"Willie," Mark Twain tells us, "had a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick"; he further informs us that this quadruman made its owner "deathly sick."

The following story shows the effect that a blue monkey on a gilt spike had in a remote Indian village called JehÂdpore--a very ordinary village set out on high, unirrigated soil, beside a large irregular tank, whence the bricks of many generations of houses had been dug; the only peculiarity about it being a glaringly whitewashed mosque faÇade, rising above the whole and flanked by a palm-tree. Merely a faÇade: viewed frontwise, distinctly imposing, with minarets and domes in orthodox numbers and positions; viewed sidewise, as distinctly disappointing. The jerriest of London jerry builders could have done nothing better than this one brick front elevation, of which even the domes were but basso-relievos.

Still it dominated the village in every way; for it was built in the court-yard of ex-Rissaldar-Major Azmutoollah Khan Sahib Bahadur's house, and he with his hangers-on represented JehÂdpore. It was a RÂngur village--that is to say, a village of Mohammedan Rajputs, a race which supplies half the native cavalry of upper India with recruits. That was the case at JehÂdpore. When the district officer came round every year to attest and write up the big village note-book there was always something to add on this score. Either the number of those away a-soldiering had to be increased, or an entry made that So-and-so had returned with a "pinson"^[5] to his wife and family. On these occasions the district officer invariably found an escort awaiting him at the boundary, consisting of sowars on leave from various regiments (with their horses), a contingent of "pinson-wallahs" in nondescript uniform on broodmares, and Khan Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, at their head. He was a very old man, as deeply wrinkled as a young actor doing the part of an ancient retainer. In the privacy of that court-yard, garnished by the jerry mosque, he clothed himself scantily in limp white muslin, and his beard was tricoloured--white at the roots, red in the middle, purple at the ends. But on his screaming stallion, sword in hand, a goodly row of medals on his worn tunic, Azmutoollah's beard was of the fiercest black, and the line of moustache shaved from the hard mouth into an arched curve under his aquiline nose, curled right up to his eyes. His voice, too, lost its quaver of age, and before he had safely inducted the Huzoor into his tents down by the tank that irregular troop of cavalry had been put through enough manoeuvres to last out three ordinary field days. It was the old soldier's Kriegspiel.

When it was over, and he dozed, wearied out by the unaccustomed effort, on the wooden bed under the nim-tree, the hard roly-poly bolster tucked in to the hollow of his neck--or something else--made his sleeping-place a Bethel, and he dreamed dreams.

Then he had to resume the old uniform once more and go over to the tents again with a petition. RÂngurs always have petitions about wells, or water, or brood mares; for, if they make excellent troopers, they are intolerably bad ploughmen. That was why Mool Raj, the hereditary money-lender of JehÂdpore, was able to send his son, HunumÂn Sing, to college and make a pleader of him.

The ex-rissaldar, with two sons and three grandsons in the old regiment, waxed contemptuous over the "pleadery" career. But that was his attitude in all things towards Mool Raj and the small Hindu element the latter represented in JehÂdpore. The fact that the Mohammedan population to a man was in the usurer's debt did not affect the position of affairs at all, or detract from the feeling of virtuous tolerance which allowed a most modest and retiring Hindu temple to conceal itself behind the back wall of the mosque faÇade. It was a great concession, for Azmutoollah was not the only HÂdji^[6] in JehÂdpore. The place was a perfect hot-bed of fighting Mohammedanism, which only needed opposition to grow into fanaticism.

Yet, when Mool Raj added a new story to the Hindu temple, nobody said him nay. They were good friends with the wizened, monkey-like usurer.

"Bismillah! Khan Sahib," laughed one of the group of sowars round Azmutoollah's wooden bed. "He saith it is to save his soul from sin. God knows he needs it, for he hath charged me rascally interest on my last debt. If we must needs have a Hindu in the place, seeing God and his Prophet forbid the true believer to soil his hands with usury, then, by the ImÂms, let us have a pious one!"

Even when he put a gilt spike on the top they spoke of it in contemptuous kindness. "Whether he buries our gold or sets it on high is all one, so long as he hath enough to lend us when we seek it. And 'tis thank-offering, he says, for his son HunumÂn passing as B.A. God knows what that may be, but the boy hath thin legs and a narrow chest."

Azmutoollah Khan, C.I.E., looked distastefully at the extreme tip of a gilt spike which from the farthermost corner of the court-yard showed just over the faÇade.

"So far well," said the old martinet. "A Hindu may have repentance, and he is like to ourselves in affection for his family--though, Allah be praised, none of mine carry themselves like a 'lumpa ta heen.'^[7] But that is an end of repentance and affection. I will have no idolatrous spike under my eyes, and so I will tell Mool Raj. Let HunumÂn build himself a temple in Lahore out of his scholarships and pleader's fees. We want none of his kind in JehÂdpore."

The usurer came back from his interview with his patron quite resigned. To tell the truth, he himself was not much set on these pious additions which cost a heap of hard-won money. Their initiator was HunumÂn's mother, who, ever since her pilgrimage to Shah Sultan had been rewarded by the long-prayed-for son, had looked on him as doubly dependent on the favour of the gods--his very name, HunumÂn, having been bestowed on him because she had seen a monkey when she first regained consciousness after the curious hysterical crisis which seizes on most women at that most famous shrine. The inference being, of course, that the monkey god was responsible for the baby--a presumption not in the least weakened by the fact that Shah Sultan was a Mohammedan saint to whom monkeys and gods were an abomination.

Chand Kor, therefore, gave shrill disapproval to Azmutoollah's fiat. In her heart of hearts she nourished the ideal of a blue monkey god perched on the top of that golden spike; and when, two days afterwards, HunumÂn Sing, B.A., came down for his vacation, she poured the tale of intolerance into his ear.

Now, HunumÂn Sing, after the manner of his kind, did not care--well, what the Iron Duke said cost him twopence--for his godfather, nor, indeed, for most of the beliefs of his mother. How could he? Who could expect it of him? The cry which goes up now and again in India when some clever lad, educated at a mission-school, openly forsakes his religion, is beneath contempt. There is not one orthodox Hindu father, north or south, who, pushing his lad on for the sake of worldly success, does not do it with his eyes open to the inevitable gulf which must separate them in the future. This particular son was like many another son of the sort; a good lad, on the whole, if more interested in his own development than anything else in the world. This, again, was inevitable. When you have to cram the evolution of ages into two-and-twenty years, and grow from a baby named after the monkey god into a B.A., a strict attention to business is necessary. If he was pushing, was not that also inevitable? Jonah's gourd had to push "some," as the Americans say. For the rest, he was like hundreds of the amiable, clever young graduates whom one longs to have in the desert for forty days and nights opposite the Sphinx. One by one, of course; for if there were two of them they would form a sub-committee and vote the Sphinx to the chair. Then the millennium would come, of course, and that would be inconvenient for nous autres.

But, though HunumÂn cared not at all for the blue monkey god, he worshipped liberty--especially his own; and he preferred it, if possible, with a flavour of law about it. What! deprive a citizen, a subject of the Queen Empress, from due exercise of religious right? Who was Azmutoollah Khan, to promulgate such a pernicious attempt at intimidation?--vide section so-and-so.

Little Mool Raj, who seemed to shrivel smaller as he grew older, listened to all this with great pride but steadfast inaction. He knew who Azmutoollah Khan was well enough. He knew the temper of the people who had enriched him all too well. Liberty was a fine thing, but money was better--peace and comfort best of all. This latter conviction, however, made him give way slightly before Chand Kor's tears; and the next evening, when the rissaldar--major was interviewing two new arrivals on leave, and bringing the wisdom of a lifetime to bear on their horses, an odd noise floated over the sham domes of the mosque.

"Tis a donkey with the strangles, Khan Sahib," remarked Rahmat Ali. "Yea, mine is a lucky one--five curls and--" He paused.

No, it was not a donkey. What was it? A camel snoring? A cow dying? The women servants baking bread in the corner stood up to listen. The two boys, heads down, arms interlaced, wrestling stark naked in the sun, paused also. Then, suddenly, as if by mistake, an inconceivable gamut, beginning with an earthquake, passing on to a foghorn, and ending with a pennywhistle, let itself loose.

"God and his Prophet," yelled Azmutoollah, "it is a conch!"

As they stood petrified by the audacity, the low grunting recommenced, and then once more something let go, lost control over itself, and went skirling up like a burst bagpipe.

"My sword!" gasped the ex-rissaldar. "The idolatrous defiler of the faith--the desecrator of my fathers' graves! A conch in JehÂdpore! By the Lord who made me, 'tis the last!"

If the opponents had been better matched, there would have been bloodshedding in the village on that calm evening; but what could a dozen sowars with drawn swords, headed by Azmutoollah, joined by half the populace of the village, do against HunumÂn Sing, who, with a trembling in his knees but the courage of martyrs in his mind, stood on the steps of the temple, nearly bursting himself in his efforts to play the unwonted instrument?

A roar of laughter went up from the crowd, as, alarmed but determined, he backed from the onslaught to the temple door, stumbled on the step, sat down violently, and the concussion sent a perfectly supernatural "Ker--whoo--oo--oo--oo--ph!" through the conch.

Even Azmutoollah's indignation could not withstand it.

"Go, Rahmat Ali, and take it from him ere he do himself an injury, and seek Mool Raj, Kutb-u-din. 'Tis his blame, not the boy's."

But HunumÂn was on his feet again, full of outraged importance. The affair to him was deadly earnest.

"I am no boy, Khan Azmutoollah, but of legal age, with B.A. pass. I am a loyal citizen of Victoria Kaiser-i-hind. Religious liberty enjoins me to play conch if I choose, and I do choose."

The spirit was willing, but the flesh, in the hustling hands of half a dozen troopers, was perforce weak. The Hindu is not naturally resistant, and the fighting men around him were not slow to recognize HunumÂn's unusual show of determination.

"It is assault! it is battery! I am coerced. I claim my rights. The law is on my side!" he gasped, between his struggles.

"Smash the blasphemous thing, and let the boy go," called Azmutoollah. "Enough, HunumÂn-ji. Seek thy law elsewhere--not here, in the house of my fathers."

The conch lay shivered to atoms, but the young man felt himself master of the situation. Just as the concussion of his fall had forced his breath into the conch, so the pressure of illegal coercion made his newly acquired love of freedom overflow into eloquence. Heart and head were both full to inflation with the finest sentiments. As he stood on the steps, haranguing the people, he would have done credit to the House of Commons in a party discussion.

"By the faith, he speaks well! 'Tis a pity his shoulders are so narrow," remarked a trooper, carelessly, as he strolled away to a bare, beaten patch by the tank, where a number of naked boys were standing in pairs, heads down, hands on knees, smacking their thighs, and crying "Hull-la-la!" to give themselves courage ere closing for the grip. Beneath the skeleton of a peepul-tree hard by, whence the branches had been stripped for fodder, some elders were at work over gymnastic exercises, swinging clubs, or--supported on palms and feet--touching the dust with their foreheads, and then rising again like a strung bow. The sunlight shone on their bronze sinews.

"Didst kill him?" asked one, breathlessly keeping the count of his own performance.

"Kill him? Look you, Allah Baksh--there was not enough of him to kill!"

And a chuckle ran round the assembly.

A fortnight after, when the district officer was playing whist with the policeman, the doctor, and the young assistant, who was gradually being taught that rules are occasionally more honoured in the breach than the observance, Dhunput Rai, judicial assistant, sent in to ask five minutes' leisure of the Huzoor. Every one laid down his cards at once, and the doctor lit a fresh cigar, for Dhunput Rai was one of those natives of the old school who many a time and oft have steered the British bark safely through troubled waters, as their fathers steered the alien armadas of the Mogul. He was a Brahman of the highest caste, keen-witted, clear-sighted; privately a bigot, publicly a statesman.

"Huzoor," he said, briefly, "young Lala Amr Nath the Extra hath this day in a case given leave for a conch to be blown in JehÂdpore. There will be trouble. In my opinion, it is a fitting occasion for the Huzoor to act under section 518, which gives absolute power to the district officer in emergency."

Five minutes afterwards, Dhunput Rai took his leave with an interdict in his pocket, and a deputy inspector of police and four mounted constables rode out with it post haste, so as to arrive before the earliest blink of dawn made conch-blowing compatible with anything save sheer malice aforethought. It was a great blow to HunumÂn and a small circle of select college friends who had assembled to witness the triumph of religious freedom. They consoled themselves during the interval of appeal by writing an article to the 'Sun of Asia,' in the course of which they promulgated several valuable new discoveries, such as that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Azmutoollah, meanwhile, admitted grudgingly that there was some sense left in the sahibs still, in spite of their setting goldsmiths' sons, like Amr Nath, to rule over honest folk.

"I'm dashed if I can find a precedent," remarked the district officer, disconsolately talking over the matter with the policeman, the doctor, and the assistant. "And in a case like this, where every thing depends on the environment, and it's sure to be appealed again, there is no mortal good in anything but a precedent. If I say there will be a row, I shall only be told with great dignity that Mr. Smith is expected to keep his district in order."

There was a pause. Finally, the doctor spoke. He hailed from Aberdeen.

"It's an ill burd that files his ain nest, but for religious into-lerance give me Scotland. Aw'm no saying ut'll hold as a preeceedent amongst the heathen, but it's a preeceedent in the Court o' Session. It was aprepaw of a bell."

"A bell! Heaven be praised! the very thing."

"A bell is not a conch," remarked the assistant.

"Alias, I should say," murmured the policeman. "Bell, conch, call to prayer: that's the spirit. Fire away, old chap!--Bearer, bring the doctor-sahib another peg."

So the precedent of a far-away cathedral, whose schismatic chime annoyed good Calvinists, was brought to bear on HunumÂn and the conch, and the latter, not being an integral part of public worship, was proclaimed a nuisance.

The deputy commissioner himself had no doubt about its being one, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and remarked to Dhunput Rai that that ought to finish the business.

The courteous old gentleman smiled.

"Huzoor," he said, "I have heard my father say that Akbar's order to his judges was, 'Write ever with the pen which has been cut by the sword; then there is peace in the land.' The case will be appealed, and the pen of the Huzoors is cut by machine."

He was a true prophet. HunumÂn, backed by the 'Sun of Asia,' not only appealed the conch question, but raised another in the interim by putting a small blue plaster monkey on the top of the gold spike, in fulfilment, it was urged, of the pre-natal vow made for him by his mother, a pious Hindu lady, whose virtuous life was crowned with honour.

The monkey remained there exactly five-and-twenty minutes after the first beams of the rising sun disclosed the fact that it had been put there during the night. That it remained so long was due to three reasons: First, that the JehÂdpore troopers, if good swordsmen, were uncommonly bad shots; second, that Azmutoollah's blunderbuss was a flint-lock; third, that he insisted on letting it off himself until it knocked him down.

This time the case was taken direct to the deputy commissioner, who, urged on the one side by a remembrance of Dhunput Rai's remark, and on the other by a sneaking fear of revision, decided that the blue monkey, as an idolatrous image, was a distinct nuisance when displayed unnecessarily over the top of a Mohammedan gentleman's private mosque. On the other hand, viewed from the Hindu standpoint, the image of a blue monkey might be an integral part of public worship. Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, must therefore pay over to Mool Raj and to HunumÂn Sing the price of the destroyed blue monkey, as they might wish to erect a similar one in a less conspicuous place.

Now, though Mool Raj's name was duly entered in the file as complainant, the affair had long ago passed out of his hands and become a real, solid, Heaven-sent grievance to a small knot of advanced young pleaders. Indeed, the old man was so distinctly unsatisfactory as chief victim, that they had more than once taken the opportunity of his absence to advance matters a step. Azmutoollah Khan, as shrewd an old soldier as could be found on either side of the Indus, was not slow to notice this, and his blind opposition covered a great longing to have these youngsters on the hip. After all, he and Mool Raj had pulled along well enough for years before this B.A. was thought of--ay, and their fathers before them. If the usurer had been alone, the money screw could have been put on him somehow; since he would not risk a pice for all the blue monkeys in heaven or on earth.

Azmutoollah Khan was cogitating these matters one afternoon on the wooden bed, with his turban as usual standing like a helmet beside him, when a party of boys rushed into the court-yard full of news and excitement. HunumÂn Sing, who, as every one knew, had come with some friends in a bullock cart that morning, must have brought the thing with him; but as sure as fate there was a blue monkey sitting on the square pedestal in front of the temple which Alla Ditta, the mason, had built in all innocence of heart last week--a blue monkey, not a miniature marionette at the top of a gilt spike like the last, but a life-sized affair, and, what is more, all the Hindus in the place and many more from neighbouring villages were doing poojah to it.

The fierce old Mohammedan's very lips turned pale. He never even thought of his turban, but, bald-headed as he was, and stumbling in his haste, was out of the court-yard into the narrow street. The next minute a cry, that was not pleasant to hear, cut the calm sunshine like a sword.

"JehÂd! JehÂd! Futt-eh Mohammed! JehÂd! JehÂd! Futt-eh Mohammed!" shrilled the boys in refrain.

A knot of young men in patent-leather shoes, standing by the blue monkey, heard the cry with a glow of triumph.

"Brothers and sisters," called one, in the polished, curiously artificial tones of one accustomed to public speaking, "remember we are peaceable citizens. There is to be no opposition. Our trust is in truth and justice, not in violence. Our weapon is right, not might. Stand aside and let them do their worst. 'I will repay,' saith the law."

It was a bold paraphrase lost on all save that little knot of culture which said, "Hear, hear!" as if to the manner born. The speech, however, though admirable, proved somewhat superfluous. The first sight of that mad assault coming round the corner sent the crowd, composed for the most part of women and children, scattering hither and thither like frightened sheep. Culture stood firm, unwisely firm, for a minute. Then a voice rose in English:

"Gentlemen, discretion is better part of valour--nor is it permissible to foster or excite breach of peace. We can speak with equal fluence and freedom from roof of house." And they did.

The scene thus described sounds farcical. There was not even a grain of comedy in it to the actors; least of all to the plaster monkey on whose blue hide the sabres hacked fast. Above, on the roof, as on a hustings, the new culture wielded the sword of the Spirit; below, the older cult clinched argument by the sword of the flesh.

That night peace reigned in JehÂdpore. Young India, in a body, had gone to report wilful destruction of private property accompanied by violence, to the deputy commissioner. Old India sat triumphant but thoughtful on the wooden bed, while the troopers laughed and drank and made merry over the discomfiture of the blue monkey.

"By the Prophet," cried Rahmat Ali, "I swear it had a look of old money-bags! And why not, seeing 'tis the father of Sri HunumÂn? Ha-ha! But thou shouldst have seen the old man's face, rissaldar-sahib, when he returned but half an hour gone, and I told him we were but waiting leisure to burn his books and clear off old scores in the old way. He wept, and said 'twas none of his doing; that he asked but peace, as in the old days. Yea, as he sat a-begging on his haunches, praying forgiveness, he looked more like the blue monkey than ever."

Khan Azmutoollah Khan let off a detonating roulade of Arabic anathema as a Te Deum.

"Fetch him here, Rahmat! I have a plan. We old folk will settle it old ways."

The next morning the deputy commissioner, the police officer, and the doctor rode out in hot haste to the scene of what they were told had been a bloodthirsty riot. At the village boundary they were met, rather to their surprise, by the usual escort. The leader of the little band was more military than ever, but there was an odd twinkle in his eye as he obeyed the curt order to fall behind, and the hint--which British majesty gave in the interests of law and order--that his presence even there was undesirable. HunumÂn Sing, and a friend who had remained to see fair play, certainly seemed to think the troopers jingling and clashing along in close order very much in their way. They edged their ponies here and there, only to find themselves perpetually ridden over; especially when, at the head of the lane leading to the temple, British majesty reined up short, the troop behind turned to stone, the horses on their haunches steady as rocks. Then there was a wild hustle; the two ponies shot out in front, where their owners managed to pull up flabbergasted at the sight which met their eyes.

"How is this?" asked the deputy commissioner, sternly. "I thought you said the blue monkey was destroyed; and there it is, in perfect condition!"

There it was, indubitably--bright blue, with a long tail curving over its legs.

From behind among the troopers came gentle grunts of disapproval, that the ears of the Huzoor should be assailed with such wanton lies. Blue monkeys indeed! What quarrel had the faithful with blue monkeys?

"Khan Azmutoollah Khan sahib," called British majesty, "what does this mean? I was told you and your fellows had wantonly destroyed Mool Raj's monkey. Is this true?"

The old man rode up from behind, his martial dignity undimmed by the discipline he respected and understood.

"I am no scholar myself, Huzoor," he said, saluting, "but I am a just man for all that. I injure neither man nor beast wantonly. Let the Huzoor ask the blue monkey if it or its master hath aught against me. Of these"--here he gave a contemptuous wave of his hand to the pleaders on their ponies--"I know naught, nor did my fathers."

Then he rode forward. "Oh, bunder-jee! speak for thyself and for thy master."

"By the Lord Harry," shrieked the policeman, as the figure on the pedestal rose slowly and salaamed, "it's old Mool Raj himself!"

"My lord!" faltered HunumÂn, "this is irrelevant--this is contempt of court."

"Peace! oh HunumÂn! and respect the voice of thy parent," began the blue monkey.

Then a roar of inextinguishable laughter played the mischief with majesty.

Half an hour afterwards, when Chand Kor in tears was washing the blue distemper off her lord and master's shrivelled limbs, he repeated his injunction regarding the fifth commandment to his son, who sat haranguing on liberty, freedom, public spirit, equality, fraternity, and a host of other duties and privileges.

"They are good, my son," he said, "but money is good also, and peace best of all. Ask no more. I am content, and thou hast naught to do with it. The temple is, and the blue monkey was mine--at least I was the blue monkey."

Then HunumÂn Sing swore.

That evening the deputy commissioner held a friendly inquiry, and everybody shook hands all round, excepting HunumÂn Sing and his friend, who left by ekka before the proceedings commenced, vowing vengeance on all summary justice. He was a full-blown pleader before the famous case of "Mool Raj and a Conch versus Azmutoollah Khan and Others" came up before the chief court of appeal. On that occasion he argued most eloquently on various subjects for half an hour, and was about to resume his seat, covered with perspiration and honour, when a voice from the body of the court cried:

"Respect thy parent, O HunumÂn! Remember the things that are behind."

Coiled up neatly on his chair was a blue tail, and once more laughter played the mischief with majesty.

Some people say that was why the appeal was dismissed. Anyhow, it is certain that shortly afterwards HunumÂn set up as a pleader in another province.

So JehÂdpore brought up its troopers, and paid or did not pay its debts in peace. And when Mool Raj died, the folk wagged their heads, saying, "Well, he was not much to speak of as a man, but he was a first-rate monkey."