Caste Part 1

Caste.

by W. A. Fraser.

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 G.o.ddess 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 bra.s.s bull that carried s.h.i.+va, he appealed, "_Om s.h.i.+va_!"

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 l.u.s.t of power, and hatred of the white race that he felt would make his inheritance, the Peshwas.h.i.+p, but a va.s.salage. 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 cla.s.s, mental development, beneath the English s.h.i.+rt 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 ma.s.sed hors.e.m.e.n, 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 a.s.sistant 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 const.i.tuted to raise a cyclone of pa.s.sion, 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, hara.s.s them with guerilla warfare, it would be serious; they were as elusive as a huge pack of wolves; unenc.u.mbered 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 hors.e.m.e.n.

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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sion.

"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 pa.s.sion. 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 G.o.ds 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 s.h.i.+va, but I will sacrifice to Mahrattaland, which to me is the supreme G.o.d."

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 s.h.i.+ver. 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 pa.s.sing is often followed by smiling suns.h.i.+ne, 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 bra.s.s-studded s.h.i.+eld?"

"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 bra.s.s 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.