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Mr. Isaacs, A Tale of Modern India

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Title: Mr. Isaacs, A Tale of Modern India

Author: F. Marion Crawford


        
Release date: August 31, 2004 [eBook #13340]
                Most recently updated: August 15, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. ISAACS, A TALE OF MODERN INDIA ***

MR. ISAACS
A TALE OF MODERN INDIA

BY F. MARION CRAWFORD


1882



BY F. MARION CRAWFORD





CHAPTER I.


In spite of Jean-Jacques and his school, men are not everywhere born
free, any more than they are everywhere in chains, unless these be of
their own individual making. Especially in countries where excessive
liberty or excessive tyranny favours the growth of that class most
usually designated as adventurers, it is true that man, by his own
dominant will, or by a still more potent servility, may rise to any
grade of elevation; as by the absence of these qualities he may fall to
any depth in the social scale.

Wherever freedom degenerates into license, the ruthless predatory
instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may, and almost
certainly will, place at their disposal the goods, the honours, and the
preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous and
certainly more unhappy countries, where the rule of the tyrant is
substituted for the law of God, the unwearying flatterer, patient under
blows and abstemious under high-feeding, will assuredly make his way to
power.

Without doubt the Eastern portion of the world, where an hereditary, or
at least traditional, despotism has never ceased since the earliest
social records, and where a mode of thought infinitely more degrading
than any feudalism has become ingrained in the blood and soul of the
chief races, presents far more favourable conditions to the growth and
development of the true adventurer than are offered in any free country.
For in a free country the majority can rise and overthrow the favourite
of fortune, whereas in a despotic country they cannot. Of Eastern
countries in this condition, Russia is the nearest to us; though perhaps
we understand the Chinese character better than the Russian. The Ottoman
empire and Persia are, and always have been, swayed by a clever band of
flatterers acting through their nominal master; while India, under the
kindly British rule, is a perfect instance of a ruthless military
despotism, where neither blood nor stratagem have been spared in
exacting the uttermost farthing from the miserable serfs--they are
nothing else--and in robbing and defrauding the rich of their just and
lawful possessions. All these countries teem with stories of adventurers
risen from the ranks to the command of armies, of itinerant merchants
wedded to princesses, of hardy sailors promoted to admiralties, of
half-educated younger sons of English peers dying in the undisputed
possession of ill-gotten millions. With the strong personal despotism of
the First Napoleon began a new era of adventurers in France; not of
elegant and accomplished adventurers like M. de St. Germain, Cagliostro,
or the Comtesse de la Motte, but regular rag-tag-and-bobtail cut-throat
moss-troopers, who carved and slashed themselves into notice by sheer
animal strength and brutality.

There is infinitely more grace and romance about the Eastern adventurer.
There is very little slashing and hewing to be done there, and what
there is, is managed as quietly as possible. When a Sultan must be rid
of the last superfluous wife, she is quietly done up in a parcel with a
few shot, and dropped into the Bosphorus without more ado. The good
old-fashioned Rajah of Mudpoor did his killing without scandal, and when
the kindly British wish to keep a secret, the man is hanged in a quiet
place where there are no reporters. As in the Greek tragedies, the
butchery is done behind the scenes, and there is no glory connected with
the business, only gain. The ghosts of the slain sometimes appear in the
columns of the recalcitrant Indian newspapers and gibber a feeble little
"Otototoi!" after the manner of the shade of Dareios, but there is very
little heed paid to such visitations by the kindly British. But though
the "raw head and bloody bones" type of adventurer is little in demand
in the East, there is plenty of scope for the intelligent and wary
flatterer, and some room for the honest man of superior gifts, who is
sufficiently free from Oriental prejudice to do energetically the thing
which comes in his way, distancing all competitors for the favours of
fortune by sheer industry and unerring foresight.

I once knew a man in the East who was neither a flatterer nor
freebooter, but who by his own masterly perseverance worked his way to
immense wealth, and to such power as wealth commands, though his high
view of the social aims of mankind deterred him from mixing in political
questions. _Bon chien chasse de race_ is a proverb which applies to
horses, cattle, and men, as well as to dogs; and in this man, who was a
noble type of the Aryan race, the qualities which have made that race
dominant were developed in the highest degree. The sequel, indeed, might
lead the ethnographer into a labyrinth of conjecture, but the story is
too tempting a one for me to forego telling it, although the said
ethnographer should lose his wits in striving to solve the puzzle.

In September, 1879, I was at Simla in the lower Himalayas,--at the time
of the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari at Kabul,--being called there in
the interests of an Anglo-Indian newspaper, of which I was then editor.
In other countries, notably in Europe and in America, there are hundreds
of spots by the sea-shore, or on the mountain-side, where specific ills
may be cured by their corresponding antidotes of air or water, or both.
Following the aristocratic and holy example of the Bishops of Salzburg
for the last eight centuries, the sovereigns of the Continent are told
that the air and waters of Hofgastein are the only nenuphar for the
over-taxed brain in labour beneath a crown. The self-indulgent sybarite
is recommended to Ems, or Wiesbaden, or Aix-la-Chapelle, and the
quasi-incurable sensualist to Aix in Savoy, or to Karlsbad in Bohemia.
In our own magnificent land Bethesdas abound, in every state, from the
attractive waters of lotus-eating Saratoga to the magnetic springs of
Lansing, Michigan; from Virginia, the carcanet of sources, the heaving,
the warm, the hot sulphur springs, the white sulphur, the alum, to the
hot springs of Arkansas, the Ultima Thule of our migratory and
despairing humanity. But in India, whatever the ailing, low fever, high
fever, "brandy pawnee" fever, malaria caught in the chase of tigers in
the Terai, or dysentery imbibed on the banks of the Ganges, there is
only one cure, the "hills;" and chief of "hill-stations" is Simla.

On the hip rather than on the shoulder of the aspiring Himalayas,
Simla--or Shumla, as the natives call it--presents during the wet
monsoon period a concourse of pilgrims more varied even than the
Bagnères de Bigorre in the south of France, where the gay Frenchman asks
permission of the lady with whom he is conversing to leave her abruptly,
in order to part with his remaining lung, the loss of the first having
brought him there. "Pardon, madame," said he, "je m'en vais cracher mon
autre poumon."

To Simla the whole supreme Government migrates for the summer--Viceroy,
council, clerks, printers, and hangers-on. Thither the high official
from the plains takes his wife, his daughters, and his liver. There the
journalists congregate to pick up the news that oozes through the
pent-house of Government secrecy, and failing such scant drops of
information, to manufacture as much as is necessary to fill the columns
of their dailies. On the slopes of "Jako"--the wooded eminence that
rises above the town--the enterprising German establishes his
concert-hall and his beer-garden; among the rhododendron trees Madame
Blavatzky, Colonel Olcott and Mr. Sinnett move mysteriously in the
performance of their wonders; and the wealthy tourist from America, the
botanist from Berlin, and the casual peer from Great Britain, are not
wanting to complete the motley crowd. There are no roads in Simla proper
where it is possible to drive, excepting one narrow way, reserved when I
was there, and probably still set apart, for the exclusive delectation
of the Viceroy. Every one rides--man, woman, and child; and every
variety of horseflesh may be seen in abundance, from Lord Steepleton
Kildare's thoroughbreds to the broad-sterned equestrian vessel of Mr.
Currie Ghyrkins, the Revenue Commissioner of Mudnugger in Bengal. But I
need not now dwell long on the description of this highly-favoured spot,
where Baron de Zach might have added force to his demonstration of the
attraction of mountains for the pendulum. Having achieved my orientation
and established my servants and luggage in one of the reputed hotels, I
began to look about me, and, like an intelligent American observer, as I
pride myself that I am, I found considerable pleasure in studying out
the character of such of the changing crowd on the verandah and on the
mall as caught my attention.

At last the dinner-hour came. With the rest I filed into the large
dining-room and took my seat. The place allotted to me was the last at
one side of the long table, and the chair opposite was vacant, though
two remarkably well-dressed servants, in turbans of white and gold,
stood with folded arms behind it, apparently awaiting their master. Nor
was he long in coming. I never remember to have been so much struck by
the personal appearance of any man in my life. He sat down opposite me,
and immediately one of his two servants, or _khitmatgars_, as they are
called, retired, and came back bearing a priceless goblet and flask of
the purest old Venetian mould. Filling the former, he ceremoniously
presented his master with a brimming beaker of cold water. A
water-drinker in India is always a phenomenon, but a water-drinker who
did the thing so artistically was such a manifestation as I had never
seen. I was interested beyond the possibility of holding my peace, and
as I watched the man's abstemious meal,--for he ate little,--I
contrasted him with our neighbours at the board, who seemed to be vying,
like the captives of Circe, to ascertain by trial who could swallow the
most beef and mountain mutton, and who could absorb the most
"pegs"--those vile concoctions of spirits, ice, and soda-water, which
have destroyed so many splendid constitutions under the tropical sun. As
I watched him an impression came over me that he must be an Italian. I
scanned his appearance narrowly, and watched for a word that should
betray his accent. He spoke to his servant in Hindustani, and I noticed
at once the peculiar sound of the dental consonants, never to be
acquired by a northern-born person.

Before I go farther, let me try and describe Mr. Isaacs; I certainly
could not have done so satisfactorily after my first meeting, but
subsequent acquaintance, and the events I am about to chronicle, threw
me so often in his society, and gave me such ample opportunities of
observation, that the minutest details of his form and feature, as well
as the smallest peculiarities of his character and manner, are indelibly
graven in my memory.

Isaacs was a man of more than medium stature, though he would never be
spoken of as tall. An easy grace marked his movements at all times,
whether deliberate or vehement,--and he often went to each extreme,--a
grace which no one acquainted with the science of the human frame would
be at a loss to explain for a moment. The perfect harmony of all the
parts, the even symmetry of every muscle, the equal distribution of a
strength, not colossal and overwhelming, but ever ready for action, the
natural courtesy of gesture--all told of a body in which true proportion
of every limb and sinew were at once the main feature and the pervading
characteristic. This infinitely supple and swiftly-moving figure was but
the pedestal, as it were, for the noble face and nobler brain to which
it owed its life and majestic bearing. A long oval face of a wondrous
transparent olive tint, and of a decidedly Oriental type. A prominent
brow and arched but delicate eyebrows fitly surmounted a nose smoothly
aquiline, but with the broad well-set nostrils that bespeak active
courage. His mouth, often smiling, never laughed, and the lips, though
closely meeting, were not thin and writhing and cunning, as one so often
sees in eastern faces, but rather inclined to a generous Greek fullness,
the curling lines ever ready to express a sympathy or a scorn which, the
commanding features above seemed to control and curb, as the stern,
square-elbowed Arab checks his rebellious horse, or gives him the rein,
at will.

But though Mr. Isaacs was endowed with exceptional gifts of beauty by a
bountiful nature, those I have enumerated were by no means what first
attracted the attention of the observer. I have spoken of his graceful
figure and perfect Iranian features, but I hardly noticed either at our
first meeting. I was enthralled and fascinated by his eyes. I once saw
in France a jewel composed of six precious stones, each a gem of great
value, so set that they appeared to form but one solid mass, yielding a
strange radiance that changed its hue at every movement, and multiplied
the sunlight a thousand-fold. Were I to seek a comparison for my
friend's eyes, I might find an imperfect one in this masterpiece of the
jeweler's art. They were dark and of remarkable size; when half closed
they were long and almond-shaped; when suddenly opened in anger or
surprise they had the roundness and bold keenness of the eagle's sight.
There was a depth of life and vital light in them that told of the
pent-up force of a hundred generations of Persian magii. They blazed
with the splendour of a god-like nature, needing neither meat nor strong
drink to feed its power.

My mind was made up. Between his eyes, his temperance, and his dental
consonants, he certainly might be an Italian. Being myself a native of
Italy, though an American by parentage, I addressed him in the language,
feeling comparatively sure of his answer. To my surprise, and somewhat
to my confusion, he answered in two words of modern Greek--"[Greek: _den
enoêsa_]"--"I do not understand." He evidently supposed I was speaking a
Greek dialect, and answered in the one phrase of that tongue which he
knew, and not a good phrase at that.

"Pardon me," said I in English, "I believed you a countryman, and
ventured to address you in my native tongue. May I inquire whether you
speak English?"

I was not a little astonished when he answered me in pure English, and
with an evident command of the language. We fell into conversation, and
I found him pungent, ready, impressive, and most entertaining,
thoroughly acquainted with Anglo-Indian and English topics, and
apparently well read. An Indian dinner is a long affair, so that we had
ample time to break the ice, an easy matter always for people who are
not English, and when, after the fruit, he invited me to come down and
smoke with him in his rooms, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity.
We separated for a few moments, and I despatched my servant to the
manager of the hotel to ascertain the name of the strange gentleman who
looked like an Italian and spoke like a fellow of Balliol. Having
discovered that he was a "Mr. Isaacs," I wended my way through verandahs
and corridors, preceded by a _chuprassie_ and followed by my
pipe-bearer, till I came to his rooms.

The fashion of the hookah or narghyle in India has long disappeared from
the English portion of society. Its place has been assumed and usurped
by the cheroot from Burmah or Trichinopoli, by the cigarette from Egypt,
or the more expensive Manilla and Havana cigars. I, however, in an early
burst of Oriental enthusiasm, had ventured upon the obsolete fashion,
and so charmed was I by the indolent aromatic enjoyment I got from the
rather cumbrous machine, that I never gave it up while in the East. So
when Mr. Isaacs invited me to come and smoke in his rooms, or rather
before his rooms, for the September air was still warm in the hills, I
ordered my "bearer" to bring down the apparatus and to prepare it for
use. I myself passed through the glass door in accordance with my new
acquaintance's invitation, curious to see the kind of abode in which a
man who struck me as being so unlike his fellows spent his summer
months. For some minutes after I entered I did not speak, and indeed I
hardly breathed. It seemed to me that I was suddenly transported into
the subterranean chambers whither the wicked magician sent Aladdin in
quest of the lamp. A soft but strong light filled the room, though I did
not immediately comprehend whence it came, nor did I think to look, so
amazed was I by the extraordinary splendour of the objects that met my
eyes. In the first glance it appeared as if the walls and the ceiling
were lined with gold and precious stones; and in reality it was almost
literally the truth. The apartment, I soon saw, was small,--for India at
least,--and every available space, nook and cranny, were filled with
gold and jeweled ornaments, shining weapons, or uncouth but resplendent
idols. There were sabres in scabbards set from end to end with diamonds
and sapphires, with cross hilts of rubies in massive gold mounting, the
spoil of some worsted rajah or Nawab of the mutiny. There were narghyles
four feet high, crusted with gems and curiously wrought work from
Baghdad or Herat; water flasks of gold and drinking cups of jade;
yataghans from Bourn and idols from the far East. Gorgeous lamps of the
octagonal Oriental shape hung from the ceiling, and, fed by aromatic
oils, shed their soothing light on all around. The floor was covered
with a rich soft pile, and low divans were heaped with cushions of
deep-tinted silk and gold. On the floor, in a corner which seemed the
favourite resting-place of my host, lay open two or three superbly
illuminated Arabic manuscripts, and from a chafing dish of silver near
by a thin thread of snow-white smoke sent up its faint perfume through
the still air. To find myself transported from the conventionalities of
a stiff and starched Anglo-Indian hotel to such a scene was something
novel and delicious in the extreme. No wonder I stood speechless and
amazed. Mr. Isaacs remained near the door while I breathed in the
strange sights to which he had introduced me. At last I turned, and from
contemplating the magnificence of inanimate wealth I was riveted by the
majestic face and expression of the beautiful living creature who, by a
turn of his wand, or, to speak prosaically, by an invitation to smoke,
had lifted me out of humdrum into a land peopled with all the effulgent
phantasies and the priceless realities of the magic East. As I gazed, it
seemed as if the illumination from the lamps above were caught up and
flung back with the vitality of living fire by his dark eyes, in which
more than ever I saw and realised the inexplicable blending of the
precious stones with the burning spark of a divine soul breathing
within. For some moments we stood thus; he evidently amused at my
astonishment, and I fascinated and excited by the problem presented me
for solution in his person and possessions.

"Yes," said Isaacs, "you are naturally surprised at my little Eldorado,
so snugly hidden away in the lower story of a commonplace hotel. Perhaps
you are surprised at finding me here, too. But come out into the air,
your hookah is blazing, and so are the stars."

I followed him into the verandah, where the long cane chairs of the
country were placed, and taking the tube of the pipe from the solemn
Mussulman whose duty it was to prepare it, I stretched myself out in
that indolent lazy peace which is only to be enjoyed in tropical
countries. Silent and for the nonce perfectly happy, I slowly inhaled
the fragrant vapour of tobacco and aromatic herbs and honey with which
the hookah is filled. No sound save the monotonous bubbling and
chuckling of the smoke through the water, or the gentle rustle of the
leaves on the huge rhododendron-tree which reared its dusky branches to
the night in the middle of the lawn. There was no moon, though the stars
were bright and clear, the foaming path of the milky way stretching
overhead like the wake of some great heavenly ship; a soft mellow lustre
from the lamps in Isaacs' room threw a golden stain half across the
verandah, and the chafing dish within, as the light breeze fanned the
coals, sent out a little cloud of perfume which mingled pleasantly with
the odour of the _chillum_ in the pipe. The turbaned servant squatted on
the edge of the steps at a little distance, peering into the dusk, as
Indians will do for hours together. Isaacs lay quite still in his chair,
his hands above his head, the light through the open door just falling
on the jeweled mouthpiece of his narghyle. He sighed--a sigh only half
regretful, half contented, and seemed about to speak, but the spirit did
not move him, and the profound silence continued. For my part, I was so
much absorbed in my reflections on the things I had seen that I had
nothing to say, and the strange personality of the man made me wish to
let him begin upon his own subject, if perchance I might gain some
insight into his mind and mode of thought. There are times when silence
seems to be sacred, even unaccountably so. A feeling is in us that to
speak would be almost a sacrilege, though we are unable to account in
any way for the pause. At such moments every one seems instinctively to
feel the same influence, and the first person who breaks the spell
either experiences a sensation of awkwardness, and says something very
foolish, or, conscious of the odds against him, delivers himself of a
sentiment of ponderous severity and sententiousness. As I smoked,
watching the great flaming bowl of the water pipe, a little coal, forced
up by the expansion of the heat, toppled over the edge and fell tinkling
on the metal foot below. The quick ear of the servant on the steps
caught the sound, and he rose and came forward to trim the fire. Though
he did not speak, his act was a diversion. The spell was broken.

"The Germans," said Isaacs, "say that an angel is passing over the
house. I do not believe it."

I was surprised at the remark. It did not seem quite natural for Mr.
Isaacs to begin talking about the Germans, and from the tone of his
voice I could almost have fancied he thought the proverb was held as an
article of faith by the Teutonic races in general.

"I do not believe it," he repeated reflectively. "There is no such thing
as an angel 'passing'; it is a misuse of terms. If there are such things
as angels, their changes of place cannot be described as motion, seeing
that from the very nature of things such changes must be instantaneous,
not involving time as a necessary element. Have you ever thought much
about angels? By-the-bye, pardon my abruptness, but as there is no one
to introduce us, what is your name?"

"My name is Griggs--Paul Griggs. I am an American, but was born in
Italy. I know your name is Isaacs; but, frankly, I do not comprehend how
you came by the appellation, for I do not believe you are either,
English, American, or Jewish of origin."

"Quite right," he replied, "I am neither Yankee, Jew, nor beef-eater; in
fact, I am not a European at all. And since you probably would not guess
my nationality, I will tell you that I am a Persian, a pure Iranian, a
degenerate descendant of Zoroaster, as you call him, though by religion
I follow the prophet, whose name be blessed," he added, with an
expression of face I did not then understand. "I call myself Isaacs for
convenience in business. There is no concealment about it, as many know
my story; but it has an attractive Semitic twang that suits my
occupation, and is simpler and shorter for Englishmen to write than
Abdul Hafizben-Isâk, which is my lawful name."

"Since you lay sufficient store by your business to have been willing to
change your name, may I inquire what your business is? It seems to be a
lucrative one, to judge by the accumulations of wealth you have allowed
me a glimpse of."

"Yes. Wealth is my occupation. I am a dealer in precious stones and
similar objects of value. Some day I will show you my diamonds; they are
worth seeing."

It is no uncommon thing to meet in India men of all Asiatic
nationalities buying and selling stones of worth, and enriching
themselves in the business. I supposed he had come with a caravan by way
of Baghdad, and had settled. But again, his perfect command of English,
as pure as though he had been educated at Eton and Oxford, his extremely
careful, though quiet, English dress, and especially his polished
manners, argued a longer residence in the European civilisation of his
adopted home than agreed with his young looks, supposing him to have
come to India at sixteen or seventeen. A pardonable curiosity led me to
remark this.

"You must have come here very young," I said. "A thoroughbred Persian
does not learn to speak English like a university man, and to quote
German proverbs, in a residence of a few years; unless, indeed, he
possess the secret by which the initiated absorb knowledge without
effort, and assimilate it without the laborious process of intellectual
digestion."

"I am older than I look--considerably. I have been in India twelve
years, and with a natural talent for languages, stimulated by constant
intercourse with Englishmen who know their own speech well, I have
succeeded, as you say, in acquiring a certain fluency and mastery of
accent. I have had an adventurous life enough. I see no reason why I
should not tell you something of it, especially as you are not English,
and can therefore hear me with an unprejudiced ear. But, really, do you
care for a yarn?"

I begged him to proceed, and I beckoned the servant to arrange our
pipes, that we might not be disturbed. When this was done, Isaacs began.

"I am going to try and make a long story short. We Persians like to
listen to long stories, as we like to sit and look on at a wedding
nautch. But we are radically averse to dancing or telling long tales
ourselves, so I shall condense as much as possible. I was born in
Persia, of Persian parents, as I told you, but I will not burden your
memory with names you are not familiar with. My father was a merchant in
prosperous circumstances, and a man of no mean learning in Arabic and
Persian literature. I soon showed a strong taste for books, and every
opportunity was given me for pursuing my inclinations in this respect.
At the early age of twelve I was kidnapped by a party of slave-dealers,
and carried off into Roum--Turkey you call it. I will not dwell upon my
tears and indignation. We travelled rapidly, and my captors treated me
well, as they invariably do their prizes, well knowing how much of the
value of a slave depends on his plump and sleek condition when brought
to market. In Istamboul I was soon disposed of, my fair skin and
accomplishments as a writer and a singer of Persian songs fetching a
high price.

"It is no uncommon thing for boys to be stolen and sold in this way. A
rich pacha will pay almost anything. The fate of such slaves is not
generally a happy one." Isaacs paused a moment, and drew in two or three
long breaths of smoke. "Do you see that bright star in the south?" he
said, pointing with his long jewel-set mouthpiece.

"Yes. It must be Sirius."

"That is my star. Do you believe in the agency of the stars in human
affairs? Of course you do not; you are a European: how should you? But
to proceed. The stars, or the fates or Kâli, or whatever you like to
term your kismet, your portion of good and evil, allotted me a somewhat
happier existence than generally falls to the share of young slaves in
Roum. I was bought by an old man of great wealth and of still greater
learning, who was so taken with my proficiency in Arabic and in writing
that he resolved to make of me a pupil instead of a servant to carry his
coffee and pipe, or a slave to bear the heavier burden of his vices.
Nothing better could have happened to me. I was installed in his house
and treated with exemplary kindness, though he kept me rigorously at
work with my books. I need not tell you that with such a master I made
fair progress, and that at the age of twenty-one I was, for a Turk, a
young man of remarkably good education. Then my master died suddenly,
and I was thrown into great distress. I was of course nothing but a
slave, and liable to be sold at any time. I escaped. Active and
enduring, though never possessing any vast muscular strength, I bore
with ease the hardships of a long journey on foot with little food and
scant lodging. Falling in with a band of pilgrims, I recognised the
wisdom of joining them on their march to Mecca. I was, of course, a
sound Mohammedan, as I am to this day, and my knowledge of the Koran
soon gained me some reputation in the caravan. I was considered a
creditable addition, and altogether an eligible pilgrim. My exceptional
physique protected me from the disease and exhaustion of which not a few
of our number died by the wayside, and the other pilgrims, in
consideration of my youth and piety, gave me willingly the few handfuls
of rice and dates that I needed to support life and strength.

"You have read about Mecca; and your _hadji_ barber, who of course has
been there, has doubtless related his experiences to you scores of times
in the plains, as he does everywhere. As you may imagine, I had no
intention of returning towards Roum with my companions. When I had
fulfilled all the observances required, I made my way to Yeddah and
shipped on board an Arabian craft, touching at Mocha, and bearing coffee
to Bombay. I had to work my passage, and as I had no experience of the
sea, save in the caïques of the Golden Horn, you will readily conceive
that the captain of the vessel had plenty of fault to find. But my
agility and quick comprehension stood me in good stead, and in a few
days I had learned enough to haul on a rope or to reef the great latteen
sails as well as any of them. The knowledge that I was just returning
from a pilgrimage to Mecca obtained for me also a certain respect among
the crew. It makes very little difference what the trade, business, or
branch of learning; in mechanical labour, or intellectual effort, the
educated man is always superior to the common labourer. One who is in
the habit of applying his powers in the right way will carry his system
into any occupation, and it will help him as much to handle a rope as to
write a poem.

"At last we landed in Bombay. I was in a wretched condition. What little
clothes I had had were in tatters; hard work and little food had made me
even thinner than my youthful age and slight frame tolerated. I had in
all about three pence money in small copper coins, carefully hoarded
against a rainy day. I could not speak a word of the Indian dialects,
still less of English, and I knew no one save the crew of the vessel I
had come in, as poor as I, but saved from starvation by the slender
pittance allowed them on land. I wandered about all day through the
bazaars, occasionally speaking to some solemn looking old shopkeeper or
long-bearded Mussulman, who, I hoped, might understand a little Arabic.
But not one did I find. At evening I bathed in the tank of a temple full
from the recent rains, and I lay down supperless to sleep on the steps
of the great mosque. As I lay on the hard stones I looked up to my star,
and took comfort, and slept. That night a dream came to me. I thought I
was still awake and lying on the steps, watching the wondrous ruler of
my fate. And as I looked he glided down from his starry throne with an
easy swinging motion, like a soap-bubble settling to the earth. And the
star came and poised among the branches of the palm-tree over the tank,
opalescent, unearthly, heart shaking. His face was as the face of the
prophet, whose name be blessed, and his limbs were as the limbs of the
Hameshaspenthas of old. Garments he had none, being of heavenly birth,
but he was clothed with light as with a garment, and the crest of his
silver hair was to him a crown of glory. And he spoke with the tongues
of a thousand lutes, sweet strong tones, that rose and fell on the night
air as the song of a lover beneath the lattice of his mistress, the song
of the mighty star wooing the beautiful sleeping earth. And then he
looked on me and said: 'Abdul Hafiz, be of good cheer. I am with thee
and will not forsake thee, even to the day when thou shalt pass over the
burning bridge of death. Thou shalt touch the diamond of the rivers and
the pearl of the sea, and they shall abide with thee, and great shall be
thy wealth. And the sunlight which is in the diamond shall warm thee and
comfort thy heart; and the moonlight which is in the pearl shall give
thee peace in the night-time, and thy children shall be to thee a
garland of roses in the land of the unbeliever.' And the star floated
down from the palm-branches and touched me with his hand, and breathed
upon my lips the cool breath of the outer firmament, and departed. Then
I awoke and saw him again in his place far down the horizon, and he was
alone, for the dawn was in the sky and the lesser lights were
extinguished. And I rose from the stony stairway that seemed like a bed
of flowers for the hopeful dream, and I turned westward, and praised
Allah, and went my way.

"The sun being up, all was life, and the life in me spoke of a most
capacious appetite. So I cast about for a shop where I might buy a
little food with my few coppers, and seeing a confectioner spreading out
his wares, I went near and took stock of the queer balls of flour and
sugar, and strange oily-looking sweetmeats. Having selected what I
thought would be within my modest means, I addressed the shopkeeper to
call his attention, though I knew he would not understand me, and I
touched with my hand the article I wanted, showing with the other some
of the small coins I had. As soon as I touched the sweetmeats the man
became very angry, and bounding from his seat called his neighbours
together, and they all shouted and screamed at me, and called a man I
thought to be a soldier, though he looked more like an ape in his long
loose trousers of dirty black, and his untidy red turban, under which
cumbrous garments his thin and stunted frame seemed even blacker and
more contemptible than nature had made them. I afterwards discovered him
to be one of the Bombay police. He seized me by the arm, and I, knowing
I had done no wrong, and curious to discover, if possible, what the
trouble was, accompanied him whither he led me. After waiting many hours
in a kind of little shed where there were more policemen, I was brought
before an Englishman. Of course all attempts at explanation were
useless. I could speak not a word of anything but Arabic and Persian,
and no one present understood either. At last, when I was in despair,
trying to muster a few words of Greek I had learned in Istamboul, and
failing signally therein, an old man with a long beard looked curiously
in at the door of the crowded court. Some instinct told me to appeal to
him, and I addressed him in Arabic. To my infinite relief he replied in
that tongue, and volunteered to be interpreter. In a few moments I
learned that my crime was that I had _touched_ the sweetmeats on the
counter.

"In India, as you who have lived here doubtless know, it is a criminal
offence, punishable by fine or imprisonment, for a non-Hindu person to
defile the food of even the lowest caste man. To touch one sweetmeat in
a trayful defiles the whole baking, rendering it all unfit for the use
of any Hindu, no matter how mean. Knowing nothing of caste and its
prejudices, it was with the greatest difficulty that the _moolah_, who
was trying to help me out of my trouble, could make me comprehend
wherein my wrong-doing lay, and that the English courts, being obliged
in their own interest to uphold and protect the caste practices of the
Hindus, at the risk of another mutiny, could not make any exception in
favour of a stranger unacquainted with Indian customs. So the Englishman
who presided said he would have to inflict a fine, but being a very
young man, not yet hardened to the despotic ways of Eastern life, he
generously paid the fine himself, and gave me a rupee as a present into
the bargain. It was only two shillings, but as I had not had so much
money for months I was as grateful as though it had been a hundred. If I
ever meet him I will requite him, for I owe him all I now possess.

"My case being dismissed, I left the court with the old _moolah_, who
took me to his house and inquired of my story, having first given me a
good meal of rice and sweetmeats, and that greatest of luxuries, a
little pot of fragrant Mocha coffee; he sat in silence while I ate,
ministering to my wants, and evidently pleased with the good he was
doing. Then he brought out a package of _birris_, those little
cigarettes rolled in leaves that they smoke in Bombay, and I told him
what had happened to me. I implored him to put me in the way of
obtaining some work by which I could at least support life, and he
promised to do so, begging me to stay with him until I should be
independent. The day following I was engaged to pull a punkah in the
house of an English lawyer connected with an immense lawsuit involving
one of the Mohammedan principalities. For this irksome work I was to
receive six rupees--twelve shillings--monthly, but before the month was
up I was transferred, by the kindness of the English lawyer and the good
offices of my co-religionist the _moolah_, to the retinue of the Nizam
of Haiderabad, then in Bombay. Since that time I have never known want.

"I soon mastered enough of the dialects to suit my needs, and applied
myself to the study of English, for which opportunities were not
lacking. At the end of two years I could speak the language enough to be
understood, and my accent from the first was a matter of surprise to
all; I had also saved out of my gratuities about one hundred rupees.
Having been conversant with the qualities of many kinds of precious
stones from my youth up, I determined to invest my economies in a
diamond or a pearl. Before long I struck a bargain with an old
_marwarri_ over a small stone, of which I thought he misjudged the
value, owing to the rough cutting. The fellow was cunning and hard in
his dealings, but my superior knowledge of diamonds gave me the
advantage. I paid him ninety-three rupees for the little gem, and sold
it again in a month for two hundred to a young English 'collector and
magistrate,' who wanted to make his wife a present. I bought a larger
stone, and again made nearly a hundred per cent on the money. Then I
bought two, and so on, until having accumulated sufficient capital, I
bade farewell to the Court of the Nizam, where my salary never exceeded
sixteen rupees a month as scribe and Arabic interpreter, and I went my
way with about two thousand rupees in cash and precious stones. I came
northwards, and finally settled in Delhi, where I set up as a dealer in
gems and objects of intrinsic value. It is now twelve years since I
landed in Bombay. I have never soiled my hands with usury, though I have
twice advanced large sums at legal interest for purposes I am not at
liberty to disclose; I have never cheated a customer or underrated a gem
I bought of a poor man, and my wealth, as you may judge from what you
have seen, is considerable. Moreover, though in constant intercourse
with Hindus and English, I have not forfeited my title to be called a
true believer and a follower of the prophet, whose name be blessed."

Isaacs ceased speaking, and presently the waning moon rose pathetically
over the crest of the mountains with that curiously doleful look she
wears after the full is past, as if weeping over the loss of her better
half. The wind rose and soughed drearily through the rhododendrons and
the pines; and Kiramat Ali, the pipe-bearer, shivered audibly as he drew
his long cloth uniform around him. We rose and entered my friend's
rooms, where the warmth of the lights, the soft rugs and downy cushions,
invited us temptingly to sit down and continue our conversation. But it
was late, for Isaacs, like a true Oriental, had not hurried himself over
his narrative, and it had been nine o'clock when we sat down to smoke.
So I bade him good-night, and, musing on all I had heard and seen,
retired to my own apartments, glancing at Sirius and at the
unhappy-looking moon before I turned in from the verandah.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER II.


In India--in the plains--people rise before dawn, and it is not till
after some weeks' residence in the cooler atmosphere of the mountains
that they return to the pernicious habit of allowing the sun to be
before them. The hours of early morning, when one either mopes about in
loose flannel clothes, or goes for a gallop on the green _maidán_, are
without exception the most delicious of the day. I shall have occasion
hereafter to describe the morning's proceedings in the plains. On the
day after the events recorded in the last chapter I awoke as usual at
five o'clock, and meandered out on to the verandah to have a look at the
hills, so novel and delicious a sight after the endless flats of the
northwest provinces. It was still nearly dark, but there was a faint
light in the east, which rapidly grew as I watched it, till, turning the
angle of the house, I distinguished a snow-peak over the tops of the
dark rhododendrons, and, while I gazed, the first tinge of distant
dawning caught the summit, and the beautiful hill blushed, as a fair
woman, at the kiss of the awakening sun. The old story, the heaven
wooing the earth with a wondrous shower of gold.

"Prati 'shya sunarî janî"--the exquisite lines of the old Vedic hymn to
the dawn maiden, rose to my lips. I had never appreciated or felt their
truth down in the dusty plains, but here, on the free hills, the glad
welcoming of the morning light seemed to run through every fibre, as
thousands of years ago the same joyful thrill of returning life inspired
the pilgrim fathers of the Aryan race. Almost unconsciously, I softly
intoned the hymn, as I had heard my old Brahmin teacher in Allahabad
when he came and sat under the porch at daybreak, until I was ready for
him--

    The lissome heavenly maiden here,
    Forth flashing from her sister's arms,
    High heaven's daughter, now is come.

    In rosy garments, shining like
    A swift bay mare; the twin knights' friend,
    Mother of all our herds of kine.

    Yea, thou art she, the horseman's friend;
    Of grazing cattle mother thou,
    All wealth is thine, thou blushing dawn.

    Thou who hast driven the foeman back,
    With praise we call on thee to wake
    In tender reverence, beauteous one.

    The spreading beams of morning light
    Are countless as our hosts of kine,
    They fill the atmosphere of space.

    Filling the sky, thou openedst wide
    The gates of night, thou glorious dawn--
    Rejoicing-run thy daily race!

    The heaven above thy rays have filled,
    The broad belovèd room of air,
    O splendid, brightest maid of morn!

I went indoors again to attend to my correspondence, and presently a
gorgeously liveried white-bearded _chuprassie_ appeared at the door, and
bending low as he touched his hand to his forehead, intimated that "if
the great lord of the earth, the protector of the poor, would turn his
ear to the humblest of his servants, he would hear of something to his
advantage."

So saying, he presented a letter from the official with whom I had to
do, an answer to my note of the previous afternoon, requesting an
interview. In due course, therefore, the day wore on, and I transacted
my business, returned to "tiffin," and then went up to my rooms for a
little quiet. I might have been there an hour, smoking and dreaming over
a book, when the servant announced a sahib who wanted to see me, and
Isaacs walked in, redolent of the sunshine without, his luminous eyes
shining brightly in the darkened room. I was delighted, for I felt my
wits stagnating in the unwonted idleness of the autumn afternoon, and
the book I had taken up was not conducive to wakefulness or brilliancy.
It was a pleasant surprise too. It is not often that an hotel
acquaintance pushes an intimacy much, and besides I had feared my
silence during the previous evening might have produced the impression
of indifference, on which reflection I had resolved to make myself
agreeable at our next meeting.

Truly, had I asked myself the cause of a certain attraction I felt for
Mr. Isaacs, it would have been hard to find an answer. I am generally
extremely shy of persons who begin an acquaintance by making
confidences, and, in spite of Isaacs' charm of manner, I had certainly
speculated on his reasons for suddenly telling an entire stranger his
whole story. My southern birth had not modified the northern character
born in me, though it gave me the more urbane veneer of the Italian; and
the early study of Larochefoucauld and his school had not predisposed me
to an unlimited belief in the disinterestedness of mankind. Still there
was something about the man which seemed to sweep away unbelief and
cynicism and petty distrust, as the bright mountain freshet sweeps away
the wretched little mud puddles and the dust and impurities from the bed
of a half dry stream. It was a new sensation and a novel era in my
experience of humanity, and the desire to get behind that noble
forehead, and see its inmost workings, was strong beyond the strength of
puny doubts and preconceived prejudice. Therefore, when Isaacs appeared,
looking like the sun-god for all his quiet dress of gray and his
unobtrusive manner, I felt the "little thrill of pleasure" so aptly
compared by Swinburne to the soft touch of a hand stroking the outer
hair.

"What a glorious day after all that detestable rain!" were his first
words. "Three mortal months of water, mud, and Mackintoshes, not to
mention the agreeable sensation of being glued to a wet saddle with your
feet in water-buckets, and mountain torrents running up and down the
inside of your sleeves, in defiance of the laws of gravitation; such is
life in the monsoon. Pah!" And he threw himself down on a cane chair and
stretched out his dainty feet, so that the sunlight through the crack of
the half-closed door might fall comfortingly on his toes, and remind him
that it was fine outside.

"What have you been doing all day?" I asked, for lack of a better
question, not having yet recovered from the mental stagnation induced by
the last number of the serial story I had been reading.

"Oh--I don't know. Are you married?" he asked irrelevantly.

"God forbid!" I answered reverently, and with some show of feeling.

"Amen," was the answer. "As for me--I am, and my wives have been
quarreling."

"Your wives! Did I understand you to use the plural number?"

"Why, yes. I have three; that is the worst of it. If there were only
two, they might get on better. You know 'two are company and three are
none,' as your proverb has it." He said this reflectively, as if
meditating a reduction in the number.

The application of the proverb to such a case was quite new in my
recollection. As for the plurality of my friend's conjugal relations, I
remembered he was a Mohammedan, and my surprise vanished. Isaacs was
lost in meditation. Suddenly he rose to his feet, and took a cigarette
from the table.

"I wonder"--the match would not light, and he struggled a moment with
another. Then he blew a great cloud of smoke, and sat down in a
different chair--"I wonder whether a fourth would act as a fly-wheel,"
and he looked straight at me, as if asking my opinion.

I had never been in direct relations with a Mussulman of education and
position. To be asked point-blank whether I thought four wives better
than three on general principles, and quite independently of the
contemplated spouse, was a little embarrassing. He seemed perfectly
capable of marrying another before dinner for the sake of peace, and I
do not believe he would have considered it by any means a bad move.

"Diamond cut diamond," I said. "You too have proverbs, and one of them
is that a man is better sitting than standing; better lying than
sitting; better dead than lying down. Now I should apply that same
proverb to marriage. A man is, by a similar successive reasoning, better
with no wife at all than with three."

His subtle mind caught the flaw instantly. "To be without a wife at all
would be about as conducive to happiness as to be dead. Negative
happiness, very negative."

"Negative happiness is better than positive discomfort."

"Come, come," he answered, "we are bandying terms and words, as if empty
breath amounted to anything but inanity. Do you really doubt the value
of the institution of marriage?"

"No. Marriage is a very good thing when two people are so poor that they
depend on each other, mutually, for daily bread, or if they are rich
enough to live apart. For a man in my own position marriage would be the
height of folly; an act of rashness only second to deliberate suicide.
Now, you are rich, and if you had but one wife, she living in Delhi and
you in Simla, you would doubtless be very happy."

"There is something in that," said Isaacs. "She might mope and beat the
servants, but she could not quarrel if she were alone. Besides, it is so
much easier to look after one camel than three. I think I must try it."

There was a pause, during which he seemed settling the destiny of the
two who were to be shelved in favour of a monogamic experiment.
Presently he asked if I had brought any horses, and hearing I had not,
offered me a mount, and proposed we should ride round Jako, and perhaps,
if there were time, take a look at Annandale in the valley, where there
was polo, and a racing-ground. I gladly accepted, and Isaacs despatched
one of my servants, the faithful Kiramat Ali, to order the horses.
Meantime the conversation turned on the expedition to Kabul to avenge
the death of Cavagnari. I found Isaacs held the same view that I did in
regard to the whole business. He thought the sending of four Englishmen,
with a handful of native soldiers of the guide regiment to protect them,
a piece of unparalleled folly, on a par with the whole English policy in
regard to Afghanistan.

"You English--pardon me, I forgot you did not belong to them--the
English, then, have performed most of their great acts of valour as a
direct consequence of having wantonly exposed themselves in situations
where no sane man would have placed himself. Look at Balaclava; think of
the things they did in the mutiny, and in the first Afghan war; look at
the mutiny itself, the result of a hair-brained idea that a country like
India could be held for ever with no better defences than the
trustworthiness of native officers, and the gratitude of the people for
the 'kindly British rule.' Poor Cavagnari! when he was here last summer,
before leaving on his mission, he said several times he should never
came back. And yet no better man could have been chosen, whether for
politics or fighting; if only they had had the sense to protect him."

Having delivered himself of this eulogy, my friend dropped his exhausted
cigarette, lit another, and appeared again absorbed in the triangulation
of his matrimonial problem. I imagined him weighing the question whether
he should part with Zobeida and Zuleika and keep Anima, or send Zuleika
and Amina about their business, and keep Zobeida to be a light in his
household. At last Kiramat Ali, on the watch in the verandah, announced
the saices with the horses, and we descended.

I had expected that a man of Isaacs' tastes and habits would not be
stingy about his horseflesh, and so was prepared for the character of
the animals that awaited us. They were two superb Arab stallions, one of
them being a rare specimen of the weight-carrying kind, occasionally
seen in the far East. Small head, small feet, and feather-tailed, but
broad in the quarters and deep in the chest, able to carry a
twelve-stone man for hours at the stretching, even gallop, that never
trembles and never tires; surefooted as a mule, and tender-tempered as a
baby.

So we mounted the gentle creatures and rode away. The mountain on which
Simla is situated has a double summit, like a Swiss peak, the one higher
than the other. On the lower height and the neck between the two is
built the town, and the bungalows used as offices and residences for the
Government officials cover a very considerable, area. "Jako," the higher
eminence, is thickly covered with a forest of primeval rhododendrons and
pines, and though there are outlying bungalows and villas scattered
about among the trees near the town, they are so far back from the main
road, reserved as I have said for the use of the Viceroy, as far as
driving is concerned, that they are not seen in riding along the shady
way; and on the opposite side, where the trees are thin, the magnificent
view looks far out over the spurs of the mountains, the only human
habitation visible being a Catholic convent, which rears its little
Italian _campanile_ against the blue sky, and rather adds to the beauty
of the scene than otherwise. As we rode along we continued our talk
about the new Afghan war, though neither of us was very much in the
humour for animated conversation. The sweet scent of the pines, the
matchless motion of the Arab, and the joyous feeling that the worst part
of the tropical year was passed, were enough for me, and I drank in the
high, rarefied air, with the intense delight of a man who has been
smothered with dust and heat, and then steamed to a jelly by a spring
and summer in the plains of Hindustan.

The road abounds in sharp turns, and I, as the heavier mount, rode on
the inside as we went round the mountain. On reaching the open part on
the farther side, we drew rein for a moment to look down at the deep
valleys, now dark with the early shade, at the higher peaks red with the
westering sun, and at the black masses of foliage, through which some
giant trunk here and there caught a lingering ray of the departing
light. Then, as we felt the cool of the evening coming on, we wheeled
and scampered along the level stretch, stirrup to stirrup and knee to
knee. The sharp corner at the end pulled us up, but before we had quite
reined in our horses, as delighted as we to have a couple of minutes'
straight run, we swung past the angle and cannoned into a man ambling
peaceably along with his reins on one finger and his large gray felt hat
flapping at the back of his neck. There was a moment's confusion,
profuse apologies on our part, and some ill-concealed annoyance on the
part of the victim, who was, however, only a little jostled and taken by
surprise.

"Really, sir," he began. "Oh! Mr. Isaacs. No harm done, I assure you,
that is, not much. Bad thing riding fast round corners. No harm, no
harm, not much. How are you?" all in a breath.

"How d'ye do! Mr. Ghyrkins; my friend Mr. Griggs."

"The real offender," I added in a conciliatory tone, for I had kept my
place on the inside.

"Mr. Griggs?" said Mr. Currie Ghyrkins. "Mr. Griggs of Allahabad? _Daily
Howler?_ Yes, yes, corresponded; glad to see you in the flesh."

I did not think he looked particularly glad. He was a Revenue
Commissioner residing in Mudnugger; a rank Conservative; a regular old
"John Company" man, with whom I had had more than one tiff in the
columns of the _Howler,_ leading to considerable correspondence.

"I trust that our collision in the flesh has had no worse results than
our tilts in print, Mr. Ghyrkins?"

"Not at all. Oh don't mention it. Bad enough, though, but no harm done,
none whatever," pulling up and looking at me as he pronounced the hist
two words with a peculiarly English slowness after a very quick
sentence.

While he was speaking, I was aware of a pair of riders walking their
horses toward us, and apparently struggling to suppress their amusement
at the mishap to the old gentleman, which they must have witnessed. In
truth, Mr. Ghyrkins, who was stout and rode a broad-backed obese "tat,"
can have presented no very dignified appearance, for he was jerked half
out of the saddle by the concussion, and his near leg, returning to its
place, had driven his nether garment half way to his knee, while the
large felt hat was settling back on to his head at a rakish angle, and
his coat collar had gone well up the back of his neck.

"Dear uncle," said the lady as she rode up, "I hope you are not hurt?"
She was very handsome as she sat there trying not to laugh. A lithe
figure in a gray habit and a broad-brimmed hat, fair as a Swede, but
with dark eyes and heavy lashes. Just then she was showing her brilliant
teeth, ostensibly in delight at her dear uncle's escape, and her whole
expression was animated and amused. Her companion was a soldierly
looking young Englishman, with a heavy moustache and a large nose. A
certain devil-may-care look about his face was attractive as he sat
carelessly watching us. I noticed his long stirrups and the curb rein
hanging loose, while he held the snaffle, and concluded he was a cavalry
officer. Isaacs bowed low to the lady and wheeled his horse. She replied
by a nod, indifferent enough; but as he turned, her eyes instantly went
back to him, and a pleasant thoughtful look passed over her face, which
betrayed at least a trifling interest in the stranger, if stranger he
were.

All this time Mr. Ghyrkins was talking and asking questions of me. When
had I come? what brought me here? how long would I stay? and so on,
showing that whether friendly or not he had an interest in my movements.
In answering his questions I found an opportunity of calling the Queen
the "Empress," of lauding Lord Beaconsfield's policy in India, and of
congratulating Mr. Ghyrkins upon the state of his district, with which
he had nothing to do, of course; but he swallowed the bait, all in a
breath, as he seemed to do everything. Then he introduced us.

"Katharine, you know Mr. Isaacs; Mr. Griggs, Miss Westonhaugh, Lord
Steepleton Kildare, Mr. Isaacs."

We bowed and rode back together over the straight piece we passed before
the encounter. Isaacs and the Englishman walked their horses on each
side of Miss Westonhaugh, and Ghyrkins and I brought up the rear. I
tried to turn the conversation to Isaacs, but with little result.

"Yes, yes, good fellow Isaacs, for a fire-worshipper, or whatever he is.
Good judge of a horse. Lots of rupees too. Queer fish. By-the-bye, Mr.
Griggs, this new expedition is going to cost us something handsome, eh?"

"Why, yes. I doubt whether you will get off under ten millions sterling.
And where is it to come from? You will have a nice time making your
assessments in Bengal, Mr. Ghyrkins, and we shall have an income-tax and
all sorts of agreeable things."

"Income-tax? Well, I think not. You see, Mr. Griggs, it would hit the
members of the council, so they won't do it, for their own sakes, and
the Viceroy too. Ha, ha, how do you think Lord Lytton would like an
income-tax, eh?" And the old fellow chuckled.

We reached the end of the straight, and Isaacs reined in and bid Miss
Westonhaugh and her companion good evening. I bowed from where I was,
and took Mr. Ghyrkins' outstretched hand. He was in a good humour again,
and called out to us to come and see him, as we rode away. I thought to
myself I certainly would; and we paced back, crossing the open stretch
for the third time.

It was almost dark under the trees as we re-entered the woods; I pulled
out a cheroot and lit it. Isaacs did the same, and we walked our horses
along in silence. I was thinking of the little picture I had just seen.
The splendid English girl on her thoroughbred beside the beautiful Arab
steed and his graceful rider. What a couple, I thought: what noble
specimens of great races. Why did not this fiery young Persian, with his
wealth, his beauty, and his talents, wed some such wife as that, some
high-bred Englishwoman, who should love him and give him home and
children--and, I was forced to add, commonplace happiness? How often
does it happen that some train of thought, unacknowledged almost to
ourselves, runs abruptly into a blind alley; especially when we try to
plan out the future life of some one else, or to sketch for him what we
should call happiness. The accidental confronting of two individuals
pleases the eye, we unite them in our imagination, carrying on the
picture before us, and suddenly we find ourselves in a quagmire of
absurd incongruities. Now what could be more laughable than to suppose
the untamed, and probably untameable young man at my side, with his
three wives, his notions about the stars and his Mussulman faith, bound
for life to a girl like Miss Westonhaugh? A wise man of the East trying
to live the life of an English country gentleman, hunting in pink and
making speeches on the local hustings! I smiled to myself in the dark
and puffed at my cigar.

Meanwhile Isaacs was palpably uneasy. First he kicked his feet free of
the stirrups, and put them back again. Then he hummed a few words of a
Persian song and let his cigar go out, after which he swore loudly in
Arabic at the eternal matches that never would light. Finally he put his
horse into a hand gallop, which could not last on such a road in the
dark, and at last he broke down completely in his efforts to do
impossible things, and began talking to me.

"You know Mr. Ghyrkins by correspondence, then?"

"Yes, and by controversy. And you, I see, know Miss Westonhaugh?"

"Yes; what do you think of her?"

"A charming creature of her type. Fair and English, she will be fat at
thirty-five, and will probably paint at forty, but at present she is
perfection--of her kind of course," I added, not wishing to engage my
friend in the defence of his three wives on the score of beauty.

"I see very little of Englishwomen," said Isaacs. "My position is
peculiar, and though the men, many of whom I know quite intimately,
often ask me to their houses, I fancy when I meet their women I can
detect a certain scorn of my nationality, a certain undefinable manner
toward me, by which I suppose they mean to convey to my obtuse
comprehension that I am but a step better than a 'native'--a 'nigger' in
fact, to use the term they love so well. So I simply avoid them, as a
rule, for my temper is hasty. Of course I understand it well enough;
they are brought up or trained by their fathers and husbands to regard
the native Indian as an inferior being, an opinion in which, on the
whole, I heartily concur. But they go a step farther and include all
Asiatics in the same category. I do not choose to be confounded with a
race I consider worn out and effete. As for the men, it is different.
They know I am rich and influential in many ways that are useful to them
now, and they hope that the fortunes of war or revolution may give them
a chance of robbing me hereafter, in which they are mistaken. Now there
is our stout friend, whom we nearly brought to grief a few minutes ago;
he is always extremely civil, and never meets me that he does not renew
his invitation to visit him."

"I should like to see something more of Mr. Currie Ghyrkins myself. I do
not believe he is half as bad as I thought. Do you ever go there?"

"Sometimes. Yes, on second thoughts I believe I call on Mr. Currie
Ghyrkins pretty often." Then after a pause he added, "I like her."

I pointed out the confusion of genders. Isaacs must have smiled to
himself in the gloom, but he answered quietly--

"I mean Miss Westonhaugh. I like her--yes, I am quite sure I do. She is
beautiful and sensible, though if she stays here much longer she will be
like all the rest. We will go and see them to-morrow. Here we are; just
in time for dinner. Come and smoke afterwards."

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER III.


A loose robe of light material from Kashmir thrown around him, Isaacs
half sat, half lay, on the soft dark cushions in the corner of his outer
room. His feet were slipperless, Eastern fashion, and his head covered
with an embroidered cap of curious make. By the yellow light of the
hanging lamps he was reading an Arabic book, and his face wore a puzzled
look that sat strangely on the bold features. As I entered the book fell
back on the cushion, sinking deep into the down by its weight, and one
of the heavy gold clasps clanged sharply as it turned. He looked up, but
did not rise, and greeted me, smiling, with the Arabic salutation--

"Peace be with you!"

"And with you, peace," I answered in the same tongue. He smiled again at
my unfamiliar pronunciation. I established myself on the divan near him,
and inquired whether he had arrived at any satisfactory solution of his
domestic difficulties.

"My father," he said, "upon whom be peace, had but one wife, my mother.
You know Mussulmans are allowed four lawful wives. Here is the passage
in the beginning of the fourth chapter, 'If ye fear that ye shall not
act with equity towards orphans of the female sex, take in marriage of
such other women as please you, two, or three, or four, and not more.
But, if ye fear that ye cannot act equitably towards so many, marry one
only, or the slaves which ye shall have acquired.'

"The first part of this passage," continued Isaacs, "is disputed; I mean
the words referring to orphans. But the latter portion is plain enough.
When the apostle warns those who fear they 'cannot act equitably towards
so many,' I am sure that in his wisdom he meant something more by
'equitable' treatment than the mere supplying of bodily wants. He meant
us to so order our households that there should be no jealousies, no
heart-burnings, no unnecessary troubling of the peace. Now woman is a
thing of the devil, jealous; and to manage a number of such creatures so
that they shall be even passably harmonious among themselves is a
fearful task, soul-wearying, heart-hardening, never-ending, leading to
no result."

"Just what I told you; a man is better with no wife at all than with
three. But why do you talk about such matters with me, an unbeliever, a
Christian, who, in the words of your prophet, 'shall swallow down
nothing but fire into my belly, and shall broil in raging flames' when I
die? Surely it is contrary to the custom of your co-religionists; and
how can you expect an infidel Frank to give you advice?"

"I don't," laconically replied my host.

"Besides, with your views of women in general, their vocation, their
aims, and their future state, is it at all likely that we should ever
arrive at even a fair discussion of marriage and marriage laws? With us,
women have souls, and, what is a great deal more, seem likely to have
votes. They certainly have the respectful and courteous service of a
large proportion of the male sex. You call a woman a thing of the devil;
we call her an angel from heaven; and though some eccentric persons like
myself refuse to ally themselves for life with any woman, I confess, as
far as I am concerned, that it is because I cannot contemplate the
constant society of an angel with the degree of appreciation such a
privilege justly deserves; and I suspect that most confirmed bachelors,
knowingly or unconsciously, think as I do. The Buddhists are not
singular in their theory that permanent happiness should be the object."

"They say," said Isaacs, quickly interrupting, "that the aim of the
ignorant is pleasure; the pursuit of the wise, happiness. Pray, under
which category would you class marriage? I suppose it comes under one or
the other."

"I cannot say I see the force of that. Look at your own case, since you
have introduced it."

"Never mind my own case. I mean with your ideas of one wife, and
heavenly woman, and voting, and domestic joy, and all the rest of it.
Take the ideal creature you rave about--"

"I never rave about anything."

"Take the fascinating female you describe, and for the sake of argument
imagine yourself very poor or very rich, since you would not enter
wedlock in your present circumstances. Suppose you married your object
of 'courteous service and respectful adoration;' which should you say
you would attain thereby, pleasure or happiness?"

"Pleasure is but the refreshment that cheers us in the pursuit of true
happiness," I answered, hoping to evade the direct question by a
sententious phrase.

"I will not let you off so easily. You shall answer my question," he
said. He looked full at me with a deep searching gaze that seemed hardly
warranted by the lightness of the argument. I hesitated, and he
impatiently leaned forward, uncrossing his legs and clasping his hands
over one knee to bring himself nearer to me.

"Pleasure or happiness?" he repeated, "which is it to be?"

A sudden light flashed over my obscured intellect.

"Both," I answered. "Could you see the ideal woman as I would fain paint
her to you, you would understand me better. The pleasure you enjoy in
the society of a noble and beautiful woman should be but the refreshment
by the wayside as you journey through life together. The day will come
when she will be beautiful no longer, only noble and good, and true to
you as to herself; and then, if pleasure has been to you what it should
be, you will find that in the happiness attained it is no longer
counted, or needed, or thought of. It will have served its end, as the
crib holds the ship in her place while she is building; and when your
white-winged vessel has smoothly glided off into the great ocean of
happiness, the crib and the stocks and the artificial supports will fall
to pieces and be forgotten for ever. Yet have they had a purpose, and
have borne a very important part in the life of your ship."

Having heard me attentively till I had finished, Isaacs relaxed his hold
on his knee and threw himself back on the cushions, as if to entrench
himself for a better fight. I had made an impression on him, but he was
not the man to own it easily. Presumably to gain time, he called for
hookahs and sherbet, and though the servants moved noiselessly in
preparing them, their presence was an interruption.

When we were settled again he had taken a nearly upright position on the
couch, and as he pulled at the long tube his face assumed that stolid
look of Oriental indifference which is the most discouraging shower-bath
to the persuasive powers. I had really no interest in converting him to
my own point of view about women. Honestly, was it my own point of view
at all? Would anything under heaven induce me, Paul Griggs, rich, or
poor, or comfortably off, to marry any one--Miss Westonhaugh, for
instance? Probably not. But then my preference for single blessedness
did not prevent me from believing that women have souls. That morning
the question of the marriage of the whole universe had been a matter of
the utmost indifference, and now I, a confirmed and hopelessly contented
bachelor, was trying to convince a man with three wives that matrimony
was a most excellent thing in its way, and that the pleasure of the
honeymoon was but the faint introduction to the bliss of the silver
wedding. It certainly must be Isaacs' own doing. He had launched on a
voyage of discovery and had taken me in tow. I had a strong suspicion
that he wanted to be convinced, and was playing indifference to soothe
his conscience.

"Well," said I at last, "have you any fault to find with my reasoning or
my simile?"

"With your simile--none. It is faultlessly perfect. You have not mixed
up your metaphors in the least. Crib, stocks, ocean, ship--all correct,
and very nautical. As for your reasoning, I do not believe there is
anything in it. I do not believe that pleasure leads to happiness; I do
not believe that a woman has a soul, and I deny the whole argument from
beginning to end. There," he added with a smile that belied the
brusqueness of his words, "that is my position. Talk me out of it if you
can; the night is long, and my patience as that of the ass."

"I do not think this is a case for rigid application of logic. When the
feelings are concerned--and where can they be more concerned than in our
intercourse with women?--the only way to arrive at any conclusion is by
a sort of trying-on process, imagining ourselves in the position
indicated, and striving to fancy how it would suit us. Let us begin in
that way. Suppose yourself unmarried, your three wives and their
children removed--"

"Allah in his mercy grant it!" ejaculated Isaacs with great fervour.

"--removed from the question altogether. Then imagine yourself thrown
into daily conversation with some beautiful woman who has read what you
have read, thought what you have thought, and dreamed the dreams of a
nobler destiny that have visited you in waking and sleeping hours. A
woman who, as she learned your strange story, should weep for the pains
you suffered and rejoice for the difficulties overcome, who should
understand your half spoken thoughts and proudly sympathise in your
unuttered aspirations; in whom you might see the twin nature to your
own, and detect the strong spirit and the brave soul, half revealed
through the feminine gentleness and modesty that clothe her as with a
garment. Imagine all this, and then suppose it lay in your power, was a
question of choice, for you to take her hand in yours and go through
life and death together, till death seem life for the joy of being
united for ever. Suppose you married her--not to lock her up in an
indolent atmosphere of rosewater, narghyles, and sweetmeats, to die of
inanition or to pester you to death with complaints and jealousies and
inopportune caresses; but to be with you and help your life when you
most need help, by word and thought and deed, to grow more and more a
part of you, an essential element of you in action or repose, to part
from which would be to destroy at a blow the whole fabric of your
existence. Would you not say that with such a woman the transitory
pleasure of early conversation and intercourse had been the
stepping-stone to the lasting happiness of such a friendship as you
could never hope for in your old age among your sex? Would not her
faithful love and abounding sympathy be dearer to you every day, though
the roses in her cheek should fade and the bright hair whiten with the
dust of life's journey? Would you not feel that when you died your
dearest wish must be to join her where there should be no parting--her
from whom there could be no parting here, short of death itself? Would
you not believe she had a soul?"

"There is no end of your 'supposing,' but it is quite pretty. I am half
inclined to 'suppose' too." He took a sip of sherbet from the tall
crystal goblet the servant had placed on a little three-legged stool
beside him, and as he drank the cool liquid slowly, looked over the
glass into my eyes, with a curious, half earnest, half smiling glance; I
could not tell whether my enthusiastic picture of conjugal bliss amused
him or attracted him, so I waited for him to speak again.

"Now that you have had your cruise in your ship of happiness on the
waters of your cerulean imagination, permit me, who am land-born and a
lover of the chase, to put my steed at a few fences in the difficult
country of unadorned facts over which I propose to hunt the wily fox,
matrimony. I have never hunted a fox, but I can quite well imagine what
it is like.

"In the first place, it is all very well to suppose that it had pleased
Allah in his goodness to relieve me of my three incumbrances--meanwhile,
there they are, and they are very real difficulties I assure you.
Nevertheless are there means provided us by the foresight of the
apostle, by which we may ease ourselves of domestic burdens when they
are too heavy for us to bear. It would be quite within the bounds of
possibility for me to divorce them all three, without making any special
scandal. But if I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of
married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women
as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter
and nibble sweetmeats alike--absolutely alike? Or if I looked abroad--"

"Stop," I said, "I am not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women
have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want
you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a
modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, 'if you looked
abroad,' as you were saying?--"

"If I looked abroad, I should probably discover little petty traits of
the same class, if not exactly identical. I know little of Englishmen,
and might be the more readily deceived. Supposing, if you will, that,
after freeing myself from all my present ties, in order to start afresh,
I were to find myself attracted by some English girl here"--there must
have been something wrong with the mouthpiece of his pipe, for he
examined it very attentively-- "attracted," he continued, "by some one,
for instance, by Miss Westonhaugh--" he stopped short.

So my inspiration was right. My little picture, framed as we rode
homeward, and indignantly scoffed at by my calmer reason, had visited
his brain too. He had looked on the fair northern woman and fancied
himself at her side, her lover, her husband. All this conversation and
argument had been only a set plan to give himself the pleasure of
contemplating and discussing such a union, without exciting surprise or
comment. I had been suspecting it for some time, and now his sudden
interest in his mouthpiece, to conceal a very real embarrassment, put
the matter beyond all doubt.

He was probably in love, my acquaintance of two days. He saw in me a
plain person, who could not possibly be a rival, having some knowledge
of the world, and he was in need of a confidant, like a school-girl. I
reflected that he was probably a victim for the first time. There is
very little romance in India, and he had, of course, married for
convenience and respectability rather than for any real affection. His
first passion! This man who had been tossed about like a bit of
driftwood, who had by his own determination and intelligence carved his
way to wealth and power in the teeth of every difficulty. Just now, in
his embarrassment, he looked very boyish. His troubles had left no
wrinkles on his smooth forehead, his bright black hair was untinged by a
single thread of gray, and as he looked up, after the pause that
followed when he mentioned the name of the woman he loved, there was a
very really youthful look of mingled passion and distress in his
beautiful eyes.

"I think, Mr. Isaacs, that you have used a stronger argument against the
opinions you profess to hold than I could have found in my whole armoury
of logic."

As he looked at me, the whole field of possibilities seemed opened. I
must have been mistaken in thinking this marriage impossible and
incongruous. What incongruity could there be in Isaacs marrying Miss
Westonhaugh? My conclusions were false. Why must he necessarily return
with her to England, and wear a red coat, and make himself ridiculous at
the borough elections? Why should not this ideal couple choose some
happy spot, as far from the corrosive influence of Anglo-Saxon prejudice
as from the wretched sensualism of prosperous life east of the
Mediterranean? I was carried away by the idea, returning with redoubled
strength as a sequel to what I had argued and to what I had guessed.
"Why not?" was the question I repeated to myself over and over again in
the half minute's pause after Isaacs finished speaking.

"You are right," he said slowly, his half-closed eyes fixed on his feet.
"Yes, you are right. Why not? Indeed, indeed, why not?"

It must have been pure guess-work, this reading of my thoughts. When he
was last speaking his manner was all indifference, scorn of my ideas,
and defiance of every western mode of reasoning. And now, apparently by
pure intuition, he gave a direct answer to the direct question I had
mentally asked, and, what is more, his answer came with a quiet,
far-away tone of conviction that had not a shade of unbelief in it. It
was delivered as monotonously and naturally as a Christian says "Credo
in unum Deum," as if it were not worth disputing; or as the devout
Mussulman says "La Illah illallah," not stooping to consider the
existence of any one bold enough to deny the dogma. No argument, not
hours of patient reasoning, or weeks of well directed persuasion, could
have wrought the change in the man's tone that came over it at the mere
mention of the woman he loved. I had no share in his conversion. My
arguments had been the excuse by which he had converted himself. Was he
converted? was it real?

"Yes--I think I am," he replied in the same mechanical monotonous
accent.

I shook myself, drank some sherbet, and kicked off one shoe impatiently.
Was I dreaming? or had I been speaking aloud, really putting the
questions he answered so quickly and appositively? Pshaw! a coincidence.
I called the servant and ordered my hookah to be refilled. Isaacs sat
still, immovable, lost in thought, looking at his toes; an expression,
almost stupid in its vacancy, was on his face, and the smoke curled
slowly up in lazy wreaths from his neglected narghyle.

"You are converted then at last?" I said aloud. No answer followed my
question; I watched him attentively.

"Mr. Isaacs!" still silence, was it possible that he had fallen asleep?
his eyes were open, but I thought he was very pale. His upright
position, however, belied any symptoms of unconsciousness.

"Isaacs! Abdul Hafiz! what is the matter!" He did not move. I rose to my
feet and knelt beside him where he sat rigid, immovable, like a statue.
Kiramat Ali, who had been watching, clapped his hands wildly and cried,
"Wah! wah! Sahib margyâ!"--"The lord is dead." I motioned him away with
a gesture and he held his peace, cowering in the corner, his eyes fixed
on us. Then I bent low as I knelt and looked under my friend's brows,
into his eyes. It was clear he did not see me, though he was looking
straight at his feet. I felt for his pulse. It was very low, almost
imperceptible, and certainly below forty beats to the minute. I took his
right arm and tried to put it on my shoulder. It was perfectly rigid.
There was no doubt about it--the man was in a cataleptic trance. I felt
for the pulse again; it was lost.

I was no stranger to this curious phenomenon, where the mind is
perfectly awake, but every bodily faculty is lulled to sleep beyond
possible excitation, unless the right means be employed. I went out and
breathed the cool night air, bidding the servants be quiet, as the sahib
was asleep. When sufficiently refreshed I re-entered the room, cast off
my slippers, and stood a moment by my friend, who was as rigid as ever.

Nature, in her bountiful wisdom, has compensated me for a singular
absence of beauty by endowing me with great strength, and with one of
those exceptional constitutions which seem constantly charged with
electricity. Without being what is called a mesmerist, I am possessed of
considerable magnetic power, which I have endeavoured to develop as far
as possible. In many a long conversation with old Manu Lal, my Brahmin
instructor in languages and philosophy while in the plains, we had
discussed the trance state in all its bearings. This old pundit was
himself a distinguished mesmerist, and though generally unwilling to
talk about what is termed occultism, on finding in me a man naturally
endowed with the physical characteristics necessary to those pursuits,
he had given me several valuable hints as to the application of my
powers. Here was a worthy opportunity.

I rubbed my feet on the soft carpet, and summoning all my strength,
began to make the prescribed passes over my friend's head and body. Very
gradually the look of life returned to his face, the generous blood
welled up under the clear olive skin, the lips parted, and he sighed
softly. Animation, as always happens in such cases, began at the precise
point at which it had been suspended, and his first movement was to
continue his examination of the mouthpiece in his hand. Then he looked
up suddenly, and seeing me standing over him, gave a little shake, half
turning his shoulders forward and back, and speaking once more in his
natural voice, said--

"I must have been asleep! Have I? What has happened? Why are you
standing there looking at me in that way?" Then, after a short
interrogatory silence, his face changed and a look of annoyance shaded
his features as he added in a low tone, "Oh! I see. It has happened to
me once before. Sit down. I am all right now." He sipped a little
sherbet and leaned back in his old position. I begged him to go to bed,
and prepared to withdraw, but he would not let me, and he seemed so
anxious that I should stay, that I resumed my place. The whole incident
had passed in ten minutes.

"Stay with me a little longer," he repeated. "I need your company,
perhaps your advice. I have had a vision, and you must hear about it."

"I thought as I sat here that my spirit left my body and passed out
through the night air and hovered over Simla. I could see into every
bungalow, and was conscious of what passed in each, but there was only
one where my gaze rested, for I saw upon a couch in a spacious chamber
the sleeping form of one I knew. The masses of fair hair were heaped as
they fell upon the pillow, as if she had lain down weary of bearing the
burden of such wealth of gold. The long dark lashes threw little shadows
on her cheeks, and the parted lips seemed to smile at the sweetness of
the gently heaving breath that fanned them as it came and went. And
while I looked, the breath of her body became condensed, as it were, and
took shape and form and colour, so that the image of herself floated up
between her body and my watching spirit. Nearer and nearer to me came
the exquisite vision of beauty, till we were face to face, my soul and
hers, high up in the night. And there came from her eyes, as the long
lids lifted, a look of perfect trust, and of love, and of infinite joy.
Then she turned her face southward and pointed to my life star burning
bright among his lesser fellows; and with a long sweet glance that bid
me follow where she led, her maiden soul floated away, half lingering at
first, as I watched her; then, with dizzy speed, vanishing in the
firmament as a falling star, and leaving no trace behind, save an
infinitely sad regret, and a longing to enter with her into that
boundless empire of peace. But I could not, for my spirit was called
back to this body. And I bless Allah that he has given me to see her
once so, and to know that she has a soul, even as I have, for I have
looked upon her spirit and I know it."

Isaacs rose slowly to his feet and moved towards the open door. I
followed him, and for a few moments we stood looking out at the scene
below us. It was near midnight, and the ever-decreasing moon was
dragging herself up, as if ashamed of her waning beauty and tearful
look.

"Griggs," said my friend, dropping the formal prefix for the first time,
"all this is very strange. I believe I am in love!"

"I have not a doubt of it," I replied. "Peace be with you!"

"And with you peace."

So we parted.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER IV.


In Simla people make morning calls in the morning instead of after dark,
as in more civilised countries. Soon after dawn I received a note from
Isaacs, saying that he had business with the Maharajah of Baithopoor
about some precious stones, but that he would be ready to go with me to
call on Mr. Currie Ghyrkins at ten o'clock, or soon after. I had been
thinking a great deal about the events of the previous evening, and I
was looking forward to my next meeting with Isaacs with intense
interest. After what had passed, nothing could be such a test of his
true feelings as the visit to Miss Westonhaugh, which we proposed to
make together, and I promised myself to lose no gesture, no word, no
expression, which might throw light on the question that interested
me--whether such a union were practical, possible, and wise.

At the appointed time, therefore, I was ready, and we mounted and
sallied forth into the bright autumn day. All visits are made on
horseback in Simla, as the distances are often considerable. You ride
quietly along, and the saice follows you, walking or keeping pace with
your gentle trot, as the case may be. We rode along the bustling mall,
crowded with men and women on horseback, with numbers of gorgeously
arrayed native servants and _chuprassies_ of the Government offices
hurrying on their respective errands, or dawdling for a chat with some
shabby-looking acquaintance in private life; we passed by the crowded
little shops on the hill below the church, and glanced at the
conglomeration of grain-sellers, jewellers, confectioners, and dealers
in metal or earthen vessels, every man sitting knee-deep in his wares,
smoking the eternal "hubble-bubble;" we noted the keen eyes of the
buyers and the hawk's glance of the sellers, the long snake-like fingers
eagerly grasping the passing coin, and seemingly convulsed into
serpentine contortion when they relinquished their clutch on a single
"pi;" we marked this busy scene, set down, like a Punch and Judy show,
in the midst of the trackless waste of the Himalayas, as if for the
delectation and pastime of some merry _genius loci_ weary of the solemn
silence in his awful mountains, and we chatted carelessly of the sights
animate and inanimate before us, laughing at the asseverations of the
salesmen, and at the hardened scepticism of the customer, at the
portentous dignity of the superb old messenger, white-bearded and clad
in scarlet and gold, as he bombastically described to the knot of poor
relations and admirers that elbowed him the splendours of the last
entertainment at "Peterhof," where Lord Lytton still reigned. I smiled,
and Isaacs frowned at the ancient and hairy ascetic believer, who
suddenly rose from his lair in a corner, and bustled through the crowd
of Hindoos, shouting at the top of his voice the confession of his
faith--"Beside God there is no God, and Muhammad is his apostle!" The
universality of the Oriental spirit is something amazing. Customs,
dress, thought, and language, are wonderfully alike among all Asiatics
west of Thibet and south of Turkistan. The greatest difference is in
language, and yet no one unacquainted with the dialects could
distinguish by the ear between Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish.

So we moved along, and presently found ourselves on the road we had
traversed the previous evening, leading round Jako. On the slope of the
hill, hidden by a dense growth of rhododendrons, lay the bungalow of Mr.
Currie Ghyrkins, and a board at the entrance of the ride--drive there
was none--informed us that the estate bore the high-sounding title of
"Carisbrooke Castle," in accordance with the Simla custom of calling
little things by big names.

Having reached the lawn near the house, we left our horses in charge of
the saice and strolled up the short walk to the verandah. A charming
picture it was, prepared as if on purpose for our especial delectation.
The bungalow was a large one for Simla, and the verandah was deep and
shady; many chairs of all sorts and conditions stood about in natural
positions, as if they had just been sat in, instead of being ranged in
stiff rows against the wall, and across one angle hung a capacious
hammock. Therein, swinging her feet to the ground, and holding on by the
edge rope, sat the beautiful Miss Westonhaugh, clad in one of those
close-fitting unadorned costumes of plain dark-blue serge, which only
suit one woman in ten thousand, though, when they clothe a really
beautiful young figure, I know of no garment better calculated to
display grace of form and motion. She was kicking a ball of worsted with
her dainty toes, for the amusement and instruction of a small tame
jackal--the only one I ever saw thoroughly domesticated. A charming
little beast it was, with long gray fur and bright twinkling eyes,
mischievous and merry as a gnome's. From a broad blue ribbon round its
neck was suspended a small silver bell that tinkled spasmodically, as
the lively little thing sprang from side to side in pursuit of the ball,
alighting with apparent indifference on its head or its heels.

So busy was the girl with her live plaything that she had not seen us
dismount and approach her, and it was not till our feet sounded on the
boards of the verandah that she looked up with a little start, and tried
to rise to her feet. Now any one who has sat sideways in a netted
hammock, with feet swinging to the ground, and all the weight in the
middle of the thing, knows how difficult it is to get out with grace, or
indeed in any way short of rolling out and running for luck. You may
break all your bones in the feat, and you both look and feel as if you
were going to. Though we both sprang forward to her assistance, Miss
Westonhaugh had recognised the inexpediency of moving after the first
essay, and, with a smile of greeting, and the faintest tinge of
embarrassment on her fair cheek, abandoned the attempt; the quaint
little jackal sat up, backing against the side of the house, and, eyeing
us critically, growled a little.

"I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Isaacs. How do you do, Mr.----"

"Griggs," murmured Isaacs, as he straightened a rope of the hammock by
her side.

"Mr. Griggs?" she continued. "We met last night, briefly, but to the
point, or at least you and my uncle did. I am alone; my uncle is gone
down towards Kalka to meet my brother, who is coming up for a fortnight
at the end of the season to get rid of the Bombay mould. Bring up some
of those chairs and sit down. I cannot tell what has become of the
'bearer' and the 'boy,' and the rest of the servants, and I could not
make them understand me if they were here. So you must wait on
yourselves."

I was the first to lay hands on a chair, and as I turned to bring it I
noticed she was following Isaacs with the same expression I had seen on
her face the previous evening; but I could see it better now. A pleasant
friendly look, not tender so much as kind, while the slightest possible
contraction of the eyes showed a feeling of curiosity. She was evidently
going to speak to him as soon as he turned his face.

"You see I have been giving him lessons," she said, as he brought back
the seat he had chosen.

Isaacs looked at the queer small beast sitting up against the boards
under the window, his brush tail curled round him, and his head turned
inquiringly on one side.

"He seems to be learning manners, at all events," said my friend.

"Yes; I think I may say now, with safety, that his bark is worse than
his bite."

"I am sure you could not have said so the last time I came. Do you
remember what fearful havoc he made among my nether garments? And yet he
is my god-child, so to speak, for I gave him into your care, and named
him into the bargain."

"Don't suppose I am ungrateful for the gift," answered Miss Westonhaugh.
"Snap! Snap! here! come here, darling, to your mistress, and be petted!"
In spite of this eloquent appeal Snap, the baby jackal, only growled
pleasantly and whisked his brush right and left. "You see," she went on,
"your sponsorship has had no very good results. He will not obey any
more than you yourself." Her glance, turning towards Isaacs, did not
reach him, and, in fact, she could not have seen anything beyond the
side of his chair. Isaacs, on the contrary, seemed to be counting her
eyelashes, and taking a mental photograph of her brows.

"Snap!" said he. The jackal instantly rose and trotted to him, fawning
on his outstretched hand.

"You malign me, Miss Westonhaugh. Snap is no less obedient than I."

"Then why did you insist on playing tennis left-handed the other day,
though you know very well how it puzzles me?"

"My dear Miss Westonhaugh," he answered, "I am not a tennis-player at
all, to begin with, and as I do not understand the _finesse_ of the
game, to use a word I do not understand either, you must pardon my
clumsiness in employing the hand most convenient and ready."

"Some people," I began, "are what is called ambidexter, and can use
either hand with equal ease. Now the ancient Persians, who invented the
game of polo----"

"I do not quarrel so much with you, Mr. Isaacs--" as she said this, she
looked at me, though entirely disregarding and interrupting my
instructive sentence--"I don't quarrel with you so much for using your
left hand at tennis as for employing left-handed weapons when you speak
of other things, or beings, for you are never so left-handed and so
adroit as when you are indulging in some elaborate abuse of our sex."

"How can you say that?" protested Isaacs. "You know with what respectful
and almost devotional reverence I look upon all women, and," his eyes
brightening perceptibly, "upon you in particular."

English women, especially in their youth, are not used to pretty
speeches. They are so much accustomed to the men of their own
nationality that they regard the least approach to a compliment as the
inevitable introduction to the worst kind of insult. Miss Westonhaugh
was no exception to this rule, and she drew herself up proudly.

There was a moment's pause, during which Isaacs seemed penitent, and she
appeared to be revolving the bearings of the affront conveyed in his
last words. She looked along the floor, slowly, till she might have seen
his toes; then her eyes opened a moment and met his, falling again
instantly with a change of colour.

"And pray, Mr. Isaacs, would you mind giving us a list of the ladies you
look upon with 'respectful and devotional reverence?'" One of the horses
held by the saice at the corner of the lawn neighed lowly, and gave
Isaacs an opportunity of looking away.

"Miss Westonhaugh," he said quietly, "you know I am a Mussulman, and
that I am married. It may be that I have borrowed a phrase from your
language which expresses more than I would convey, though it would ill
become me to withdraw my last words, since they are true."

It was my turn to be curious now. I wondered where his boldness would
carry him. Among his other accomplishments, this man was capable of
speaking the truth even to a woman, not as a luxury and a _bonne
bouche_, but as a matter of habit. As I looked, the hot blood mantled up
to his brows. She was watching him, and womanlike, seeing he was in
earnest and embarrassed, she regained her perfect natural composure.

"Oh, I had forgotten!" she said. "I forgot about your wife in Delhi."
She half turned in the hammock, and after some searching, during which
we were silent, succeeded in finding a truant piece of worsted work
behind her. The wool was pulled out of the needle, and she held the
steel instrument up against the light, as she doubled the worsted round
the eye and pushed it back through the little slit. I observed that
Isaacs was apparently in a line with the light, and that the threading
took some time.

"Mr. Griggs," she said slowly, and by the very slowness of the address I
knew she was going to talk to me, and at my friend, as women will; "Mr.
Griggs, do you know anything about Mohammedans?"

"That is a very broad question," I answered; "almost as broad as the
Mussulman creed." She began making stitches in the work she held, and
with a little side shake settled herself to listen, anticipating a
discourse. The little jackal sidled up and fawned on her feet. I had no
intention, however, of delivering a lecture on the faith of the prophet.
I saw my friend was embarrassed in the conversation, and I resolved, if
possible, to interest her.

"Among primitive people and very young persons," I continued, "marriage
is an article of faith, a moral precept, and a social law."

"I suppose you are married, Mr. Griggs," she said, with an air of
childlike simplicity.

"Pardon me, Miss Westonhaugh, I neither condescend to call myself
primitive, nor aspire to call myself young."

She laughed. I had put a wedge into my end of the conversation.

"I thought," said she, "from the way in which you spoke of 'primitive
and young persons' that you considered their opinion in regard to--to
this question, as being the natural and proper opinion of the original
and civilised young man."

"I repeat that I do not claim to be very civilised, or very
young--certainly not to be very original, and my renunciation of all
these qualifications is my excuse for the confirmed bachelorhood to
which I adhere. Many Mohammedans are young and original; some of them
are civilised, as you see, and all of them are married. 'There is no
God but God, Muhammad is his prophet, and if you refuse to marry you are
not respectable,' is their full creed."

Isaacs frowned at my profanity, but I continued--"I do not mean to say
anything disrespectful to a creed so noble and social. I think you have
small chance of converting Mr. Isaacs."

"I would not attempt it," she said, laying down her work in her lap, and
looking at me for a moment. "But since you speak of creeds, to what
confession do you yourself belong, if I may ask?"

"I am a Roman Catholic," I answered; adding presently--"Really, though,
I do not see how my belief in the papal infallibility affects my opinion
of Mohammedan marriages."

"And what _do_ you think of them?" she inquired, resuming her work and
applying herself thereto with great attention.

"I think that, though justified in principle by the ordinary
circumstances of Eastern life, there are cases in which the system acts
very badly. I think that young men are often led by sheer force of
example into marrying several wives before they have sufficiently
reflected on the importance of what they are doing. I think that both
marriage and divorce are too easily managed in consideration of their
importance to a man's life, and I am convinced that no civilised man of
Western education, if he were to adopt Islam, would take advantage of
his change of faith to marry four wives. It is a case of theory _versus_
practice, which I will not attempt to explain. It may often be good in
logic, but it seems to me it is very often bad in real life."

"Yes," said Isaacs; "there are cases----" He stopped, and Miss
Westonhaugh, who had been very busy over her work, looked quietly up,
only to find that he was profoundly interested in the horses cropping
the short grass, as far as the saice would let them stretch their necks,
on the other side of the lawn.

"I confess," said Miss Westonhaugh, "that my ideas about Mohammedans are
chiefly the result of reading the Arabian Nights, ever so long ago. It
seems to me that they treat women as if they had no souls and no minds,
and were incapable of doing anything rational if left to themselves. It
is a man's religion. My uncle says so too, and he ought to know."

The conversation was meandering in a kind of vicious circle. Both Isaacs
and I were far too deeply interested in the question to care for such
idle discussion. How could this beautiful but not very intellectual
English girl, with her prejudices and her clumsiness at repartee or
argument, ever comprehend or handle delicately so difficult a subject? I
was disappointed in her. Perhaps this was natural enough, considering
that with two such men as we she must be entirely out of her element.
She was of the type of brilliant, healthy, northern girls, who depend
more on their animal spirits and enjoyment of living for their happiness
than upon any natural or acquired mental powers. With a horse, or a
tennis court, or even a ball to amuse her, she would appear at her very
best; would be at ease and do the right thing. But when called upon to
sustain a conversation, such as that into which her curiosity about
Isaacs had plunged her, she did not know what to do. She was
constrained, and even some of her native grace of manner forsook her.
Why did she avoid his eyes and resort to such a petty little trick as
threading a needle in order to get a look at him? An American girl, or a
French woman, would have seen that her strength lay in perfect
frankness; that Isaacs' straightforward nature would make him tell her
unhesitatingly anything she wanted to know about himself, and that her
position was strong enough for her to look him in the face and ask him
what she pleased. But she allowed herself to be embarrassed, and though
she had been really glad to see him, and liked him and thought him
handsome, she was beginning to wish he would go, merely because she did
not know what to talk about, and would not give him a chance to choose
his own subject. As neither of us were inclined to carry the analysis of
matrimony any farther, nor to dispute the opinions of Mr. Currie
Ghyrkins as quoted by his niece, there was a pause. I struck in and
boldly changed the subject.

"Are you going to see the polo this afternoon, Miss Westonhaugh? I heard
at the hotel that there was to be a match to-day of some interest."

"Oh yes, of course. I would not miss it for anything. Lord Steepleton is
coming to tiffin, and we shall ride down together to Annandale. Of
course you are going too; it will be a splendid thing. Do you play polo,
Mr. Griggs? Mr. Isaacs is a great player, when he can be induced to take
the trouble. He knows more about it than he does about tennis."

"I am very fond of the game," I answered, "but I have no horses here,
and with my weight it is not easy to get a mount for such rough work."

"Do not disturb yourself on that score," said Isaacs; "you know my
stable is always at your disposal, and I have a couple of ponies that
would carry you well enough. Let us have a game one of those days,
whenever we can get the ground. We will play on opposite sides and match
the far west against the far east."

"What fun!" cried Miss Westonhaugh, her face brightening at the idea,
"and I will hold the stakes and bestow the crown on the victor."

"What is to be the prize?" asked Isaacs, with a smile of pleasure. He
was very literal and boyish sometimes.

"That depends on which is the winner," she answered.

There was a noise among the trees of horses' hoofs on the hard path, and
presently we heard a voice calling loudly for a saice who seemed to be
lagging far behind. It was a clear strong voice, and the speaker abused
the groom's female relations to the fourth and fifth generations with
considerable command of the Hindustani language. Miss Westonhaugh, who
had not been in the country long, did not understand a word of the very
free swearing that was going on in the woods, but Isaacs looked annoyed,
and I registered a black mark against the name of the new-comer, whoever
he might be.

"Oh! it is Lord Steepleton," said the young girl. "He seems to be always
having a row with his servants. Don't go," she went on as I took up my
hat; "he is such a good fellow, you ought to know him."

Lord Steepleton Kildare now appeared at the corner of the lawn, hotly
pursued by his breathless groom, who had been loitering on the way, and
had thus roused his master's indignation. He was, as I have said, a fine
specimen of a young Englishman, though being Irish by descent he would
have indignantly denied any such nationality. I saw when he had
dismounted that he was tall and straight, though not a very heavily
built man. He carried his head high, and looked every inch a soldier as
he strode across the grass, carefully avoiding the pegs of the tennis
net. He wore a large gray felt hat, like every one else, and he shook
hands all round before he took it off, and settled himself in an easy
chair as near as he could get to Miss Westonhaugh's hammock.

"How are ye? Ah--yes, Mr. Isaacs, Mr. Griggs of Allahabad. Jolly day,
isn't it?" and he looked vaguely at the grass. "Really, Miss
Westonhaugh, I got in such a rage with my rascal of a saice that I did
not remember I was so near the house. I am really very sorry I talked
like that. I hope you did not think I was murdering him?"

Isaacs looked annoyed.

"Yes," said he, "we thought Mahmoud was going to have a bad time of it.
I believe Miss Westonhaugh does not understand Hindustani."

A look of genuine distress came into the Englishman's face.

"Really," said he, very simply. "You don't know how sorry I am that any
one should have heard me. I am so hasty. But let me apologise to you all
most sincerely for disturbing you with my brutal temper."

His misdeed had not been a very serious crime after all, and there was
something so frank and honest about his awkward little apology that I
was charmed. The man was a gentleman. Isaacs bowed in silence, and Miss
Westonhaugh had evidently never thought much about it.

"We were talking about polo when you came, Lord Steepleton; Mr. Isaacs
and Mr. Griggs are going to play a match, and I am to hold the stakes.
Do you not want to make one in the game?"

"May I?" said the young man, grateful to her for having helped him out.
"May I? I should like it awfully. I so rarely get a chance of playing
with any except the regular set here." And he looked inquiringly at us.

"We should be delighted, of course," said Isaacs. "By the way, can you
help us to make up the number? And when shall it be?" He seemed suddenly
very much interested in this projected contest.

"Oh yes," said Kildare, "I will manage to fill up the game, and we can
play next Monday. I know the ground is free then."

"Very good; on Monday. We are at Laurie's on the hill."

"I am staying with Jack Tygerbeigh, near Peterhof. Come and see us. I
will let you know before Monday. Oh, Mr. Griggs, I saw such a nice thing
about me in the _Howler_ the other day--so many thanks. No, really,
greatly obliged, you know; people say horrid things about me sometimes.
Good-bye, good-bye, delighted to have seen you."

"Good morning, Miss Westonhaugh."

"Good morning; so good of you to take pity on my solitude." She smiled
kindly at Isaacs and civilly at me. And we went our way. As we looked
back after mounting to lift our hats once more, I saw that Miss
Westonhaugh had succeeded in getting out of the hammock and was tying on
a pith hat, while Lord Steepleton had armed himself with balls and
rackets from a box on the verandah. As we bowed they came down the
steps, looking the very incarnation of animal life and spirits in the
anticipation of the game they loved best. The bright autumn sun threw
their figures into bold relief against the dark shadow of the verandah,
and I thought to myself they made a very pretty picture. I seemed to be
always seeing pictures, and my imagination was roused in a new
direction.

We rode away under the trees. My impression of the whole visit was
unsatisfactory. I had thought Mr. Currie Ghyrkins would be there, and
that I would be able to engage him in a political discussion. We could
have talked income-tax, and cotton duties, and Kabul by the hour, and
Miss Westonhaugh and Isaacs would have had a pleasant _tête-à-tête._
Instead of this I had been decidedly the unlucky third who destroys the
balance of so much pleasure in life, for I felt that Isaacs was not a
man to be embarrassed if left alone with a woman, or to embarrass her.
He was too full of tact, and his sensibilities were so fine that, with
his easy command of language, he must be agreeable _quand même_; and
such an opportunity would have given him an easy lead away from the
athletic Kildare, whom I suspected strongly of being a rival for Miss
Westonhaugh's favour. There is an easy air of familiar proprietorship
about an Englishman in love that is not to be mistaken. It is a subtle
thing, and expresses itself neither in word nor deed in its earlier
stages of development; but it is there all the same, and the combination
of this possessive mood, with a certain shyness which often goes with
it, is amusing.

"Griggs," said Isaacs, "have you ever seen the Rajah of Baithopoor?"

"No; you had some business with him this morning, had you not?"

"Yes--some--business--if you call it so. If you would like to see him I
can take you there, and I think you would be interested in the--the
business. It is not often such gems are bought and sold in such a way,
and besides, he is very amusing. He is at least two thousand years old,
and will go to Saturn when he dies. His fingers are long and crooked,
and that which he putteth into his pockets, verily he shall not take it
out."

"A pleasing picture; a good contrast to the one we have left behind us.
I like contrasts, and I should like to see him."

"You shall." And we lit our cheroots.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER V.


"We will go there at four," said Isaacs, coming into my rooms after
tiffin, a meal of which I found he rarely partook. "I said three, this
morning, but it is not a bad plan to keep natives waiting. It makes them
impatient, and then they commit themselves."

"You are Machiavellian. It is pretty clear which of you is asking the
favour."

"Yes, it is pretty clear." He sat down and took up the last number of
the _Howler_ which lay on the table. Presently he looked up. "Griggs,
why do you not come to Delhi? We might start a newspaper there, you
know, in the Conservative interest."

"In the interest of Mr. Algernon Currie Ghyrkins?" I inquired.

"Precisely. You anticipate my thoughts with a true sympathy. I suppose
you have no conscience?"

"Political conscience? No, certainly not, out of my own country, which
is the only one where that sort of thing commands a high salary. No, I
have no conscience."

"You would really write as willingly for the Conservatives as you do for
the Liberals?"

"Oh yes. I could not write so well on the Conservative side just now,
because they are 'in,' and it is more blessed to abuse than to be
abused, and ever so much easier. But as far as any prejudice on the
subject is concerned, I have none. I had as lief defend a party that
robs India 'for her own good,' as support those who would rob her with a
more cynical frankness and unblushingly transfer the proceeds to their
own pockets. I do not care a rush whether they rob Peter to pay Paul, or
fraudulently deprive Paul of his goods for the benefit of Peter."

"That is the way to look at it. I could tell you some very pretty
stories about that kind of thing. As for the journalistic enterprise, it
is only a possible card to be played if the old gentleman is obdurate."

"Isaacs," said I, "I have only known you three days, but you have taken
me into your confidence to some extent; probably because I am not
English. I may be of use to you, and I am sure I sincerely hope so.
Meanwhile I want to ask you a question, if you will allow me to." I
paused for an answer. We were standing by the open door, and Isaacs
leaned back against the door-post, his eyes fixed on me, half closed, as
he threw his head back. He looked at me somewhat curiously, and I
thought a smile flickered round his mouth, as if he anticipated what the
question would be.

"Certainly," he said slowly. "Ask me anything you like. I have nothing
to conceal."

"Do you seriously think of marrying, or proposing to marry, Miss
Katharine Westonhaugh?"

"I do seriously think of proposing to marry, and of marrying, Miss
Westonhaugh." He looked very determined as he thus categorically
affirmed his intention. I knew he meant it, and I knew enough of
Oriental character to understand that a man like Abdul Hafizben-Isâk, of
strong passions, infinite wit, and immense wealth, was not likely to
fail in anything he undertook to do. When Asiatic indifference gives way
under the strong pressure of some master passion, there is no length to
which the hot and impetuous temper beneath may not carry the man. Isaacs
had evidently made up his mind. I did not think he could know much about
the usual methods of wooing English girls, but as I glanced at his
graceful figure, his matchless eyes, and noted for the hundredth time
the commanding, high-bred air that was the breath of his character, I
felt that his rival would have but a poor chance of success. He guessed
my thoughts.

"What do you think of me?" he asked, smiling. "Will you back me for a
place? I have advantages, you must allow--and worldly advantages too.
They are not rich people at all."

"My dear Isaacs, I will back you to win. But as far as 'worldly
advantages' are concerned, do not trust to wealth for a moment. Do not
flatter yourself that there will be any kind of a bargain, as if you
were marrying a Persian girl. There is nothing venal in that young
lady's veins, I am sure."

"Allah forbid! But there is something very venal in the veins of Mr.
Currie Ghyrkins. I propose to carry the outworks one by one. He is her
uncle, her guardian, her only relation, save her brother. I do not think
either of those men would be sorry to see her married to a man of
stainless name and considerable fortune."

"You forget your three incumbrances, as you called them last night."

"No--I do not forget them. It is allowed me by my religion to marry a
fourth, and I need not tell you that she would be thenceforth my only
wife."

"But would her guardian and brother ever think of allowing her to take
such a position?"

"Why not? You know very well that the English in general hardly consider
our marriages to be marriages at all--knowing the looseness of the bond.
That is the prevailing impression."

"Yes, I know. But then they would consider your marriage with Miss
Westonhaugh in the same light, which would not make matters any easier,
as far as I can see."

"Pardon me. I should marry Miss Westonhaugh by the English marriage
service and under English law. I should be as much bound to her, and to
her alone, as if I were an Englishman myself."

"Well, you have evidently thought it out and taken legal advice; and
really, as far as the technical part of it goes, I suppose you have as
good a chance as Lord Steepleton Kildare."

Isaacs frowned, and his eyes flashed. I saw at once that he considered
the Irish officer a rival, and a dangerous one. I did not think that if
Isaacs had fair play and the same opportunities Kildare had much chance.
Besides there was a difficulty in the way.

"As far as religion is concerned, Lord Steepleton is not much better off
than you, if he wants to marry Miss Westonhaugh. The Kildares have been
Roman Catholics since the memory of man, and they are very proud of it.
Theoretically, it is as hard for a Roman Catholic man to marry a
Protestant woman, as for a Mussulman to wed a Christian of any
denomination. Harder, in fact, for your marriage depends upon the
consent of the lady, and his upon the consent of the Church. He has all
sorts of difficulties to surmount, while you have only to get your
personality accepted--which, when I look at you, I think might be done,"
I added, laughing.

"_Jo hoga, so hoga_--what will be, will be," he said; "but religion or
no religion, I mean to do it." Then he lighted a cigarette and said,
"Come, it is time to go and see his Saturnine majesty, the Maharajah of
Baithopoor."

I called for my hat and gloves.

"By-the-bye, Griggs, you may as well put on a black coat. You know the
old fellow is a king, after all, and you had better produce a favourable
impression." I retired to comply with his request, and as I came back he
turned quickly and came towards me, holding out both hands, with a very
earnest look in his face.

"Griggs, I care for that lady more than I can tell you," he said, taking
my hands in his.

"My dear fellow, I am sure you do. People do not go suddenly into
trances at a name that is indifferent to them. I am sure you love her
very honestly and dearly."

"You and she have come into my life almost together, for it was not
until I talked with you last night that I made up my mind. Will you help
me? I have not a friend in the world." The simple, boyish look was in
his eyes, and he stood holding my hands and waiting for my answer. I was
so fascinated that I would have then and there gone through fire and
water for him, as I would now.

"Yes. I will help you. I will be a friend to you."

"Thank you. I believe you." He dropped my hands, and we turned and went
out, silent.

In all my wanderings I had never promised any man my friendship and
unconditional support before. There was something about Isaacs that
overcame and utterly swept away preconceived ideas, rules, and
prejudices. It was but the third day of our acquaintance, and here was I
swearing eternal friendship like a school-girl; promising to help a man,
of whose very existence I knew nothing three days ago, to marry a woman
whom I had seen for the first time yesterday. But I resolved that,
having pledged myself, I would do my part with my might, whatever that
part might be. Meanwhile we rode along, and Isaacs began to talk about
the visit we were going to make.

"I think," he said, "that you had better know something about this
matter beforehand. The way is long, and we cannot ride fast over the
steep roads, so there is plenty of time. Do not imagine that I have idly
asked you to go with me because I supposed it would amuse you. Dismiss
also from your mind the impression that it is a question of buying and
selling jewels. It is a very serious matter, and if you would prefer to
have nothing to do with it, do not hesitate to say so. I promised the
maharajah this morning that I would bring, this afternoon, a reliable
person of experience, who could give advice, and who might be induced to
give his assistance as well as his counsel. I have not known you long,
but I know you by reputation, and I decided to bring you, if you would
come. From the very nature of the case I can tell you nothing more,
unless you consent to go with me."

"I will go," I said.

"In that case I will try and explain the situation in as few words as
possible. The maharajah is in a tight place. You will readily understand
that the present difficulties in Kabul cause him endless anxiety,
considering the position of his dominions. The unexpected turn of
events, following now so rapidly on each other since the English
wantonly sacrificed Cavagnari and his friends to a vainglorious love of
bravado, has shaken the confidence of the native princes in the
stability of English rule. They are frightened out of their senses,
having the fear of the tribes before them if the English should be
worsted; and they dread, on the other hand, lest the English, finding
themselves in great straits, should levy heavy contributions on
them--the native princes--for the consolidation of what they term the
'Empire.' They have not much sense, these poor old kings and boy
princes, or they would see that the English do not dare to try any of
those old-fashioned Clive tactics now. But old Baithopoor has heard all
about the King of Oude, and thinks he may share the same fate."

"I think he may make his mind easy on that score. The kingdom of
Baithopoor is too inconveniently situated and too full of mosquitoes to
attract the English. Besides, there are more roses than rubies there
just now."

"True, and that question interests me closely, for the old man owes me a
great deal of money. It was I who pulled him through the last famine."

"Not a very profitable investment, I should think. Shall you ever see a
rupee of that money again?"

"Yes; he will pay me; though I did not think so a week ago, or indeed
yesterday. I lent him the means of feeding his people and saving many of
them from actual death by starvation, because there are so many
Mussulmans among them, though the maharajah is a Hindoo. As for him, he
might starve to-morrow, the infidel hound; I would not give him a
_chowpatti_ or a mouthful of _dal_ to keep his wretched old body alive."

"Do I understand that this interview relates to the repayment of the
moneys you have advanced?"

"Yes; though that is not the most interesting part of it. He wanted to
pay me in flesh--human flesh, and he offered to make me a king into the
bargain, if I would forgive him the debt. The latter part of the
proposal was purely visionary. The promise to pay in so much humanity he
is able to perform. I have not made up my mind."

I looked at Isaacs in utter astonishment. What in the world could he
mean? Had the maharajah offered him some more wives--creatures of
peerless beauty and immense value? No; I knew he would not hesitate now
to refuse such a proposition.

"Will you please to explain what you mean by his paying you in man?" I
asked.

"In two words. The Maharajah of Baithopoor has in his possession a man.
Safely stowed away under a triple watch and carefully tended, this man
awaits his fate as the maharajah may decide. The English Government
would pay an enormous sum for this man, but Baithopoor fears that they
would ask awkward questions, and perhaps not believe the answers he
would give them. So, as he owes me a good deal, he thinks I might be
induced to take his prisoner and realise him, so to speak; thus
cancelling the debt, and saving him from the alternative of putting the
man to death privately, or of going through dangerous negotiations with
the Government. Now this thing is perfectly feasible, and it depends
upon me to say 'yes' or 'no' to the proposition. Do you see now? It is a
serious matter enough."

"But the man--who is he? Why do the English want him so much?"

Isaacs pressed his horse close to mine, and looking round to see that
the saice was a long way behind, he put his hand on my shoulder, and,
leaning out of the saddle till his mouth almost touched my ear, he
whispered quickly--

"Shere Ali."

"The devil, you say!" I ejaculated, surprised out of grammar and decorum
by the startling news. Persons who were in India in 1879 will not have
forgotten the endless speculation caused by the disappearance of the
Emir of Afghanistan, Shere Ali, in the spring of that year. Defeated by
the English at Ali Musjid and Peiwar, and believing his cause lost, he
fled, no one knew whither; though there is reason to think that he might
have returned to power and popularity among the Afghan tribes if he had
presented himself after the murder of Cavagnari.

"Yes," continued Isaacs, "he has been a prisoner in the palace of
Baithopoor for six weeks, and not a soul save the maharajah and you and
I know it. He came to Baithopoor, humbly disguised as a Yogi from the
hills, though he is a Mussulman, and having obtained a private hearing,
disclosed his real name, proposing to the sovereign a joint movement on
Kabul, then just pacified by the British, and promising all manner of
things for the assistance. Old Baitho, who is no fool, clapped him into
prison under a guard of Punjabi soldiers who could not speak a word of
Afghan, and after due consideration packed up his traps and betook
himself to Simla by short stages, for the journey is not an easy one for
a man of his years. He arrived the day before yesterday, and has
ostensibly come to congratulate the Viceroy on the success of the
British arms. He has had to modify the enthusiasm of his proposed
address, in consequence of the bad news from Kabul. Of course, his first
move was to send for me, and I had a long interview this morning, in
which he explained everything. I told him that I would not move in the
matter without a third person--necessary as a witness when dealing with
such people--and I have brought you."

"But what was his proposal to invest you with a crown? Did he think you
were a likely person for a new Emir of Kabul?"

"Exactly. My faith, and above all, my wealth, suggested to him that I,
as a born Persian, might be the very man for the vacant throne. No
doubt, the English would be delighted to have me there. But the whole
thing is visionary and ridiculous. I think I shall accept the other
proposition, and take the prisoner. It is a good bargain."

I was silent. The intimate way in which I had seen Isaacs hitherto had
made me forget his immense wealth and his power. I had not realised that
he could be so closely connected with intrigues of such importance as
this, or that independant native princes were likely to look upon him as
a possible Emir of Afghanistan. I had nothing to say, and I determined
to keep to the part I was brought to perform, which was that of a
witness, and nothing more. If my advice were asked, I would speak boldly
for Shere Ali's liberation and protest against the poor man being bought
and sold in this way. This train of thought reminded me of Isaacs' words
when we left Miss Westonhaugh that morning. "It is not often," he had
said, "that you see such jewels bought and sold." No, indeed!

"You see," said Isaacs, as we neared our destination, "Baithopoor is in
my power, body and soul, for a word from me would expose him to the
British Government as 'harbouring traitors,' as they would express it.
On the other hand, the fact that you, the third party, are a journalist,
and could at a moment's notice give publicity to the whole thing, will
be an additional safeguard. I have him as in a vice. And now put on your
most formal manners and look as if you were impenetrable as the rock and
unbending as cast iron, for we have reached his bungalow."

I could not but admire the perfect calm and caution with which he was
conducting an affair involving millions of money, a possible indictment
for high treason, and the key-note of the Afghan question, while I knew
that his whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of a beautiful
picture ever before him, sleeping or waking. Whatever I might think of
his bargaining for the possession of Shere Ali, he had a great, even
untiring, intellect. He had the elements of a leader of men, and I
fondly hoped he might be a ruler some day.

The bungalow in which the Maharajah of Baithopoor had taken up his
residence during his visit was very much like all the rest of the houses
I saw in Simla. The verandah, however, was crowded with servants and
sowars in gorgeous but rather tawdry liveries, not all of them as clean
as they should have been. Horses with elaborate high saddles and
embroidered trappings rather the worse for wear were being led up and
down the walk. As we neared the door there was a strong smell of
rosewater and native perfumes and hookah tobacco--the indescribable
odour of Eastern high life. There was also a general air of wasteful and
tawdry dowdiness, if I may coin such a word, which one constantly sees
in the retinues of native princes and rich native merchants, ill
contrasting with the great intrinsic value of some of the ornaments worn
by the chief officers of the train.

Isaacs spoke a few words in a low voice to the jemadar at the door, and
we were admitted into a small room in the side of the house, opening, as
all rooms do in India, on to the verandah. There were low wooden
charpoys around the walls, and we sat down, waiting till the maharajah
should be advised of our arrival. Very soon a jemadar came in and
informed us that "if the _sahib log_, who were the protectors of the
poor, would deign to be led by him," we should be shown into the royal
presence. So we rose and followed the obsequious official into another
apartment.

The room where the maharajah awaited us was even smaller than the one
into which we had been first shown. It was on the back of the house, and
only half lighted by the few rays of afternoon sun that struggled
through the dense foliage outside. I suppose this apartment had been
chosen as the scene of the interview on account of its seclusion.
Outside the window, which was closed, a sowar paced slowly up and down
to keep away any curious listeners. A heavy curtain hung before the door
through which we had entered. I thought that on the whole the place
seemed pretty safe.

The old maharajah sat cross-legged upon a great pile of dark-red
cushions, his slippers by his side, and a huge hookah before him. He
wore a plain white pugree with a large jewel set on one side, and his
body was swathed and wrapped in dark thick stuffs, as if he felt keenly
the cold autumn air. His face was long, of an ashy yellowish colour, and
an immense white moustache hung curling down over his sombre robe. One
hand protruded from the folds and held the richly-jewelled mouthpiece of
the pipe to his lips, and I noticed that the fingers were long and
crooked, winding themselves curiously round the gold stem, as if
revelling in the touch of the precious metal and the gems. As we came
within his range of vision, his dark eyes shot a quick glance of
scrutiny at me and then dropped again. Not a movement of the head or
body betrayed a consciousness of our presence. Isaacs made a long
salutation in Hindustani, and I followed his example, but he did not
take off his shoes or make anything more than an ordinary bow. It was
quite evident that he was master of the situation. The old man took the
pipe from his mouth and replied in a deep hollow voice that he was glad
to see us, and that, in consideration of our wealth, fame, and renowned
wisdom, he would waive all ceremony and beg us to be seated. We sat down
cross-legged on cushions before him, and as near as we could get, so
that it seemed as if we three were performing some sacred rite of which
the object was the tall hookah that stood in the centre of our triangle.

Being seated, Isaacs addressed the prince, still in Hindustani, and said
that the splendour of his sublime majesty, which was like the sun
dispelling the clouds, so overcame him with fear and trembling, that he
humbly implored permission to make use of the Persian tongue, which, he
was aware, the lord of boundless wisdom spoke with even greater ease
than himself.

Without waiting for an answer, and with no perceptible manifestation of
any such "fear and trembling" as he professed, Isaacs at once began to
speak in his native tongue, and dropping all forms of ceremony or
circumlocution plunged boldly into business. He did not hesitate to
explain to the maharajah the strength of his position, dwelling on the
fact that, by a word to the English of the whereabouts of Shere Ali, he
could plunge Baithopoor into hopeless and endless entanglements, to
which there could be but one issue--absorption into the British Râj. He
dwelt on the large sums the maharajah owed him for assistance lent
during the late famine, and he skilfully produced the impression that he
wanted the money down, then and there.

"If your majesty should refuse to satisfy my just claims, I have ample
weapons by which to satisfy them for myself, and no considerations of
mercy or pity for your majesty will tempt me to abate one rupee in the
account of your indebtedness, which, as you well know, is not swelled by
any usurious interest. You could not have borrowed the money on such
easy terms from any bank in India or England, and if I have been
merciful hitherto, I will be so no longer. What saith the Apostle of
Allah? 'Verily, life for life, and eye for eye, and nose for nose, and
ear for ear, and tooth for tooth, and for wounding retaliation.' And the
time of your promise is expired and you shall pay me. And is not the
wise Frank, who sitteth at my right hand, the ready writer, who giveth
to the public every day a new book to read, the paper of news,
_Khabar-i-Khagaz_ wherein are written the misdeeds of the wicked, and
the dealings of the fraudulent and the unwary receive their just reward?
And think you he will not make a great writing, several columns in
length, and deliver it to the devils that perform his bidding, and shall
they not multiply what he hath written, and sow it broadcast over the
British Râj for the minor consideration of one anna a copy, that all
shall see how the Maharajah of Baithopoor doth scandalously repudiate
his debts, and harbour traitors to the Râj in his palace?"

Isaacs said all this in a solemn and impressive manner, calculated to
inspire awe and terror in the soul of the unhappy debtor. As for the
maharajah, the cold sweat stood on his face, and at the last words his
anxiety was so great that the long fingers uncurled spasmodically and
the jewelled mouthpiece fell back, as the head of a snake, among the
silken coils of the tube at his feet. Instantly, on feeling the grasping
hand empty, his majesty, with more alacrity than I would have expected,
darted forward with outstretched claws, as a hawk on his prey, and
seizing the glittering thing returned it to his lips with a look of
evident relief. It was habit, of course, for we were not exactly the men
to plunder him of his toy, but there was a fierceness about the whole
action that spoke of the real miser. Then there was silence for a
moment. The old man was evidently greatly impressed by the perils of his
situation. Isaacs continued.

"Your majesty well perceives that you have surrounded yourself with
dangers on all sides. No danger threatens me. I could buy you and
Baithopoor to-morrow if I chose. But I am a just man. When the prophet,
whose name be blessed, saith that we shall have eye for eye, and nose
for nose, and for wounding retaliation, he saith also that 'he that
remitteth the same as alms it shall be an atonement unto him.' Now your
majesty is a hard man, and I well know that if I force you to pay me now
you will cruelly tax and oppress your subjects to refill your coffers.
And many of your subjects are true believers, following the prophet,
upon whom be peace; and it is also written 'Thou shalt rob a stranger,
but thou shalt not rob a brother,'--and if I cause you to rob my
brethren is not the sin mine, and the atonement thereof? Now also has
the lawful interest on your bond mounted up to several lakhs of rupees.
But for the sake of my brethren who are in bondage to you, who are an
unbeliever and shall broil everlastingly in raging flames, I will yet
make a covenant with you, and the agreement thereof shall be this:

"You shall deliver into my hand, before the dark half of the next moon,
the man"--Isaacs lowered his voice to a whisper, barely audible in the
still room, where the only sound heard as he paused was the tread of the
sowar on the verandah outside-- "the man Shere Ali, formerly Emir of
Afghanistan, now hidden in your palace of Baithopoor. Him you shall give
to me safe and untouched at the place which I shall choose, northwards
from here, in the pass towards Keitung. And there shall not be an hair
of his head touched, and if it is good in my eyes I will give him up to
the British; and if it is good in my eyes, I will slay him, and you
shall ask no questions. And if you refuse to do this I will go to the
great lord sahib and tell him of your doings, and you will be arrested
before this night and shall not escape. But if you consent and put your
hand to this agreement, I will speak no word, and you shall depart in
peace; and moreover, for the sake of the true believers in your kingdom
I will remit to you the whole of the interest on your debt; and the bond
you shall pay at your convenience. I have spoken, do you answer me."
Isaacs calmly took from his pocket two rolls covered with Persian
writing, and lighting a cigarette, proceeded to peruse them carefully,
to detect any flaw or error in their composition. The face of the old
maharajah betrayed great emotion, but he bravely pulled away at his
hookah and tried to think over the situation. In the hope of delivering
himself from his whole debt he had rashly given himself into the hands
of a man who hated him, though he had discovered that hatred too late.
He had flattered himself that the loan had been made out of friendly
feeling and a desire for his interest and support; he found that Isaacs
had lent the money, for real or imaginary religious motives, in the
interest of his co-religionists. I sat silently watching the varying
passions as they swept over the repulsive face of the old man. The
silence must have lasted a quarter of an hour.

"Give me the covenant," he said at last, "for I am in the tiger's
clutches. I will sign it, since I must. But it shall be requited to you,
Abdul Hafiz; and when your body has been eaten of jackals and wild pigs
in the forest, your soul shall enter into the shape of a despised
sweeper, and you and your off-spring shall scavenge the streets of the
cities of my kingdom and of the kingdom of my son, and son's son, to ten
thousand generations." A Hindoo cannot express scorn more deadly or hate
more lasting than this. Isaacs smiled, but there was a concentrated look
in his face, relentless and hard, as he answered the insult.

"I am not going to bandy words with you. But if you are not quick about
signing that paper I may change my mind, and send for the Angrezi sowars
from Peterhof. So you had better hurry yourself." Isaacs produced a
small inkhorn and a reed pen from his pocket. "Sign," he said, rising to
his feet "before that soldier outside passes the window three times, or
I will deliver you to the British."

Trembling in every joint, and the perspiration standing on his face like
beads, the old man seized the pen and traced his name and titles at the
foot, first of one copy, and then of the other. Isaacs followed, writing
his full name in the Persian character, and I signed my name last, "Paul
Griggs," in large letters at the bottom of each roll, adding the word
"witness," in case of the transaction becoming known.

"And now," said Isaacs to the maharajah, "despatch at once a messenger,
and let the man here mentioned be brought under a strong guard and by
circuitous roads to the pass of Keitung, and let them there encamp
before the third week from to-day, when the moon is at the full. And I
will be there and will receive the man. And woe to you if he come not;
and woe to you if you oppress the true believers in your realm." He
turned on his heel, and I followed him out of the room after making a
brief salutation to the old man, cowering among his cushions, a ceremony
which Isaacs omitted, whether intentionally or from forgetfulness, I
could not say. We passed through the house out into the air, and
mounting our horses rode away, leaving the double row of servants
salaaming to the ground. The duration of our private interview with the
maharajah had given them an immense idea of our importance. We had come
at four and it was now nearly five. The long pauses and the Persian
circumlocutions had occupied a good deal of time.

"You do not seem to have needed my counsel or assistance much," I said.
"With such an armoury of weapons you could manage half-a-dozen
maharajahs."

"Yes--perhaps so. But I have strong reasons for wishing this affair
quickly over, and the editor of a daily paper is a thing of terror to a
native prince; you must have seen that."

"What do you mean to do with your man when he is safely in your hands,
if it is not an indiscreet question?"

"Do with him?" asked Isaacs with some astonishment. "Is it possible you
have not guessed? He is a brave man, and a true believer. I will give
him money and letters, that he may make his way to Baghdad, or wherever
he will be safe. He shall depart in peace, and be as free as air."

I had half suspected my friend of some such generous intention, but he
had played his part of unrelenting hardness so well in our late
interview with the Hindoo prince that it seemed incomprehensible that a
man should be so pitiless and so kind on the same day. There was not a
trace of hardness on his beautiful features now, and as we rounded the
hill and caught the last beams of the sun, now sinking behind the
mountains, his face seemed transfigured as with a glory, and I could
hardly bear to look at him. He held his hat in his hand and faced the
west for an instant, as though thanking the declining day for its
freshness and beauty; and I thought to myself that the sun was lucky to
see such an exquisite picture before he bid Simla good-night, and that
he should shine the brighter for it the next day, since he would look on
nothing fairer in his twelve hours' wandering over the other half of
creation.

"And now," said he, "it is late, but if we ride towards Annandale we may
meet them coming back from the polo match we have missed." His eyes
glowed at the thought. Shere Ali, the maharajah, bonds, principal, and
interest, were all forgotten in the anticipation of a brief meeting with
the woman he loved.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER VI.


"Why did you not come and see the game? After all your enthusiasm about
polo this morning, I did not think you would miss anything so good,"
were the first words of Miss Westonhaugh as we met her and Kildare in
the narrow path that leads down to Annandale. Two men were riding behind
them, who proved to be Mr. Currie Ghyrkins and Mr. John Westonhaugh. The
latter was duly introduced to us; a quiet, spare man, with his sister's
features, but without a trace of her superb colour and animal spirits.
He had the real Bombay paleness, and had been steamed to the bone
through the rains. As we were introduced, Isaacs started and said
quickly that he believed he had met Mr. Westonhaugh before.

"It is possible, quite possible," said that gentleman affably,
"especially if you ever go to Bombay."

"Yes--it was in Bombay--some twelve years ago. You have probably
forgotten me."

"Ah, yes. I was young and green then. I wonder you remember me." He did
not show any very lively interest in the matter, though he smiled
pleasantly.

Miss Westonhaugh must have been teasing Lord Steepleton, for he looked
flushed and annoyed, and she was in capital spirits. We turned to go
back with the party, and by a turn of the wrist Isaacs wheeled his horse
to the side of Miss Westonhaugh's, a position he did not again abandon.
They were leading, and I resolved they should have a chance, as the path
was not broad enough for more than two to ride abreast. So I furtively
excited my horse by a touch of the heel and a quick strain on the curb,
throwing him across the road, and thus producing a momentary delay, of
which the two riders in front took advantage to increase their distance.
Then we fell in, Mr. Ghyrkins and I in front, while the dejected Kildare
rode behind with Mr. John Westonhaugh. Ghyrkins and I, being heavy men,
heavily mounted, controlled the situation, and before long Isaacs and
Miss Westonhaugh were a couple of hundred yards ahead, and we only
caught occasional glimpses of them through the trees as they wound in
and out along the path.

"What are those youngsters talking about, back there? Tigers, I'll be
bound," said Mr. Ghyrkins to me. Sure enough, they were.

"What do you suppose I found when we got back this afternoon, Mr.
Griggs? Why, this hair-brained young Kildare has been proposing to my
niece----" his horse stumbled, but recovered himself in a moment.

"You don't mean it," said I, rather startled.

"Oh no, no, no. I don't mean that at all. Ha! ha! ha! very good, very
good. No, no. Lord Steepleton wants us all to go on a tiger-hunt to
amuse John, and he proposes--ha! ha!--really too funny of me--that Miss
Westonhaugh should go with us."

"I suppose you have no objection, Mr. Ghyrkins? Ladies constantly go on
such expeditions, and they do not appear to be the least in the way."

"Objections? Of course I have objections. Do you suppose I want to drag
my niece to a premature grave? Think of the fever and the rough living
and all, and she only just out from England."

"She looks as if she could stand anything," I said, as just then an open
space in the trees gave us a glimpse of Miss Westonhaugh and Isaacs
ambling along and apparently in earnest conversation. She certainly
looked strong enough to go tiger-hunting that minute, as she sat erect
but half turned to the off side, listening to what Isaacs seemed to be
saying.

"I hope you will not go and tell her so," said Ghyrkins. "If she gets an
idea that the thing is possible, there will be no holding her. You don't
know her. I hardly know her myself. Never saw her since she was a baby
till the other day. Now you are the sort of person to go after tigers.
Why do you not go off with my nephew and Mr. Isaacs and Kildare, and
kill as many of them as you like?"

"I have no objection, I am sure. I suppose the _Howler_ could spare me
for a fortnight, now that I have converted the Press Commissioner, your
new _deus ex machina_ for the obstruction of news. What a motley party
we should be. Let me see.--a Bombay Civil Servant, an Irish nobleman, a
Persian millionaire, and a Yankee newspaper man. By Jove! add to that a
famous Revenue Commissioner and a reigning beauty, and the sextett is
complete." Mr. Ghyrkins looked pleased at the gross flattery of himself.
I recollected suddenly that, though he was far from famous as a revenue
commissioner, I had read of some good shooting he had done in his
younger days. Here was a chance.

"Besides, Mr. Ghyrkins, a tiger-hunting party would not be the thing
without some seasoned Nimrod to advise and direct us. Who so fitted for
the post as the man of many a chase, the companion of Maori, the slayer
of the twelve foot tiger in the Nepaul hills in 1861?"

"You have a good memory, Mr. Griggs," said the old fellow, perfectly
delighted, and now fairly launched on his favourite topic. "By Gad, sir,
if I thought I should get such another chance I would go with you
to-morrow!"

"Why not? there are lots of big man-eaters about," and I incontinently
reeled off half a page of statistics, more or less accurate, about the
number of persons destroyed by snakes and wild beasts in the last year.
"Of course most of those deaths were from tigers, and it is a really
good action to kill a few. Many people can see tigers but cannot shoot
them, whereas your deeds of death amongst them ate a matter of history.
You really ought to be philanthropic, Mr. Ghyrkins, and go with us. We
might stand a chance of seeing some real sport then."

"Why, really, now that you make me think of it, I believe I should like
it amazingly, and I could leave my niece with
Lady--Lady--Stick-in-the-mud; what the deuce is her name? The wife of
the Chief Justice, you know. You ought to know, really--I never remember
names much;" he jerked out his sentences irately.

"Certainly, Lady Smith-Tompkins, you mean. Yes, you might do that--that
is, if Miss Westonhaugh has had the measles, and is not afraid of them.
I heard this morning that three of the little Smith-Tompkinses had them
quite badly."

"You don't say so! Well, well, we shall find some one else, no doubt."

I was certain that at that very moment Isaacs and Miss Westonhaugh were
planning the whole expedition, and so I returned to the question of
sport and inquired where we should go. This led to considerable
discussion, and before we arrived at Mr. Ghyrkins' bungalow--still in
the same order--it was very clear that the old sportsman had made up his
mind to kill one more tiger at all events; and that, rather than forego
the enjoyment of the chase, he would be willing to take his niece with
him. As for the direction of the expedition, that could be decided in a
day or two. It was not the best season for tigers--the early spring is
better--but they are always to be found in the forests of the Terai, the
country along the base of the hills, north of Oude.

When we reached the house it was quite dark, for we had ridden slowly.
The light from the open door, falling across the verandah, showed us
Miss Westonhaugh seated in a huge chair, and Isaacs standing by her side
slightly bending, and holding his hat in his hand. They were still
talking, but as we rode up to the lawn and shouted for the saices,
Isaacs stood up and looked across towards us, and their voices ceased.
It was evident that he had succeeded in thoroughly interesting her, for
I thought--though it was some distance, and the light on them was not
strong--that as he straightened himself and stopped speaking, she looked
up to his face as if regretting that he did not go on. I dismounted with
the rest and walked up to bid Miss Westonhaugh good-night.

"You must come and dine to-morrow night," said Mr. Ghyrkins, "and we
will arrange all about it. Sharp seven. To-morrow is Sunday, you know.
Kildare, you must come too, if you mean business. Seven. We must look
sharp and start, if we mean to come back here before the Viceroy goes."

"Oh in that case," said Kildare, turning to me, "we can settle all about
the polo match for Monday, can't we?"

"Of course, very good of you to take the trouble."

"Not a bit of it. Good-night." We bowed and went back to find our horses
in the gloom. After some fumbling, for it was intensely dark after
facing the light in the doorway of the bungalow, we got into the saddle
and turned homeward through the trees.

"Thank you, Griggs," said Isaacs. "May your feet never weary, and your
shadow never be less."

"Don't mention it, and thanks about the shadow. Only it is never likely
to be less than at the present moment. How dark it is, to be sure!" I
knew well enough what he was thanking me for. I lit a cheroot.

"Isaacs," I said, "you are a pretty cool hand, upon my word."

"Why?"

"Why, indeed! Here you and Miss Westonhaugh have been calmly planning an
extensive tiger-hunt, when you have promised to be in the neighbourhood
of Keitung in three weeks, wherever that may be. I suppose it is in the
opposite direction from here, for you will not find any tigers nearer
than the Terai at this time of year."

"I do not see the difficulty," he answered. "We can be in Oude in two
days from here; shoot tigers for ten days, and be here again in two days
more. That is just a fortnight. It will not take me a week to reach
Keitung. I am much mistaken if I do not get there in three days. I shall
lay a _dâk_ by messengers before I go to Oude, and between a double set
of coolies and lots of ponies wherever the roads are good enough, I
shall be at the place of meeting soon enough, never fear."

"Oh, very well; but I hardly think Ghyrkins will want to return under
three weeks; and--I did not think you would want to leave the party." He
had evidently planned the whole three weeks' business carefully. I did
not continue the conversation. He was naturally absorbed in the
arrangement of his numerous schemes--no easy matter, when affairs of
magnitude have to be ordered to suit the exigencies of a _grande
passion_. I shrank from intruding on his reflections, and I had quite
enough to do in keeping my horse on his feet in the thick darkness.
Suddenly he reared violently, and then stood still, quivering in every
limb. Isaacs' horse plunged and snorted by my side, and cannoned heavily
against me. Then all was quiet. I could see nothing. Presently a voice,
low and musical, broke on the darkness, and I thought I could
distinguish a tall figure on foot at Isaacs' knee. Whoever the man was
he must be on the other side of my companion, but I made out a head from
which the voice proceeded.

"Peace, Abdul Hafiz!" it said.

"Aleikum Salaam, Ram Lal!" answered Isaacs. He must have recognised the
man by his voice.

"Abdul," continued the stranger, speaking Persian. "I have business with
thee this night; thou art going home. If it is thy pleasure I will be
with thee in two hours in thy dwelling."

"Thy pleasure is my pleasure. Be it so." I thought the head disappeared.

"Be it so," the voice echoed, growing faint, as if moving rapidly away
from us. The horses, momentarily startled by the unexpected pedestrian,
regained their equanimity. I confess the incident gave me a curiously
unpleasant sensation. It was so very odd that a man on foot--a Persian,
I judged, by his accent--should know of my companion's whereabouts, and
that they should recognise each other by their voices. I recollected
that our coming to Mr. Ghyrkins' bungalow was wholly unpremeditated, and
I was sure Isaacs had spoken to none but our party--not even to his
saice--since our meeting with the Westonhaughs on the Annandale road an
hour and a half before.

"I wonder what he wants," said my friend, apparently soliloquising.

"He seems to know where to find you, at all events," I answered. "He
must have second sight to know you had been to Carisbrooke."

"He has. He is a very singular personage altogether. However, he has
done me more than one service before now, and though I do not comprehend
his method of arriving at conclusions, still less his mode of
locomotion, I am always glad of his advice."

"But what is he? Is he a Persian?--you called him by an Indian name, but
that may be a disguise--is he a wise man from Iran?"

"He is a very wise man, but not from Iran. No. He is a Brahmin by birth,
a Buddhist by adopted religion, and he calls himself an 'adept' by
profession, I suppose, if he can be said to have any. He comes and goes
unexpectedly, with amazing rapidity. His visits are brief, but he always
seems to be perfectly conversant with the matter in hand, whatever it
be. He will come to-night and give me about twenty words of advice,
which I may follow or may not, as my judgment dictates; and before I
have answered or recovered from my surprise, he will have vanished,
apparently into space; for if I ask my servants where he is gone they
will stare at me as if I were crazy, until I show them that the room is
empty, and accuse them of going to sleep instead of seeing who goes in
and out of my apartment. He speaks more languages than I do, and better.
He once told me he was educated in Edinburgh, and his perfect knowledge
of European affairs and of European topics leads me to think he must
have been there a long time. Have you ever looked into the higher phases
of Buddhism? It is a very interesting study."

"Yes, I have read something about it. Indeed I have read a good deal,
and have thought more. The subject is full of interest, as you say. If I
had been an Asiatic by birth, I am sure I should have sought to attain
_moksha_, even if it required a lifetime to pass through all the degrees
of initiation. There is something so rational about their theories,
disclaiming, as they do, all supernatural power; and, at the same time,
there is something so pure and high in their conception of life, in
their ideas about the ideal, if you will allow me the expression, that I
do not wonder Edwin Arnold has set our American transcendentalists and
Unitarians and freethinkers speculating about it all, and wondering
whether the East may not have had men as great as Emerson and Channing
among its teachers." I paused. My greatest fault is that if any one
starts me upon a subject I know anything about, I immediately become
didactic. So I paused and reflected that Isaacs, being, as he himself
declared, frequently in the society of an "adept" of a high class, was
sure to know a great deal more than I.

"I too," he said, "have been greatly struck, and sometimes almost
converted, by the beauty of the higher Buddhist thoughts. As for their
apparently supernatural powers and what they do with them, I care
nothing about phenomena of that description. We live in a land where
marvels are common enough. Who has ever explained the mango trick, or
the basket trick, or the man who throws a rope up into the air and then
climbs up it and takes the rope after him, disappearing into blue space?
And yet you have seen those things--I have seen them, every one has seen
them,--and the performers claim no supernatural agency or assistance. It
is merely a difference of degree, whether you make a mango grow from the
seed to the tree in half an hour, or whether you transport yourself ten
thousand miles in as many seconds, passing through walls of brick and
stone on your way, and astonishing some ordinary mortal by showing that
you know all about his affairs. I see no essential difference between
the two 'phenomena,' as the newspapers call them, since Madame Blavatsky
has set them all by the ears in this country. It is just the difference
in the amount of power brought to bear on the action. That is all. I
have seen, in a workshop in Calcutta, a hammer that would crack an
eggshell without crushing it, or bruise a lump of iron as big as your
head into a flat cake. 'Phenomena' may amuse women and children, but the
real beauty of the system lies in the promised attainment of happiness.
Whether that state of supreme freedom from earthly care gives the
fortunate initiate the power of projecting himself to the antipodes by a
mere act of volition, or of condensing the astral fluid into articles of
daily use, or of stimulating the vital forces of nature to an abnormal
activity, is to me a matter of supreme indifference. I am tolerably
happy in my own way as things are. I should not be a whit happier if I
were able to go off after dinner and take a part in American politics
for a few hours, returning to business here to-morrow morning."

"That is an extreme case," I said. "No man in his senses ever connects
the idea of happiness with American politics."

"Of one thing I am sure, though." He paused as if choosing his words. "I
am sure of this. If any unforeseen event, whether an act of folly of my
own, or the hand of Allah, who is wise, should destroy the peace of mind
I have enjoyed for ten years, with very trifling interruption,--if
anything should occur to make me permanently unhappy, beyond the
possibility of ordinary consolation,--I should seek comfort in the study
of the pure doctrines of the higher Buddhists. The pursuit of a
happiness, so immeasurably beyond all earthly considerations of bodily
comfort or of physical enjoyment, can surely not be inconsistent with my
religion--or with yours."

"No indeed," said I. "But, considering that you are the strictest of
Mohammedans, it seems to me you are wonderfully liberal. So you have
seriously contemplated the possibility of your becoming one of the
'brethren'--as they style themselves?"

"It never struck me until to-day that anything might occur by which my
life could be permanently disturbed. Something to-day has whispered to
me that such an existence could not be permanent. I am sure that it
cannot be. The issue must be either to an infinite happiness or to a
still more infinite misery. I cannot tell which." His clear, evenly
modulated voice trembled a little. We were in sight of the lights from
the hotel.

"I shall not dine with you to-night, Griggs. I will have something in my
own rooms. Come in as soon as you have done--that is if you are free.
There is no reason why you should not see Ram Lal the adept, since we
think alike about his religion, or school, or philosophy--find a name
for it while you are dining." And we separated for a time.

It had been a long and exciting day to me. I felt no more inclined than
he did for the din and racket and lights of the public dining-room. So I
followed his example and had something in my own apartment. Then I
settled myself to a hookah, resolved not to take advantage of Isaacs'
invitation until near the time when he expected Ram Lal. I felt the need
of an hour's solitude to collect my thoughts and to think over the
events of the last twenty-four hours. I recognised that I was fast
becoming very intimate with Isaacs, and I wanted to think about him and
excogitate the problem of his life; but when I tried to revolve the
situation logically, and deliver to myself a verdict, I found myself
carried off at a tangent by the wonderful pictures that passed before my
eyes. I could not detach the events from the individual. His face was
ever before me, whether I thought of Miss Westonhaugh, or of the
wretched old maharajah, or of Ram Lal the Buddhist. Isaacs was the
central figure in every picture, always in the front, always calm and
beautiful, always controlling the events around him. Then I entered on a
series of trite reflections to soothe my baffled reason, as a man will
who is used to understanding what goes on before him and suddenly finds
himself at a loss. Of course, I said to myself, it is no wonder he
controls things, or appears to. The circumstances in which I find this
three days' acquaintance are emphatically those of his own making. He
has always been a successful man, and he would not raise spirits that he
could not keep well in hand. He knows perfectly well what he is about in
making love to that beautiful creature, and is no doubt at this moment
laughing in his sleeve at my simplicity in believing that he was really
asking my advice. Pshaw! as if any advice could influence a man like
that! Absurd.

I sipped my coffee in disgust with myself. All the time, while trying to
persuade myself that Isaacs was only a very successful schemer, neither
better nor worse than other men, I was conscious of the face that would
not be banished from my sight. I saw the beautiful boyish look in his
deep dark eyes, the gentle curve of the mouth, the grand smooth
architrave of the brows. No--I was a fool! I had never met a man like
him, nor should again. How could Miss Westonhaugh save herself from
loving such a perfect creature? I thought, too, of his generosity. He
would surely keep his promise and deliver poor Shere Ali, hunted to
death by English and Afghan foes, from all his troubles. Had he not the
Maharajah of Baithopoor in his power? He might have exacted the full
payment of the debt, principal and interest, and saved the Afghan chief
into the bargain. But he feared lest the poor Mohammedans should suffer
from the prince's extortion, and he forgave freely the interest,
amounting now to a huge sum, and put off the payment of the bond itself
to the maharajah's convenience. Did ever an Oriental forgive a debt
before even to his own brother? Not in my experience.

I rose and went down to Isaacs. I found him as on the previous evening,
among his cushions with a manuscript book. He looked up smiling and
motioned me to be seated, keeping his place on the page with one finger.
He finished the verse before he spoke, and then laid the book down and
leaned back.

"So you have made up your mind that you would like to see Ram Lal. He
will be here in a minute, unless he changes his mind and does not come
after all."

There was a sound of voices outside. Some one asked if Isaacs were in,
and the servant answered. A tall figure in a gray _caftán_ and a plain
white turban stood in the door.

"I never change my mind," said the stranger, in excellent English,
though with an accent peculiar to the Hindoo tongue when struggling with
European languages. His voice was musical and high in pitch, though soft
and sweet in tone. The quality of voice that can be heard at a great
distance, with no apparent effort to the speaker. "I never change my
mind. I am here. Is it well with you?"

"It is well, Ram Lal. I thank you. Be seated, if you will stay with us a
while. This is my friend Mr. Griggs, of whom you probably know. He
thinks as I do on many points, and I was anxious that you should meet."

While Isaacs was speaking, Ram Lal advanced into the room and stood a
moment under the soft light, a gray figure, very tall, but not otherwise
remarkable. He was all gray. The long _caftán_ wrapped round him, the
turban which I had first thought white, the skin of his face, the
pointed beard and long moustache, the heavy eyebrows--a study of grays
against the barbaric splendour of the richly hung wall--a soft outline
on which the yellow light dwelt lovingly, as if weary of being cast back
and reflected from the glory of gold and the thousand facets of the
priceless gems. Ram Lal looked toward me, and as I gazed into his eyes I
saw that they too were gray--a very singular thing in the East--and that
they were very far apart, giving his face a look of great dignity and
fearless frankness. To judge by his features he seemed to be very thin,
and his high shoulders were angular, though the long loose garment
concealed the rest of his frame from view. I had plenty of time to note
these details, for he stood a full minute in the middle of the room, as
if deciding whether to remain or to go. Then he moved quietly to a divan
and sat down cross-legged.

"Abdul, you have done a good deed to-day, and I trust you will not
change your mind before you have carried out your present intentions."

"I never change my mind, Bam Lai," said Isaacs, smiling as he quoted his
visitor's own words. I was startled at first. What good deed was the
Buddhist referring to if not to the intended liberation of Shere Ali?
How could he know of it? Then I reflected that this man was, according
to Isaacs' declaration, an adept of the higher grades, a seer and a
knower of men's hearts. I resolved not to be astonished at anything that
occurred, only marvelling that it should have pleased this extraordinary
man to make his entrance like an ordinary mortal, instead of through the
floor or the ceiling.

"Pardon me," answered Ram Lal, "if I venture to contradict you. You do
change your mind sometimes. Who was it who lately scoffed at women,
their immortality, their virtue, and their intellect? Will you tell me
now, friend Abdul, that you have not changed your mind? Do you think of
anything, sleeping or waking, but the one woman for whom you _have_
changed your mind? Is not her picture ever before you, and the breath of
her beauty upon your soul? Have you not met her in the spirit as well as
in the flesh? Surely we shall hear no more of your doubts about women
for some time to come. I congratulate you, as far as that goes, on your
conversion. You have made a step towards a higher understanding of the
world you live in."

Isaacs did not seem in the least surprised at his visitor's intimate
acquaintance with his affairs. He bowed his head in silence, acquiescing
to what Bam Lai had said, and waited for him to proceed.

"I have come," continued the Buddhist, "to give you some good
advice--the best I have for you. You will probably not take it, for you
are the most self-reliant man I know, though you have changed a little
since you have been in love, witness your sudden intimacy with Mr.
Griggs." He looked at me, and there was a faint approach to a smile in
his gray eyes. "My advice to you is, do not let this projected
tiger-hunt take place if you can prevent it. No good can come of it, and
harm may. Now I have spoken because my mind would not be at rest if I
did not warn you. Of course you will do as you please, only never forget
that I pointed out to you the right course in time."

"Thank you, Ram Lal, for your friendly concern in my behalf. I do not
think I shall act as you suggest, but I am nevertheless grateful to you.
There is one thing I want to ask you, and consult you about, however."

"My friend, what is the use of my giving you advice that you will not
follow? If I lived with you, and were your constant companion, you would
ask me to advise you twenty times a day, and then you would go and do
the diametric opposite of what I suggested. If I did not see in you
something that I see in few other men, I would not be here. There are
plenty of fools who have wit enough to take counsel of a wise man. There
are few men of wit wise enough to be guided by their betters, as if they
were only fools for the time. Yet because you are so wayward I will help
you once or twice more, and then I will leave you to your own
course--which you, in your blindness, will call your kismet, not seeing
that your fate is continually in your own hands--more so at this moment
than ever before. Ask, and I will answer."

"Thanks, Ram Lal. It is this I would know. You are aware that I have
undertaken a novel kind of bargain. The man you wot of is to be
delivered to me near Keitung. I am anxious for the man's safety
afterwards, and I would be glad of some hint about disposing of him. I
must go alone, for I do not want any witness of what I am going to do,
and as a mere matter of personal safety for myself and the man I am
going to set free, I must decide on some plan of action when I meet the
band of sowars who will escort him. They are capable of murdering us
both if the maharajah instructs them to. As long as I am alive to bring
the old man into disgrace with the British, the captive is safe; but it
would be an easy matter for those fellows to dispose of us together, and
there would be an end of the business."

"Of course they could," replied Ram Lal, adding in an ironical tone "and
if you insist upon putting your head down the tiger's throat, how do you
expect me to prevent the brute from snapping it off? That would be a
'phenomenon,' would it not? And only this evening you were saying that
you despised 'phenomena.'"

"I said that such things were indifferent to me. I did not say I
despised them. But I think that this thing may be done without
performing any miracles."

"If it were not such a good action on your part I would have nothing to
do with it. But since you mean to risk your neck for your own peculiar
views of what is right, I will endeavour that you shall not break it. I
will meet you a day's journey before you reach Keitung, somewhere on the
road, and we will go together and do the business. But if I am to help
you I will not promise not to perform some miracles, as you call them,
though you know very well they are no such thing. Meanwhile, do as you
please about the tiger-hunt; I shall say no more about it." He paused,
and then, withdrawing one delicate hand from the folds of his _caftán_,
he pointed to the wall behind Isaacs and me, and said, "What a very
singular piece of workmanship is that yataghan!"

We both naturally turned half round to look at the weapon he spoke of,
which was the central piece in a trophy of jewelled sabres and Afghan
knives.

"Yes," said Isaacs, turning back to answer his guest, "it is a ----" He
stopped, and I, who had not seen the weapon before, lost among so many,
and was admiring its singular beauty, turned too; to my astonishment I
saw that Isaacs was gazing into empty space. The divan where Ram Lal had
been sitting an instant before, was vacant. He was gone.

"That is rather sudden," I said.

"More so than usual," was the reply. "Did you see him go? Did he go out
by the door?"

"Not I," I answered, "when I looked round at the wall he was placidly
sitting on that divan pointing with one hand at the yataghan. Does he
generally go so quickly?"

"Yes, more or less. Now I will show you some pretty sport." He rose to
his feet and went to the door. "Narain!" he cried. Narain, the bearer,
who was squatting against the door-post outside, sprang up and stood
before his master. "Narain, why did you not show that pundit the way
downstairs? What do you mean? have you no manners?"

Narain stood open mouthed. "What pundit, sahib?" he asked.

"Why, the pundit who came a quarter of an hour ago, you donkey! He has
just gone out, and you did not even get up and make a salaam, you
impertinent vagabond!" Narain protested that no pundit, or sahib, or any
one else, had passed the threshold since Ram Lal had entered. "Ha! you
_budmash_. You lazy dog of a Hindoo! you have been asleep again, you
swine, you son of a pig, you father of piglings! Is that the way you do
your work in my service?" Isaacs was enjoying the joke in a quiet way
immensely.

"Sahib," said the trembling Narain, apparently forgetting the genealogy
his master had thrust upon him, "Sahib, you are protector of the poor,
you are my father and my mother, and my brother, and all my relations,"
the common form of Hindoo supplication, "but, Sri Krishnaji! by the
blessed Krishna, I have not slept a wink."

"Then I suppose you mean me to believe that the pundit went through the
ceiling, or is hidden under the cushions. Swear not by your false idols,
slave; I shall not believe you for that, you dog of an unbeliever, you
soor-be-iman, you swine without faith!"

"Han, sahib, han!" cried Narain, seizing at the idea that the pundit had
disappeared mysteriously through the walls. "Yes, sahib, the pundit is a
great yogi, and has made the winds carry him off." The fellow thought
this was a bright idea, not by any means beneath consideration. Isaacs
appeared somewhat pacified.

"What makes you think he is a yogi, dog?" he inquired in a milder tone.
Narain had no answer ready, but stood looking rather stupidly through
the door at the room whence the unearthly visitor had so suddenly
disappeared. "Well," continued Isaacs, "you are more nearly right than
you imagine. The pundit is a bigger yogi than any your idiotic religion
can produce. Never mind, there is an eight anna bit for you, because I
said you were asleep when you were not." Narain bent to the ground in
thanks, as his master turned on his heel. "Not that he minds being told
that he is a pig, in the least," said Isaacs. "I would not call a
Mussulman so, but you can insult these Hindoos so much worse in other
ways that I think the porcine simile is quite merciful by comparison."
He sat down again among the cushions, and putting off his slippers,
curled himself comfortably together for a chat.

"What do you think of Ram Lal?" he asked, when Narain had brought
hookahs and sherbet.

"My dear fellow, I have hardly made up my mind what to think. I have not
altogether recovered from my astonishment. I confess that there was
nothing startling about his manner or his person. He behaved and talked
like a well educated native, in utter contrast to the amazing things he
said, and to his unprecedented mode of leave-taking. It would have
seemed more natural--I would say, more fitting--if he had appeared in
the classic dress of an astrologer, surrounded with zodiacs, and blue
lights, and black cats. Why do you suppose he wants you to abandon the
tiger-hunt?"

"I cannot tell. Perhaps he thinks something may happen to me to prevent
my keeping the other engagement. Perhaps he does not approve----" he
stopped, as if not wanting to approach the subject of Ram Lal's
disapprobation. "I intend, nevertheless, that the expedition come off,
and I mean, moreover, to have a very good time, and to kill a tiger if I
see one."

"I thought he seemed immensely pleased at your conversion, as he calls
it. He said that your newly acquired belief in woman was a step towards
a better understanding of life."

"Of the world, he said," answered-Isaacs, correcting me. "There is a
great difference between the 'world' and 'life.' The one is a finite,
the other an infinite expression. I believe, from what I have learned of
Ram Lal, that the ultimate object of the adepts is happiness, only to be
attained by wisdom, and I apprehend that by wisdom they mean a knowledge
of the world in the broadest sense of the word. The world to them is a
great repository of facts, physical and social, of which they propose to
acquire a specific knowledge by transcendental methods. If that seems to
you a contradiction of terms, I will try and express myself better. If
you understand me, I am satisfied. Of course I use transcendental in the
sense in which it is applied by Western mathematicians to a mode of
reasoning which I very imperfectly comprehend, save that it consists in
reaching finite results by an adroit use of the infinite."

"Not a bad definition of transcendental analysis for a man who professes
to know nothing about it," said I. "I would not accuse you of a
contradiction of terms, either. I have often thought that what some
people call the 'philosophy of the nineteenth century,' is nothing after
all but the unconscious application of transcendental analysis to the
everyday affairs of life. Consider the theories of Darwin, for instance.
What are they but an elaborate application of the higher calculus? He
differentiates men into protoplasms, and integrates protoplasms into
monkeys, and shows the caudal appendage to be the independent variable,
a small factor in man, a large factor in monkey. And has not the idea of
successive development supplanted the early conception of spontaneous
perfection? Take an illustration from India--the new system of
competition, which the natives can never understand. Formerly the
members of the Civil Service received their warrants by divine
authority, so to speak. They were born perfect, as Aphrodite from the
foam of the sea; they sprang armed and ready from the head of old John
Company as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus. Now all that is changed;
they are selected from a great herd of candidates by methods of extreme
exactness, and when they are chosen they represent the final result of
infinite probabilities for and against their election. They are all
exactly alike; they are a formula for taxation and the administration of
justice, and so long as you do not attempt to use the formula for any
other purpose, such, for instance, as political negotiation or the
censorship of the public press, the equation will probably be amenable
to solution."

"As I told you," said Isaacs, "I know nothing, or next to nothing, of
Western mathematics, but I have a general idea of the comparison you
make. In Asia and in Asiatic minds, there prevails an idea that
knowledge can be assimilated once and for all. That if you can obtain
it, you immediately possess the knowledge of everything--the pass-key
that shall unlock every door. That is the reason of the prolonged
fasting and solitary meditation of the ascetics. They believe that by
attenuating the bond between soul and body, the soul can be liberated
and can temporarily identify itself with other objects, animate and
inanimate, besides the especial body to which it belongs, acquiring thus
a direct knowledge of those objects, and they believe that this direct
knowledge remains. Western philosophers argue that the only acquaintance
a man can have with bodies external to his mind is that which he
acquires by the medium of his bodily senses--though these, are
themselves external to his mind, in the truest sanse. The senses not
being absolutely reliable, knowledge acquired by means of them is not
absolutely reliable either. So the ultimate difference between the
Asiatic saint and the European man of science is, that while the former
believes all knowledge to be directly within the grasp of the soul,
under certain conditions, the latter, on the other hand, denies that any
knowledge can be absolute, being all obtained indirectly through a
medium not absolutely reliable. The reasoning, by which the Western mind
allows itself to act fearlessly on information which is not (according
to its own verdict) necessarily accurate, depends on a clever use of the
infinite in unconsciously calculating the probabilities of that
accuracy--and this entirely falls in with what you said about the
application of transcendental analysis to the affairs of everyday life."

"I see you have entirely comprehended me," I said. "But as for the
Asiatic mind--you seem to deny to it the use of the calculus of thought,
and yet you denned adepts as attempting to acquire specific knowledge by
general and transcendental methods. Here is a real contradiction."

"No; I see no confusion, for I do not include the higher adepts in
either class, since they have the wisdom to make use of the learning and
of the methods of both. They seem to me to be endeavouring, roughly
speaking, to combine the two. They believe absolute knowledge
attainable, and they devote much time to the study of nature, in which
pursuit they make use of highly analytical methods. They subdivide
phenomena to an extent that would surprise and probably amuse a Western
thinker. They count fourteen distinct colours in the rainbow, and
invariably connect sound, even to the finest degrees, with shades of
colour. I could name many other peculiarities of their mode of studying
natural phenomena, which displays a much more minute subdivision and
classification of results than you are accustomed to. But beside all
this they consider that the senses of the normal man are susceptible of
infinite refinement, and that upon a greater or less degree of acquired
acuteness of perception the value of his results must depend. To attain
this high degree of sensitiveness, necessary to the perception of very
subtle phenomena, the adepts find it necessary to train their faculties,
bodily and mental, by a life of rigid abstention from all pleasures or
indulgences not indispensable in maintaining the relation between the
physical and intellectual powers."

"The common _fakir_ aims at the same thing," I remarked.

"But he does not attain it. The common _fakir_ is an idiot. He may, by
fasting and self-torture, of a kind no adept would approve, sharpen his
senses till he can hear and see some sounds and sights inaudible and
invisible to you and me. But his whole system lacks any intellectual
basis: he regards knowledge as something instantaneously attainable when
it comes at last; he believes he will have a vision, and that everything
will be revealed to him. His devotion to his object is admirable, when
he is a genuine ascetic and not, as is generally the case, a
good-for-nothing who makes his piety pay for his subsistence; but it is
devotion of a very low intellectual order. The true adept thinks the
training of the mind in intellectual pursuits no less necessary than the
moderate and reasonable mortification of the flesh, and higher Buddhism
pays as much attention to the one as to the other."

"Excuse me," said I, "if I make a digression. I think there are two
classes of minds commonly to be found among thinkers all over the world.
The one seek to attain to knowledge, the others strive to acquire it.
There is a class of commonplace intellects who regard knowledge of all
kinds in the light of a ladder; one ladder for each science, and the
rungs of the ladders are the successive facts mastered by an effort and
remembered in the order they have been passed. These persons think it is
possible to attain to high eminence on one particular ladder, that is,
in one particular science, without having been up any of the other
ladders, that is, without a knowledge of other branches of seience. This
is the mind of the plodder, the patient man who climbs, step by step, in
his own unvarying round of thought; not seeing that it is but the wheel
of a treadmill over which he is labouring, and that though every step
may pass, and repass, beneath his toiling feet, he can never obtain a
birdseye view of what he is doing, because his eyes are continually
fixed on the step in front."

"But," I continued, as Isaacs assented to my simile by a nod, "there is
another class of minds also. There are persons who regard the whole
imaginable and unimaginable knowledge of mankind, past, present, and
future, as a boundless plain over which they hang suspended and can look
down. Immediately beneath them there is a map spread out which
represents, in the midst of the immense desert, the things they
themselves know. It is a puzzle map, like those they make for children,
where each piece fits into its appointed place, and will fit nowhere
else; every piece of knowledge acquired fits into the space allotted to
it, and when there is a piece, that is, a fact, wanting, it is still
possible to define its extent and shape by the surrounding portions,
though all the details of colour and design are lacking. These are the
people who regard knowledge as a whole, harmonious, when every science
and fragment of a science has its appointed station and is necessary to
completeness of perfect knowledge. I hope I have made clear to you what
I mean, though I am conscious of only sketching the outlines of a
distinction which I believe to be fundamental."

"Of course it is fundamental. Broadly, it is the difference between
analytic and synthetic thought; between the subjective and the objective
views; between the finite conception of a limited world and the infinite
ideal of perfect wisdom. I understand you perfectly."

"You puzzle me continually, Isaacs. Where did you learn to talk about
'analytic' and 'synthetic,' and 'subjective' and 'objective,' and
transcendental analysis, and so forth?" It seemed so consistent with his
mind that he should understand the use of philosophical terms, that I
had not realised how odd it was that a man of his purely Oriental
education should know anything about the subject. His very broad
application of the words 'analytic' and 'synthetic' to my pair of
illustrations attracted my attention and prompted the question I had
asked.

"I read a good deal," he said simply. Then he added in a reflective
tone, "I rather think I have a philosophical mind. The old man who
taught me theology in Istamboul when I was a boy used to talk philosophy
to me by the hour, though I do not believe he knew much about it. He was
a plodder, and went up ladders in search of information, like the man
you describe. But he was very patient and good to me; the peace of Allah
be with him."

It was late, and soon afterwards we parted for the night. The next day
was Sunday, and I had a heap of unanswered letters to attend to, so we
agreed to meet after tiffin and ride together before dining with Mr.
Ghyrkins and the Westonhaughs.

I went to my room and sat a while over a volume of Kant, which I always
travel with--a sort of philosopher's stone on which to whet the mind's
tools when they are dulled with boring into the geological strata of
other people's ideas. I was too much occupied with the personality of
the man I had been talking with to read long, and so I abandoned myself
to a reverie, passing in review the events of the long day.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER VII.


The Sabbatarian tendency of the English mind at home and abroad is
proverbial, and if they are well-behaved on Sunday in London they are
models of virtue in Simla on the same day. Whether they labour and are
well-fed and gouty in their island home, or suffer themselves to be
boiled for gain in the tropical kettles of Ceylon and Singapore; whether
they risk their lives in hunting for the north pole or the northwest
passage, or endanger their safety in the pursuit of tigers in the Terai,
they will have their Sunday, come rain, come shine. On the deck of the
steamer in the Red Sea, in the cabin of the inbound Arctic explorer, in
the crowded Swiss hotel, or the straggling Indian hill station, there is
always a parson of some description, in a surplice of no description at
all, who produces a Bible and a couple of well-thumbed sermons from the
recesses of his trunk or his lunch basket, or his gun-case, and goes at
the work of weekly redemption with a will. And, what is more, he is
listened to, and for the time being--though on week days he is styled a
bore by the old and a prig by the young--he becomes temporarily invested
with a dignity not his own, with an authority he could not claim on any
other day. It is the dignity of a people who with all their faults have
the courage of their opinions, and it is the authority that they have
been taught from their childhood to reverence, whenever their traditions
give it the right to assert itself. Not otherwise. It is a fine trait of
national character, though it is one which has brought upon the English
much unmerited ridicule. One may differ from them in faith and in one's
estimate of the real value of these services, which are often only saved
from being irreverent in their performance by the perfect sincerity of
parson and congregation. But no one who dispassionately judges them can
deny that the custom inspires respect for English consistency and
admiration for their supreme contempt of surroundings.

I presume that the periodical manifestations of religious belief to
which I refer are intimately and indissolubly connected with the staid
and funereal solemnity which marks an Englishman's dress, conversation,
and conduct on Sunday. He is a different being for the nonce, and must
sustain the entire character of his dual existence, or it will fall to
the ground and forsake him altogether. He cannot take his religion in
the morning and enjoy himself the rest of the day. He must abstain from
everything that could remind him that he has a mind at all, besides a
soul. No amusement will he tolerate, no reading of even the most
harmless fiction can he suffer, while he is in the weekly devotional
trance.

I cannot explain these things; they are race questions, problems for the
ethnologist. Certain it is, however, that the partial decay of strict
Sabbatarianism which seems to have set in during the last quarter of a
century has not been attended by any notable development of power in
English thought of that class. The first Republic tried the experiment
of the decimal week, and it was a failure. The English who attempt to
put off even a little of the quaint armour of righteousness, which they
have been accustomed to buckle on every seventh day for so many
generations, are not so successful in the attempt as to attract many to
follow them. They are not graceful in their holiday gambols.

Meditating somewhat on this wise I lay in my long chair by the open door
that Sunday morning in September. It was a little warmer again and the
sun shone pleasantly across the lawn on the great branches and bright
leaves of the rhododendron. The house was very quiet. All the inmates
were gone to the church on the mall, and the servants were basking in
the last few days of warmth they would enjoy before their masters
returned to the plains. The Hindoo servant hates the cold. He fears it
as he fears cobras, fever, and freemasons. His ideal life is nothing to
do, nothing to wear, and plenty to eat, with the thermometer at 135
degrees in the verandah and 110 inside. Then he is happy. His body
swells with much good rice and _dal_, and his heart with pride; he will
wear as little as you will let him, and whether you will let him or not,
he will do less work in a given time than any living description of
servant. So they basked in rows in the sunshine, and did not even
quarrel or tell yarns among themselves; it was quiet and warm and
sleepy. I dozed lazily, dropped my book in my lap, struggled once, and
then fairly fell asleep.

I was roused by Kiramat Ali pulling at my foot, as natives will when
they are afraid of the consequences of waking their master. When I
opened my eyes he presented a card on a salver, and explained that the
gentleman wanted to see me. I looked, and was rather surprised to see it
was Kildare's card. "Lord Steepleton Kildare, 33d Lancers "--there was
no word in pencil, or any message. I told Kiramat to show the sahib in,
wondering why he should call on me. By Indian etiquette, if there was to
be any calling, it was my duty to make the first visit. Before I had
time to think more I heard the clanking of spurs and sabre on the
verandah, and the young man walked in, clad in the full uniform of his
regiment. I rose to greet him, and was struck by his soldierly bearing
and straight figure, as I had been at our first meeting. He took off his
bearskin --for he was in the fullest of full dress--and sat down.

"I am so glad to find you at home," he said: "I feared you might have
gone to church, like everybody else in this place."

"No. I went early this morning. I belong to a different persuasion. I
suppose you are on your way to Peterhof?"

"Yes. There is some sort of official reception to somebody,--I forget
who,--and we had notice to turn out. It is a detestable nuisance."

"I should think so."

"Mr. Griggs, I came to ask you about something. You heard of my proposal
to get up a tiger-hunt? Mr. Ghyrkins was speaking of it."

"Yes. He wanted us to go,--Mr. Isaacs and me,--and suggested leaving his
niece, Miss Westonhaugh, with Lady Smith-Tompkins."

"It would be so dull without a lady in the party. Nothing but tigers and
shikarries and other native abominations to talk to. Do you not think
so?"

"Why, yes. I told Mr. Ghyrkins that all the little Smith-Tompkins
children had the measles, and the house was not safe. If they have not
had them, they will, I have no doubt. Heaven is just, and will not leave
you to the conversational mercies of the entertaining tiger and the
engaging shikarry."

"By Jove, Mr. Griggs, that was a brilliant idea: and, as you say, they
may all get the measles yet. The fact is, I have set my heart on this
thing. Miss Westonhaugh said she had never seen a tiger, except in cages
and that kind of thing, and so I made up my mind she should. Besides, it
will be no end of a lark; just when nobody is thinking about tigers, you
go off and kill a tremendous fellow, fifteen or sixteen feet long, and
come back covered with glory and mosquito bites, and tell everybody that
Miss Westonhaugh shot him herself with a pocket pistol. That will be
glorious!"

"I should like it very much too; and I really see no reason why it
should not be done. Mr. Ghyrkins seemed in a very cheerful humour about
tigers last night, and I have no doubt a little persuasion from you will
bring him to a proper view of his obligations to Miss Westonhaugh." He
looked pleased and bright and hopeful, thoroughly enthusiastic, as
became his Irish blood. He evidently intended to have quite as "good" a
"time" as Isaacs proposed to enjoy. I thought the spectacle of those
rivals for the beautiful girl's favour would be extremely interesting.
Lord Steepleton was doubtless a good shot and a brave man, and would
risk anything to secure Miss Westonhaugh's approval; Isaacs, on the
other hand, was the sort of man who is very much the same in danger as
anywhere else.

"That is what I came to ask you about. We shall all meet there at dinner
this evening, and I wanted to secure as many allies as possible."

"You may count on me, Lord Steepleton, at all events. There is nothing I
should enjoy better than such a fortnight's holiday, in such good
company."

"All right," said Lord Steepleton, rising, "I must be off now to
Peterhof. It is an organised movement on Mr. Ghyrkins this evening,
then. Is it understood?" He took his bearskin from the table, and
prepared to go, pulling his straps and belts into place, and dusting a
particle of ash from his sleeve.

"Perfectly," I answered. "We will drag him forth into the arena before
three days are past." We shook hands, and he went out.

I was glad he had come, though I had been waked from a pleasant nap to
receive him. He was so perfectly gay, and natural, and healthy, that one
could not help liking him. You felt at once that he was honest and would
do the right thing in spite of any one, according to his light; that he
would stand by a friend in danger, and face any odds in fight, with as
much honest determination to play fair and win, as he would bring to a
cricket match or a steeple-chase. His Irish blood gave him a somewhat
less formal manner than belongs to the Englishman; more enthusiasm and
less regard for "form," while his good heart and natural courtesy would
lead him right in the long-run. He seemed all sunshine, with his bright
blue eyes and great fair moustache and brown face; the closely fitting
uniform showed off his erect figure and elastic gait, and the whole
impression was fresh and exhilarating in the extreme. I was sorry he had
gone. I would have liked to talk with him about boating and fishing and
shooting; about athletics and horses and tandem-driving, and many things
I used, to like years ago at college, before I began my wandering life.
I watched him as he swung himself into the military saddle, and he
threw up his hand in a parting salute as he rode away. Poor fellow! was
he, too, going to be food for powder and Afghan knives in the avenging
army on its way to Kabul? I went back to my books 

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