Flora Annie Webster Steel

THE MONEY OF FOOLS

'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered HÂfiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history of civilisation!'

The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet to speak.

This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another orator was in full swing of adjective.

The row of bicycles in the verandah, and a knot of those green-box hired carriages outside on the road, had told Chris already that he had been right in calculating on an assemblage of young India; but this was a larger gathering than he had expected, and he remembered suddenly with a vague shame--since he was a prominent member of the organisation--that it must be the monthly meeting of the Society for Promoting the General Good of People. He had quite forgotten all about it; still here he was, and here was his audience for that roll of manuscript he held.

He glanced round the double room,--for both dining and drawing-room had been thrown open, rather to Miriam-bibi's relief, since she could now sit unreservedly in the screened verandah and play 'beggar my neighbour' with her foster-mother, who did duty as ayah--and recognised almost every one of note in young Nushapore.

HÂfiz Ahmad was in the chair, of course; a rather fat young man of the coarser Mohammedan type, with a short curly beard. Like many others in the room, he wore a scarlet fez; though why this distinctive bit of a Turk's costume should be grafted on a quasi-English quasi-Indian one is a mystery not to be beaten in incomprehensibility by any other minor problem of our Indian Empire.

Beside him was Lala RÂm NÂth, the head, in Nushapore, of the only real political organisation in India; that is the Arya Somaj; an organisation all the more dangerously political because it denies the basis of politics, and appeals to that of religion.

He, Chris knew, would be the last to admit the position taken up in the roll of manuscript, namely, that it was suicidal on the part of the little leaven of educated natives to pose as the party of opposition, since that was, briefly, to array itself permanently, inevitably, against what none could deny was the party of progress; the party which had made this little leaven itself a possibility.

RÂm NÂth, the breath of whose nostrils was adverse criticism to Government, who, in bewildering defiance of the laws which govern Indian life, had swallowed red-hot Radicalism wholesale, like a juggler swallowing a red-hot poker, was not likely to admit this at any time; still less now, when he was the champion of a wrongfully dispossessed Municipal Committee. Chris knew exactly what the Lala would say, and what the majority of the young men--there was not one over thirty-five in the room--would say also. And yet their faces were brimful of intelligence, of a certain eager earnestness. It could hardly be otherwise, since the mere fact of their being in that room proved them to be of those whose faculty and desire for acquiring knowledge was so far superior to that of the average man, that it had taken them, as it were, to a place apart. To be tempted of the devil perhaps; though, none the less, the fact bore witness to a certain nobility of type.

So it was all the more strange that when--the next speaker having finished in a calculated chaos of words--Govind, the dissipated editor, who had yawned his tacit approval of DilarÂm the dancer, rose to denounce some trivial iniquity in the ruling race, his middle-school English, and cheap abuse, was received with just the same desultory applause. It seemed to Chris, listening impatiently, as if the faculty of criticism had been lost in its abuse, as if the one thing needful was antagonism pur et simple.

The great event of all such meetings in Nushapore followed next--a paper by RÂm NÂth. He spoke admirably, and if he wandered occasionally from the point, the vast scope of his subject, 'The Political, National, and Social aspect of Modern India,' must be held responsible for that!

An Englishman listening would, of course, have challenged his facts and denied his conclusions; but Chris did neither. He gave an unqualified assent to many and many a point. And yet when he listened to the assertion that 'the cup of our political evils is so full, the burden of our social inequalities so intolerable, and the tyranny of custom stands out so red and foul, that some militant uprising has become essential to national salvation, and armed resistance the only hope of amendment,' he wondered with a certain shame how many of the millions of India would find a personal grievance in social equality or political evil. And as for the tyranny of custom? What militant uprising was possible among willing slaves?

For all that he listened, not without an answering heartbeat, to the Lala's eloquence, as he skilfully fanned every burning question with a wind of words, and let the fretting fingers of subtle suggestion undermine the foundations of fact. He was specially bitter against the plague precautions, and his hints that there was more behind them than met the eye, aroused the only spontaneous applause of the evening. Yet once more, when the well-reasoned, admirably-delivered address was over, the audience listened with exactly the same receptive expression to the recitation, by its author, of a hymn for use in the approaching Congress in which delegates were told they should--

'To croaking fools their folly leave,

Their canting puerile rant;

To noble mission steadfast cleave

And sprouts devoutly plant.'

It was a very long hymn, and it alluded, amongst other items, to the 'blazing sun of Western lore,' to 'duty's trumpet call,' to 'England, dear home of every virtue, sweet nurse to Liberty,' and to 'India's crying woes.'--It secured a rather more hearty meed of applause than anything else, possibly because the audience--being above all things scholastic--appreciated the difficulty of making English verse!

So, with a resolution that the 'Good of People' must be encouraged at all costs, and a vote of thanks to Mr. RÂm NÂth, the actual business of the meeting ended, but not the speechifying. Half a dozen minor men stood up with a surcharged look; but one, a tall young fellow with a charmingly gentle, emotional face, caught the chairman's eye first. He was a schoolmaster, and at his own expense brought out a monthly magazine which was, briefly, the most high-toned bit of printing that ever passed through a press. Bishops might have read it and confessed themselves edified.

'Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,' he began, 'although formal recognition of our distinguished townsman's magnificent elocutionary effort has not been wanting, I wish to record my humble admiration, and to state my belief that his forecast of possible difficulties regarding plague precautions may amount to prophecy. Since, alas! our poor folk have been strangers to beneficent sanitations from birth, and are now, as another honourable speaker pointed out, in considerable states of ebullition. Yet, instead of applying salutary balms to these uneducated minds, I grieve to say that efforts are being made to increase terror; witness the golden paper falling from Heaven, as bolt from the blue, in the so-called Temple of Viseshwar. This trick of greedy Brahmins----'

RÂm NÂth was on his feet in an instant, recognised champion of his faith.

'I beg to submit, Mr. Chairman, that these words are out of order. This society is pledged to neutrality, and "trick of greedy Brahmins" is calculated to wound pious feelings.'

'I second the protest,' put in another eager voice, 'and beg the objectionable phrase be withdrawn.'

A murmur of approval ran through the larger part of the audience, and HÂfiz Ahmad, with the scowl of the true idol-hater on his face, asked the speaker to withdraw the words; which he did, protesting that, as a member of the Brahmo Somaj, he had only spoken with a view to eternal and abstract truth. The paper, he continued, though possibly only the outcome of the quarrel which, his hearers must know, had been going on for some time between the priests of the two rival temples regarding the relative supremacy of KÂli-m and her consort Shiv-jee----

Here the chairman himself called with alacrity, 'Order! Order! This meeting does not deal with such dogmatics,' and another and smaller murmur of assent followed.

The gentle-faced schoolmaster apologised again. There could be no doubt, at any rate, he said almost pathetically, that the uneducated mind was, as the poet said, liable to be tickled by straws, and so he conceived it to be his duty to draw the attention of the 'Society for Promoting the General Good of People' to this paper, which, he might add, he was going to pillory in his publication with scathing criticism. So, drawing a slip from his pocket, he began to read in the vernacular--

'I, Kali, will come. In my dark month I will come for blood. Woe to them who seek to stay me in the city, since I will have blood on my altar whether the hands of strange men stay Me, or smite Me. For I am Kali the Death-Mother of all men, whether they will it or no. Yea! I will come.'

The vague phrases, besprinkled with hollow-sounding mysterious Sanskrit words, brought a curious hush even to that assemblage, till HÂfiz Ahmad laughed arrogantly.

'Is that all, pandit-jee?' he asked; 'that bogey will do little.'

'As much, I venture to suggest,' put in RÂm NÂth suavely, 'as the bogey of supposed invasion of domestic privacy for women.'

The Mohammedan, though he professed himself above such considerations, frowned. 'I demur. The caste prejudices will, in my opinion, be more difficult to place on common-sense footings.'

They had embarked on the fencing-match which, as often as not, ended discussion between these two recognised leaders of the two communities, Hindoo and Mohammedan, and the attention of the meeting had wandered after them, when a new voice brought it back. It was Chris Davenant's. Taller than most there, fairer, and of better birth than the generality of those who brave the dangers of foreign travel, he was the show man of young Nushapore for pure culture, as RÂm NÂth was for ability; and as such he commanded attention.

'Gentlemen!' he said, 'it seems to me that this paper, which pandit Narain Das has just read, will give our society an opportunity for practical work. It means nothing, or at most little, to any of us here. But none will deny it will mean much to many; to our friends--let us face the facts!--to our own families. And it is a dangerous paper, gentlemen! None know that better than we, who have passed from the influence of such words,'--here that faint desultory clapping became audible--'and it is just because we have so passed, that I ask this meeting what it is prepared to do in order to combat the possible, the probable effect of these mysterious threats?'

'Hear! hear!' came several voices. And then came silence; until the pandit said, in hurt tones--

'I have already told this meeting that I will publish in my monthly magazine, together with criticisms of the most scathing character----'

'And,' put in RÂm NÂth, rising to the challenge in Chris Davenant's face, 'I venture to suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this meeting pass a resolution condemning----'

'And who will know what resolutions we pass, Mr. Secretary?' interrupted Chris, with a sudden passion which gave his face a look that was half hope, half wistful doubt; 'who will read your diatribes, Mr. Editor? We! We only, who pass the resolutions, who write the criticisms, who know already how to appraise that paper! Printed words, gentlemen, are no use to those who cannot read, resolutions are naught to those who never hear of them. But we have tongues; we can speak! We can, if we choose, throw the whole weight of our personal influence on the side of truth, even though that side be also the side of a government with which we have many a righteous feud.'

As he paused for breath, there was a murmur of approval for the eloquence, none for the thought it held. 'Gentlemen!' he went on, 'it is futile for any one here to deny that this paper aims at rousing religious opposition to any precautions whatever against the plague! Well! some of us here, myself among the number, hold that many of the precautions in the government programme are objectionable----'

'And more in the private instructions, if rumour says true,' put in RÂm NÂth spitefully.

'I have listened to reasonable criticism, reasonable resentment, and I have agreed with it. But is there any one of us here who would throw all precautions to the winds?' went on Chris, passing by the interruption; 'is there any one who really believes that this golden paper fell from heaven? If there are, I let them pass. But for the rest of us, I call upon you not to write, not to resolve, but to speak; to speak to our wives, our mothers, our sisters--to the timid women whom such threats alarm; briefly to throw our whole personal influence on what we know to be the side of truth.'

There was an instant's silence; then HÂfiz Ahmad, as chairman, said perfunctorily: 'I am sure we are all completely at one with our honourable friend. Such manifest attempts at preposterous intimidation deserve the heartiest contempt of educated minds.'

'I second that proposition,' added RÂm NÂth as head of his following. 'We are morally bound to give heartiest co-operation in the difficult task before government, in so far as is compatible with strict deference to the private religious feeling of all parties concerned. That is the groundwork of true liberty.'

A fine scorn showed on Chris Davenant's face; he was about to speak when pandit Narain Das turned to him with a wistful apology in his, and said: 'Without demurring to his general principle, I would remind our honourable friend, whose educational career is a credit to our town, that our influence, alas! is but a broken reed. Our position, in a society of ignorami, is anomalous, not to say precarious. And if we too freely kick against the pricks, we are in danger of losing what we have, which would be undesirable. As John Morley says in his valuable work on compromise----'

Chris turned on him almost savagely. 'There is no need to preach compromise, pandit-jee! We practise it. We do not let our opinions influence our own conduct, yet we expect them to influence the conduct of our rulers! We write these opinions. Oh, yes! we write them! Why? Because we know that only those read them who agree with us! But which of us will go from here to-day, and braving opposition, disregarding personal considerations, tell, even their own immediate families, that the Brahmins who wrote that paper are--are splendide mendax!'

He could not help it! He was keenly alive to the legitimate fun made by the opponents of young India, out of its intolerable aptitude for unsuitable quotation, but he fell a victim to it sometimes himself. So, as he paused before his own words--a house, as it were, divided against itself--he lost his opportunity. For a dapper little gentleman who, by reason of a high appointment under government, was generally allowed to apply the closure to heated or unwelcome discussions, had risen, and caught the chairman's eye.

'What our honourable and esteemed townsman, Mr. Krishn Davenund, has just said, must receive consensus of universal opinion, since it is doubtless of supreme importance to national life. Priest-craft, supernaturalism, et hoc genus omne, are clearly traits of low civilisation, just as popular government, enlargement of franchise, and diffusion of evolutionary theories are significant of higher. Still, Rome was not built in a day. Nor is there use in raising the wind, if we can't ride the whirlwind, or control the storm. Therefore, in the interim, pending wider liberty of speech, I propose that this meeting pass a unanimous resolution condemning such paltry attempts at cockering up superstitious feelings, and that the same be duly recorded in the minutes of our society.'

Before the relieved applause which greeted this diplomacy was over, the waste-paper basket beside Chris Davenant had received another contribution. His roll of manuscript, torn to shreds, lay in it, in obedience to a sudden, swift intuition that if he was ever to rise beyond the chaos of lofty aspirations, the strictly impersonal admiration for great deeds in his fellows, he must leave words behind.

So silent, alone, he walked home to his empty house, his empty life.

But others, though they passed homewards in batches still full of discussion, still drunk with words, were passing to environments which were, in a way, even more empty than his. So empty of the sentiments they had just been formulating, so much at variance with the ideals they had just professed, that the very imagination grows bewildered in the effort to reconcile the two.

Govind the editor, however, had less difficulty than most in accommodating his mental position to a stool stuck over the reeking gutter of a liquor shop, where he refreshed himself with a brandy-and-soda and an infamous cigar. He was in an evil temper, because the meeting, which he frequented chiefly because the speakers provided him with ideas wherewith to spice his own broadsheet, had been unusually discreet; so he would have to write his own sedition; unless he could pick up some scurrilous news instead.

'Nay, friend! I know naught to suit thy purpose,' replied the stout sergeant of police who frequented the same liquor shop, to whom he applied; 'save the finding of the Lady-sahib's jewel-box.'

'And the pearls?' asked Govind, taking out a greasy stump of pencil.

'The pearls!' echoed the policeman scornfully, 'as if pearls were to be found by us! They can be hid in a body's very mouth, and then, if there be not another mouth with a tongue in it, there is silence! But the box is enough to keep the file of the case open, and the inspector content for a while.'

'How many are in the lock-up concerning it?' asked Govind, out of the fulness of his knowledge regarding police methods.

'Six,' yawned the sergeant. 'The coolie who found the box broken and empty, flung in the bushes by the Lat-sahib's house; he was setting the fireworks for the big spectacle to-morrow. He sold it to a pawnbroker. That makes two for us. Then a woman bought the velvet lining from a rag-merchant. That makes four. She gave it to Hashim, tailor, who works for the Huzoors, as a cap to her grandchild. And he, having doubts, informed us. So he makes five. Then the firework-maker's people were turbulent, therefore we arrested one of them to show diligence.'

'And there was naught in the box when it was found?' asked Govind. He was writing now on one of the smoothed-out squares of white waste-paper which lay in a pile beside the liquor seller, who used them for wiping the rims of the tumblers, out of deference to the caste prejudices of his customers against a general cloth.

'God knows!' yawned the policeman piously. 'The man saith not; but there were letters besides the trinkets and the pearls, and we may find them, if not the others. Folk will not lose a cowrie's worth of waste-paper these hard times.'

'Ay!' assented the liquor seller, eyeing Govind askance. 'Mine had to be paid for, though some seem to think not. And paid high too, since the firework-makers were in the market for their squibs and crackers for to-morrow.'

A man lounging outside in the gutter laughed suddenly, viciously. 'They will find enough for them anyhow, even if they have the police at their tails!' he said, moving off with a defiant salaam to the fat policeman.

'I would I had handcuffed a pair of them,' remarked the latter mildly. ''Twould have been one trouble, and 'tis well to save oneself what one can these hard times.'

'Trouble!' echoed a passer-by, shaking his head, 'there will be no saving of that in Nushapore. JÂn-Ali-shÂn hath returned and brought the plague, so folk say.'

The liquor seller turned in quick interest to the sergeant of police.

'Dost know if he hath returned?' he asked; for the loafer was a customer who owed money, and must be got hold of while money was in his pockets.

For answer the policeman chucked away his cigar end, stumbled off the dais of the shop, and stood to attention, as a figure rounded the angle of the next crossway street, followed by a crowd of ragged half-naked urchins. It was JÂn-Ali-shÂn himself, washed, shaved, spruce, in a second-hand suit of khaki uniform and a white helmet which he had redeemed from a pawnshop on the credit of his new appointment as foreman of works. JÂn-Ali-shÂn, who, from sheer habit, had, on finding himself in the city with money in his pocket, gone straight for his old haunt. From the new resolutions, however, which with him always began with new work, he called for a 'gingerade plain' in a voice of authority, which made a little circle gather round him admiringly, as after humming a stave of 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' while he was opening the bottle, he proceeded to pour its fizzing contents down his throat.

The interest of the crowd seemed to amuse him, he sate down on the plinth and drew out a handful of pice in lordly fashion.

'Two anna, over an' above,' he said, holding up the coins, 'and I don't want no change. So which of you noble earls,' here he turned to his following of lads, 'is goin' to fight for the balance? You understand? Lurro abhi, jut put, an' be burra burra pailwÂn for two pice a 'ed (fight now immediately and be great heroes).'

The vile admixture of tongues seemed quite comprehensible to those acquainted with JÂn-Ali-shÂn's methods, for two urchins stepped forward at once, and the rest joined with the other loungers to form a ring.

John Ellison, loafer, leant back against the wall at his ease.

'Now then, nap,'^[6] he began, 'back to back fair and square. None o' yer nigger blarney,^[7] you young devil! Fight seeda,^[8] or it ain't worth fightin' at all. And I won't 'ave no buttin' in the stummick. You're pailwÂns m'henda nahin (heroes, not fighting rams). Sumjha?'

The boys professed to understand, and, having divested themselves of their last rag, stood like slim bronze statues in the sunlight.

'Are you ready?' asked JÂn-Ali-shÂn with superb gravity. 'Then chul (go), an' may the Lord 'ave mercy on your souls.'

They were locked in each other's grip in a second in true Western fashion.

'Shab-bash!' said the holder of the stakes with an approving nod 'That's wrestlin'. None o' yer slappin's an' buttin's and boo-in's. Shab-bash! boys. Shab-bash!'

The crowd grinned widely at the praise, and, as the combatants struggled and swayed, discussed their family history and took sides, after the manner of crowds all over the world. Quite a breath of anxiety ran through it as a fall came, but came sideways. There was no dust on the back yet!--there would not be!--yes! there would.

Aha! aha! there was, surely!

There would have been, doubtless, for the uppermost boy's small brown hand had freed itself for a second from its grip and sought blindly on the ground for that recognised weapon in Indian wrestling, dust for the adversary's eyes, had not JÂn-Ali-shÂn, seeing the action, sprung to his feet, stooped over the writhing figures, and seizing the top one by the scruff of its neck, held it up by one hand and shaken it as a terrier shakes a rat.

'None o' yer monkey tricks, none o' yer niggar blarneying, you young sneak,' he said roughly, as he dropped his whimpering prisoner from mid air, 'or I'll make mutti^[9] of you. Bus! (enough). T'other Johnny's jeetgia (won). Here, sonny! take your do paisa.'

The crowd, however, which had been betting freely on the event, hesitated; the supporters of the dust-thrower grumbled. They were headed by Govind, who began with great pomp--

'I would have you aware, sir, that use of dust is not non-regulation in our code; therefore the other boy is victor.

John Ellison looked at him condescendingly, and turned up the cuffs of his coat with unnecessary elaboration.

'Ain't it in your code, baboo?' he said, with equally elaborate civility, 'an' t'other chap 'as won, has he? I'm glad t'hear it. But this is my show, and, 'by the Lord 'oo made me! I'm goin' to run it myself. An' if any gentleman 'as a objection to make, let 'im make it now, or for ever after 'old 'is peace.'

The crowd made way for him hastily, as he drove a three-feet passage through it with his elbows; but as he walked jauntily down the bazaar, the boys fell in behind him and kept step, as he did, to the 'Wedding March,' which he whistled in reminiscent continuation of his last words. For they knew JÂn-Ali-shÂn of old as one who, drunk or sober, always had a reward for fair fighting.

'What did the M'lechcha^[10] say?' asked a grumbler who did not know English.

'That 'twas nothing to him what was our custom. It was his, and that settled it. It is their word! Well! let them say it! We will see, brothers, if it is true, will we not?' replied Govind viciously.

A murmur of approval ran through the bystanders, but an old dodderer with a white beard, who, in Eastern fashion, was dozing through his days, waiting for death, crouched up comfortably on a string bed set in the sun, said dreamily--

'Didst say it was JÂn-Ali-shÂn? Yea! it was his word. I have heard him say it; and he keeps it, my sons! he keeps it!'

Govind turned on the speaker scornfully. 'Those were other times, baba, and another JÂn-Ali-shÂn. The times have changed and men too----'

A thin musical laugh interrupted him. It came from Lateefa, the kite-maker, who was passing with his bundle of kites for sale.

'Lo! baboo-jee!' he said. 'I know naught of time but my poor portion of it, nor of man save my poor self! But I change not, and I am as others. We are like kites; the form changes not unless the maker chooses, and God, so say the Moulvies, changes not at all. He makes men on the old pattern ever; the rest is but dye and tinsel.'

So he passed on, tossing his bundle, and chanting the street-seller's cry--