Part 11 (2/2)

This, however, was not at all the light in which Blunt saw the matter; he was annoyed at the man's bl.u.s.ter, pomposity and pretence. He was not in the least impressed by a well-worn packet of letters which his visitor produced, in which successive Generals and Commissioners had testified to his deserts; what he wanted was business, and this was essentially unbusinesslike. If Sutton had written, 'You have proved yourself a brave and loyal soldier, and I will ever be your friend,'

this was no reason why Mahomed Khan should not pay his salt-dues like other folk, or should object to have his t.i.tle-deeds rigidly overhauled.

'If it was just, why had Sir John Larrens Sahib never done it?' the old man objected; but Blunt did not care what Sir John Lawrence had done or had not done; what he wanted was his bond, and nothing else would satisfy him.

This was Blunt's first nettle, and he was grasping it firmly, with no doubts as to the propriety of the course. Then, at last, he got tired of the interview, and--fatal blunder for an Eastern diplomat--became abrupt and rude, and began to show his hand. Thereupon Mahomed Khan began to show his teeth and went away in a surly mood with the news, which spread like wildfire among the clansmen, that the Sirkar was going to rule them with a heavy hand; that all old rights were to be cancelled; a grievous land-tax to be imposed, and that a terrible 'Sahib,' of fierce aspect, had arrived to see this objectionable policy carried out.

Then Blunt found the investigation by no means the simple matter he had hoped. Statements, which looked so neat and clean when submitted to the Board and neatly minuted on by Whisp, a.s.sumed an aspect of hopeless inexplicability when Blunt had them face to face; and the more he questioned the less he understood. He was armed with powers to examine witnesses, but not a word of truth could be got out of any one. Fine old countrymen, whose n.o.ble bearing, well-chiselled features and long flowing beards would have made a fortune in a Roman studio, came before him and told him the most unblus.h.i.+ng lies with a volubility and earnestness that fairly staggered Blunt's bewildered comprehension.

To say one thing to-day, the precise opposite to-morrow, and to explain with easy grace that it was a mistake, or that the evidence had been wrongly taken down, seemed to every man whom Blunt interrogated the correct and natural procedure for a person who was being pressed for information which it was inconvenient to produce. Some men remembered everything; others professed the most absolute obliviousness; each contradicted all the rest, except when Government interests were concerned, and then all swore together like a band of conspirators. To make confusion worse confounded, the accounts were kept on a system which none of the Salt Board people understood and which no one else could be induced to explain.

Then, by some fatality, the white ants had always eaten the precise doc.u.ments of which Blunt stood in need, and the trembling officials produced a tattered ma.s.s of dirt and rags and a.s.sured him that this was the record which he called for, or rather all that could be found of its remains. Blunt became, day by day, more profoundly convinced that all men--all the Rumble Chunder men, at any rate--were liars, and let his conviction appear in short speeches and abrupt procedure. The old Zamindars, outraged by discourtesy in the presence of their retainers, came away from his presence quivering with rage and ripe for the first chance of mischief which offered. Blunt found the nettle stinging him sorely, and, like a rough, resolute man, grasped it with all the more unflinching hand. When at last he succeeded in making out a case he dealt out the sternest justice, not, perhaps, without a gratified vindictiveness against the people who had so long baffled and annoyed him. One Uzuf Ali, a large grantee, had been called upon to verify his claims; and this he proceeded to do with the utmost alacrity. He and his forefathers, he protested, had been in possession for centuries--look at the Revenue records, the files of the Courts, the orders of Government.

Here, too, was a Sunnud from the Emperor Akbar confirming them in their rights. Twenty witnesses, all disinterested, honourable, unimpeachable, the entire village indeed, would attest the fact of continuous, open, rightful enjoyment from a period as far as memory could go. So the twenty witnesses did; but then appeared a gentleman, one Hosain Khan, on the other side, and blew the pretty story into the air. Uzuf Ali was an audacious impostor, everybody in the country knew that his father had come from Delhi not thirty years ago; he had no more right to an ounce of salt than the 'Commissioner Sahib' himself; the ground over which he claimed his rights was notoriously in the possession of another man: as for the Sunnud of Akbar, it was an obvious forgery, as the Commissioner Sahib might see for himself by merely looking.

Hosain Khan having had his innings, Uzuf Ali returned to the wickets and began to make great play. 'Ask Hosain Khan,' he said, 'if his uncle did not carry off my sister and if some of our people did not kill him for it?'

'Yes,' says Hosain Khan, 'you stabbed him yourself, like a coward as you are, when he lay asleep by his bullocks.'

'And if I did,' cries his opponent, 'did not your father knock out my cousin's brains with a lathee[2] and get sent over the Kala Panee[3] for his pains?'

The controversy waxed ardent; the combatants' voices rose shrill and high; they tossed their black locks and waved their arms, and poured out long streams of pa.s.sionate family history, long-cherished feuds--deep, never-to-be-forgotten wrongs--interminable complications as to lands and wells, women and bullocks; and Blunt, who understood nothing but that they had travelled a long way from the Rumble Chunder Grant, sat by in mute and wrathful despair, and began to perceive that the administration of justice to folks so excitable and unveracious as these was no such easy matter as he had once imagined.

Amid all the chaff, however, Blunt had, he thought, got hold of one piece of solid fact: either the Sunnud was a forgery or it was not; and if a forgery, then he resolved to make an example, prosecute Uzuf Ali for his fraud, and turn him summarily out of his pretended rights. A forgery no doubt it was, for the paper bore the British watermark, and you could see the places where the gunpowder had been smeared in hopes of giving it an antiquated look. And so the question was decided, and the order made out, and poor Uzuf Ali, in vain protesting that it was a device of the enemy, left the Commissioner's presence a ruined man.

Ruined men, however, are dangerous things at all times, and especially with an excitable and easily frightened people, who see in their neighbours' fall only an antic.i.p.ation of their own. The Bazaar was presently in a tumult: angry cl.u.s.ters of talkers gathered in circles round the grain-shops or at the village well, or under the great banyan-tree which spread a wide shade over one end of the street, and discussed past grievances and future disaster. Meanwhile Blunt, not with so light a heart or seeing his way as clearly as usual, had moved his head-quarters a dozen miles away, and begun a new series of investigations with a new set of Hosain Khans and Uzuf Alis, and with precisely similar success.

Before the month was over Fotheringam's words had come true. The Eusuf Khayls, a turbulent tribe of frontier freebooters, were up. A police outpost had been attacked in force one night, and its occupants had made a bad retreat, leaving two of their number on the field. The marauders had ridden through twenty miles of British territory, burning villages, destroying crops, driving away bullocks to their fastnesses in the hills. Blunt, as he came, escorted by a strong detachment, into Dustypore, met the Horse Artillery rattling out towards the disturbed region; and a telegram despatched to Elysium informed Sutton that he was to head a flying column into the enemies' country and that he must be with his regiment without an instant's delay.

CHAPTER XX.

A LAST RIDE.

He turned his charger as he spoke Upon the river-sh.o.r.e; He gave the bridle-reins a shake, Said 'Adieu for evermore, My love!

And adieu for evermore!'

Sutton, who was practising '_La ci darem la mano_' with Maud when the telegram arrived, glanced at its contents without stopping the duet and slipped it into his pocket before Maud had even seen it. '_Andiam, Andiam, Andiam,_' she sang joyfully; '_Andiam, Andiam, Andiam_' pealed Sutton's pleasant tenor tones; '_d'un innocente Amor_' sang the two together; so the performance came smoothly to its close. 'And now,'

Sutton said, 'I am afraid we must stop our practice for this morning, as I have to go to the Viceroy. I will come and see you on my way back. I may have to go down to Dustypore this afternoon.'

'Down to Dustypore!' Maud cried, in a tone that bespoke the pang of disappointment that shot into her heart, 'I thought that you were to stay all the summer?'

'And so did I,' said her companion; 'but unluckily some of my naughty boys on the Hills out there have been getting into too good spirits, and I must go and look after them. And now for his Excellency.'

Before Sutton had been gone many minutes Desvoeux came galloping up the pathway, and found Maud still standing in the verandah, where she had wished Sutton farewell, and where in truth she had been standing in a brown study ever since he went. Desvoeux was in the gloomiest spirits, far too much concerned about himself to pay much attention to Maud's troubled looks. 'Have you heard the dreadful, dreadful news?' he said.

'All our holidays are over for the year. There has been an outbreak on the frontier. The troops are already on the march. The Agent is closeted with the Viceroy and goes down this afternoon, and of course poor I have to go along with him. Sutton is to command the expedition, and, I daresay, is off already. Every soldier in the place will be ordered down; and meanwhile what is to become of the fancy-ball?'

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