CHAPTER XXI.
For some days after returning home, I could not get rid of the horrid gloom that brooded over me like a cloud of sulphurous vapor. During the day I kept myself very busy, looking after various things, making calls on those who needed a little assistance, looking after my garden and property, visiting Mr. Jasper, so my mind was diverted. But at night! I had to read the driest metaphysical books I possessed, not for pleasure or profit, but to fatigue my mind, so that it could get any rest at all. Woe to me, if it caught even the slightest thread of the black story of my life, for then away it would run like a fast flying reel, until all from the beginning was unwound. How I tossed and turned, trying to sleep! I repeated poem after poem, put wet cold towels around my head, arose and ran as fast as I could through the garden, and to concentrate my thoughts, repeated poems and paragraphs backward word by word.
I thought of the fate of the damned, who through the long eternal night are trying to forget the foul offenses and crimes of their lives on earth! No, no hell to be compared to such a torment! To be their own accusers, to be theirown judge, to keep forever their own infamous record! To be haunted by a ghost that will never be laid. Utter annihilation would be a paradise of bliss compared to such an eternal state of misery.
I still had a duty to perform before I could drop the subject so far as it was possible to do so. M. Le Maistre had made me promise to let him know the result of my investigation, and of my visit to the Commissioner. It was no use to delay, as sooner or later I would have to tell him, and the black wounds would have to be re-opened again. I could not write to him, for I have made it a habit of my life never to write anything that I was not willing the whole world should know. I have gone a hundred miles to tell what I might have written in a few lines. There are so many chances for a paper to be lost and be found by the wrong person, to be mislaid or kept for years, to be read and gossiped about by the world after the writer is dead. These letters and writing of the Commissioner, some of them unsigned, had been his death warrant.
So I had to go again to Lucknow. My old friend received me kindly, as usual. I went over the whole affair again, except that about my sister. That I never told except to the one himself most concerned. He heard it, and will remember it. My sister never even suspected what that man was to her. She had enough sorrow and shame as it was, without knowing of that black, foul crime. It was too much for me to know, and what would I have given to have erased the hideous remembrance of it from my memory?
I was rather ashamed to tell of my ruse, the white lie (though I never knew how any lie could be white), I told in order to gain admittance, but my old friend said that in catching rascals, as in trapping rats, one has to use a little chaff and deception, so I concluded that he did not think any the worse of me for my little trick.
Yet I have always hated to lie, it strains me so, and after it I feel a weakness, as if my moral system had been wrenched, so I refrain, that is, as much as possible.
M. Le Maistre was as good a listener as I knew him to be a good talker, though these two traits seldom go together.After I had finished by telling him of the apparent remorse of the man—I do not like to write man, as applied to him, as it seems a degradation of that word, neither do I like to use epithets all the time, so will have to let it go—he exclaimed, “Served him right; served him right. Such a scoundrel as that should be put into the public stocks to be jeered at by every beggar who passes, as long as he lives, and after death, we need not say anything of that, for he will have all he deserves. God is not just if he will abate one particle of punishment due to such sinners. I know that some, the church people would censure me for such an expression.
“There is a lot of nonsense talked about eternal salvation. Why, they would people heaven with scoundrels, reprobates of earth, suddenly made into saints. There cannot be two laws of God to directly contradict each other. This is what I mean. There is a man of fair education, exemplary in every way, an excellent Christian. I am not making a case, for I knew just such a man. He is seated one evening with his wife and children on a veranda in front of his house. A man for some slight grudge comes, and without a word, shoots, and the father and husband falls dead in the arms of his wife. The criminal is tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hung. The priest has been with him. On the scaffold he tells the crowd that he has repented, believes in Jesus, and is going to be happy among the redeemed.
“The church affects to believe him, that all his past has been forgiven, that the blood of Jesus has washed him white as snow, and that he is going straight to become a saint in heaven.
“But what about the family? Deprived of their support, guide and best of earthly friends, they are reduced to want and beggary. The mother is crushed to death by her hard toil and care. The boys without education and the training of a father, fall into vice and sin. Their children inherit their defects and so on for generations; aye to the very end. With the family the evil consequences of that man’s crime are eternal. How can we by any torture of justice suppose him to be saved from all the consequencesof his sin and to be happy in heaven, while they suffer all the miseries inflicted by his crime while they are upon earth, and an eternal loss and degradation?”
I think I said that my friend, when he got started was like the rushing waters in a mill-race when the gates were open. As I enjoyed his talk, I had no inclination to shut down the gates. Of his own accord he made a halt. I took occasion to refer to my story and said that the only thing I questioned, was that perhaps I had been a little severe on my unworthy parent. He quickly said, “Not a bit of it, not a bit of it. With such a man, hardened, encased in sin, you have got to be severe in order to touch him at all. Had you gone to him otherwise than you did, he would have smiled in your face, rubbed his hands with glee over the tricks of his youth, and the follies of his old age. Had my father served me as yours did you, killed my mother, and made his children outcasts, I would by the God who made me, I would have done more than you did, very much more.”
He used some other very forcible expressions that I forbear to give. I saw the old man’s blood was up, so waited without a word. He began again. “I am a father, I have daughters, but all happily married, thank God, but for years it was the torture of my life as to what might happen to them. They went into “society,” as it is called, and what these upper class men, as they are styled, polished and skilled in all the sly arts of flattery and seduction, might do, I did not know. They are educated, trained in vice as they are in grammar and mathematics. I was just reading an account of a candidate for Parliament, being accused by his opponents of impudicity when he was at the Charterhouse school. There was issued a writ for slander and when the case came on, a paper states, “there was a shocking light on the morals of the great public schools, at any rate twenty-eight years ago.” I was astonished not long ago when an Englishman, lately from home, said that he did not believe there was a boy in England over fourteen years of age, but was guilty of immorality. One prominent school was called ‘Sodom on the Hill,’ because of its wicked practices. A gentleman told me that when he wasin the university, one of the greatest in England, there was no set that could keep up with the divinity students in immorality and flagrant blackguardism. Great God! what a condition of society! Where are the fathers and mothers and sisters of these boys? What can be the condition of the homes of England? What can we expect of men who were such boys?
“I know this is not a pleasant or agreeable subject for conversation, but like some other things in life it ought not to be avoided on that account. If I were to write about this, not a paper would publish my article. They are too much absorbed with politics, in detailing the dresses worn at some party or ball, with wars, intrigues, or the events in society, to give any attention to a subject on which the very preservation of society depends, and not only that, but the destiny of souls. Some say we ought never to refer to such things to corrupt the minds of the young. Such people are so simple-minded, as to have forgotten all about the inquisitiveness or the passions of their own youth. The young! They know too much, taught by the example of their elders and the vicious stories in novels, of the intrigues and seductions in society life. They are attracted, allured, rather than repulsed and warned of danger. Another class, and a numerous one, the guilty, the culprits themselves, would frown and declare it was too nasty for anything. They certainly would not like anything that would reflect on their own wicked conduct, or show up their own impurities.
“Impurity is the greatest evil of this age. It is worse than cholera, or any pestilence, for these only destroy the bodies, but this undermines the moral nature, and destroys the souls of mankind. We give little attention to this sin of all sins. Fathers and mothers let their children grow up without a word of advice or warning. ‘It is such a delicate subject, you know,’ is the excuse. The clergy discourse on everything, but are as dumb as mummies about this devil of lust. Only a few days ago the chaplain was over here, and I asked his advice and made some statements about some young men, whom I wished to save from ruin, when he interrupted me by saying, ‘M. Le Maistre, thesethings are too horrible, I wish you had not told me a word about them,’ and away he went, this man who ought to be a sin doctor, a soul curer and saver of souls, went away to gossip with a lot of women at a croquet party.
“I am inclined to think that we ought to go back to the Christ that was, begin a new church with a new set of preachers, who would talk less about rites and ceremonies, less about the souls of men, and care something about their bodies, and dare to denounce the sins and lusts of the flesh, and have manhood and courage enough to take for a text, ‘Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her!’ Wouldn’t there be a squirming among the sinners such as your distinguished father, if they dared to preach as Jesus would? Let us have some dinner.”
We had a good dinner, and a very pleasant chat among the family present, until the time for my train. On bidding good-bye, I said, “I can trust you.” He answered, “You need have no fear of me.” And I never had.
I wanted a change, to go into a retreat after all the excitement and anxiety of the past few months, to get rid of the ennui and disgust of life that was unsettling me, and the best remedy I have found in such cases, is to go and benefit somebody, and give real enjoyment to others.
I at once thought of my villagers. Have not great men sought rest by retiring to their country homes, why not I? For several years I had only ridden out a day at a time to attend some school festival or fair, but now I concluded to make a real visit. I had my tent, servants, bag and baggage sent out to make a real stay in my Reviera or Tusculum. I sought the shade of a big peepul, a ficus and a religiosa to me, and I was soon pleasantly situated. The condition of the villages was excellent. The drains I had formerly made carried away all the refuse to the opposite side of the village from the tank. The people were extremely healthy. Few deaths had occurred, and these were from natural causes. I had given them a number of talks about the value of manure and refuse, that this was food for the soil, that the land was hungry, starving, and needed to be fed. This they could understand, for they had been hungry themselves. I said nothing about nitrates or phosphates,or the chemical ingredients of different kinds of soil, or that the ash of wheat contains phosphates, potashes and magnesia. Too much learning hath turned many a wise man’s brain, and I wanted no insanity or confusion among my people. I told them that every seer of refuse was land food, and every seer would bring in a number of extra grains of seed, larger and better vegetables, a larger rate of interest than they had paid to the bunyas. I had frequently pointed out the stuff lying about and making the villages untidy and going to waste, while the soil was begging for it. I found that they had acted on my suggestion, and swept the streets and yards, and every straw and leaf were stored in the pits. The result was a clean village, healthy people, and thriving fields. In planting the trees years ago, I was careful to have them of good timber, or of excellent fruit. They beautified the villages, gave plenty of shade, while the lopped branches supplied fuel, the fruit was a harvest in itself of food, and gave the people a pleasure in life all conducing to health and happiness. I am a utilitarian, but include that which gives beauty and pleasure with the useful.
Some years previous I had supplied a few imported cattle. These now formed quite a stock, of which the people were very proud and I rejoiced in their pride. I had given some talks on cattle and their treatment; that they could not expect a poor starved bullock to do good work, any more than a weak starved man. I drew a picture on the school blackboard of a fat-bellied man, thrashing and punching a pair of skeleton cattle, and gave my opinion of such a man, fattening himself while starving the poor brutes depending on him.
I had offered prizes to be distributed by a committee at our semi-annual fairs to those having the best cattle, and also a big leather medal to be given to the one having the poorest cattle, this to be nailed to the door of his house until the next fair. I wanted a little fun, and they all appreciated this leathery idea. I hardly need say that after a few years the committee decided that there were not any cattle in the villages to entitle the owner to the leather medal. It was a standing remark for them to make whenany one’s cattle were becoming a little lean, “O he is going in for the leather medal.” I am egotist enough to believe that my talks about cattle were far superior to any given by the wordy lecturers of the anti-cow-killing society. It is the grimmest kind of a farce for the Hindus to talk of the sacredness of cattle and then to cruelly starve and treat the poor brutes as they do.
I had stocked the tank with the fry of the best fish and some had grown to a large size, and plenty of them. There had been a fish committee appointed and a law passed, that no one should fish except with a hook and line, and that no fish under six inches in length should be kept out, but be thrown back into the water. I had plenty of sport, if it can be called sport to take life of any kind, and a fish for my breakfasts, giving the rest to the widows. I always showed great respect to the women, putting them ever first.
One morning I received the finest compliment of my life. I was coming from the tank and my boy,—I never was in want of boys when fishing, who is?—had a fine string of large fish, when the widows approached to get their share. As the fish were distributed, one old wrinkled body getting her share exclaimed: “The Sahib is a friend to the poor widows.” I trust the recording angel made a note of that, for I like to get all the good marks I deserve, as I am afraid I shall have so many bad ones to be erased, for I have read somewhere, that every time the scribe above puts down a good mark for any one he rubs out a bad one. The fish committee made their report that there had been no violation of the law except once, when a man was caught going away from the tank with a number of small fish. The committee at once surrounded him, and decided that he must eat the fish raw, then and there, and they waited until he had devoured heads, tails, bones and all. I doubt if the justices of any high or low court ever gave a decision with more justice, or administered a punishment with more alacrity than did my fish committee.
Once going to the tank with my rod, I met this man and said, probably with a slight hint in my voice that I had heard from the committee: “Well Gulab, are you fond offish?” He hesitated, with a slight grin on his face, for he was somewhat of a wag, “Yes, Sahib, when they are cooked.” I replied, “That is the way I like mine, not raw, but well cooked,” and we parted, each with a meaning smile.
I was so well pleased with my fish investment, bringing in a constant crop of food without labor, worth the product of a number of acres, that I sent for some fishermen with nets to go to the river to bring me a lot of small fish at so much a seer, and they brought me not seers, but maunds, and I waited to see what a harvest my planting would produce, as I told the villagers that the tank was my field. Some of them, I afterwards learned, called the tank, “The Sahib’s Khet.”
I found that it was the custom of the people after their evening meal to assemble in front of the school-house at the chibutra, the areopagus of India villages, when the teacher and older scholars would read aloud the papers and books that I had sent them. Questions were put, and various were the discussions, with more courtesy and order than in the British Parliament, when the Irish bill is to the front. These assemblies became so popular that every man, woman and child in the village would be present, not one left to guard a house, for why should there be a guard, when all were at the chibutra?
The women had their right to half the space, and well they claimed and kept it. Woe to the wight who dared intrude upon their side. I greatly enjoyed this assertion of rights by the women. I have always been foolish enough to believe that a woman is as good as a man, everywhere and at any time, and most of the time a great deal better. She has her rights and should demand them, even if she has not as much coarse brute muscle as the self styled lords of creation. From my little reading and observation I have come to the conclusion that the moral and social status of a nation, a tribe or individual, is seen by the way they treat their women. If a man, or rather a male of the human species, acts like a hog towards a woman, he is a hog in other respects. I mistrust that this word is not a polite one to use, and that it would be as bad to say hog beforesome fastidious people, as it would be to say hell in church. But when I mean hog why not say it, and surely I have seen hog bipeds, as well as hog quadrupeds.
I cannot help throwing in a suggestion. If I, now an old man, should give any advice to a young woman, about to accept a man for a husband, it would be to see him often with his mother and his sisters, and observe his treatment of them. His murder will out to them, when he would be all smiles and graciousness to women outside his home. In his home he is off his guard, and there is the place to judge these slippery men.
As long as the people of India keep their women in ignorance and seclusion, England need have no fear of holding the country in subjection. Liberty, patriotism and the higher moral traits of the human race were never born of men, but of women. Was it not the mother of the Gracchi who bade her sons go forth and conquer in battle or be brought home dead on their spears? That was also the spirit and patriotism of the Spartan mothers that made a place in history for their nation. Was there ever a great people, but had its grand women, its noble wives and mothers? The people of India think they know a great deal, but they are far from having learned this first great principle, the great secret of a nation’s freedom and civilization, the education and elevation of women. I may be mistaken in this as I am in so many things, yet I see no reason why I should not say the best I think on the subject.
I do not know when I acquired this regard and reverence for women. I think they must have been implanted by Mr. Percy to grow with my years. I know of so many traits in my thoughts and life, that in after years I saw I got from him unconsciously, not that he taught me directly, but rather that he impressed upon me by his conversation and example. It was an education to walk and move beside or in the company of such a man, to absorb something of his character and goodness. Ah! that grand man, so pure and good! What would he have been without that noble mother of his! He fairly worshiped women as God’s best gift to men, and he could no more have harmed a woman than he could have blasphemed his Maker. I haveoften thought that a man who respects and reverences women can scarcely go wrong in a moral sense.
I was greatly pleased with the position the village women had taken, and with their spirit of inquiry. They were my best hope in the permanent prosperity of these people.
I was allotted the place of honor at the chibutra. There was no one to move that I take the chair, or to ask for a vote of thanks at the close of the meetings. They had not come to imitate the babus in aping the customs of the English. There were more questions put than ever dreamed of in Parliament, but with this difference, none were asked to gain time, or to waste time, or to perplex the Ministry or the chair. They applied their inquisitive pumps to me, as if I was a never-failing well of knowledge. The women, too, had their questions, mostly about the women in Wilayat, how they lived and did, a very good sign. During all these evenings I gave talks on all sorts of subjects, making them practical, as well as interesting. Once I talked on gossip and slander. I suspected that there were several women whose tongues hung as loosely as a clapper in a bell.
The next day several matronly women met me, and said they were very glad I had talked about women quarreling, as there were some guilty of it. All this may be called trifling matter, not worth mentioning. Yet, what to great people would seem trifles, were to these simple people great affairs. They were not in society, could attend no operas, clubs, or fashionable parties, had few books, knew nothing of the great life of the world, and were better for it, so the little things would make their lives happier, and would lift them up from the earth, above the brutes, and raise them toward God, and fit them for a better eternal life.
I am convinced that if the simple, ignorant people of India were shown how to better their condition, no people on earth would be so ready to act. Theories will not reach them. They, like all people in their grade of life, are materialists; they want to see with their own eyes—results. They can reason upon what they see and feel, or better,upon what they eat. I have been told by an educated, English gentleman, that most of the common people or voters in England, were guided more by their stupid bellies than by their brains, how much more so these people? I might have talked and persuaded all my life, and they would have remained just what they were, and would have continued doing as their forefathers did centuries ago, but when they saw me spending money in support of my theories, they became interested, and when they saw results, they were convinced. All the people in India are the slowest in the world to make experiments or engage in anything that they do not comprehend or see a profitable solution.
It appears that when the tram-car was first proposed for Bombay, not a native would invest in it, though begged and urged to do so. As soon as they saw it was a paying concern they clamored for shares, and felt wronged that none were sold to them. A Parsee complained to me that he had been hurt by the refusal.
There is a great drawback. The people are desperately poor. There is not a people the sun shines on, who are so sunken in the degradation of poverty as those of India. Ninety per cent. of them are connected with agriculture, and it is stated on good authority, that sixty per cent. of them do not get enough to eat, even of the coarsest food.
What can a people do for themselves when the average wage is not more than three rupees or three shillings a month? What can all the learned investigations and scientific reports of Government do for a people in such an utterly helpless condition? I am not speaking at random. I have seen and heard for myself, and know what I am talking about. To illustrate: Passing through a field where a man—almost naked—was rooting up the earth with a pair of small skeleton cattle, I had a chat with him about his life and crops. I asked him how much he got a year from all his labor. He replied, that if by working every day he could get a little food for himself and family, and at the close of the year could have enough to buy a cloth for himself, he would be happy. A whole year’s work for a little food, a little rice with weeds and stuff from his fields, not wheat or grain, as all the latter would have to be sold topay the rent, and at the end have enough left to buy a cloth, worth less than a shilling!
The great curse of Indian agriculture, is the middlemen, the “zemindars,” or village owners. They do nothing except to pass their time in idleness and dissipation, spending more in one night on a nautch dance of prostitutes, than would dig a dozen wells, or build a good tank, while they live on the sweat and blood of their ryots. It is to the infamy of Government that it tolerates such a system of tyranny, injustice and robbery. Not one in ten thousand of these zemindars does anything for the benefit of his villagers.
I once talked with a great Maharajah with a long string of titles, who was ever head first when his name could be mentioned in public, and who privately was known as a screw, the owner of hundreds of villages, and I suggested some improvements for his people. “No,” he replied, “I have nothing to do with them, except to get my rents, all I want is my rupees,” and he was getting them by lacs a year. They are worse than vultures, for these are scavengers, destroyers of carrion, good birds, and never take life, but such men as this Maharajah, live and grow fat on the lives of their serfs. It is evident that I grow warm, yes hot, on this subject, and why not?
Another thing I cannot abide, and that is the learned nonsense about improving the condition of the agricultural population by some high flown scientific processes. You might as well form a society to cultivate the valleys of the moon, or “go about to turn the sun to ice by fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather.”
Lighten the burdens of poverty, and the crushing of the ryots, by less taxation, by the destruction of the leeches, the zemindars, and then the people would have something on which to live and help themselves. The permanent prosperity of a country depends on agriculture, and India will never come up, it is now at its lowest depth, until the condition of the ryots is radically changed.
The editor of a prominent India paper says: “The direct effect of unduly low rents is careless husbandry. Instead of benefiting the cultivator, such rents are a mereincentive to idleness.” What a sapient conclusion! His publishers should have immediately cut down his wages so that they might not be an incentive to his idleness.
This reminds me of a bunya who sold cloth, traveling from one bazar to another. He purchased a fine, stout pony to carry his goods. The beast was so fat that he diminished its food, and as it traveled so well, he increased its load. He continued to do both, until the poor brute, of its own accord, discontinued eating and going, and the man wondered what gave it such an incentive to idleness. But he had not the wisdom of the editor.
An expert sent out by Government says in his report, “Until a more adequate collection of statistics is made nothing can be done for agriculture!” I might use some very harsh words, if I should relieve my mind by using epithets regarding such twaddle, so I refrain. Yet I cannot forbear saying that one of the things for which I have an unsurmountable contempt is an educated fool.
Referring to these Government learned scientific investigators recalls to me an incident. One of my neighbors went on furlough. He had several valuable horses, which he left in the care of his sais. They were large, strong-limbed, well-proportioned animals. But something seemed to be the matter with them. They became thinner and thinner and drooped, standing for hours with their heads down and their legs scarcely supporting their bodies. Some of the neighbors happened around in the mornings and formed a kind of committee of investigation, as they did not like to see such fine animals go to the dogs and vultures, and beside, they had some regard for the interests of their friend. At length they decided to send for a distinguished veterinary surgeon, several hundred miles away. One suggested that this would be expensive. Others blanked the expense; they couldn’t let the horses die. The vet came, took a general look at the beasts and stood silently as if meditating where to begin. At last he spoke, “Gentlemen, this is a very serious matter, very strange; never saw anything like it in an experience of forty years. Yes, gentlemen, in forty years. Here are young, fine, well built animals slowly dying by inches, and yet apparentlywithout disease. I will have to investigate, and it will be some days before I can make a report.” The days went on, and the vet stayed on, at a salary of fifty rupees a day to somebody. The weeks passed, and notwithstanding the vet’s investigation and long report, the horses grew thinner, and then the poor brutes went to death for want of breath, or, to be explicit, they died because they hadn’t strength enough to breathe, and not because they were sick or diseased. The vultures sang requiems over their bones, and said, “It was a strange case, very strange, the like they had never seen in all their experience of years, all skin and bones, not a particle of meat; very strange.” So said we all of us, “a very strange case.”
After his weeks of diagnosing and cognising the vet departed with his pockets full of rupees. Besides, he made quite a reputation, for he sent a long account of this very strange case to a horsey journal. A deluge of letters came, everybody had his theory or opinion, until the editor, buried under the accumulation of papers, said that the discussion must stop. At last the Government got to hear of it. Why is it that Government takes such a long time to hear? Is it on account of the length of its ears, the distance anything has to travel to get into its head? It had a long investigation by a committee of fifteen, all titled, distinguished—nobody knows anything but this class—and as each had to have his talk printed, the result was a voluminous book, of which a thousand copies were published, costing many times more than the horses were worth, not to mention the expense of the committee, for such men are always good livers. Of these thousand copies only twenty-five were used. Each member of the committee took a copy to show his wife and friends, and ten were sent to editors. A Government subsidized paper declared that the book reflected great credit on the distinguished committee, that it was just what the public might have expected from the well known reputation of the members selected with such great care and excellent judgment by His Excellency, the Viceroy.
An opposition paper, reviewing the book, said that the committee was a ponderous one, in number, in titles, in itsexpenses; the report was ponderous in its size and weight, in the number of its pages and sections, and in its cost. The subject of the investigation, to begin with, was of no consequence, the quiet death of three probably worn-out old hacks in a little up-country, out of the way station. There was not a thought in the book worth preserving, the style was verbose, flatulent to a degree, as if the committee had been appointed wholly and solely to make a book. “Without wasting any more of our valuable space on nothing, we give it as from our profound conviction that a mosquito might take in every idea in the whole book and then not be conscious of any enlargement of its brain.” A babu tried his copy, but declared it was too much for him, as “it made him sick in his mind to read it.” The only real benefit from the book was what the paper-maker, the printer and the waste paper dealer received. The whole committee decided unanimously that the horses had died, and as everybody agreed with them, the subject was dropped and forgotten by the public.
One day, not long after the mysterious affair, I met the sais who had charge of the horses. He knew me very well. I questioned him. I told him he knew what ailed the horses, and wished him to tell me. He hesitated. I urged. At length he said, “Sahib, if you will promise me upon your honor never to report me I will tell you.” I promised. He replied, “When my sahib was taking leave he told me it would cost him a great deal to go to Wilayat and back, that there was now a very big income tax, and that the rupee was very bimar, that there were taxes on everything, and more to follow, he didn’t know on what next; it might be on his wife and children, so that he couldn’t afford to allow more than one seer of grain a day for each horse, and that he would give me so many rupees, and that would be so many anas a day, while he was away, and that I must not spend more than that, or he would cut it from my talab, and I knew he would do just what he said. When he is here he strikes me with his whip, when I am within reach, or, if not, he hurls a brick, or anything he can get, at my head.” “But about the horses?” I asked. He replied, “The grass, as you know, all dried up, theprice of grain doubled in the bazar, and as I had only so many anas a day for each horse until the sahib returned, I had to cut down the feed until it was scarcely more than a child could eat, and that is what was the matter, the horses died for want of feed.”
“But why didn’t you tell me, and I would have given the feed?” I asked, quite indignant. “Yes,” he continued, “and when my sahib returned he would get to know of it, and I would be thrashed, my pay cut or be dismissed. I know my sahib too well to think that he would be willing to have any one know that he had left his horses to starve. I was sorry for them, and often cried, but what could I do? It was either I or the horses, and I preferred to save myself, for he is brother to a donkey who will not try to keep his own skin on his back.”
As the sais has gone to a place from which he will never be dismissed, and though he may not be flogged by a sahib, he will have to meet the ghosts of those starved horses, so let him be happy if he can. As I had promised on my honor, though an Eurasian is not credited with much of that, I never told the story until now, and the learned vet, and the distinguished Government committee, can have the free and full benefit of my information. It was a strange case, very.
I will not point a moral to this incident, for if any one has been so slighted by nature as not to have the ability to see it, all pointing would be superfluous. It would be like having to explain one of my own jokes, and that always gives me a mental twist. This reminds me of the reply of a Scotchman, when asked to explain, “A body canna be expectit baith to mak the joke an’ to see’t; na, that would be doin’ twa fowk’s wark.”