The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel
as he sat in the lock-up, vastly contented with his black eye and an ugly cut on the nose, which he explained gleefully to Sonny baba put him in mind of old times. The latter, through the medium of a fellow-passenger who knew Punjâbi, was meanwhile trying to make the old sinner understand that he had got the whole army into trouble, and that personally he must stand his trial for a breach of the peace.
"And tell him, please," said Sonny baba with grieved diffidence, "that we all think he must have been drunk."
An odd smile struggled with the gravity of Dr. Taylor's interpretation of the reply.
"He says, of course he was drunk, as you all were. In fact, he bought a bottle of rum instead of taking his opium, so that the effects might be uniform--I'm telling you the sober truth, my dear boy. You see you don't know the people or the country, or anything about them. I do. Besides, the Tommies--the regular soldiers I mean--always make a point of getting drunk if they can when they go down or come up to the sea in ships. Perhaps it's the connection between reeling to and fro, you know. I beg your pardon; no offence--but really, what with the tambourines--"
Dr. Taylor paused with his bright eyes on the boy's face. They had been cabin companions, and despite an absolute antagonism of thought, chums. It is so sometimes, and as a rule such friendships last.
"Did you tell him the General was greatly displeased? It is such a terrible beginning to our campaign; so unscriptural," mourned Sonny baba evasively.
"I don't know about that; wasn't there some one who smote off some one else's ear? and that, I believe, is what the old man is accused of doing. I beg your pardon again, but the coincidence is remarkable."
"And what is he saying now?" put in the other hurriedly.
Dr. Taylor paused.
"He is calling down the blessing of the one true God upon your head, now and for all eternity," he answered slowly, and there was a sort of hush in his voice.
Sonny baba's eyes grew suspiciously moist, but he shook his head dutifully. "How--how sad," he began.
"Very sad that you can't understand what he says," interrupted Dr. Taylor curtly, "because as I've only just time to catch my train I must be off. Salaam, Akâli sahib!"
Dhurm Singh, standing to salute, detained the doctor for a minute with eager questioning.
"What is it?" asked Sonny baba again. "What is it he wants to know?"
Dr. Taylor gave a short laugh. "He wants to know who the General's papa and mamma were, because he isn't a gentleman. You needn't stare so, my dear fellow. That is the first thing they find out about an Englishman, and it needs a lot of grit and go in a man to get over the initial drawback. Well, good-bye, and if you will take my advice, come up north, see the people, learn their language, and appreciate their lives before you try to change them. And look here! don't go taking an Akâli about in a religious procession with drums and banners. It isn't safe, especially if you are going to Bengal."
"Why Bengal more than other places?"
"Accustomed to lick them, that's all--hereditary instinct. Well, good-bye again, and take my advice and come north. The old swash-buckler might be of some use to you there. He'll be in the way down country."
II.
Some eighteen months afterwards, the doctor, being busy over that great hunt for the comma-shaped bacillus, which, as is told elsewhere, ended in a full stop for the seeker, saw a man come into his verandah with a note.
"The old swash-buckler, by all that's sinful," he said to himself. "Now, what can he want?" According to the superscription of the letter, it was a "Civil Surgeon"; according to a few almost illegible words inside, help for a suspected case of cholera in the European room of the serai.
Dr. Taylor, with grave doubts as to being able to supply either of these desires, went into the verandah.
"Is it Sonny baba?" he asked.
Dhurm Singh's delight was boundless; since a sahib to whom you have once spoken is not as other sahibs; just as a sahib whom you have once served becomes a demi-god--transfigured, immortal. Undoubtedly it was the Baba-sahib[11]--for unto this semi-religious title the old man had compounded his memories and his respect; who else was it likely to be, seeing that he, Dhurm Singh, had taken service with the master's son? Undoubtedly also he was ill, though, in the poor opinion of the dustlike one, it was not cholera--at least it need not have been if the Baba-sahib had only taken the remedy proposed to him.
"Opium? hey!" asked Taylor, who in a huge pith hat which made him look like an animated mushroom, was by this time walking over to the serai, which was but a few hundred yards off.
The old Akâli grinned from ear to ear, the massive curves of his lips stretching like india-rubber. "The Huzoor knows the great gift of God in the bad places of mind and body. But the Baba-sahib will not have it so. He understands not many things through being so young. But he learns, he learns!"
There was a cheerful content in the apology, suggestive of the possibility that Dhurm Singh had something to do with the teaching. If so, he had been an unsafe guide in one point; for it was cholera; cholera of the type which merges into a dreary convalescence of malarial fever, during which Dr. Taylor saw a good deal, necessarily and unnecessarily, of his old cabin companion; thus renewing a friendship which, like the majority of those struck up on board ship, would have been forgotten but for an accident--the accident of his doing civil duty for a colleague during ten days' leave.
"Civil Surgeon, indeed!" he would say, as he sat on the edge of the bed amusing Sonny baba when the latter began to pull round. "Deuce take me if I could be that to save my life! One of my patients the other day said I was the most uncivil person calling himself a gentleman she ever came across, just because I told her she couldn't expect her liver to act if she lived the life of a Strasburg goose. 'Liver!' she cried, 'why, doctor, it's all heart that is the matter with me.' Now, my dear boy, can you tell me why that unfortunate viscera, the liver, has got into such disrepute? You may tell a patient every other organ in the body is in a disgraceful state of disrepair, but if you hint at bile it's no use trying to be a popular physician. Stick to the heart! that's my advice to a youngster entering the lists. Both for the healer and the healed it is ennobling. Now you, for instance! you will put it all down to your ardent affection for your fellow-man; but what the devil have you done with your muscle, my dear fellow? Oh, I know! you have been doing the dâl-bhât[12] trick, in order to show your sympathy with the people, and to assimilate your wants to theirs, so that in some occult way they are to assimilate their religious beliefs to yours. Lordy, Lordy, what an odd creature man is! But you didn't get old Dhurm Singh to give up his kid pullao, I'll go bail. Now, he looks fit--more like your Church Militant business than you do."
"I've--I've given up the Army," said Sonny baba after an embarrassed pause.
And Dr. Taylor actually refrained from asking why, or from saying he was glad to hear it; for there was a puzzled, pained look in his patient's face, which, like any other unfavourable symptom, had to be attended to at once. In the verandah, however, he commented on the news to Dhurm Singh, who with his turban off and his long white hair coiled round the high wooden comb like any woman's, was putting an extra fine polish to his sword to while away the time.
"Huzoor! it is true. It did not suit us. I told the Baba-sahib so from the beginning. They were not of his caste. As the Protector may see, I did all in my power. I set aside the steel bracelets and the quoits. I refrained myself to humility and carried a tambourine, but to no purpose. It did not suit. So now, praise be to the Lord, we have taken 'pinson' again, and the Baba is to serve the Big Lât-padre (bishop) according to hukm (orders), as all the padre sahibs do."
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