PART II
CHAPTER I
A weak monsoon, following on scarcity already serious; consequent failure of autumn and spring crops; and famine, dread word, echoed over the half of India.
Now the hot weather had set in unusually, as it were, malevolently early. Areas none too fertile at the best of times reverted to parched deserts, wells and river-beds dried, canals shrank, strained to the limit of inadequate supply. People and beasts were dying of disease and starvation, and officials, both European and Indian, fought one of Nature's remedies for over-population with every ounce of human energy.
Philip Flint sat in his office-tent weary, over-taxed, writing with a sort of dogged persistence. His papers were powdered with dust, the ink evaporated, thickened in the pot; his eyes smarted and his bones ached. For months he had been touring through stricken districts, his camp a kind of flying column, inspecting and organising relief works, famine camps, poor-houses, hospitals. Out at dawn, often not home till dusk, he would have to sit up half the night to wrestle with reports and returns, accounts and statistics; so sparing neither body nor brain on behalf of the miserable multitude that crawled and craved, hunger-smitten, homeless, his heart sore with the sight of skeleton children, exhausted mothers, piteous old people....
Early yesterday he had arrived at a remote point far from town or railway, where earthworks had lately been started for the relief of an area comprising numerous scattered villages, never prosperous, now on the verge of absolute ruin. Transport was the chief difficulty; it must be some time before the light railway that was being laid from the nearest junction could be completed. Cartage and bullocks were scarce, and though a certain stock of food and necessaries were already to hand, there were many to be fed, clothed, accommodated, and the numbers increased day and night. The hospital sheds, in charge of a native doctor, were filling rapidly; further medical help would be needed. Flint had been thankful to hear from his senior subordinate that recently a Zenana Mission lady had arrived with a fair supply of comforts. He was familiar with the invaluable work of such women; it was beyond all praise. As yet he had not had the time to visit the little encampment pointed out to him on the far side of the works; all day he had been too busy superintending transport, checking stores of grain, considering applications for financial assistance, while it was his duty, as well, to detect and guard against imposition, to sift demands, even to appear callous, that the ready cunning of those who sought to benefit by help intended for their suffering brethren might be frustrated. Only this afternoon he had been nearly outdone by an old fellow who presented himself among a gang of emaciated villagers clamouring that he had no plough-bullocks, no seed, nothing—that he and his descendants were ruined.... At first Flint had listened with sympathy until something in the demeanour of the bystanders aroused his suspicions; a few of the less distressed members of the crowd were covertly smiling as though in amused admiration of the patriarch's powers of persuasion, and a little adroit inquiry disclosed the fact that the supplicant was none other than the moneylender of the village whence they had all come.
In contrast with this example of rascality a man of low caste in obvious need had stoutly refused assistance other than in the form of a loan from the Government to be repaid with reasonable interest when times should improve. So it had gone on from the first—patience and pride, heroic endurance, a fine sense of fair play, in company with avarice, fraud, evil intention. Ignorance, stupidity, superstition had to be reckoned with as well, allowed for; the problems were endless, for, while the people must be tended and fed, money could not be wasted or misapplied.