W. A. Fraser - Caste

W >> W. A. Fraser >> Caste

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

CASTE

BY

W. A. FRASER

AUTHOR OF "RED MEEKINS," "BULLDOG CARNEY," "THE THREE SAPPHIRES," "THE
LONE FURROW," "THOROUGHBREDS," ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

CASTE. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CASTE

CHAPTER I

The three Mahrattas, Sindhia, Holkar, and Bhonsla, were plotting the
overthrow of the British, and the Peshwa was looking out of brooding
eyes upon Hodson, the Resident at Poona.

Up on the hill, in the temple of Parvati, the priests repeated prayers
to the black goddess calling for the destruction of the hated whites.

Each one of the twenty-four priests as he came with a handful of
marigolds laid them one by one at the feet of the four-armed hideous
idol, repeating: "_Om, Parvati_! _Om, Parvati_!" the comprehensive,
all-embracing "_Om_" that meant adoration and a clamour for favour.
Even to Nandi, the brass bull that carried Shiva, he appealed, "_Om
Shiva_!"

But down on the rock-plateau, where gleamed in the hot sun marble
palaces, a more malign influence was at work. Dandhu Panth, the
adopted son of the Peshwa, had come back from Oxford, and the English
believed he had been changed into an Englishman, Nana Sahib.

Outwardly he was a sporting, well-dressed gentleman, such as Oxford
turns out; but in his heart was lust of power, and hatred of the white
race that he felt would make his inheritance, the Peshwaship, but a
vassalage. His dreams of ruling India would fade, and he would sit a
pensioner of the British. The Mahrattas had been stigmatised by a
captious Mogul ruler, "mountain rats." As Hindus there was a sharp
cleavage of character; the Brahmins, fanatical, high up in the caste
scale, and all the rest of the breed inferior, vicious, blood-thirsty,
a horde of pirates. Even the man who first made them a power, Sivaji,
had been of questionable lineage, a plebeian; and so the body corporate
was of inflammable material--little restraint of breeding.

And for all Nana Sahib's veneer of English class, mental development,
beneath the English shirt he wore the _junwa_, the three-strand sacred
thread, insignia of the twice-born,--the Brahmin.

From Governor General to the British officers who played polo with the
Peshwa's son, they all accepted him as one of themselves; considered it
good diplomacy that he had been sent to Oxford and made over.

There was just one man who had misgivings, the Resident at Poona. He
was a small, tired, worn-out official--an executive, a perpetual wheel
in the works, always close to the red-tape-tied papers, always.
Strange that one not a dreamer, no sixth-sense, should have attained to
an intuition--which it was, his distrust of the cheery, sporty Nana
Sahib. That Hodson's superiors intimated that India was getting to his
liver when he wrote, very cautiously, of this obsession, made no
difference; and clinging to his distrust, he achieved something.

After all it was rather strange that the matter had not been taken out
of his hands, but it wasn't. A sort of departmental formula running;
"Commissioner So-and-So has the matter in hand--refer to him." And so,
when a new danger appeared on the distressed horizon, Amir Khan and a
hundred thousand massed horsemen, Captain Barlow was sent to consult
with the Resident. That was the way; a secretive, trusty, brave man,
for in India the written page is never inviolate.

Captain Barlow was sent--ostensibly as an assistant to the Resident, in
reality to acquire full knowledge of the situation, and then go to the
camp of Amir Khan with the delicate mission of persuading him not to
join his riding spear-men to the Mahratta force, but to form an
alliance with the British.

The Resident had asked for Barlow. He had explained that any show of
interest, two men, or five, or twenty, an envoy, even men of pronounced
position, would defeat their object; in fact, believing Nana Sahib to
be what he was, he conceived the very simple idea of playing the
Oriental's Orientalism against him.

Barlow would be the last man in India to whom one as suspicious as the
Peshwa's son would attribute a subtlety deep enough for a serious
mission. He was a great handsome boy; in his physical excellence he
was beautiful; courage was manifest in the strong content of his deep
brown eyes. Incidentally that was one of the reasons the Resident had
asked for him, though he would have denied it, even to his daughter,
Elizabeth, though it was for her sake--that part of it.

The affair with Elizabeth had been going on for two or three years;
never quite settled--always hovering.

Indeed the Resident's daughter was not constituted to raise a cyclone
of passion, a tempest of feeling that brings an impetuous declaration
of love from any man. She was altogether proper; well-bred; admirable;
perhaps somewhat of the type so opposite to Barlow's impressionable
nature that ultimately, all in good time, they would realise that the
scheme of creation had marked them for each other. And Colonel Hodson
almost prayed for this. It was desirable in every way. Barlow was of
a splendid family; some day he might become Lord Barradean.

Anyway Captain Barlow was there playing polo with Nana Sahib--one of
the Prince's favourites; and waiting for a certain paper that would be
sent to the Resident that would contain offers of an alliance with the
Pindari Chief.

And this same hovering menace of the Pindari force was causing Nana
Sahib unrest. Perhaps there had been a leak, as cautiously as the
Resident had made every move. If the Pindari army were to join the
British, ready at a moment's notice to fall on the flank of the
Mahrattas, harass them with guerilla warfare, it would be serious; they
were as elusive as a huge pack of wolves; unencumbered by camp
followers, artillery, foraging as they went, swooping like birds of
prey, they were a terrible enemy. Even as the tiger slinks in dread
from a pack of the red wild-dogs, so a regular force might well dread
these flying horsemen.

And it was Amir Khan that Nana Sahib, and the renegade French
commander, Jean Baptiste, dreaded and distrusted. Overtures had been
made to him without result. He was a wonderful leader. He had made
the name of the Pindari feared throughout India. He was the magnet
that held this huge body of fighting devils together.

Thus with the gigantic chess-board set; the possession of India
trembling in the balance; intellects of the highest development
pondering; Fate held the trump card, curiously, a girl; and not one of
the players had ever heard her name, the Gulab Begum.

CHAPTER II

The white sand plain surrounding Chunda was dotted with the tents of
the Mahratta force Sirdar Baptiste commanded. And the Sirdar, his soul
athirst for a go at the English, whom he hated with the same rabid
ferocity that possessed the soul of Nana Sahib, was busy. From
Pondicherry he had inveigled French gunners; and from Goa, Portuguese.
Also these renegade whites were skilled in drill. If Holkar and
Bhonsla did their part it would be Armageddon when the hell that was
brewing burst.

But Baptiste feared the Pindari. As he swung here and there on his
Arab the horse's hoofs seemed to pound from the resonant sands the
words "Amir Khan--Amir Khan! Pin-dar-is, Pin-dar-is!"

It was as he discussed this very thing with his Minister, Dewan Sewlal,
that Nana Sahib swirled up the gravelled drive to the bungalow on his
golden-chestnut Arab, in his mind an inspiration gleaned from something
that had been.

His greeting of the two was light, sporty; his thin well-chiselled face
carried the bright indifferent vivacity of a fox terrier.

"Good day, Sirdar," he cried gaily; and, "How listen the gods to your
prayers, my dear Dewani?"

Baptiste, out of the fulness of his heart soon broached the troublous
thing: "Prince," he begged, "obtain from the worthy Peshwa a command
and I'll march against this wolf, Amir Khan, and remove from our path
the threatened danger."

Nana Sahib laughed; his white, even teeth were dazzling as the
black-moustached lip lifted.

"Sirdar, when I send two Rampore hounds from my kennel to make the kill
of a tiger you may tackle Amir Khan. Even if we could crumple up this
blighter it's not cricket--we need those Pindari chaps--but not as dead
men. Besides, I detest bloodshed."

The Dewan rolled his bulbous eyes despairingly: "If Sindhia would send
ten camel loads of gold to this accursed Musselman, we could sleep in
peace," he declared.

"If it were a woman Sindhia would," Nana Sahib sneered.

Baptiste laughed.

"It is a wisdom, Prince, for that is where the revenue goes: women are
a curse in the affairs of men," the Dewan commented.

"With four wives your opinion carries weight, Dewani," and Nana Sahib
tapped the fat knee of the Minister with his riding whip.

Baptiste turned to the Prince. "There will be trouble over these
Pindaris; your friends, the English--eh, Nana Sahib--"

As though the handsome aquiline face of the Peshwa's son had been
struck with a glove it changed to the face of a devil; the lips
thinned, and shrinking, left the strong white teeth bare in a wolf's
snarl. Under the black eyebrows the eyes gleamed like fire-lit amber;
the thin-chiselled nostrils spread and through them the palpitating
breath rasped a whistling note of suppressed passion.

"Sirdar," he said, "never call me Nana Sahib again. The English call
me that, but I wait--must wait; I smile and suffer. I am Dandhu Panth,
a Brahmin. The English so loved me that they tried to make an
Englishman of me, but, by Brahm! they taught me hate, which is their
lot till the sea swallows the last of the accursed breed and
Mahrattaland is free!"

Nana Sahib was panting with the intensity of his passion. He paced the
floor flicking at his brown boots with his whip, and presently whirled
to say with a sneering smile on his thin lips:

"The English can teach a man just one thing--to die for his ideals."

"Yes, Prince, of a certainty the Englishman knows how to die for his
country," Baptiste agreed in a soldier's tribute to courage.

"And for another nation's country," Nana Sahib rasped. "He is a born
pirate, a bred pirate--we in India know that; and that, General, is why
I am a Brahmin, because they alone will free Mahrattaland--faith,
ideals. Forms! the gods to me are not more than show-pieces. That
Kali spreads the cholera is one with the idea that the little
red-daubed stone Linga gets the woman a male child, false; these things
are in ourselves, and in Brahm. The priests sacrifice to Shiva, but I
will sacrifice to Mahrattaland, which to me is the supreme God."

Jean Baptiste looked out of his wise grey eyes into the handsome face
and felt a thrill, an awakening, the terrible sincerity of the speaker.
At times the ferocity in the eyes when he had spoken of sacrifice
caused the free-lance soldier to shiver. A blur of red floated before
his eyes--something of a fateful forecasting that some day the awful
storm that was brewing would break, and the fanatical Brahmin in front
of him would call for English blood to glut his hate. It was the more
appalling that Nana Sahib was so young. Closing his eyes Baptiste
heard the voice of an English Oxonian that perhaps should be chortling
of polo and cricket and racing; and yet the more danger--the
youthfulness of the agent of destruction; like a Napoleon--a corporal
as a boy. "_C'est la guerre_!" the French officer murmured.

Then, as a storm passing is often followed by smiling sunshine, so the
mood of Nana Sahib changed. He had the volatile temperament of a
Latin, and now he turned to the Minister, his face having undergone a
complete metamorphosis: "Dewani," he said, "do you remember when a
certain raja sent his Prime Minister and twenty thousand men to punish
Pertab for not paying his taxes, and Pertab gave one Bhart, a Bagree,
ten thousand rupees and a village to bring him the Minister's
head--which he did, tied to the inside of his brass-studded shield?"

"Yes, Prince; that is a way of this land."

Nana Sahib drew forth a gold cigarette case, lighted a cigarette from a
fireball that stood in a brass cup, and gazed quizzically at the Dewan.
There was a little hush. This story had set Jean Baptiste's nerves
tingling; there was something behind it.

The Dewan half guessed what was in the air, but he blinked his big eyes
solemnly, and reaching for a small lacquer box took from it a Ran leaf,
with a finger smeared some ground lime on it, and wrapping the leaf
around a piece of betel-nut popped it into his capacious mouth.

"These Bagrees are in the protection of Rajas, Karowlee, are they not?"
Nana Sahib asked.

"Yes, Prince; even some of Bhart's relatives are there--one Ajeet
Singh; he's a celebrated leader of these decoits."

"And Sindhia took from Karowlee some territory, didn't he?"

"Yes; Karowlee refused to pay the taxes."

"I should think the Raja would like to have it back."

"No doubt, Prince."

Nana Sahib, holding the cigarette to his lips between two fingers gazed
mockingly at the large-paunched Brahmin. Then he said; "I see the
illuminating light of understanding in your eyes, Dewani--a subtle
comprehension. Small wonder that you are Minister to the delightful
Sindhia. If you are making any promises to Karowlee, I should make
them in the name of Sindhia--through Sirdar Baptiste, of course. And,
Dewani, this restless cuss, Amir Khan, might make a treaty with the
English any time. The dear fish-eyed Resident has been particularly
active--my spies can hardly keep up with him. I shouldn't lose any
time--Ajeet Singh sounds promising."

Nana Sahib drew a slim flat gold watch from his pocket. "I now must
leave you two interesting gentlemen," he said, "for I am to play a few
chuckers of polo with--particularly, Captain Barlow. He is jackal to
the bloodless Resident. I really thought a couple of days ago that he
would have to be sent home on sick leave. One of my officers rode him
off the ball in a fierce drive for goal, and by some devilish mistake
the post hadn't been sawed half-through, so when Barlow crashed into it
it stood up. As he lay perfectly still after his cropper it looked as
though Resident Hodson had lost his jackal. But Barlow is one of those
whip-cord Englishmen that die of old age; he was in the saddle again in
two days. Well, _au revoir_ and salaam."

When the clattering scurry of Nana Sahib's Arab had died out Baptiste
turned to the Dewan, saying:

"Well?"

"I will write the letter to Raja Karowlee, but you must sign it,
Sirdar; also furnish a fast riding camel and a trusty officer," the
Dewan answered simply.

"But Nana Sahib was nebulous--we may be made the goat of sacrifice."

"It is a wisdom, Sirdar; but, also, it is from the Prince an order; and
my office is always one of blame when there are excuses to make--it is
always that way. When a head is required the Dewan's is always
offered."

CHAPTER III

In answer to the Dewan's request Raja Karowlee sent a force of two
hundred Bagrees to Jean Baptiste's camp. Evidently the old Raja had
run the official comb through his territories, for the decoit force was
composed of a hundred men from Karowlee, under Ajeet Singh, and a
hundred from Alwar, led by Sookdee.

The two leaders were commanded to obey Sirdar Baptiste implicitly; and
Baptiste passed an order that they were to receive a thousand rupees a
day for their maintenance.

In addition there was a fourth officer, Hunsa, who was a jamadar, a
lieutenant, to Ajeet Singh. And if then and there the ugly head had
been cut from his body, the things that happened would not have
happened.

From the advent of the Bagrees, even on their way from Karowlee, Hunsa
had been plotting evil. He was a man who would have shrivelled up,
become atrophied, in an atmosphere of decency--he would have died.

Hunsa caused Sookdee to believe that he should have been the leader and
not Ajeet Singh.

A document was written out by Dewan Sewlal promising that in the event
of the decoits carrying out the mission they had come upon the estate
would be restored to Raja Karowlee, and that he would be compelled to
assign to the three decoit leaders villages within that territory in
rent free tenure. The Dewan, with wide precaution, took care that the
document was so worded that General Baptiste was the official promiser,
putting in a clause that he, Sewlal, the Minister, would see that the
General carried out these promises on behalf of Sindhia.

Baptiste set his lips in a sardonic smile when he read and signed the
paper. However, he cared very little; no concern of his whether
Karowlee attained to his lands or not--it would be a matter of the King
disposes. Even that the Dewan stood in Baptiste's shadow in the affair
was another something that only caused the Frenchman to remark
sardonically:

"Dewani, the English sahibs have a delectable game of cards named poker
in which there is an observance called passing the buck; when a player
wishes to avoid the responsibility of a bet he passes the buck to the
next man. Dewani, you have the subtlety of a good poker player and
have passed the buck to me."

The Brahmin looked hurt. "Sirdar," he said, "you are the commander of
matters of war, which this is. You stand here in the city of tents as
Sindhia; I am but the man of accounts; it is well as it is. And now
that we have signed the promise the decoits will also sign, then I will
make them take the oath according to their patron goddess, Bhowanee.
They are just without--I will have them in."

When the three jamadars had been summoned to the Dewan's presence, he
said: "Here is the paper of promise as to the reward from Sindhia for
the service you are to render. You will also sign here, making your
seal or thumb print; then it will be required that you take the oath of
service according to your own method and your gods."

Ajeet consulted a little apart with Sookdee and then coming forward
said: "We Bagrees are an ancient people descended from the Rajputs, and
we keep our word to our friends; therefore we will take the oath after
the manner of Bhowanee, beneath the pipal tree. If Your Honour will
give us but an hour we will take the oath."

A mile down the red road from the bungalow, looking like a huge beehive
with its heavy enveloping roof of thatch, that was Jean Baptiste's
head-quarters, was a particularly sacred pipal of huge growth. It was
an extraordinary octopus-like tree, and most sacred, for perched in the
embrace of its giant arms was a shrine that had been lifted from its
base in the centuries of the tree's growth.

And now, an hour later, the pipal was surrounded by thousands of
Mahratta sepoys, for word had gone forth,--the mysterious rumour of
India that is like a weird static whispering to the four corners of the
land a message,--had flashed through the tented city that the men from
Karowlee were to take the oath of allegiance to Sindhia.

The fat Dewan had come down in a _palki_ swung from the shoulders of
stout bearers, while Jean Baptiste had ridden a silver-grey Arab.

And then just as a bleating, mottled white-and-black goat was led by a
thong to the pipal, Nana Sahib came swirling down the road in a brake
drawn by a spanking pair of bay Arabs with black points. Beside him
sat the Resident's daughter, Elizabeth Hodson, and in the seat behind
was Captain Barlow.

At the pipal Nana Sahib reined in the bays sharply, saying, "Hello,
General, wanted to see you for a minute--called at the bungalow, and
your servant said you had gone down this way. What's up?" he
questioned after greetings had passed between Baptiste, Barlow and
Elizabeth Hodson.

"Just some new recruits, scouts, taking the oath of service," and
Baptiste closed an eye in a caution-giving wink.

A slight sneer curled the thin lips of Nana Sahib; he understood
perfectly what Baptiste meant by the wink--that the Englishman being
there, it would be as well to say little about the Bagrees. But the
Prince had no very high opinion of Captain Barlow's perceptions, of his
finer acuteness of mind; the thing would have to be very plainly
exposed for the Captain to discover it. He was a good soldier, Captain
Barlow--that happy mixture of brain and brawn and courage that had
coloured so much of the world's map red, British; he was the terrier
class--all pluck, with perhaps the pluck in excelsis--the brain-power
not preponderant.

"Who is the handsome native--he looks like a Rajput?" Elizabeth asked,
indicating the man who was evidently the leader among the others.

"That is Ajeet Singh, chief of these men," Baptiste answered.

"He is a handsome animal," Nana Sahib declared.

"He is like an Arab Apollo," Elizabeth commented; and her tone
suggested that it was a whip-cut at the Prince's half-sneer.

The girl's description of Ajeet was trite. The Chief's face was almost
perfect; the golden-bronze tint of the skin set forth in the enveloping
background of a turban of blue shot with gold-thread draped down to
cover a silky black beard that, parted at the chin, swept upward to
loop over the ears. The nose was straight and thin; there was a
predatory cast to it, perhaps suggested by the bold, black, almost
fierce eyes. He was clothed with the full, rich, swaggering adornment
of a Rajput; the splendid deep torso enclosed in a shirt-of-mail, its
steel mesh so fine that it rippled like silver cloth; a red velvet
vestment, negligently open, showed in the folds of a silk sash a
jewel-hilted knife; a _tulwar_ hung from his left shoulder. As he
moved here and there, there was a sinuous grace, panther-like, as if he
strode on soft pads. At rest his tall figure had the set-up of a
soldier.

As the three in the brake studied the handsome Ajeet, a girl stepped
forward and stood contemplating them.

"By Jove!" the exclamation had been Captain Barlow's; and Elizabeth,
with the devilish premonition of an acute woman knew that it was a
masculine's involuntary tribute to feminine attractivity.

She had turned to look at the Captain.

Nana Sahib, little less vibrant than a woman in his sensitive
organisation, showed his even, white teeth: "Don't blame you, old
chap," he said; "she's all that. I fancy that's the girl they call
Gulab Begum. Am I right, Sirdar?"

"Yes, Prince," Jean Baptiste answered. "The girl is a relative of the
handsome Ajeet."

"She's simply stunning!" Captain Barlow said, as it were, meditatively.

But Nana Sahib, knowing perfectly well what this observation would do
to the austere, exact, dominating daughter of a precise man, the
Resident, muttered to himself: "Colossal ass! an impressionable cuss
should have a _purdah_ hung over his soul--or be gagged."

"One of their _nautch_ girls, I suppose;" Elizabeth thus eased some of
the irritation over Barlow's admiration in a well-bred sneer.

"Yes," Baptiste declared; "it is said she dances wonderfully."

"You name her the Gulab Begum, General,--that is a Moslem title and,
from the turbans and caste-marks on the men, they seem to be Hindus; I
suppose Gulab Begum is her stage name, is it?"

Elizabeth was exhibiting unusual interest in a native--that is for
Elizabeth, and Nana Sahib chuckled softly as he answered: "Names mean
little in India; I know high-caste Brahmins who have given their
children low-caste names to make them less an object of temptation to
the gods of destruction. Also, the Gulab may have been stolen from the
harem of some Nawab by this bandit."

The Gulab suggested more a Rajput princess than a dancing girl. No
ring pierced the thin nostrils of her Grecian nose; neither from her
ears hung circles of gold or brass, or silver; and the slim ankles that
peeped from a rich skirt were guiltless of anklets. On the wrist of
one arm was a curious gold bangle that must have held a large ruby, for
at times the sun flicked from the moving wrist splashes of red wine.
Indeed the whole atmosphere of the girl was simplicity and beauty.

"No wonder they call her the Rose Queen," Barlow was communing with
himself. For the oval face with its olive skin, as fair as a Kashmiri
girl's, was certainly beautiful. The black hair was smoothed back from
a wide low forehead, after the habit of the Mahratti women; the prim
simplicity of this seeming to add to the girlish effect. A small
white-and-gold turban, even with its jauntiness, seemed just the very
thing to check the austere simplicity. The girl's eyes, like Ajeet's,
were the eyes of some one unafraid, of one born to a caste that felt
equality. When they turned to those who sat in the brake they were
calmly meditative; they were the eyes of a child, modest; but with the
unabashed confidence of youth.

Elizabeth, perhaps unreasonably, for the three of them sat so close
together in the brake, fancied that the Gulab's gaze constantly picked
out the handsome Captain Barlow.

An imp touched Nana Sahib, and he said: "I'd swear there was Rajput
blood in that girl. If I knew of some princess having been stolen I'd
say she stood yonder. The eyes are simply ripping; baby eyes, that,
when roused, assist in driving a knife under a man's fifth rib. I've
seen a sambhur doe with just such eyes cut into ribbons a Rampore hound
with her sharp hoofs."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15