The Mercy of the Lord Part 31

REX ET IMP:

I

"Rex will get on all right," said Muriel Alexander pettishly, "you know quite well, Horace, that so long as he has old Bisvas he wants nothing else. Look at him now! He is quite happy, and the old man would die rather than let any harm happen to the child."

Horace Alexander frowned slightly as he looked through the wide set door of his office room to the verandah beyond. It was a very neat, natty, office room, severely correct and Western in its pigeon-holes, its files, its elegant upholstered chair at the further side of the writing table ready for the confidential visitor. No guns defiled it; no tennis bats, no half-used box of cigars, no general litter of unofficial male humanity such as most Indian office rooms in the past have permitted, was to be seen within the precincts sacred to duty, for Horace Alexander was that curious product of modern times, a clever and advanced man, bent upon progress, who stickles for the commonplace conventional etiquette in all things. So he stirred uneasily at the sight he saw beyond his office doors, dropped his eye-gla.s.ses and put them on again petulantly.

Yet it was rather a pretty sight.

A red-haired, fuzzy-headed child of four or five, small, but strong and st.u.r.dy, seated with the utmost dignity oh a red velvet cushion, his broad freckled face wearing an expression of conscious majesty, part of which was doubtless due to the insecurity of a gilt paper band which was perched on his goldy-red curls.

Before him, in an att.i.tude of prayerful adoration, squatted a very very old man. At his full height he must still have been tall, and the bent shoulders were broad; broad enough to show up the line of war-medals on the breast of his orderly's coat. They gave the new scarlet cloth a certain personal _cachet_ and toned down its official garishness.

"Come here, Rex!" called Horace Alexander, and the child rose at once.

Though high-spirited and a bit of an imp, he was a reasonable, obedient, little chap enough; obedient because he was reasonable.

"What's that you've got on your head?" queried his father irritably.

"It's my c'wown," replied Rex cheerfully. "Bisvas cut it out for me; and he's goin' to put b'wown paper to make it 'weal stiff--c'wowns onghter be stiff, 'weal stiff, oughtn't they? an' he's going to put things on it like the pictures in the papers, an' then I shall be a 'weal King, shan't I?"

"No, my boy!" said his father sharply. "Crowns don't make kings; remember that always. There was Charles the First----"; then he paused, recognising he was out of the child's depth; and the cult of the weaker brother was not often forgotten by Horace Alexander. It was the secret of his popularity; but how he managed to reconcile it with his pa.s.sion for progress remained rather a mystery to some people.

"And what were you doing," he continued.

"I wasn't doin' nothin' except be king," replied the child; "but Bisvas was doin' '_durshan_.' What is a '_durshan_,' daddy, 'weally?"

The childish forehead was all puckered beneath its crown, and Rex's father, for all he was ent.i.tled to linguistic letters after his name, hesitated.

"Sight," he began, "ur--appearance--ur--aspect----"

But Rex shook his head in disapproval. "Bisvas says it's just for all the same as seein' G.o.d--didn't you, Bisvas?"

The liquid Urdu to which the little fellow's voice turned, echoed through the sunshine to where the tall old trooper, risen to his full height, stood smiling.

"Huzoor! so it is, without doubt. The sight of a King is even as the sight of a G.o.d. It is a revelation of the Most High."

"Good Lord!" muttered Horace Alexander under his breath, yet with an amused smile. "The child will grow up a feudal serf combined with a feudal lord, if we don't take care, Muriel! He is too much with old Bisvas--You'd better take him with you--or--or not go."

His wife did not even frown: her position was too a.s.sured in the household for her to be even alarmed. "Of course I must go. I must wear my new frocks. Besides, you forget I'm President of the Veiled-Women's-Guild, and they are going to present a casket. And there isn't room in the Hotel for Rex--I was lucky to get _one_ for myself this morning--besides, it would be bad for him. Of course, when you were going with tents and all that it was different; but now that you've been told to stop--Really, Horace, it is most annoying! What can it mean? There is nothing wrong in the district, is there?"

Horace Alexander's eyegla.s.s dropped again. It generally did when he was asked for a personal opinion; not from any lack of decision in the man himself, but from that habit of relying on collective as against individual thought which distinguishes so many clever men nowadays; as if the mediocre ma.s.s could ever outvalue superior sense.

"I cannot conceive that anything serious can be wrong," he began, then paused almost pathetically before the certainty that his district was admittedly the best managed in the province. "However," he continued, virtuously remembering that the communication which stopped his going to the Big Durbar was strictly confidential, "that is neither here nor there. I have my orders, so that ends it, and----" he glanced out to the verandah where the "_durshan_" had re-commenced--"I suppose Rex had better remain, if you think it safe. I shall be very busy----"

His wife laughed, and stooping over his chair, kissed the top of his head; it was a trifle bald.

"You dear old stupid," she said kindly. "You've nothing to do with it.

I wouldn't leave him if it wasn't for old Bisvas! You and I, Horace, have grown out of--what shall I call it--feudal relations--but we can understand them. You don't suppose I leave the boy in your charge, do you? No! My dear man! you're not up to it. But Bisvas! Bisvas was your grandfather's servant when he was a boy, and he swears Rex is the living image of '_Jullunder Jullunder baba_,' whom, I verily believe, he mixes up with Alexander the Great! It doesn't do the child any harm, though it makes him a bit autocratic now. He'll grow out of being King at school. And really it is a pretty sight to see him with his bodyguard of those marvellous old dodderers Bisvas rakes up from the bazaar----"

"I've seen them," replied her husband gloomily. "I'd have sent them about their business if they hadn't been old pensioners--and in uniform----"

Muriel laughed again. "Such uniforms! But they are magnificent to the child and he's magnificent to them. It's all right, Horace. He is as pleased as Punch, because I've allowed him, as he can't go to Delhi, to have a sham coronation here."

"My dear!" protested her husband; but at that moment an old-fashioned buggy, with a flea-bitten Arab in the shafts, drew up, and Mrs.

Alexander discreetly withdrew before an official visitor.

Ere five minutes were over the new comer rose from the upholstered chair, went to the four doors of the office room, looked round for possible eavesdroppers, closed them, then sate down again; for John Carruthers, the Superintendent of Police, was of the old school. He suspected everybody. In his heart of hearts Horace Alexander loathed him: or rather, his methods; but he had to admit that he was an excellent police officer. Short and stout, he looked as if he had a trace of native blood in him, anyhow, none understood the ways of Indian wickednesses better than he.

"This is serious," he said briefly. "I always told you, sir, you would have to face it some time." Then he paused. "I wonder if anyone realises the relief it will be to our force when the whole show goes off well--as it will do! But there's always that off chance--and here is one----"

"I don't believe it," said Horace Alexander stubbornly; "it is unthinkable, inconceivable----"

John Carruthers raised his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows. "Nothing, sir, is inconceivable in India. There's a lot of lees in four thousand years of civilisation. So long as it's stagnant, well and good; but if you stir 'em up--However! you don't agree. And _this_----" he touched the confidential communication--"has got to be seen to."

"Yes! it has got to be seen to--wrong or right," echoed the younger man firmly. Outside, the sunshine shone in sultry drowsy peace; but within the closed office room, the air seemed vibrant, as the two, mutually responsible for so much in their world, looked into each other's eyes in perfect unanimity. So it is often in India nowadays; something has to be done and old and new must combine to the doing of it.

"Hullo! what's up?" asked the Superintendent of Police when, having offered to drive his official superior down to the city, they stepped into the verandah; and then he smiled. "The youngster seems to be enjoying himself, eh!"

Under the _sirus_ trees on the opposite side of the drive were drawn up five old men, headed by Bisvas, who stood next something that was more like a monkey than a man; for Bhim Singh, even when he had been the most swaggering _havildar_ in a Ghurka regiment, had never been tall, and was now almost incredibly shrunken and old. But his eyes still looked out sharp and bright from his wizened face and his military salute shot out smartly at the sight of the masters.

"It is all old Bisvas' fault," excused Rex's father, giving a disturbed look at his son and heir, who--with the gilt paper circlet still on his fuzzy head--was apparently drilling the ancient warriors, "I've told my wife that it's a mistake, but you see, Bisvas looked after my grandfather when they were kids together, and so----"

"And so," interrupted John Carruthers with a chuckle, "you have the most valuable a.s.set in the world! If I were you I would encourage it!

Good Lord! man!----" he forgot etiquette for the moment--"that sort of thing is the safety of--of everything."

So the two men drove off to the office, to confer secretly with other good men and true, and the child, with the gold circlet on his fuzzy hair, stood in the half shade, half shine of the _sirus_ trees, and dressed his army autocratically. And the old warriors--there was Bisvas who had fought at Sobraon, and Bhim Singh who had fought everywhere indiscriminately for sheer love of fighting, and old Iman, the hair of whose body still stood on end as he told tales of how he had waged war for the Sirkar against his own brothers in Mutiny time, and Pir Khan, Yusufzai, who still talked of _Nikalseyn sahib_ as if he were not dead, and last but not least, most ancient of all, a nameless fossil of humanity called by the others "_Baba_" (father), who bewailed the fact that he had not been at both sieges of Bhurtpore--these all obeyed the child's orders, and nodded and winked and swore that he was the living spit and image of "_Gineral Jullunder Jullunder Sahib Bahadur_," who had led them to victory again and again. The smallest cavalry officer in _Jan Kampani's_ army; but the bravest and the best loved!

II

Three days had pa.s.sed, and once again the two men sate facing each other in the tidy, conventional office room. The confidential box was open and papers littered the table; but the hint of possible trouble remained still a mere hint.

"And yet," said John Carruthers thoughtfully, "I don't like it. I told you about that temple incident? Quite a trivial affair, but in my experience--and that is pretty wide, sir--that sort of thing always means something. But the fact is, I haven't time----" his bright eyes grew restless--"to unearth anything."

Horace Alexander smiled. "Because, my dear fellow, there is nothing to unearth. I told you so from the beginning. I am pretty well up in my own district, Carruthers----"

"That you may be, sir; but pure anarchism isn't a thing of districts: it's--what do they call it!--a _zeit geist_! How many fools do you suppose are in your towns and villages, sir? Well! everyone of them is a danger if there is a good agitator within hearing. Anyhow, I am so far dissatisfied, that I am going to propose to you a plan----" He got up as he had done before, closed every door after a good look round for eavesdroppers, and finally paused before little Rex, who was sitting in a corner of the room, playing with a pen and paper and some red and black ink which his father had given him. His mother having gone off to the Big Show, which was to take place next day, the little fellow had been tearful and needed consolation. Now, however, he appeared quite absorbed in his occupation.

"What are you doing, Rex?" asked John Carruthers.

The child held up a round of white paper with cabalistic signs on it.

"I'm makin' a medal to give to my army," he said with importance. "And 'Wex' is to be in 'wed and so's 'Imp.' Then 'et' will be black, don't you see?"

The men laughed, and settled themselves over the railway map which John Carruthers spread out on the table.

"You see," said the police officer in a low voice, "the Royal train focusses anxiety according to these hints----" he pointed to the confidential papers--"and I can't help a feeling that they are right.

I've got a sort of second-sight in these ways--perhaps because I was born and brought up in the country--and I believe there is something in it. I'd ferret it out if I'd time; but I haven't. So why run risks? The Royal train is timed to run the sixty odd miles through your district on the _direct_ line between three and five a.m. to-morrow morning-- just before dawn. Now why should it? Why shouldn't it do the eighty odd miles of the loop line?"