Voices in the Night Part 13

'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered Hafiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history of civilisation!'

The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet to speak.

This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another orator was in full swing of adjective.

The row of bicycles in the verandah, and a knot of those green-box hired carriages outside on the road, had told Chris already that he had been right in calculating on an a.s.semblage of young India; but this was a larger gathering than he had expected, and he remembered suddenly with a vague shame--since he was a prominent member of the organisation--that it must be the monthly meeting of the Society for Promoting the General Good of People. He had quite forgotten all about it; still here he was, and here was his audience for that roll of ma.n.u.script he held.

He glanced round the double room,--for both dining and drawing-room had been thrown open, rather to Miriam-bibi's relief, since she could now sit unreservedly in the screened verandah and play 'beggar my neighbour' with her foster-mother, who did duty as ayah--and recognised almost every one of note in young Nushapore.

Hafiz Ahmad was in the chair, of course; a rather fat young man of the coa.r.s.er Mohammedan type, with a short curly beard. Like many others in the room, he wore a scarlet fez; though why this distinctive bit of a Turk's costume should be grafted on a _quasi_-English _quasi_-Indian one is a mystery not to be beaten in incomprehensibility by any other minor problem of our Indian Empire.

Beside him was Lala Ram Nath, the head, in Nushapore, of the only real political organisation in India; that is the Arya Somaj; an organisation all the more dangerously political because it denies the basis of politics, and appeals to that of religion.

He, Chris knew, would be the last to admit the position taken up in the roll of ma.n.u.script, namely, that it was suicidal on the part of the little leaven of educated natives to pose as the party of opposition, since that was, briefly, to array itself permanently, inevitably, against what none could deny was the party of progress; the party which had made this little leaven itself a possibility.

Ram Nath, the breath of whose nostrils was adverse criticism to Government, who, in bewildering defiance of the laws which govern Indian life, had swallowed red-hot Radicalism wholesale, like a juggler swallowing a red-hot poker, was not likely to admit this at any time; still less now, when he was the champion of a wrongfully dispossessed Munic.i.p.al Committee. Chris knew exactly what the Lala would say, and what the majority of the young men--there was not one over thirty-five in the room--would say also. And yet their faces were brimful of intelligence, of a certain eager earnestness. It could hardly be otherwise, since the mere fact of their being in that room proved them to be of those whose faculty and desire for acquiring knowledge was so far superior to that of the average man, that it had taken them, as it were, to a place apart. To be tempted of the devil perhaps; though, none the less, the fact bore witness to a certain n.o.bility of type.

So it was all the more strange that when--the next speaker having finished in a calculated chaos of words--Govind, the dissipated editor, who had yawned his tacit approval of Dilaram the dancer, rose to denounce some trivial iniquity in the ruling race, his middle-school English, and cheap abuse, was received with just the same desultory applause. It seemed to Chris, listening impatiently, as if the faculty of criticism had been lost in its abuse, as if the one thing needful was antagonism _pur et simple_.

The great event of all such meetings in Nushapore followed next--a paper by Ram Nath. He spoke admirably, and if he wandered occasionally from the point, the vast scope of his subject, 'The Political, National, and Social aspect of Modern India,' must be held responsible for that!

An Englishman listening would, of course, have challenged his facts and denied his conclusions; but Chris did neither. He gave an unqualified a.s.sent to many and many a point. And yet when he listened to the a.s.sertion that 'the cup of our political evils is so full, the burden of our social inequalities so intolerable, and the tyranny of custom stands out so red and foul, that some militant uprising has become essential to national salvation, and armed resistance the only hope of amendment,' he wondered with a certain shame how many of the millions of India would find a personal grievance in social equality or political evil. And as for the tyranny of custom? What militant uprising was possible among willing slaves?

For all that he listened, not without an answering heartbeat, to the Lala's eloquence, as he skilfully fanned every burning question with a wind of words, and let the fretting fingers of subtle suggestion undermine the foundations of fact. He was specially bitter against the plague precautions, and his hints that there was more behind them than met the eye, aroused the only spontaneous applause of the evening. Yet once more, when the well-reasoned, admirably-delivered address was over, the audience listened with exactly the same receptive expression to the recitation, by its author, of a hymn for use in the approaching Congress in which delegates were told they should--

'To croaking fools their folly leave, Their canting puerile rant; To n.o.ble mission steadfast cleave And sprouts devoutly plant.'

It was a very long hymn, and it alluded, amongst other items, to the 'blazing sun of Western lore,' to 'duty's trumpet call,' to 'England, dear home of every virtue, sweet nurse to Liberty,' and to 'India's crying woes.'--It secured a rather more hearty meed of applause than anything else, possibly because the audience--being above all things scholastic--appreciated the difficulty of making English verse!

So, with a resolution that the 'Good of People' must be encouraged at all costs, and a vote of thanks to Mr. Ram Nath, the actual business of the meeting ended, but not the speechifying. Half a dozen minor men stood up with a surcharged look; but one, a tall young fellow with a charmingly gentle, emotional face, caught the chairman's eye first. He was a schoolmaster, and at his own expense brought out a monthly magazine which was, briefly, the most high-toned bit of printing that ever pa.s.sed through a press. Bishops might have read it and confessed themselves edified.

'Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,' he began, 'although formal recognition of our distinguished townsman's magnificent elocutionary effort has not been wanting, I wish to record my humble admiration, and to state my belief that his forecast of possible difficulties regarding plague precautions may amount to prophecy. Since, alas! our poor folk have been strangers to beneficent sanitations from birth, and are now, as another honourable speaker pointed out, in considerable states of ebullition. Yet, instead of applying salutary balms to these uneducated minds, I grieve to say that efforts are being made to increase terror; witness the golden paper falling from Heaven, as bolt from the blue, in the so-called Temple of Viseshwar. This trick of greedy Brahmins----'

Ram Nath was on his feet in an instant, recognised champion of his faith.

'I beg to submit, Mr. Chairman, that these words are out of order. This society is pledged to neutrality, and "trick of greedy Brahmins" is calculated to wound pious feelings.'

'I second the protest,' put in another eager voice, 'and beg the objectionable phrase be withdrawn.'

A murmur of approval ran through the larger part of the audience, and Hafiz Ahmad, with the scowl of the true idol-hater on his face, asked the speaker to withdraw the words; which he did, protesting that, as a member of the Brahmo Somaj, he had only spoken with a view to eternal and abstract truth. The paper, he continued, though possibly only the outcome of the quarrel which, his hearers must know, had been going on for some time between the priests of the two rival temples regarding the relative supremacy of Kali-_ma_ and her consort Shiv-_jee_----

Here the chairman himself called with alacrity, 'Order! Order! This meeting does not deal with such dogmatics,' and another and smaller murmur of a.s.sent followed.

The gentle-faced schoolmaster apologised again. There could be no doubt, at any rate, he said almost pathetically, that the uneducated mind was, as the poet said, liable to be tickled by straws, and so he conceived it to be his duty to draw the attention of the 'Society for Promoting the General Good of People' to this paper, which, he might add, he was going to pillory in his publication with scathing criticism. So, drawing a slip from his pocket, he began to read in the vernacular--

'_I, Kali, will come. In my dark month I will come for blood. Woe to them who seek to stay me in the city, since I will have blood on my altar whether the hands of strange men stay Me, or smite Me. For I am Kali the Death-Mother of all men, whether they will it or no. Yea! I will come_.'

The vague phrases, besprinkled with hollow-sounding mysterious Sanskrit words, brought a curious hush even to that a.s.semblage, till Hafiz Ahmad laughed arrogantly.

'Is that all, _pandit-jee_?' he asked; 'that bogey will do little.'

'As much, I venture to suggest,' put in Ram Nath suavely, 'as the bogey of supposed invasion of domestic privacy for women.'

The Mohammedan, though he professed himself above such considerations, frowned. 'I demur. The caste prejudices will, in my opinion, be more difficult to place on common-sense footings.'

They had embarked on the fencing-match which, as often as not, ended discussion between these two recognised leaders of the two communities, Hindoo and Mohammedan, and the attention of the meeting had wandered after them, when a new voice brought it back. It was Chris Davenant's.

Taller than most there, fairer, and of better birth than the generality of those who brave the dangers of foreign travel, he was the show man of young Nushapore for pure culture, as Ram Nath was for ability; and as such he commanded attention.

'Gentlemen!' he said, 'it seems to me that this paper, which _pandit_ Narain Das has just read, will give our society an opportunity for practical work. It means nothing, or at most little, to any of us here.

But none will deny it will mean much to many; to our friends--let us face the facts!--to our own families. And it is a dangerous paper, gentlemen! None know that better than we, who have pa.s.sed from the influence of such words,'--here that faint desultory clapping became audible--'and it is just because we have so pa.s.sed, that I ask this meeting what it is prepared to do in order to combat the possible, the probable effect of these mysterious threats?'

'Hear! hear!' came several voices. And then came silence; until the _pandit_ said, in hurt tones--

'I have already told this meeting that I will publish in my monthly magazine, together with criticisms of the most scathing character----'

'And,' put in Ram Nath, rising to the challenge in Chris Davenant's face, 'I venture to suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this meeting pa.s.s a resolution condemning----'

'And who will know what resolutions we pa.s.s, Mr. Secretary?'

interrupted Chris, with a sudden pa.s.sion which gave his face a look that was half hope, half wistful doubt; 'who will read your diatribes, Mr. Editor? _We!_ We only, who pa.s.s the resolutions, who write the criticisms, who know already how to appraise that paper! Printed words, gentlemen, are no use to those who cannot read, resolutions are naught to those who never hear of them. But we have tongues; we can speak! We can, if we choose, throw the whole weight of our personal influence on the side of truth, even though that side be also the side of a government with which we have many a righteous feud.'

As he paused for breath, there was a murmur of approval for the eloquence, none for the thought it held. 'Gentlemen!' he went on, 'it is futile for any one here to deny that this paper aims at rousing religious opposition to _any_ precautions whatever against the plague!

Well! some of us here, myself among the number, hold that many of the precautions in the government programme _are_ objectionable----'

'And more in the private instructions, if rumour says true,' put in Ram Nath spitefully.

'I have listened to reasonable criticism, reasonable resentment, and I have agreed with it. But is there any one of us here who would throw all precautions to the winds?' went on Chris, pa.s.sing by the interruption; 'is there any one who really believes that this golden paper fell from heaven? If there are, I let them pa.s.s. But for the rest of us, I call upon you not to write, not to resolve, but to speak; to speak to our wives, our mothers, our sisters--to the timid women whom such threats alarm; briefly to throw our whole personal influence on what we know to be the side of truth.'

There was an instant's silence; then Hafiz Ahmad, as chairman, said perfunctorily: 'I am sure we are all completely at one with our honourable friend. Such manifest attempts at preposterous intimidation deserve the heartiest contempt of educated minds.'

'I second that proposition,' added Ram Nath as head of his following.

'We are morally bound to give heartiest co-operation in the difficult task before government, in so far as is compatible with strict deference to the private religious feeling of all parties concerned.

That is the groundwork of true liberty.'

A fine scorn showed on Chris Davenant's face; he was about to speak when _pandit_ Narain Das turned to him with a wistful apology in his, and said: 'Without demurring to his general principle, I would remind our honourable friend, whose educational career is a credit to our town, that our influence, alas! is but a broken reed. Our position, in a society of ignorami, is anomalous, not to say precarious. And if we too freely kick against the p.r.i.c.ks, we are in danger of losing what we have, which would be undesirable. As John Morley says in his valuable work on compromise----'

Chris turned on him almost savagely. 'There is no need to preach compromise, _pandit-jee_! We practise it. We do not let our opinions influence our own conduct, yet we expect them to influence the conduct of our rulers! We write these opinions. Oh, yes! we write them! Why?

Because we know that only those read them who agree with us! But which of us will go from here to-day, and braving opposition, disregarding personal considerations, tell, even their own immediate families, that the Brahmins who wrote that paper are--are _splendide mendax_!'

He could not help it! He was keenly alive to the legitimate fun made by the opponents of young India, out of its intolerable apt.i.tude for unsuitable quotation, but he fell a victim to it sometimes himself. So, as he paused before his own words--a house, as it were, divided against itself--he lost his opportunity. For a dapper little gentleman who, by reason of a high appointment under government, was generally allowed to apply the closure to heated or unwelcome discussions, had risen, and caught the chairman's eye.

'What our honourable and esteemed townsman, Mr. Krishn Davenund, has just said, must receive consensus of universal opinion, since it is doubtless of supreme importance to national life. Priest-craft, supernaturalism, _et hoc genus omne_, are clearly traits of low civilisation, just as popular government, enlargement of franchise, and diffusion of evolutionary theories are significant of higher. Still, Rome was not built in a day. Nor is there use in raising the wind, if we can't ride the whirlwind, or control the storm. Therefore, in the _interim_, pending wider liberty of speech, I propose that this meeting pa.s.s a unanimous resolution condemning such paltry attempts at c.o.c.kering up superst.i.tious feelings, and that the same be duly recorded in the minutes of our society.'

Before the relieved applause which greeted this diplomacy was over, the waste-paper basket beside Chris Davenant had received another contribution. His roll of ma.n.u.script, torn to shreds, lay in it, in obedience to a sudden, swift intuition that if he was ever to rise beyond the chaos of lofty aspirations, the strictly impersonal admiration for great deeds in his fellows, he must leave words behind.

So silent, alone, he walked home to his empty house, his empty life.