The rains had fallen late, bringing unusual greenness to the stretches of waste-land, and unusual promise of harvest to the bare, brown fields where man and beast were hard at work, day and night, ploughing, harrowing, sowing, watering. Waiting--that integral part of Indian husbandry--had yet to come, but the memory, almost the dread of it, lurked ever in the slow brains of the labourers. In mine also, alien and uninterested though it was; for surely no one who has seen a JÂt cultivator, tall, meagre, soft eyed, wandering amongst his green wheat, waiting for RÂm to send rain, can ever forget the incarnate tragedy of the sight.

The sun was setting cloudless in a sea of light, that still flooded the scene with the brightness of noon, though the shadows lengthened in swift strides. I was sitting on a wide flight of steps leading down into a small tank closed in on all sides by masonry. Viewed thus, with the mass of brick work surrounding it, this square of placid water reflecting back the lemon-coloured sky, the fringe of dull farÂsh trees, and the gilded spires of the temple rising above them, showed like a small Dutch picture set in a heavy, deep-recessed frame. On the opposite side a woman in a saffron veil was filling her brass pot, and on the trumpery stucco arcades of the temple-plinth were painted blue elephants, gingerbread tigers, and spidery monkeys. Round and round the central spire the iridescent breasts of the whirling pigeons glinted in the level rays.

It was peaceful, colourful, almost in its way beautiful, especially after a long day's work in the office tent which rose a few hundred yards away. Suddenly the clear-cut silence of the scene was marred by a deprecatory voice behind me.

"The Presence will not think it so fine as 'Ide Park, doubtless?"

"So fine as what?" I echoed carelessly, being accustomed to the thousand and one interruptions of a district officer's life.

"So fine as your 'Ide Par-k in the town of London."

"Hyde Park!--why! what the deuce do you know of Hyde Park?"

Intense surprise had replaced my indifference, for there was nothing to account for the strangeness of his words either in the face or figure of the man who stood behind me leaning on a long staff over which his hands were crossed. It was just such a face and figure as I saw every day. A typical JÂt--in other words, a farmer by race and heritage--tall, high-shouldered, lank, with a bushy-shaped turban adding to his height, and straight folds of heavy, unbleached cotton cloth suggesting the lean, bony frame beneath. A face well cut, but not refined, marked, but not strong, in which the most noticeable features were the large dreamy eyes like those of Botticelli's Moses in the Sistine Chapel.

Immovable from the knee downwards he squatted, as the Americans say, "in his tracks," keeping his submissive face towards mine like a dog awaiting his master's pleasure.

"By the mercy of the Presence I have seen 'Ide Park. Yes, I have been there--in the city of London--where the sahibs and the mem-sahibs sit and walk."

A vision of the figure before me planted out amongst flower-decked mashers and powdery belles aroused such a sense of incongruity in my mind that I could only echo feebly--

"So you have been to London!"

"Yes!" he replied cheerfully, "I've been to London to see the great Queen."

For the life of me I could not help reverting to the sequence of childish days: "Pussy cat, pussy cat, what saw you there?" and his reply fitted in so neatly that my query lost its lightness and became serious.

"I saw the Sikattar (secretary) who sits in her chair."

I laughed then; I could not help it, for I felt convinced that no other words could have expressed the whole incident more truthfully.

"I went to London, O Protector of the Poor!" continued the stranger softly, "because I wanted, to get back the land. The Presence knows we JÂts cannot live without our land."

Involuntarily his eyes turned to a neighbouring field, where a couple of plough bullocks were slowly scoring the levels into feeble furrows, whilst the ploughman--just such a man as the one before me--held his hookah in one hand, his goad in the other.

"So you did not get the land after all? How was that?" God knows I was not always so ready of access to the native (as the departmental pastorals put it), but then one does not meet a JÂt who has been to Hyde Park every day.

"Perhaps if it had not been a Sikattar," replied the low soft voice--"perhaps if it had been the great Queen herself--" Here the plough bullocks he was watching turned too sharply, and his hand closed mechanically on the stick he held between his knees, as if he were responsible for the mistake. "If the Presence has not heard it all before, I will tell it why Dewa RÂm the JÂt went to London."

I give the story in his own words, for mine might fail to transmit the perfection of his patience.

"The land was my father's, and my father's father from Mahratta times. In those days no one could sell the land or prevent the sons from following the father's plough. To begin with, no one wanted to sell good land, and then they could not if they would. That was before the great SirkÂr--life and prosperity be with it always--came to lift the hearts of the poor and set their heads high. There was much land, and on some of it in olden days a mortgage had been put. The Presence will know the kind of mortgage, where for a hundred rupees or so of loan another man is allowed to till the soil worth thousands. Only if it is wanted back, then the owner returns the hundred rupees. That is all. It is done when a family is small and has too much land to till properly. So the village accountant's people held the land because they were relations by marriage. It was in my father's time that the great SirkÂr came, and we began paying the dues to it instead of to the Maharajah. Then, when my father fell into evil ways because of drugs, my mother took her sons--we were twins, Sewa RÂm and I--if the Presence pleases, back to her people far away beyond Amritsar. For she was of a high, proud family, and when the hemp gets into a man's head he does unclean things. So my father was alone, and the accountant made him do as he liked, bribing him with drugs. That was how it happened, as the Presence will doubtless perceive. So when my father neglected his own land, the accountant's people cultivated it for him and gave him what was due. My mother heard of this, but she said nothing, because we were but little lads, and the land could not run away--it was better that it should be tilled than left to rack and ruin. At last my father died, but they sent no word to Amritsar, because the great SirkÂr was coming to count the village, and make a map of it with all the holdings of the proper shape, and all the fields coloured green. If the Protector of the Poor will forgive his dust-like slave, he will remember that fields are not green always, and so likewise the holdings are not always right, no matter how carefully they are put on the map. There was the old mortgage, a man who lied tilling the soil, and no one to come to the SirkÂr and say, 'Here is the hundred rupees, give us back the land and write it in our names,' because, as I have said, Sewa RÂm and I were away beyond Amritsar, and our mother thought the land could not run away. It was no wonder the SirkÂr was deceived, no wonder at all, but when we came to claim the land even our names were not on the list. They had written the wrong thing because the mortgage had been foreclosed, and there were no heirs. After this one judge--may he become the LÂt Sahib--said he would put it right, but the accountant was rich and made it into an appeal. The Presence knows what an appeal is, doubtless, and how, when a little thing like this--just a mistake in a map--gets up amongst the pleaders and the Sikattars, it is sometimes too small for them to see. It would have been different if the SirkÂr had seen two big noisy boys when it counted the village. Then Sewa RÂm was set free from the prison of life, and I was alone; for the Presence knows a JÂt cannot marry without land, or have sons when there is no plough to keep the furrow of existence straight. So I sold my mother's jewels and went to show the great Queen herself that my father really had a son. Thus I came to 'Ide Park in London city, and saw the Sikattar."

"Then you did not succeed?"

"The Presence knows that the vizier is not as the badshah. He was very kind, sending me back by ship P. and O. And writing! God knows how many letters he wrote, and he bade me wait. That is two years gone, so I am waiting still."

"Have you a case in my Court?"

He shook his head with a certain pride. "Oh no! it is in the big Court, or with the Financial, or a Sikattar just now; but it will come to the Presence sooner or later. That is why I journey with the Protector of the Poor. When that day comes the Presence will remember how Dewa RÂm the JÂt went to 'Ide Park."

As I strolled back to the tent he followed at a discreet distance. Afterwards, as I sat smoking outside, I saw him wandering in the fields listlessly, his tall figure standing out against the sky as he paused to look at the sprouting wheat. When I questioned my underlings as to his story, they smiled obsequiously, as the native will smile before the master's face. The case, it appeared, had grown to be quite a standing joke in the office, nor was this the first cold weather that Dewa RÂm had haunted the camp of the Deputy Commissioner and waited for news of his land. They hemmed and hawed, however, over the rights and wrongs of his claim, until I asked them point blank what their own impressions were; then habit gave way to truth, and they frankly declared their belief in some miscarriage of justice. A man, they said, would not go all the way to London for nothing. As I inclined to the same view, I took the trouble to try working the oracle by the back stairs--a method no less successful in India than elsewhere. Replies, more or less hopeful as to some ultimate settlement of the question, came from various friends in high places. Some of these I communicated, in a guarded way, to "London," who as the sowing time passed fell a victim to fever and deferred hope. It was impossible for mortal man to see those dreamy eyes of his watching the crops of other men without feeling an insane desire to bring the promised land within his reach. He was very grateful. So condescending a Presence, he said, had never before dwelt in the tents of the great SirkÂr; and often on Sunday afternoons, when the camp was at rest, he would steal ostentatiously to a spot about thirty yards from where I was sitting, and if opportunity offered, enter into conversation--generally beginning by some apologetic allusion to 'Ide Park, but ending with a vast amount of information. He was a perfect mine of folk-lore, and many a half hour did he beguile by old-world stories and traditions. One, in particular, I will retail in his own words, because it seems to me to give insight into the nature of the man and of his race.

I had been having my Sunday cup of afternoon tea in the shade of a huge banian tree, and was idly amusing myself by throwing crumbs to a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed palm squirrel, that had crept down the trunk not two yards from me. Attracted, partly by hunger, but more by the sheer light-hearted cussedness which makes the Indian squirrel so charming a companion, the little creature came nearer and nearer, its tail in an aggressive pluff, its large eyes scanning my face knowingly. A pause, a dart, and it was chirruping on the branch above my head with the crumb in its deft fingers.

"The Presence is a friend of RÂm's," said "London" deferentially, "that is why the heart of the Presence is so soft."

"And why do you say I am a friend of RÂm's?" I asked.

"Because the Presence is a friend to RÂm's friend. Has the Huzoor never heard how the squirrel people come to have four black marks on their golden backs? Then I will tell. It was in the old days when RÂm's parents fastened the silken bracelet on his wrist, and sent him out to find Seeta his wife. The Presence will have heard of that, and how each year our women folk tie the rÂm rukkhi to our wrists for luck. Well, when RÂm, the King of all men, came to Sanderip, he found the great Monkey had carried off Seeta the Queen of women. Then, being in distress, he bid all the birds and beasts and fishes come to help him, for great RÂm was the Lord of the whole earth. Now the first to answer his call was the squirrel. In those days it was all golden, like corn in the sunlight, and light-hearted beyond all mortal things, as it is now. It leapt on to RÂm's sword and cried, 'Master! I am ready.' But the great god's eyes grew soft as he saw the little thing's slender beauty, and perceived that it had the bravest heart of all his creatures. So he laid his hand on it in blessing, saying softly--

"'Nay! tender little warrior! thou art too pretty for strife and death. Live on, brave and careless for ever, so that weary men may see the beauty of the life great RÂm has given.'

"But, lo! when he raised his hand the squirrel's shining coat bore the shadow of RÂm's tired fingers, for even golden life is dimmed by the touch of care."

This and many another tale he told to me, while the green pigeons bustled about in the branches, and the squirrels lay yawning amongst the mango flowers. For the winter had flown, the camping season was at an end, and still "London" was waiting. He never complained; only when rain fell, or when there was a heavy dew, or a good winnowing wind,--anything, in short, calculated to gladden the heart of a farmer,--he used to talk of 'Ide Park, and bewail the fact that Sikattar sahibs had penetrated even there. The hot weather passed, as usual, in a stagnation of mind and body more or less modified by individual energy, and during it "London" paid me but occasional visits, and was fairly cheerful. No sooner, however, did the stir of coming cultivation begin again in the high, unirrigated soils, than he followed suit with a growing restlessness. And still no answer came. Just then a small piece of Government land,--that is to say, land in which no cultivator had a vested interest,--fell vacant in a village not far from "London's" ancestral home, and I bethought me of putting him in as tenant if I could. But it is no easy task to find soil to cultivate in India, since farms are not "to be let" as they are in England, and the State, though in reality owner, has no power to turn out one man or his heirs in favour of another, or in any way to manipulate the holdings of hereditary cultivators. Why, knowing this, it could have delegated the power to the money lender, in giving the right of alienation by sale or mortgage to the cultivator, is one of those abstruse mysteries over the elucidation of which volumes have been and are still to be written. A mystery, moreover, which is responsible for half the growing poverty of those whose patient labour is the bulwark of the State.

The particular village in which I hoped to find a more or less temporary outlet for poor "London's" hereditary instinct--which made the sight of a plough have much the same effect on him as a clutch of eggs has on a broody hen--had earned an unenviable notoriety from the number of mutineers it produced in the '57. Nearly one-half of the land had come under direct Government control by confiscation, and as the country settled down, had been leased, at fixed rentals, to the loyal families, or in many cases to the heirs of the dead offenders.

One of these, the son of a notorious mutineer, had just died childless, and it was into his place that I determined, if possible, to put "London." The case "Dewa RÂm versus the Empress and others" had come back to me for the third time, with a request for further inquiry and evidence. There was none to give, for in a country where birth and marriage certificates are unknown quantities, and registers of all kinds are inaccurate, legal proof of a case like "London's" is almost impossible. As he himself invariably said, it was no wonder the SirkÂr had been deceived by the foreclosed mortgage, and the lying man who tilled the soil, joined to the newly-invented theory that the peasant proprietor had a right to alienate the ancestral property of his descendants. So, with the prospect of another cold weather camp before me, I felt an almost morbid desire to get rid of "London," and those patient eyes that seemed to me as if they were ever on the look-out for the promised land.

I was told afterwards by my superiors, in set terms, that my behaviour was illegal and indiscreet, and that I should have gone round the mutinous crew one by one, giving them the option of leasing the land, before offering it to any one else, above all, before putting in a man whose claim to other ground was "in course of settlement." I believe my superiors to have been quite right theoretically, and I know that, practically, my philanthropic experiment proved a disastrous failure. Not a week after "London," glowing with gratitude, set out for the village in which his new holding was situated, he was brought back to the hospital on a stretcher with a broken arm and several clouts on the head. Indeed, I have always felt it to be the crowning mercy of my career, that no one was actually killed in the free fight which ensued on my protÉgÉ's arrival in the mutineers' village; for he had some friends, stalwart as himself, and the JÂts, once aroused from their usual calm placidity, fight like devils with their long quarterstaves. On this occasion they gave the truculent crew as good as they got, until overpowered by numbers. When the incident occurred I was in a very out of the way part of the district, and I well remember having to send a special messenger thirty miles with an urgent telegram in order to allay still more urgent inquiries as to the "serious agrarian riot in B----."

When I returned to head-quarters I found "London" convalescent and distinctly cheerful. He was sitting on the hospital steps whittling a new staff, and expressed his determination of going back to the village as soon as possible with a larger supply of friends. I felt constrained, however, to deny him his revenge. To begin with, my official reputation could not have stood another agrarian riot; in addition, the mutineering village had appealed against my action "en masse," so the matter had passed beyond my control. "London" was sorrowful, but sympathetic, seeming to enjoy the idea that I too might become a prey to Sikattars ere long. He took great pride in his broken arm and new stick, and more than once suggested that if the great Queen only knew how he had clouted the heads of the misbegotten, unfaithful devils, she might believe that his father had indeed left a son.

After this I made several attempts to bring a plough handle within "London's" reach, but my philanthropy was guarded, and my efforts uniformly unsuccessful. Once, a small atom of land on which I had my eye was taken up by a newly-made Municipal Committee as a public institute. It was Jubilee year, and various things of the kind were being started. When I saw this particular one last, a stuffed crocodile, two spinning wheels, some tussar silk cocoons, and a specimen card of aniline dyes, occupied what they were pleased to call the Industrial Department. In the reading room opposite an interesting collection of seditious journalism lay on the table, and a chromo of the "Kaiser-i-Hind" hung over the fireplace.

Then once again, when I thought I had found a resting-place for those dreamy eyes, the Military Department stepped between hope and fruition with a stout Subadar-major who had done the State good service. Finally, sick leave--the end of so many kindly plans and hopes for those who, living amongst the peasantry learn to admire them as they deserve to be admired--came to put an end to all my plans for "London."

He bore the tidings with gentle regret. The Presence, he said, had not been well for some time; It would be the better of seeing 'Ide Park again, and perhaps as It was to be away so long--a whole year he was told--there would be a chance of seeing not only the Sikattar, but the great Queen herself.

"And if," he continued, standing up and leaning on his staff as I had first seen him, whilst his eyes followed the ploughing for yet another harvest,--"and if the Presence is so fortunate, perhaps It might find time to remember that Dewa RÂm the JÂt is waiting for his land."

The reason for my writing this absolutely true experience is one of those distressing inconsistencies which are part and parcel of poor humanity. One might have thought the facts sufficient to excuse a resort to pen, ink, and paper on the part of one really interested in that peasant life of which the rulers and governors know so little. But it needed an unreality, a mere feverish fancy to supply the motive power.

I was in Hyde Park yesterday at the close of a bright afternoon. No need to describe what I saw. To those who live in London the scene is as familiar as their own faces, while those who do not, have at their disposal a thousand descriptions far better than any I could give. An unusually thick sprinkling of clerical attire among the crowd testified to the attraction of missionary meetings when combined with London at its best. Indeed, as I had come down Piccadilly the vast number of sandwich men advertising lectures, meetings, and addresses on every conceivable subject, struck me as favourable evidence of the growing intelligence and sympathy of the many for things beyond the daily round of English life.

I sat down, and being a comparative stranger, amused myself, as many have done before me, in listening to the scraps of conversation which fell from the lips of the passers by--the flotsam-jetsam left by the stream of humanity; and as usual my initial curiosity and interest died down before the growing perception of some strange likeness underlying all the atoms of thought and speech.

Slowly, uncertainly, as the confused tints of a child's magic lantern focus into some horrid monster, or as the ebbing tide discloses the drowned face of a victim, the half-heard assertions, denials, protestations of the pleasure-seeking crowd, gave up their individual form and colour, and were lost in the one unchangeable, indestructible characteristic of humanity--its selfishness. On every face an interest, a smile, a frown, a thought; below these, the one source of all. Inevitable, no doubt, but depressing in the masks are men and women claiming to be the cream of culture and civilisation. I wondered if, when the best was said and done, the art of widening our vitality by our sympathies had made much progress.

A stir in the crowd, a murmur, a look of expectation roused me from idle moralisings. A couple of outriders in red came down the drive, and people paused to look.

"By Jove! it's the Queen herself," said some one hurriedly, as a brougham drove past giving a glimpse from behind closed windows of grey hair and a widow's cap. The murmur swelled to a roar, almost a cheer. Every hat was off, and some country cousins stood up in their chairs in order to see better.

Now, what followed will, I know, be set down to the attack of Indian fever which some ten minutes afterwards sent me home to shiver in bed. Nevertheless, I am prepared to swear that there, amongst the flower-decked mashers and the powdery belles, I saw the tall, gaunt form of "London" leaning on his quarterstaff. The gentle, deprecatory smile I had so often seen when he spoke of 'Ide Park was on his face, as if he knew the incongruity of his own appearance in such a scene. His eyes were not on the modest carriage in which the Kaiser-i-Hind was being partially displayed to her faithful subjects. They were fixed on me! On me, the tape-tied, sealing-waxed representative of a paternal despotism in India. The myriad tongues resumed their civilised shibboliths, but above them came a well-known cadence, "And if the Presence is so fortunate, perhaps it might find time to remember that Dewa RÂm the JÂt is waiting for his land."

As I said before, I went home to bed. What else could I do? Perhaps if other people could have seen what I saw, Dewa RÂm and his kind would not be so often in difficulties about their land.