"And when is such an event likely to happen?" the Padre had asked.
Who can tell?—Weren't there mutterings and discontent in big towns?—All who travelled and went to the cities came back with news of great things to come if all that the people demanded was not granted by the Sarcar.
"What are the people demanding?" Mr. Meek persisted in knowing.
That was best known to the highly educated. What did the poor agriculturist know of what was good for the country? He was like sheep led to the pasture by those in authority. But when the Sarcar sent among the sheep a butcher with no stomach for the suffering of the helpless ones, it was time to protest and to see to it that he was recalled or driven away. Some were for even more lawless methods of ridding the countryside of this monster who disembowelled the sick and suffering, severed limbs, and robbed people of their rights.
Mr. Meek's inquiries elicited that the doctor had performed certain surgical operations in some cases of accidental injury, which the neglect of sanitary precautions had rendered necessary. An operation for appendicitis had resulted in death through bad nursing and failure to carry out instructions. The women of a zemindar's household had fed his son on solids too soon after the removal of his appendix, which act of ignorance and disobedience had produced inflammation, agony, and death. The doctor was regarded as his murderer, and evil looks followed him whenever he passed that way.
"What butchery!" one had afterwards exclaimed at a council of five called to discuss the enormity of the doctor's conduct and his growing record of outrages upon humanity. "To extract a portion of the intestines was madness and murder, for who can exist without intestines as God made them?—and his effrontery to put the blame upon the women who in the tenderness of their hearts had fed the youth on dhal and rice for the restoration of his strength—ai Khodar! What harm was there ever in plain dhal and rice? It was but an excuse, and now there is Gunesh Prosad without a son to inherit his estate, and all because of this man who is sent among us to cut up human bodies while they are yet alive!"
"It is a great danger to us. Someone must teach this Sarcari butcher of human flesh a lesson, or where might it not end?" another had remarked in complete sympathy.
"But," put in a third cautiously, fearful of making himself unpopular by repeating the tale with which he was fit to burst, "didst hear of that legend concerning the coolie of Panipara busti who went forth as a beater for the hunt, the time the Collector Sahib and others took long spears and killed wild boars? He was gored, and lay on the grass disembowelled, and as one dead. Quickly on hearing of the accident came the doctor Sahib in his hawa-ghari, himself at the wheel, and leaping out he knelt on the grass, and in a twinkling with strange gloves, and water in a gumla[15], he washed the coolie's intestines and restored them where they belonged, after which with a needle, even as a darzi sews garments, he stitched up the wound! Those watching turned sick of stomach, but not so the doctor Sahib. Even the Collector Sahib turned his back and called for a glass of spirits. Ai—Ma!—how he did it was a miracle, but the man is at the hospital in the Station, recovering, and these are true words; on the head of my eldest born I swear I have repeated it just as it was told to me."
"It is a fable; believe it not. More likely he is dead and his body already cremated."
"Not so. I was told I could see him, if I willed, with mine own eyes. Many have journeyed to the Station so that they might with their own eyes behold him. The doctor Sahib may be unfeeling, even bloodthirsty, but he is devil-possessed with cunning to work magic."