"The big one," replied Nânuk stoutly. There was no good in underlings; that he knew.
Police Constable number seventy-five called over to his crony number ninety-six on the next road.
"Ari, brother! Here is another durbari. Canst let him in on thy beat? I have no room on mine." And then they both laughed, whereat old Nânuk, taking courage, moved on a step, only to be caught and dragged back, hustled, and abused. What! was the Great Durbar for the like of him--the Great Durbar on which lakhs and crores had been spent--the Great Durbar all India had been thinking of for months? Wâh! Whence had he come if he had not heard of the Great Durbar, and what had he thought was the meaning of the Venetian masts and triumphal arches, the flags and the watered roads? Did he think such things were always? Ari! if it came to such ignorance as that, mayhap he would not know what this was coming along the road.
It was a disciplined tramp of feet, an even glitter of bayonets, a straight line of brown faces, a swing and a sweep, as a company of the Guides came past in their kâkhi and crimson uniform. Old Nânuk looked at it wistfully.
"Nay, brother," he said, "I know that. 'Twas my son's regiment, God rest him!"
"Thou shouldst sit down, old man," said a bystander kindly. "Of a truth thou canst go no further till the show is over. Hark! there are the guns again. 'Twill be Bairânpore likely, since Hurriâna has gone past. Wâh! it is a show--a rare show!"
So down the watered road, planted out in miserable attempts at decoration with barbers' poles unworthy of a slum in the East End, came a bevy of Australian horses, wedged at a trot between huge kettledrums, which were being whacked barbarically by men who rose in their stirrups with the conscientious precision of a newly imported competition-wallah. Then more Australian horses again in an orfeverie barouche lined with silver, where, despite the glow of colour, the blinding flash of diamonds in an Indian sun, despite even the dull wheat-green glitter of the huge emerald tiara about the turban, the eye forgot these things to fix itself upon the face which owned them all; a face haggard, sodden, superlatively handsome even in its soddenness; indifferent, but with an odd consciousness of the English boy who--dressed as for a flower show--sat silently beside his charge. Behind them with a clatter and flutter of pennons came a great trail of wild horsemen, showing as they swept past, dark, lowering faces among the sharp spear points.
And the guns beat on their appointed tale, till, with the last, a certain satisfaction came to that sodden face, since there were none short in the salute--as yet. The measure of his misdoings was not full as yet.[[25]]
The crowd ebbed and flowed irregularly to border the straight white roads, where at intervals the great tributary chiefs went backwards and forwards to pay their State visits, but Nânuk and his rat--the plaintiff and the defendant--waited persistently for their turn to pass on. It was long in coming; for even when the last flash and dash of barbaric splendour had disappeared, the roar of cannon began louder, nearer, regular to a second in its even beat.
"That is the Lât-salute" said one man to another in the crowd. "Let us wait and see the Lât, brother, ere we go."