Seen and Unseen

by E. Katherine Bates

Now I had spent the afternoon at the Taj, and had made many inquiries about the tradition that this building had once been turned into a hospital. No one knew anything about it. One old Hindoo, evidently thinking I wished him to say "Yes," remembered hearing that this had been the case "about eighty years ago." This last artistic touch of accuracy was fatal to his bonâ fides, and I turned away in disgust.

So I told Major Pulford my story, and we laughed over the well-known fact that a Hindoo of that class always tries to find out what you wish him to say, and then says it!

Major Pulford asked why I was so keen on the subject.

"Because a very old friend of mine was badly wounded at Agra during the Mutiny, and from a child I have had the impression that he was nursed in the Taj."

"No," he answered. "I am sure the Taj was never used as a hospital, but I think the Pearl Mosque may have been. This would account for the mistake, probably."

Now the point in this incident is the fact that I had not mentioned my friend's name to Major Pulford.

Had the name been a more distinctive one, I might have mentioned it, although realising that Major Pulford was too young a man to have known anything about the Mutiny at first hand.

We talked casually on the subject for a few minutes, and then he said: "Of course, I was a baby at the time, but I have read and heard any amount about it, naturally. My boyish hero was a fellow named Jones of the 9th Lancers, who was so awfully plucky in their celebrated charge, when surprised by the enemy on the Agra parade-ground. I know nothing about the fellow except what I have read. I believe he is alive still, but they say he was almost cut to pieces then."

"That is the friend whom I thought had been nursed in the Taj," was my astonished answer.

Major Pulford's delight was unbounded to have come by so strange a coincidence even thus near to the hero of his youth. For myself, I recognised that I had sat next to the only man, probably then in India, who could have given me the accurate and precise details of the whole affair!