'm a Chief,” says Billy Fish, quite quiet. “I stay with you. My men can go.”

‘The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word, but ran off, and Dan and me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold – awful cold. I've got that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump of it there.'

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and
splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said: ‘What happened after that?'

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

‘What was you pleased to say?' whined Carnehan. ‘They took them without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King knocked down the first man that set hand on him – not though old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, sir, then and there, like a pig; and the King kicks up the bloody snow and says: “We've had a dashed fine run for our money. What's coming next?” But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, sir. No, he didn't neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. “Damn your eyes!” says the King. “D'you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?” He turns to Peachey – Peachey that was crying like a child. “I've brought you to this, Peachey,” says he. “Brought you out of your happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.” – “I do,” says Peachey. “Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.” – “Shake hands, Peachey,” says he. “I'm going now.” Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes – “Cut, you beggars,” he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside.

‘But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachey's hands will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he didn't die. He hung there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him down – poor old Peachey that hadn't done them any harm – that hadn't done them any –'

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.

‘They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he was more of a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then they
turned him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and said: “Come along, Peachey. It's a big thing we're doing.” The mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on Peachey's head, but Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came along bent double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot, sir! You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him now!'

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread, and shook therefrom on to my table – the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.

‘You behold now,' said Carnehan, ‘the Emperor in his habit as he lived
²⁵
– the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a monarch once!'

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. ‘Let me take away the whisky, and give me a little money,' he gasped. ‘I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy-Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs – in the South – at Marwar.'

He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the Deputy-Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head from right to left:

‘The Son of God goes forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;

His blood-red banner streams afar!

Who follows in his train?'
²⁶

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and drove him to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the
Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me, whom he did not in the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the Asylum.

‘He was admitted suffering from sunstroke. He died early yesterday morning,' said the Superintendent. ‘Is it true that he was half an hour bare-headed in the sun at mid-day?'

‘Yes,' said I, ‘but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by any chance when he died?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

Baa Baa, Black Sheep
¹

Baa Baa, Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full.
One for the Master, one for the Dame –
None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane.

Nursery Rhyme
.

When I was in my father's house, I was in a better place.
²

They were putting Punch to bed – the
ayah
³
and the
hamal
⁴
and Meeta, the big
Surti
⁵
boy, with the red-and-gold turban. Judy, already tucked inside her mosquito-curtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been accorded to Punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous. He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs defiantly.

‘Punch-
baba
going to bye-lo?' said the
ayah
suggestively.

‘No,' said Punch. ‘Punch-baba wants the story about the Ranee
⁶
that was turned into a tiger. Meeta must tell it, and the
hamal
shall hide behind the door and make tiger-noises at the proper time.'

‘But Judy-
baba
will wake up,' said the
ayah
.

‘Judy-
baba
is waked,' piped a small voice from the mosquito-curtains. ‘There was a Ranee that lived at Delhi. Go on, Meeta,' and she fell fast asleep again while Meeta began the story.

Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale with so little opposition. He reflected for a long time. The
hamal
made the tiger-noises in twenty different keys.

‘'Top!' said Punch authoritatively. ‘Why doesn't Papa come in and say he is going to give me
put-put
?'

‘Punch-
baba
is going away,' said the
ayah
. ‘In another week there will be no Punch-
baba
to pull my hair any more.' She sighed softly, for the boy of the household was very dear to her heart.

‘Up the Ghauts
⁷
in a train?' said Punch, standing on his bed. ‘All the way to Nassick
⁸
where the Ranee-Tiger lives?'

‘Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib,' said Meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. ‘Down to the sea where the coconuts are thrown, and across the sea in a big ship. Will you take Meeta with you to
Belait?
'
⁹

‘You shall all come,' said Punch, from the height of Meeta's strong arms. ‘Meeta and the
ayah
and the
hamal
and Bhini-in-the-Garden, and the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake-man.'

There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he replied: ‘Great is the Sahib's favour,' and laid the little man down in the bed, while the
ayah
, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman Catholic Church at Parel.
¹⁰
Punch curled himself into a ball and slept.

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a trip to Nassick.

Papa and Mamma sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals, and took long counsel together over a bundle of letters bearing the Rock-lington postmark.

‘The worst of it is that one can't be certain of anything,' said Papa, pulling his moustache. ‘The letters in themselves are excellent, and the terms are moderate enough.'

‘The worst of it is that the children will grow up away from me,‘ thought Mamma; but she did not say it aloud.

‘We are only one case among hundreds,' said Papa bitterly. ‘You shall go Home again in five years, dear.'

‘Punch will be ten then – and Judy eight. Oh, how long and long and long the time will be! And we have to leave them among strangers.'

‘Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make friends wherever he goes.'

‘And who could help loving my Ju?'

They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and I think that Mamma was crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she knelt down by the side of Judy's cot. The
ayah
saw her and put up a prayer that the Memsahib might never find the love of her children taken away from her and given to a stranger.

Mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one. Summarized it ran: ‘Let strangers love my children and be as good to them as I should be, but let
me
preserve their love and their confidence for ever
and ever. Amen.' Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a little.

Next day they all went down to the sea, and there was a scene at the Apollo Bunder
¹¹
when Punch discovered that Meeta could not come too, and Judy learned that the
ayah
must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand fascinating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the big P. & O. steamer long before Meeta and the
ayah
had dried their tears.

‘Come back, Punch-
baba
,' said the
ayah
.

‘Come back,' said Meeta, ‘and be a
Burra Sahib
[a big man].'