CHAPTER VII: 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.”