So he found Segregation at last. There was no more fear of his doing any harm to anyone.
[SLAVE OF THE COURT]
I sate in the sunshine of Delhi as it blazed down upon the trellised tombs of a dead dynasty. I was very tired; as police officers are apt to be when Crowned Heads travel in India. But my particular Monarch was away from my jurisdiction laying foundation stones elsewhere, so I had an off four-and-twenty hours. Not knowing Delhi as it should be known, I utilised my holiday for slow, solitary, silent sight-seeing, in the course of which I had driven out to the Kutb-minar, had bidden the carriage return to await me by Humayon's Tomb, so, with lunch in my pocket, had set out systematically to reconstruct old India out of the crowding ruins.
It is a fascinating occupation; but one provocative of dreams, and, as I rested, idly smoking, in the shade of a gnarled jhund tree, I was more than half asleep. Around me lay the graves of Kings who had once ruled in the flesh. I had been trying, as it were, to live their lives, to see with their eyes, and the conclusion had been forced in upon me that though the monarchy had changed (and my particular Crowned Head was certainly not to pattern of the Old Indian autocrat) the country and the people had altered but little.
For instance, the pageant through the city streets of a few days past, with the brazen sunlight setting silks and satins aflame with vivid colours, and painting every shadow dark with the purple gloom of night, was, as it were, of all time; the faces of the crowd through which it cleft its way, were in type, in character, permanent.
I closed my eyes to visualize how the dapper Viceroy would have looked had he been scattering golden pistachios, silver almonds and enamelled rose leaves amongst the lieges, instead of sitting his horse purposefully, like an ill-fitting statue and inwardly rehearsing the detail of up-to-date benefits he had to proclaim at the end of his ride? Were they, I wondered, more satisfactory than the older largesse?
When I opened my eyes, I saw a naked old man squatted forlornly among the latticed graves. He held a flat basket--a gardener's basket--between his knees; it contained only one compact posy of closely crushed flowers--the gul this and gul that--beloved of natives; but I saw that a similar bunch had been laid on several of the tombs.
The man, however, was palpably not a gardener. No one of Indian experience who on real hot-weather evenings had wandered round his back premises could have hesitated as to vocation. Either as chef or scullion, the figure belonged to the cook-room; there was that in its very nakedness (save for a tight-wound waist cloth), that in the very polish of the close-shaved head, which was quaintly reminiscent of full-starched raiment and high-piled turban.
Now, I always speak to a native when I get him alone--it is a useful habit for a police officer--so I said casually:
"On what tomb, friend, are you going to put that bunch?"