The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel

III.

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      "Dhurm Singh?"

      "Huzoor."

      After five and twenty years the same appeal--the same reply. But on that May night and July day neither the man nor the woman had any doubt as to what was to come next; the universe held no possibility save "the mem sahib" or "Sonny baba But the latter, now it came to his turn, hesitated; even while he was conscious that to a well-balanced mind capable of weighing advantage and disadvantage fairly, there ought to be no difficulty in telling any one that you had no further need for his services. The recollection of certain thin-lipped, dignified, self-respecting conversations overheard at home sprang to memory obtrusively. "Then, Mary Ann, it had better be this day month." "Yes, ma'am, this day month, if you please; and if you please, ma'am, Wednesdays and Saturdays from eleven till one, if convenient, for a character."

      But things were different somehow in this heathen country, which was so backward in education, so ignorant of liberty, equality, and--ahem!

      "Dhurm Singh," began Sonny once more rather hurriedly.

      "Huzoor."

      "I--I am going to make a complete change of plan, Dhurm Singh. I--I am going to begin work on a new principle. I--I am going to start in another part of the country where I shall not require--er--many things I have hitherto required." He paused, well satisfied at his plunge in medias res.

      Dhurm Singh, standing attention at the door, smiled approvingly. "It is a good word, Huzoor. So said the Gurus also. When do we start?"

      Half an hour afterwards Sonny baba in rather a shamefaced manner, told the doctor that, after all, he had come to the conclusion it would be better not to dismiss Dhurm Singh. To begin with, the village children delighted in his tales, and then--it was a triviality, no doubt, perhaps in a measure a giving in to prejudice--the elders certainly set store by position; for instance, they were always more ready to listen to him if the old swash-buckler had had an opportunity of giving the family history, embellishments and all. In addition, Dhurm Singh had promised to amend his ways generally; to spend his days in compounding pills and potions instead of hectoring about. Finally, he had agreed to an allowance of opium, swearing dhurm nâl to take no more than was served out by the master.

      "Of course," said Sonny baba at this juncture, with a considerate superiority which raised every atom of the doctor's original sin, "I shall be careful, I shall not dock it too much at once; but in the course of a year or two I hope to break him entirely of this most pernicious habit."

      "Which has never done him or his surroundings the least harm," growled Taylor savagely. "Upon my soul, I begin to wish I were five and twenty again, if only that I might be as cock-sure of being right about everything as you are. As it is, even the bacillus--" He wrinkled his eyes over the microscope once more, and did not finish his sentence.

      After this Dhurm Singh might have been seen any day of the week in the dispensary verandah grinding away vigorously with pestle and mortar at unsavoury medicaments, rolling pills under his flexible brown fingers, or polishing up surgical instruments with all the fervour bestowed of yore on the old sword.

      "Lo! if the Baba-sahib cares not for being a big Hâkm (magistrate, ruler), sure the next best thing is to be a big Hâkeem (doctor)," he would say, smiling simply at his own wit. "And doth not the Guru say, 'Fight with no weapon but the sword of the Spirit'? Besides, when I feel like fighting I can put an edge to the knives or pound harder with the pestle. God knows they may both do more damage than a sabre. Then the rolling of pills is ever the first step towards dream-getting. Thus in all ways, I, Dhurm Singh, Sikh, ex-duffadar, pinson-wallah, and Akâli, am consoled. But there! God is good to the Sikh. Know you that He never made an ugly one yet?"

      This was a favourite boast of the old man's, backed always, should doubts be expressed, by a modest appeal to his own looks, joined to an assertion--which, by the way, was perfectly true--that he was the meanest looking of ten brothers.

      So, in due season, the doctor once more watched the odd couple pass out together into the wilderness; and this time, noticing the change in Sonny baba and remembering the raw lad who had been his cabin companion, he, so to speak, put his whole pile on Dhurm Singh--unless the boy killed him with philanthropy.

      The rains, after an unusually heavy fall, had ceased early, the result being an epidemic of autumnal fever. Now the cholera may kill its thousands, but year by year, with every now and again a sort of jubilee over its own strength, malaria kills its tens of thousands quietly, unostentatiously; so quietly, that it is only when the officer in charge of a district finds himself during his cold weather camp deciding the rival claims to hereditary offices day after day in village after village, that even he realises how widely the archangel Azrael has spread his wings over the people. The doctor, however, judging simply by the weather, sent Sonny into the jungles well supplied with that carmine-tinted quinine which carries the fact of its being Government property in its colour: a useless attempt to prevent the sale of charity in a land where the regulation five grain powder is as much a part of the currency as a two anna bit. Well supplied, yet at the same time with cautions not to be over generous except in genuine cases. Let him stick to the country medicines as prophylactics. Opium and aconite were to be had for the buying; and if he did wander into the low jungles close to the hills, and if he could be tolerant and learn not to despise old wisdom, let him prescribe the former in preference to the latter--though perhaps that was too much to expect from a five-and-twenty-year old who was cock-sure he knew best.

      "I know nothing of myself," replied Sonny in all seriousness. "The Eternal Right decides. There lies the difference between you and me--pardon me if I say between the Christian and the Unbeliever. You trust to your finite mind, I to Something which is and was, which cannot err."

      And Dhurm Singh, gleefully employed in turning a cash transport mule with its fixings into a perambulating dispensary, was keeping up his character of devotee by repeating verses from the Adhee Grunt'h^[14] in sing-song; his round, mellow voice echoing out through the sunshine--