Driftwood Spars Part 27

"My good old paternal parent made me work many hours each night, and though he knew nothing of the subjects he could read English and would hear all my lessons and other brothers', and we had to say Skagger Rack, Cattegat, Scaw Fell and Helvellyn, and such things to him, and he would abuse us if we mis-arranged the figures and letters in CaH2O2 and H2SO4 and all those things in bottles. Before the Matriculation Examination he made a Graduate, whom he had got under his thumb-nail, teach us all the answers to all the back questions in all subjects till we knew them all by heart, and also made us learn ten long essays by heart so as to make up the required essay out of parts of them. He nearly killed my brother by starvation (saving food as well as punishing miscreant) for failing--the only one of us who ever failed in any examination--which he did by writing out all first chapter of Washington Irving for essay, when the subject was 'Describe a sunrise in the Australian back-blocks'. As parent said, he could have used 'A moonlight stroll by the sea-sh.o.r.e' and change the colour from silver to golden.

But the fool was ill--so ill that he tried to kill himself and had not the strength. He said he would rather go to the missionaries' h.e.l.l, full of Englishes, than go on learning _Egbert, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Ethelred the Unready_, and _If two triangles have two sides of the one equal to two angles of the other each to each and the sides so subtended equal then shall the bases or fourth sides be equal each to each or be isosceles_.

"Well, the progenitor kept our noses in the pie night and day and we all hated the old papa piously and wished he and we and all teachers and text-books were burned alive.

"But we were very much loved by everybody as we were so learned and clever, and whenever the Collector or anybody came to School, the Head Master used to put one of us in each room and call on us to answer questions and recite and say capes and bays without the map, and other clever things; and when my eldest brother left I had to change coat with another boy and do it twice sometimes, in different rooms.

"Sometimes the Educational Inspector himself would come, but then nothing could be done, for he would not ask questions that were always asked and were in the book, like the teachers and Deputy Inspectors did, but questions that no one knew and had to be thought out then and there.

That is no test of Learning--and any fool who has not troubled to mug his book by heart might be able to answer such questions, while the man who had learnt every letter sat dumb.

"I hated the school and the books I knew by heart, but I loved Mr.

Ganeshram Joshibhai. He was a clever cunning man, and could always tweak the leg of pompous Head Master when he came to the room, and had beautiful ways of cheating him when he came to examine--better than those of the other teachers.

"Before we had been with him a month he could tell us things while being examined, and no one else knew he was doing it. The initial letters of each word made up the words he wanted to crib to us, and when he scratched his head with the right hand the answer was 'No,' while with the left hand it was 'Yes'. And the clever way he taught us sedition while teaching us History, and appearing to praise the English!

"He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the Government and Members of Council. We knew all about Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pim, and those c.r.a.ppies, and many a boy who had never heard of Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.

"We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too, and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day. He showed always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed. And he gave weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.

"And all the Indian History was about the Mutiny and how and why it failed, when he was not showing us how the Englishes have ruined and robbed India, and comparing the Golden Age of India (when no cow ever died and there was never famine, plague, police nor taxes) with the miserable condition of poor bleeding India to-day.

"He was a fine fellow and so clever that we were almost his worshippers.

But I am not writing his autobiography but my own, so let him lapse herewith into posterity and well-merited oblivious.

"At the College when we could work no longer, we who had never learnt crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the gra.s.s at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing in chokey and do _poojah_ to their photos. But the superior members did no _poojah_ to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have a.s.sumed, for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.

"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.

"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the next Instrument?

"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.

"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be unrestful. And one of us, whom the Princ.i.p.al would not certify to sit for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.

"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British Government does for you--educates you to be pa.s.sed B.A. and educated gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A.

work with hands like _maistri_?

"Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-cla.s.s superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory.

"His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they did much--for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it.

"But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing up of the _bhangi_ by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacred cause and have photo in newspapers and be talked about.

"Besides, as I have said, I am not being done brown, as I murdered Mr.

Spensonly, the Engineer.

"How I hated him!

"Why should he be big and strong while I am skinny and feeble--owing to night-and-day burning midnight candle at both ends and unable to make them meet?

"Besides did he not bring unmerited dishonour on grey hairs of poor old progenitor by finding him out in bribe-taking? Did he not bring my honoured father's aforesaying grey hairs in sorrow to reduced pension?

"Did he not upbraid and rebuke, nay, reproach me when I made grievous little errors and backslippers?

"A thousand times Yea.

"But I should never have murdered him had I not caught the Plague, so out of evil cometh good once more.

"The Plague came to Gungapur in its millions and we knew not what to do but stood like drowning man splitting at a straw.

"Superst.i.tious Natives said it was the revenge of G.o.ddess Kali for not sacrificing, and superst.i.tious Europeans said it was a microbe created by their G.o.d to punish unhygienic way of living.

"Knowing there are no G.o.ds of any sort I am in a position to state that it was just written on our foreheads.

"To make confusion worse dumbfounded the Government of course had to seize horns of dilemma and trouble the poor. They had all cases taken to hospital and made segregation and inspection camps. They disinfected houses and burnt rags and even purdah women were not allowed to die in bosom of family. Of course police stole lakhs of rupees worth of clothes and furniture and said it was infected. And many good men who were enemies of Government were falsely accused of being plague-stricken and were dragged to hospital and were never seen again.

"Terrible calamities fell upon our city and at last it nearly lost me myself. I was seized, dragged from my family-bosom, cast into hospital and cured. And in hospital I learned from fellow who was subordinate-medical that rats get plague in sewers and cesspools and when they die of it their fleas must go elsewhere for food, and so hop on to other rat and give that poor chap plague too, by biting him with dirty mouths from dead rat, and then he dies and so _in adfinitum_, as the poet has it. But suppose no other rat is handy, what is poor hungry flea to do? When you can't get curry, eat rice! When flea can't get rat he eats man--turns to nastier food. (He! He!)

"So when flea from plague-stricken rat jumps on to man and bites him, poor fellow gets plague--_bus_.[58]

[58] Finale, enough, the end.

"Didn't friends and family-members skeddaddle and bunk when they saw rat after I told them all that! But I didn't care, I had had plague once, and one cannot get it twice. Not one man in thousand recovers when he has got it, but I did. Old uneducated fool maternal parent did lots of thanks-givings and _poojah_ because G.o.ds specially attentive to me--but I said 'Go to, old woman. It was written on forehead.'

"And when I returned to work, one day I had an idea--an idea of how to punish Mr. Spensonly for propelling honoured parent head first out of job, and idea for striking blow at British prestige. We had our office in private bungalow in those days before new Secretariat was built, and it was unhealthy bungalow in which no one would live because they died.

"Mr. Spensonly didn't care, and he had office on top floor, but bottom floor was clerks' office who went away at night also. Now it was my painful duty to go every morning up to his office-room and see that peon had put fresh ink and everything ready and that the _hamal_ had dusted properly. So it was not long before I was aware that all the drawers were locked except the top right-hand drawer, and that was not used as there was a biggish hole in the front of it where the edge was broken away from the above, some miscreant having once forced it open with tool.

"And verily it came to pa.s.s that one day, entering my humble abode-room, I saw a plague-rat lying suffering from _in extremis_ and about to give up ghost. But having had plague I did not trouble about the fleas that would leave his body when it grew stiff and cold, in search of food.

Instead I let it lie there while my food was being prepared, and regretted that it was not beneath the chair of some enemy of mine who had not had plague, instead of beneath my own ... that of Mr. Spensonly for example!...

"It was Sat.u.r.day night. I returned to the office that evening, knowing that Mr. Spensonly was out; and I went to his office-room with idle excuse to the peon sitting in verandah--and in my pocket was poor old rat kicking bucket fast.

"Who was to say _I_ put deceasing rat in the Sahib's table-drawer just where he would come and sit all day--being in the habit of doing work on Sunday the Christian holy day (being a man of no religion or caste)?

What do I know of rats and their properties when at death's front door?

"Cannot rat go into a Sahib's drawer as well as into poor man's? If he did no work on Sunday very likely the fleas would remain until Monday, the rat dying slowly and remaining warm and not in _rigour mortuis_.

Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed up with old rat--or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, to make humble inquiries on Tuesday, he was reported jolly sickish with Plague--and he died Tuesday night. I never heard of any other Sahib dying of Plague in Gungapur except one missionary fellow who lived in the native city with native fellows.

"So they can hang me for share in bomb-outrage and welcome (though I never threw the bomb nor made it, and only took academic interest in affair as I told the Judge Sahib)--for I maintain with my dying breath that it was I who murdered Mr. Spensonly and put tongue in cheeks when _Gungapur Gazette_ wrote column about the unhealthy bungalow in which he was so foolish as to have his office. When I reflect that by this time to-morrow I shall be Holy Martyr I rejoice and hope photo will be good one, and I send this message to all the world--

"'Oh be....'"

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Gosling-Green, M.P., liked this Pathan gentleman so well after reading his letter and enclosure. Before long they liked him very much less--although they did not know it--which sounds cryptic.

-- 5. MR. HORACE f.a.gGIT.