Prem Lal, census enumerator, raised to that fleeting dignity by reason of his being a "middle fail" student (as those who have at least gone up for the Middle School examination style themselves in India), paused in his ineffectual attempt to write with a fine steel nib on the fluttering blue paper held--without any backing--in his left hand, and, all unconsciously, gave the offending pen that sidelong, blot-scattering flick which the native reed requires when it will not drive properly.

Then he coughed a deprecating cough, and covered the previous act--natural enough in one whose ancestors, being of the clerkly caste, had spent long centuries in acquiring and transmitting it--by displaying his Western culture in another way.

"Now for the next 'adult' or 'adulteress' in this house," he said pompously in polyglot.

The grammatical correctness of his genders passed unchallenged by his half-curious, half-awe-stricken audience. The blue paper, ruled, scheduled, classified, contained an unknown world to that patriarchal party assembled in the sleepy sunshine which streamed down on the roof set--far above the city, far above Western civilisation--under the sleepy sunshiny sky; so it might well hold stranger things to its environment than untrustworthy feminines.

"There is the grandfather's father, Chiragh Shah, Huzoor," replied a man of about thirty who, standing midway between the real householder and his grandsons, had assumed the responsibility of spokesmanship in virtue of his possibly combining old wisdom and new culture. He used the honorific title "Huzoor" not to Prem Lal--whom he gauged scornfully to be a mere schoolboy, and a Hindoo idolator to boot--but to the blue paper which represented the alien rulers, who were numbering the people for reasons best known to themselves.

A stir came from the door chink behind which the females of the family were decorously hiding their indignant anxiety.

"Yea! let the old man go forth," shrilled a voice to which none in that household ever said nay. "He is past his time--let them take his brains if they will, and leave virtuous women alone. Who are we, to be registered as common evil walkers?"

Even Prem Lal grew humble instantly.

"Nay! mother," he said apologetically, in unconscious oblivion of his own previous classification. "The Sirkar suggests no impropriety. We seek but to know such trivials as age--sex--if idiot, cripple, spinster, adult or adult----"

"Let Chiragh Shah go forth to him," interrupted the hidden oracle with opportune decision. "Lo! his midday opium is still in his brain. Let it bring peace to him and the eater thereof."

The chink widened obediently, disclosing a fluttering and scattering of dim draperies. So, roused evidently from a doze in the inner darkness, a very old man shuffled out into the sunshine, then stopped, blinking at it as if, verily, he found himself in some new and unfamiliar world.

"The Sirkar hath sent for thee, grandad," bawled the appointed spokesman in his ear. "They need----"

But the words were enough. The blank, dazed look passed into a sudden alacrity which took years from the old body as it sat it a-trembling with eagerness.

"The Sirkar," he echoed. "It is long since I, Chiragh Shah--long since----" He relapsed as suddenly into dreams. His voice failed as if following the suit of memory, but he supplied the lack of both by a smile which spoke volumes.

For it was the smile of a sycophant as unblushingly false as the teeth which it displayed--teeth which were square, dicelike blocks of ivory, unvarying in size, strung together en a bold gold wire, and hung--Heaven knows how--to his toothless gums.

"Sit down, meeÂn-jee," said the census enumerator, politely, for the heart-whole artificiality of the smile admitted of no breach of manners. "We seek but honourable names and ages."

So they brought the old man a quaint red lacquered stool, which had once carried a certain dignity in its spindled back rail by reason of its having come into the family with some far dead and gone bride--Chiragh Shah's own, mayhap!--and there he sate, still with that look of urbane smiling alacrity rejuvenating his wrinkled face.

There was a hint, beneath the semi-transparency of his frayed white muslin robe, cut in a bygone fashion, of very worn, very old brocade fitting closely to the very thin, very old body, and the embroidered cap set back from his high, narrow forehead showed a glint here and there of frayed old worn gold thread.

"His name is Chiragh Shah," yawned the spokesman, adding in a bawl, "How old art thou, dÂdÂ--the Sirkar is asking?"

There was a little pause, and wintry though the sun was, its shine seemed to filter straight through all things, denying a visible shadow even to the blue paper.

"How old?" came the urbane voice, speaking with a long-lapsed precision of polish. "That is as God wills and my lord chooses."

Prem Lal glanced doubtfully at the schedules. They did not provide for such politeness, so he appealed mutely to the spokesman, who replied by roundabout assertion:

"He was of knowledgeable years when the city fell--wast thou not, dÂdÂ?" The explanatory shout brought keen intelligence to the hearer.

"Aye! it was from the palace bastion I watched the English. Half the city watched them that 14th of September...." Here once more voice and memory lapsed awhile. But Prem Lal's history was at least equal to the more recent event of that memorable date, so his pen grew glib in ciphering. "Taking knowledgeable age as ten," he commenced rapidly, "with deduction of years 1857 from present epoch 1881----"

His face darkened. "He has the appearance of more age than thirty-five," he began dubiously, when the suave old voice picked up the lost thread of recollection.

"Lake sahib came to our court two days after, and the King, being blind, saw not that the English face was no more merciful than the French face which had been driven away, so there were rejoicings."

"He means the day which began the hundred years of tyranny," suggested the spokesman; and Prem Lal's pen had already substituted 1805 for 1857, when the voice of her who had to be obeyed came sternly from the chink. "Put him down as a hundred, boy!" it said scornfully. "Meat is tough when the sacrifice is past its prime, anyhow, so what does it matter?"

The next question presented no difficulty. No one in that house could be aught but a descendant of the Prophet, so the answer "Syyed" sprang to every lip with chill, almost scornful, pride.

"Profession or trade," continued Prem Lal, mechanically; "gold-thread embroiderer, I suppose, like the rest of you."

It was a natural supposition, seeing that the high-bred, in-bred household had for years past--since, in fact, courts were abolished in Delhi--taken to this, the trade of so many ousted officials.

"Huzoor! no!" replied the spokesman with a yawn, for the proceedings were becoming uninteresting to him. "He is before that. He does nothing--he never did anything."

"Gentleman at large," hesitated on Prem Lal's pen; there an ephemeral conscientiousness born of his ephemeral dignity made him appeal to the old man himself.

Chiragh Shah smiled courteously. His hands trembled themselves tip to tip.

"My profession," he echoed. "Surely I am Chaplaoo--of inheritance and choice," he added alertly.

"Chaplaoo!" That was clear enough to Prem Lal in the vernacular, but how was it to be translated for the blue paper which must be written in English as an exposition of learning that might lead to further employment?

Being prepared for such emergencies by a pocket dictionary, he looked the word up--a proceeding which revived interest in the audience, notably behind the chink, whence the magisterial voice was heard remarking that it was no wonder the Sirkar wanted brains if it was so crassly ignorant as not to know what chaplaoo meant!

This flurried Prem Lal into premature decision. "Chaplaoo," he quoted under his breath, "a fawner--ha! I see! One who keepers the fawn--forester--huntsman--Am I not right?" he translated with a preparative flick of the steel pen.

The even ivory smile was clouded by an expression too blank for resentment.

"The Sirkar mistakes. This slave kept no animals."

Prem Lal dived hurriedly into further equivalents. "Parasite--backbiter--one who bites backs! Ah! I see--bug--etc."

"This slave, as he has said, kept no kind of animals whatever," repeated Chiragh Shah, with a suave, unconscious dignity which appeased even the rising storm of virtuous indignation behind the chink. "He was--if the Sirkar prefers the title--Chapar-qunatya, by inheritance and choice."

The rolling Arabic word had a soothing sound, and a hush fell with the sunshine even on Prem Lal's search after a common factor between East and West.

"Toad eater! eater of toads----" he began with doubt in the suggestion; "lick spittle--one who licks the spittle?"

"Eater of toads, licker of spittle," shrilled the voice of the chink. "Dost come here defiling an honourable house--and I who purvey its food--with such vile calumny--I----"

"Peace, mother," soothed a softer voice; "such things do no harm save to the speaker. What you spit at the sky falls on your own face!"

"Aye!" assented a ruder voice, "and is he not a Kyasth (clerk)--lie he must or his belly will burst."

The word "lie" gave the agitated enumerator a fresh clue, and the pages of the dictionary fluttered as if in a full gale.

"Lie--liar--slanderer----"

There was no connection in his tone; but the suggestion being at least plausible to his audience, the question was referred loudly to old Chiragh Shah, who was beginning to nod with combined sunshine and opium drams.

"Lie?" he asked, with a return of that swift alacrity. "Surely, I lied always. Yea! from the beginning to the end."

He used the high-sounding Arabic word for liar, and so sent Prem Lal a--fluttering once more. Ere he had lit on the correct gutteral, old Chiragh Shah's set smile had changed into a real one. The slack muscles of his neck stiffened; he flung out his right hand airily.

"Hush!" said the two smallest boys on the roof in sudden interest; "dÂd is going to talk."

He was.

"Lies!" he began, and there was tone in the old voice, "and wherefore not if it is a real lie and not a bungle? But I never was a bungler. I know my profession too well--even at the last--yea, at the very end they had to come to me for artifice--for subterfuge. It was the last lie--to count as a real lie."

He paused, one of the boys had crept round to him and now laid a compelling hand of entreaty on the old man.

"Tell us of it, dÂdÂ."

The spokesman looked at the enumerator as if for orders.

"It may elucidate the meanings," muttered the Middle-fail to himself.

So in the stillness of that sunshiny roof, set so far above the workaday world, they sate listening.

"Yea! it was the last lie that was worth the telling. Yet I was past my prime like the court itself. For none, save those who saw, knew the heart-burnings, the bitterness of those last years. King but in name, the very court officials drifting away to other allegiance. And Lake sahib had been so full of promise on that first September day, when the Frenchman was driven away because, forsooth! he had made the blind Shah Alum a prisoner in his own palace----" There was a pause in the thin old cadences, and a flitting shadow fell on the sun-saturate listeners from a wheeling kite overhead.

"And what was Bahadur Shah but a prisoner, too? What matter--the Huzoors gave him bread after their fashion and he was unfaithful to the salt of it. That was not well--one must be loyal even to a lie! So after the mad midsummer dream of recovered kingship in the palace--such a mad dream--we who dreamed it knew at the time that we were dreaming--came that second September day when the English returned to Delhi. We did not watch them, then; we were hiding in the tombs--Humayon's tomb without the wall.

"It was the night after Hudson sahib bahadur had wiled away the King by fair promises--aya! the Huzoor knew the trick of those well--but the Princes were still hiding--and many a better man, too.

"My son for one. He was wounded to the death. Ah! I knew it--though the brave lad--he was the son of mine old age--steadied his breath and smiled when I spoke to him. But there was little leisure for words with treachery to right and treachery to left, and none to trust fairly. For the world had changed even then, and there were but one or two of my kind left, and I was out of favour. Too old for the new court--too old for new pleasures. And the young Prince--lo! how he used to laugh at my worn flatteries--had many pleasures--so many of them that he took some of them from other folks' lives; thus he had foes. Aye! but friends, too, for he came nearer to kingliness than his brothers. And my son loved him.

"So when the danger came, and I knew by chance of the plot to kill the Prince as he slept, and gain the reward set on him by the English, I had no choice. Yet I dare trust no one in the skulking crowd which crept about the shadows of the old tomb. In those days it was every one for himself, and the Prince had scant following at best. And he lay drunk with wine and women, out of bravado partly to the skulkers--in one of the half-secret upper rooms. But I knew which, and I remember it so well. The grey spear point of the distant Kut showed through its open arch.

"And below, in a far nook of the crypt, where there was a secret swinging panel in the red sandstone wall, known only to the old, my son lay dying.

"He steadied his breath as I stooped over him, and whispered that he would soon be fighting for his Prince again.

"'Soon, my son,' I answered, waiting as he smiled. For I knew the silence was at hand--silence from all things save the breathing that would only steady into death.

"We, my servant and I, lifted him easily. He was but a lad, though he would have grown to greater stature than the Prince. His head lay so contentedly on my shoulder as I went backward up the stair, telling those who stood aside to let us pass, that he was better and craved the fresher air of the roof. 'Better? Aye! he is better, or soon will be, old fool,' said one with a laugh. Then clattered noisily after his companions, so noisily that the echo of the winding staircase sent their scornful mirth back to me. 'He will be dead--like someone he followed--by morning.'

"Before morning, if I did not fail, thought I, silently, as, searching the shadows, we sought the Prince's hidden room. There was a youth ever with the Prince--a baby-faced, frightened, womanly thing--yet faithful as far as in him lay. Him, I caught by the throat, 'They would kill thee, too,' I said; 'better take the chance of life. If fate be kind, ere dawn discovers the deceit, he will be fit to fly.'

"So after my servant and I, wailing at our lack of wisdom, had carried the Prince down, face covered as one to whom worse sickness had come suddenly, I crept to the upper room again. It was growing late, but the grey spear-head of the Kut still showed beyond the open arch as I covered the lad's face, lest, for all his gay dress, the murderers might see too much.

"'Dream thou art fighting for the Prince, sonling!' I said, knowing he was past even the steadying of his breath for an answer; but the smile had lingered on his face.

"Then I covered my face also, and, bidding the baby-faced one escape to the crypt as soon as it was possible, sate as a servant might have sate, at the turning of the ways from the stair head.

"Would those who were to come be familiar or strange? I wondered. The latter, most likely, since Chiragh Shah, the Chaplaoo, had long since passed from court life, almost from remembrance.

"They were strange; as they challenged me, I drew the cloth from my face without fear.

"'The Prince's room!' they cried, dagger-point at my breast. But that could not be. There must be no suspicion, only certainty, only soothed certainty. 'I have been waiting to show it to my lords,' I answered. 'Lo! he sleeps sound--yea! he sleeps sound, his face toward the Kut.'

"So, with smooth words, I led them in the dark----"

The memory of the darkness seemed to fall as darkness itself on the old brain, and Chiragh Shah sate silent in the sunshine for a few seconds. When he spoke again, it was as if years had passed. "It was the last lie that was worth the telling," he said, almost triumphantly.

"And a good lie, too," came the shrill voice from behind the door chink. "See you, boy!--call the old man by his right name in your paper, or may God's curse light on you for ever!"

Thus adjured, Prem Lal, who, throughout the whole tale, had been fluttering his dictionary from one synonym to another, suggested sycophant; that was, he explained, one who flatters and lies for personal profit.

"Profit!" echoed the voice. "Small profit dÂd gained. Was not the Prince killed with his brothers next day by Hudson Sahib; so there was no one left even to reward the old man?"

"Save God," suggested Prem Lal, piously trying to escape somehow from the dilemma.

"And there is gain, and gain," admitted the spokesman, combining new and old, east and west.

"Hush!" said one of the two small boys again; "dÂd is going to talk--he may know----"

So once more the old voice rose in unconscious apology for the difficulty of condensing what etomologists call his life history into a census paper.

"Yea, it was good, and hard--yet not so hard as the first. That never left me, despite the long years."

It seemed, indeed, as if it had not, for something of childlike complaint came into the old voice. "It was my first day at court. Mother had cut my father's khim-khab robe--crimson with gold flowering--to fit me, despite her tears. Her eyes were heavy with them when she kissed me; but I had no fear for all I was so young. I knew the women's bread depended on my tongue--though it was my heritage also to be Chaplaoo.

"And the King was pleased. Mother had tied my turban so tall and he laughed at that. It was out in the garden, he under the gilt canopy, the nobles round and beyond the flowers, and birds fluttering among the roses.

"And I was standing beside the king, and he was laughing--for I knew my part.

"Then the fluttering came closer, closer, and lo! a bird settled on my wrist. It was Gul-afrog--I had left it with my sister, but it had followed me--for we loved each other. So, on my wrist it sate joyful, and salaamed, as I had taught it, drooping its pretty wings.

"Then the King cried, 'How, now, whose pretty bird is this?' and someone laid a warning hand upon my shoulder. But I knew before what I must say if I was to stand in father's place. I knew! I knew!

"'It is yours, my king.'

"So I said, kneeling at his feet! 'It is yours, it is yours,' and Gul-afrog had been with me since it fell out of the bulbul nest in the rose tree. Then they brought a golden cage ..." The old man sate staring out into the sunshine in silence, and only the littlest of the two boys wept softly.

"We will call him 'Flatterer for Gain.'" said Prem Lal, in desperate decision, and perhaps the description came as near to old Chiragh Shah's profession as was possible in a census schedule.