Chapter 7 IN THE RAJAH'S PALACE

A rambling, many-storied building, a jumbled mass of no particular design or style of architecture, with blue-washed walls and close-latticed windows, an insanitary rabbit-warren of intricate passages, unexpected courtyards, hidden gardens, and crazy tenements kennelling a small army of servants, retainers, and indefinable hangers-on-such was the palace of the Rajah of Lalpuri. Here and there, by carved doors or iron-studded gates half off their hinges, lounged purposeless sentries, barefooted, clad in old and dirty red coatees, white cross-belts and ragged blue trousers.

They leant on rusty, muzzle-loading muskets purchased from "John Company" in pre-Mutiny years, and their uniforms were modelled on those worn by the Company's native troops before the days of Chillianwallah.

The outer courtyard swarmed with a mob of beggars, panders, traders, servants, and idlers, through which occasionally a ramshackle carriage drawn by galled ponies, their broken harness tied with rope, and conveying some Palace official, made its way with difficulty. Sometimes the vehicle was closely shuttered or shrouded with white cotton sheets and contained some high-caste lady or brazen, jewel-decked wanton of the Court.

On one side were the tumble-down stables, near which a squealing white stallion with long, red-dyed tail was tied to a peepul tree. Its rider, a blue-coated sowar, or cavalryman, with bare feet thrust into heelless native slippers, sat on the ground near it smoking a hubble-bubble. A chorus of neighing answered his screaming horse from the filthy stalls, outside which stood foul-smelling manure-heaps, around which mangy pariah dogs nosed. In the blazing sun a couple of hooded hunting-cheetahs lay panting on the bullock-cart to which they were chained.

The Palace stood in the heart of the city of Lalpuri, a maze of narrow, malodorous streets off which ran still narrower and fouler lanes. The gaudily-painted houses, many stories high, with wooden balconies and projecting windows, were interspersed with ruinous palm-thatched bamboo huts and grotesquely decorated temples filled with fat priests and hideous, ochre-daubed gods, and noisy with the incessant blare of conch shells and the jangling of bells. Lalpuri was a byword throughout India and was known to its contemptuous neighbours as the City of Harlots and Thieves. Poverty, debauchery, and crime were rife. Justice was a mockery; corruption and abuses flourished everywhere. A just magistrate or an honourable official was as hard to find as an honest citizen or a virtuous woman.

Like people, like rulers. The State had been founded by a Mahratta free-booter in the days when the Pindaris swept across Hindustan from Poona almost to Calcutta. His successor at the time of the Mutiny was a clever rascal, who refused to commit himself openly against the British while secretly protesting his devotion to their enemies. He balanced himself adroitly on the fence until it was evident which side would prove victorious. When Delhi fell and the mutineers were scattered, he offered a refuge in his palace to certain rebel princes and leaders who were fleeing with their treasures and loot to Burmah. But the treacherous scoundrel seized the money and valuables and handed the owners over to the Government of India.

The present occupant of the gadi-which is the Hindustani equivalent of a throne-was far from being an improvement on his predecessors. He exceeded them in viciousness, though much their inferior in ability. As a rule the Indian reigning princes of today-and especially those educated at the splendid Rajkumar College, or Princes' School-are an honour to their high lineage and the races from which they spring. In peace they devote themselves to the welfare of their subjects, and in war many of them have fought gallantly for the Empire and all have given their treasures or their troops loyally and generously to their King-Emperor.

The Rajah of Lalpuri was an exception-and a bad one. Although not thirty years of age he had plumbed the lowest depths of vice and debauchery. Cruelty and treachery were his most marked characteristics, lust and liquor his ruling passions.

Of Mahratta descent he was of course a Hindu. While in drunken moments professing himself an atheist and blaspheming the gods, yet when suffering from illness caused by his excesses he was a prey to superstitious fears and as wax in the hands of his Brahmin priests. Although his territory was small and unimportant, yet the ownership of a Bengal coalfield and the judicious investment by his father of the treasure stolen from the rebel princes in profitable Western enterprises ensured him an income greater than that enjoyed by many far more important maharajahs. But his revenue was never sufficient for his needs, and he ground down his wretched subjects with oppressive taxes to furnish him with still more money to waste in his vices. All men marvelled that the Government of India allowed such a debauchee and wastrel to remain on the gadi. But it is a long-suffering Government and loth to interfere with the rulers of the native states. However, matters were fast reaching a crisis when the Viceroy and his advisers would be forced to consider whether they should allow this degenerate to continue to misgovern his State. This the Rajah realised, and it filled him with feelings of hostility and disloyalty to the Suzerain Power.

But the real ruler of Lalpuri State was the Dewan or Prime Minister, a clever, ambitious, and unscrupulous Bengali Brahmin, endowed with all the talent for intrigue and chicanery of his race and caste as well as with their hatred of the British. He had persuaded himself that the English dominion in India was coming to an end and was ready to do all in his power to hasten the event. For he secretly nourished the design of deposing the Rajah and making himself the nominal as well as the virtual ruler of the State, and he knew that the British would not permit this. His was the brain that had conceived the project of uniting the disloyal elements of Bengal with the foreign foes of the Government of India, and he was the leader of the disaffected and the chief of the conspirators.

When Chunerbutty arrived in Lalpuri he rode with difficulty through the crowded, narrow streets. His sun-helmet and European dress earned him hostile glances and open insults, and more than one foul gibe was hurled at him as he went along by some who imagined him from his dark face and English clothes to be a half-caste. For the native, however humble, hates and despises the man of mixed breed.

When he reached the Palace he made his way through the throng of beggars, touts, and hangers-on in the outer courtyard, and, passing the sentries, all of whom recognised him, entered the building. Through the maze of passages and courts he penetrated to the room occupied by his father in virtue of his appointment in the Rajah's service.

He found the old man sitting cross-legged on a mat in the dirty, almost bare apartment. He was chewing betel-nut and spitting the red juice into a pot. He looked up as his son entered.

Among the other out-of-date customs and silly superstitions that the younger Chunerbutty boasted of having freed himself from, were the respect and regard due to parents-usually deep-rooted in all races of India, and indeed of the East generally. So without any salutation or greeting he sat down on the one ricketty chair that the room contained, and said ill-temperedly:

"Here I am, having ridden miles in the heat and endured discomfort for some absurd whim of thine. Why didst thou send for me? I told thee never to do so unless the matter were very important. I had to eat abuse from that drunken Welshman to get permission to come. I had to swear that thou wert on the point of death. Then he consented, but only because, as he said, I might catch thy illness and die too. May jackals dig him from his grave and devour his corpse!"

As the father and son sat confronting each other the contrast between them was significant of the old Bengal and the new. The silly, light-minded girls in England who had found the younger man's attractions irresistible and raved over his dark skin and the fascinating suggestion of the Orient in him, should have seen the pair now. The son, ultra-English in his costume, from his sun-hat to his riding-breeches and gaiters, and the old Bengali, ridiculously like him in features, despite his shaven crown with one oiled scalp-lock, his bulbous nose and flabby cheeks, and teeth stained red by betel-chewing. On his forehead were painted three white horizontal strokes, the mark of the worshippers of Siva the Destroyer. His only garment was a dirty old dhoti tied round his fat, naked paunch.

He grinned at his son's ill-temper and replied briefly:

"The Rajah wishes to see thee, son."

"Why? Is there anything new?"

"I do not know. Thou art angry at being torn from the side of the English girl. Art thou to marry her? Why not be satisfied to wed one of thine own countrywomen?"

The younger man spat contemptuously.

"I would not be content with a fat Hindu cow after having known English girls. Thou shouldest see those of London, old man. How they love us of dark skin and believe our tales that we are Indian princes!"

The father leered unpleasantly.

"Thou hast often told me that these white women are shameless. Is it needful to pay the price of marriage to possess this one?"

"I want her, if only to anger the white men among whom I live," replied his son sullenly. "Like all the English out here they hate to see their women marry us black men."

"There is a white man in the Palace who is not like that."

"A white man in the Palace?" echoed his son. "Who is he? What does he here?"

"A Parliamentary-wallah, who is visiting India and will go back to tell the English monkeys in his country what we are not. He comes here with letters from the Lat Sahib."

"From the Viceroy?"

"Yes; thou knowest that any fool from their Parliament holds a whip over the back of the Lat Sahib and all the white men in this land. This one hath no love for his own country."

"How knowest thou that?"

"Because the Dewan Sahib loves him. Any foe of England is as welcome to the Dewan as the monsoon rain to the ryot whose crops are dying of drought. Thou wilt see this one, for he is ever with the Dewan, who has ordered that thou goest to him before seeing the Rajah.

"Ordered? I am sick of his orders," replied the son, petulantly. "Am I his dog that he should order me? I am not a Lalpuri now. I am a British subject."

"Thy father eats the Rajah's salt. Thou forgettest that the Dewan found the money to send thee across the Black Water to learn thy trade."

The younger man frowned discontentedly.

"Well, I see not the colour of his money now. Why should I obey him? I will not."

"Softly, softly, son. There be many knives in the bazaars of the city that will seek out any man's heart at the Dewan's bidding. Thou art a man of Lalpuri still."

His son rose discontentedly from his chair.

"Kali smite him with smallpox. I suppose it were better to see what he wants. I shall go."

Admitted to the presence of the Dewan, Chunerbutty's defiant manner dropped from him, for he had always held that official in awe. His swagger vanished; he bent low and his hand went up to his head in a salaam. The Premier of the State, a wrinkled old Brahmin, was seated on the ground propped up by white bolsters, with a small table, a foot high, crowded with papers in front of him. He was dressed simply and plainly in white cotton garments, a small coloured puggri covering his shaved head. Although reputed the possessor of finer jewels than the Rajah he wore no ornaments.

Sprawling in an easy chair opposite him was a fat European in a tight white linen suit buttoned up to the neck. He evidently felt the heat acutely, and with a large coloured handkerchief he incessantly wiped his red face, down which the sweat rolled in oily drops, and mopped his bald head.

When Chunerbutty entered the apartment the Dewan, without any greeting indicated him, saying:

"This, Mr. Macgregor, is an example of what all we Indians shall be when relieved of the tyranny of British officials and allowed to govern ourselves."

His English was perfect.

The bearer of the historic Highland name, whose appearance suggested rather a Hebrew patronymic, removed from his mouth the cigar that he was smoking and asked in a guttural voice:

"Who is the young man?"

The Dewan briefly explained, then, turning to Chunerbutty, he said:

"This is Mr. Donald Macgregor, M.P., a member of the Labour Party and a true friend of India. You may speak freely before him. Sit down."

The engineer looked around in vain for another chair. The Dewan said sharply in Bengali, using the familiar, and in this case contemptuous, "thou":

"Sit on the floor, as thy fathers before thee have done, as thou didst thyself before thou began to think thyself an Englishman and despise thy country and its ways."

Chunerbutty collapsed and sat down hastily on a mat. Then in English the Dewan continued:

"Have you any news?"

"No; I have forwarded as they came all letters and messengers from Bhutan. The troops-" He stopped and looked at the Member of Parliament.

"Continue. There is no need of secrecy before Mr. Macgregor," said the Dewan. "I have said that he is a friend of India."

"It's all right, my boy," added the Hebrew Highlander encouragingly. "I am a Pacifist and a socialist. I don't hold with soldiers or with keeping coloured races enslaved. 'England for English and India for the Indians' is my motto."

"Well, I have already informed you that there is no truth in the reports that troops were to be sent again to Buxa Duar," said Chunerbutty, reassured. "On the frontier there are only the two hundred Military Police at Ranga Duar. They are Punjaubi Mohammedans. I made the acquaintance of the officer commanding them last night."

"Ah! What is he like?" enquired the Dewan, interested.

"Inquisitive, but a fool-like all these officers," replied the engineer contemptuously. "He noticed Narain Dass on our garden and saw that he was a Bengali. He learned that others of us were employed on our estate and was surprised that Brahmins should do coolie work. But he suspected nothing."

"You are sure?" asked the Dewan.

"Quite certain."

The Dewan shook his head doubtfully.

"These English officers are not always the fools they seem," he observed. "We must keep an eye on this inquisitive person. Now, how goes the work among the garden coolies? Are they ripe for revolt?"

"Not yet on all the estates. They are ignorant cattle, and to them the Motherland means nothing. But on our garden our greatest helper is the manager, a drunken bully. He ill-treats the coolies and nearly kicked one to death the other day."

"That's how the Englishman always treats the native, isn't it?" asked the Hebrew representative of an English constituency.

"Always and everywhere," replied the engineer unhesitatingly, wondering if Macgregor were really fool enough to believe the libel, which one day's experience in India should have shown him to be false. But this foreign Jew turned Scotchman hated the country of his adoption, as only these gentry do, and was ready to believe any lie against it and eager to do all in his power to injure it.

The Dewan said:

"Mr. Macgregor has been sent to tell us that his party pledges itself to help us in Parliament."

"Yes, you need have no fear. We'll see that justice is done you," began the politician in his best tub-thumping manner. "We Socialists and Communists are determined to put an end to tyranny and oppression, whether of the downtrodden slaves of Capitalism at home or our coloured brothers abroad. The British working-man wants no colonies, no India. He is determined to change everything in England and do away with all above him-kings, lords, aristocrats, and the bourgeoisie. He demands Revolution, and we'll give it him."

"Pardon me, Mr. Macgregor," remarked the engineer. "I've lived among British working-men, when I was in the shops, but I never found that they wanted revolution."

The Member of Parliament looked at him steadily for a moment and grinned.

"You're no fool, Mr. Chunerbutty. You're a lad after my own heart. You know a thing or two. Perhaps you're right. But the British working-man lets us represent him, and we know what's good for him, if he don't. We Socialists run the Labour Party, and I promise you we'll back you up in Parliament if you rebel and drive the English out of India."

"We shall do it, Mr. Macgregor," said the Dewan, confidently, "We are co-ordinating all the organisations in the Punjaub, Bombay, and Bengal, and we shall strike simultaneously. Afghan help has been promised, and the Pathan tribesmen will follow the Amir's regiments into India. As I told you, the Chinese and Bhutanese invasion is certain, and there are neither troops nor fortifications along this frontier to stop it."

"That's right. You'll do it," said Macgregor. "The General Election comes off in a few months, and our party is sure of victory. I am authorised to assure you that our first act will be to give India absolute independence. So you can do what you like. But don't kill the white women and children-at least, not openly. They might not like it in England, though personally I don't care if you massacre every damned Britisher in the country. From what I've seen of 'em it's only what they deserve. The insolence I've met with from those whipper-snapper officers! And the civil officials would be as bad, if they dared. Then their women-I wouldn't like to say what I think of them."

The Dewan turned to Chunerbutty.

"Go now; you have my leave. His Highness wishes to see you. I have sent him word that you are here."

The engineer rose and salaamed respectfully. Then, with a nod to Macgregor, he withdrew full of thought. He had not known before that the conspiracy to expel the British was so widespread and promising. He had not regarded it very seriously hitherto. But he had faith in the Dewan, and the pledge of the great political party in England was reassuring.

Admitted to the presence of the Rajah, Chunerbutty found him reclining languidly on a pile of soft cushions on the floor of a tawdrily-decorated room. The walls were crowded with highly-coloured chromos of Hindu gods and badly-painted indecent pictures. A cut-glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, and expensive but ill-assorted European furniture stood about the apartment. French mechanical toys under glass shades crowded the tables.

The Rajah was a fat and sensual-looking young man, with bloated face and bloodshot that eyes spoke eloquently of his excesses. On his forehead was painted a small semicircular line above the eyebrows with a round patch in the middle, which was the sect-mark of the Sáktas. His white linen garments were creased and dirty, but round his neck he wore a rope of enormous pearls. His feet were bare. On a gold tray beside him were two liqueur bottles, one empty, the other only half full, and two or three glasses.

He looked up vacantly as Chunerbutty entered, then, recognising him, said petulantly:

"Where have you been? Why did you not come before?"

The engineer salaamed and seated himself on the carpet near him without invitation. He held the Rajah far less in awe than the Prime Minister, for he had been the former's boon-companion in his debauches too often to have much respect for him.

He answered the prince carelessly.

"The Dewan sent for me to see him before I came to you, Maharaj Sahib."

"Why? What for? That man thinks that he is the ruler of Lalpuri, not I," grumbled the Rajah. "I gave orders that you were to be sent to me as soon as you arrived. I want news of the girl. Is she still there?"

"Yes; she is still there."

"Listen to me," the Rajah leant forward and tapped him on the knee. "I must have that girl. Ever since I saw her at the durbar at Jalpaiguri I have wanted her."

"Your Highness knows that it is difficult to get hold of an Englishwoman in India."

"I know. But I do not care. I must have her. I will have her." He filled a tumbler with liqueur and sipped it. "I have sent for you to find a way. You are clever. You know the customs of these English. You have often told me how you did as you wished with the white women in England."

"That is very different. It is easy there," and Chunerbutty smiled at pleasant memories. "There the women are shameless, and they prefer us to their own colour. And the men are not jealous. They are proud that their daughters and sisters should know us."

He helped himself to the liqueur.

"Why do you not go to England?" he continued. "There every woman would throw herself at your feet. They make much of the Hindu students, the sons of fat bunniahs and shopkeepers in Calcutta, because they think them all Indian princes. For you who really are one they would do anything."

The Rajah sat up furious and dashed his glass down on the tray so violently that it shivered to atoms.

"Go to England? Have I not tried to?" he cried. "But every time I ask, the Viceroy refuses me permission. I, a rajah, the son of rajahs, must beg leave like a servant from a man whose grandfather was a nobody-and be refused. May his womenkind be dishonoured! May his grave be defiled!"

He filled another glass and emptied it before continuing.

"But, I tell you, I want this girl. I must have her. You must get her for me. Can you not carry her off and bring her here? You can have all the money you want to bribe any one. You said there are only two white men on the garden. I will send you a hundred soldiers."

Chunerbutty looked alarmed. He had no wish to be dragged into such a mad proceeding as to attempt to carry off an Englishwoman by force, and in a place where he was well known. For the girl in question was Noreen Daleham. The Rajah had seen her a few months before at a durbar or reception of native notables held by the Lieutenant Governor of Eastern Bengal, and been fired with an insane and unholy passion for her.

"Your Highness, it is impossible. Quite impossible. Do you not see that all the power of the Sirkar (the Government) would be put forth to punish us? You would be deposed, and I-I would be sent to the convict settlement in the Andaman Islands, if I were not hanged."

The Rajah abused the hated English, root and branch. But he was forced to admit that Chunerbutty was right. Open violence would ruin them.

He sank back on the cushions, exhausted by his fit of anger. Draining his glass he filled it up again. Then he clapped his hands. A servant entered noiselessly on bare feet, bringing two full bottles of liqueur and fresh tumblers. There was little difficulty in anticipating His Highness's requirements. The khitmagar removed the empty bottles and the broken glass and left the apartment.

The Rajah drank again. The strong liqueur seemed to have no effect on him. Then he said:

"Well, find a plan yourself. But I must get the girl."

Chunerbutty pretended to think. Then he began to expose tentatively, as if it were an idea just come to him, a plan that he had conceived weeks before.

"Maharaj Sahib, if I could make the girl my wife-"

The Rajah half rose up and spluttered out furiously:

"You dog, wouldst thou dare to rival me, to interfere between me and my desires?"

The engineer hastened to pacify the angry man.

"No, no, Your Highness. You misunderstand me. Surely you know that you can trust me. What I mean is that, if I married her, she would have to obey me, and-" he smiled insinuatingly and significantly-"I am a loyal subject of Your Highness."

The fat debauchee stared at him uncomprehendingly for a few moments. Then understanding dawned, and his bloated face creased into a lascivious smile.

"I see. I see. Then marry her," he said, sinking back on the cushions.

"Your Highness forgets that the salary they pay a tea-garden engineer is not enough to tempt a girl to marry him nor support them if she did."

"That is true," replied the Rajah thoughtfully. He was silent for a little, and then he said:

"I will give you an appointment here in the Palace with a salary of a lakh of rupees a year."

Chunerbutty's eyes glistened. A lakh is a hundred thousand, and at par fifteen rupees went to an English sovereign.

"Thank you, Your Highness," he said eagerly.

The Rajah held up a fat forefinger warningly.

"But not until you have married her," he said.

Chunerbutty smiled confidently. Much as he had seen of Noreen Daleham he yet knew her so little as to believe that the prospect of such an income, joined to the favour in which he believed she held him, would make it an easy matter to win her consent.

He imagined himself to be in love with the girl, but it was in the Oriental's way-that is, it was merely a matter of sensual desire. Although as jealous as Eastern men are in sex questions, the prospect of the money quite reconciled him to the idea of sharing his wife with another. His fancy flew ahead to the time, which he knew to be inevitable, when possession would have killed passion and the money would bring new, and so more welcome, women to his arms. The Rajah would only too readily permit, nay encourage him to go to Europe-alone. And he gloated over the thought of being again in London, but this time with much money at his command. What was any one woman compared with fifty, with a hundred, others ready to replace her?

So he calmly discussed with the Rajah the manner of carrying out their nefarious scheme; and His Highness, to show his appreciation, invited him to share his orgies that night. And in the smiles and embraces of a Kashmiri wanton, Chunerbutty forgot the English girl.