The Flower of Forgiveness Part 5

"The Great Army is recruited from those who are unfit for duty, from those who are sinners. Is it not so, comrades? Are we not all maimed, halt, blind, yet entering into life?"

"Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" cried the company, bursting into the refrain of a hymn, in which Sonny _baba_ joined with an angelic voice. The voice, in fact, was largely responsible for the position in which he found himself. The old swash-buckler's eyes grew moist as he looked at him, thinking that he was the very image, for sure, of his dead father, who had been the pride of the regiment. Nevertheless the effervescence of song left the old man still deprecating and fumbling in his tunic.

"The General-_sahib_ mistakes; these are my _pinson_ papers."

That proved a climax. When, just as you are setting foot on a country which you have sworn to conquer, an old warrior comes aboard and produces a bundle of Scripture texts and Salvation hymns out of his innermost breast pocket, naturally nothing is left but to _enthuse_.

What followed Dhurm Singh only dimly understood, but he stuck manfully to his intention of following Sonny _baba_ to the death if needs be.

The result being that at four o'clock in the afternoon he took part in a procession round the town of Bombay--mortal man of his mould being manifestly unable to resist the temptation of marching in step behind a big drum, with the colours of a whole army on his shoulders; especially when unlimited opportunity for scowling defiance at hostile crowds is thrown into the bargain. By eight o'clock, however, matters had a.s.sumed a different complexion; so had Dhurm Singh, 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-pa.s.senger who knew Punjabi, 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 G.o.d 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, _Akali 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 _Akali_ 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-G.o.d--transfigured, immortal. Undoubtedly it was the _Baba-sahib_[11]--for unto this semi-religious t.i.tle 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 _Akali_ grinned from ear to ear, the ma.s.sive curves of his lips stretching like india-rubber. "The _Huzoor_ knows the great gift of G.o.d 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 enn.o.bling. 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 _dal-bhat_[12] trick, in order to show your sympathy with the people, and to a.s.similate your wants to theirs, so that in some occult way they are to a.s.similate 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 embarra.s.sed 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 _Lat-padre_ (bishop) according to _hukm_ (orders), as all the _padre sahibs_ do."

As 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 _dhurmsalas_--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-embarra.s.sed 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 _doctore_ 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 G.o.d knew where the _Baba-sahib_ might end; at Simla, as "_burra Lat sahib_," no doubt. Till then it was more dignified to refrain from ign.o.ble badges of which afterwards one might be ashamed.