The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel
he drove home, the doctor decided that he would gladly give a month's pay to know the history of the past year and a half. The very imagination of it made him smile. Yet there must have been more than mere laughter in his thoughts, for even when the lad grew strong enough to resume the arguments which had begun in the cabin, the doctor never tried to force his confidence. And Sonny baba was reserved on some points. But the enthusiasm, and the fervour, and the faith were strong in him as ever, though the angelic voice now busied itself with Hymns Ancient and Modern; especially the Ancient. For, face to face with the Rig-Vedas, the advantages of unquestioned authority had begun to show themselves.
There is no need to repeat the arguments on either side; they are easily imagined, given the characters of the arguers. Nor is it difficult to imagine the grip of hands when they parted. One of them, no doubt, said something about the other not being far from a certain kingdom, and the saying was not resented, though, no doubt, the hearer laughed softly over the comma-shaped bacillus as he watched Sonny baba and the old swash-buckler set off together to the wilderness again. The former to itinerate from village to village, learning the language and lives of the people he hoped by and by to convert; the latter, presumably, to complete the education he had begun. They were an odd couple.
"Ten to one on the swash-buckler," thought the doctor; "he is a fine old chap."
Christmas had come and gone ere Sonny baba reappeared in civilised society. When he did so he looked weather-beaten and yet spruce--the natural result on a healthy young Englishman of combined exposure to sunshine and a good washerman.
"Hullo!" cried the doctor cheerily, "back again in boiled shirts, I see! Find 'em a bit stiff, I expect, after kurtas and dhotees. The natives know how to dress comfortably at any rate."
Sonny baba blushed under his bronze and hesitated. "The fact is," he said with an effort, "I did not, after all, adopt native costume as I intended, or perhaps"--here a faint smile obtruded itself--"I might say it wouldn't adopt me. You see, to enter into details, I couldn't exactly give up--a--a night shirt, or that sort of thing, you know--now could I? And what with being a very sound sleeper, and sleeping in public places--serai's and dhurmsâlas--or out in the open--somehow my day clothes were always being stolen. As soon as ever I got a new outfit it disappeared, until at last Dhurm Singh said,--"
"Yes! what did Dhurm Singh say?"
"That it was very peculiar, and that as the thieves didn't seem to fancy my English clothes it might be--more economical--" Here a half-embarrassed laugh finally interrupted the sentence. "I don't think I was sorry," went on the speaker hastily; "I found out afterwards that the people don't understand it. One old fellow asked me why it was that though a native convert always had to wear trousers like the sahib-logue, the 'missen' people preferred to preach without them? Of course it was an exaggeration both ways, but the more I see of these people, the more necessary it seems to me that we should be ourselves armed at all points before beginning the attack. And then their poverty, their patience, the insanitary conditions--the needless suffering! Surely before we can touch their minds--"
"I know," broke in the doctor cynically. "Medical missions, et cetera; so it has come to that already, has it, old chap?"
"I don't know what you mean by its having come to that," retorted Sonny at a white heat; "but if you think it right to live in the lap of luxury while these brothers and sisters of ours--"
So the arguments began again, more fiercely than ever, for the two fought at closer quarters--so close that ofttimes the doctor had to retreat from his own position and seek another, because Sonny baba had already entrenched himself therein; the which is a direful offence, rousing determined resistance in a real argufier.
Despite this, Sonny baba rented a room in the doctor's house, and shared the doctor's dinners and library and hospital after the easy Indian fashion, while Dhurm Singh swaggered about among the dispensary badge-wearers, explaining at full length why he did not wear a badge like the rest of them. His sahib had not yet settled which branch of the public service he would exalt by his presence. He was young, doubtless, as yet, but he made strides. Two years ago he had found him in a very poor "naukeri" (service), in which he paid all the rupees and no one gave him anything; a topsy-turvy arrangement: not that his sahib needed the paisas. He was rich as a nawab. Then he thought of being a padre sahib; now it was doctoré department, but in his, Dhurm Singh's opinion, that was not much either. Personally he would just as soon wear no badge, as one of those with "Charitable Dispensary" on it. But only God knew where the Baba-sahib might end; at Simla, as "burra Lât sahib," no doubt. Till then it was more dignified to refrain from ignoble badges of which afterwards one might be ashamed.
And while he talked in this fashion he sat in the sunshine combing his long hair, and piously wondering how folk could defile their insides with tobacco. Then he would stroll off into the shadow and bring out the black lump of dreams. Yet if Sonny baba came out into the verandah calling after the Indian fashion for some one, the broad northern accent was always ready with its "Huzoor!"
So the months passed in preparations, and the angelic voice might have been heard to sing "Lead, kindly Light" more often than any other hymn in the book. About this time, also, Sonny baba speaking of Dhurm Singh and his ways, used to quote in rather a patronising manner a certain text regarding those who might expect to be beaten with few stripes--a speech which roused the doctor to vigorous retort. He had observed, he said, that the remark held good about most honest, healthy men who could play singlestick.
The fact being, however, that Sonny baba was beginning to get obstinate, as is only natural when a man passes five and twenty. It was time, he felt, to begin work in earnest; for the enthusiasm and the faith and the fervour were as hot as ever in him still. Looking back on the last three years he hardly understood why he had done so little.
"There seems so much to learn before one can even begin on the problem," he sighed, "and then, dear as the old man is, I really think Dhurm Singh is a drawback. I hoped when we left the Army--but indeed, Taylor, I think even you will allow that he is hardly the sort of man for a missionary's servant."
"Well, I don't know that I should classify him under that head; but then," he paused, thinking, perhaps, that when all was said and done the master was no more fit for the place than the servant.
"I'm glad you agree with me," put in Sonny eagerly, "for I've quite made up my mind to a change. You have no idea how the old fellow hectors over getting me a pint of milk or a couple of eggs. You would think I was about to loot a whole village. I must own that I invariably get what I want--that, too, without the least unpleasantness; but it is not edifying. Not the sort of thing that ought to go on. Then his habit of eating opium. It does not seem to hurt him, I own; but that again is not what it ought to be. It is bad enough to belong to a race who, while they go about with words of condemnation on their lips--"
"Pardon me," murmured the doctor, "I pass--"
"--on their lips, are at the same time battening on the proceeds of an infamous monopoly of a drug dealing death and disease to a whole continent."
"One-third of one per cent of the total population," murmured the doctor again.
"You forget the opium grown in China," put in Sonny with great heat.
"My dear fellow, isn't there a story somewhere about the Emperor of China's clothes? If I remember right he forgot to put 'em on, and then every one was afraid to tell him he was naked. It appears to me that in this opium business the good gentleman hasn't a rag of reason for complaint, but that you are all afraid to say so. If we can prevent our subjects from growing poppy except under supervision, why can't he? It isn't Jonah's gourd, but a three month crop."
Sonny baba began to walk up and down the room excitedly. "It is perfectly inexplicable to me how a man like you--"
"Excuse me," interrupted the doctor. "I'll explain. I'm forty-four years of age. Two and twenty years of that I lived in a parish in Scotland where every decent, respectable body would have thought shame to himself if he didn't have more whisky than