Before they reached the Rajah’s palace they had further evidence of the fact that they as strangers had as many enemies as friends in the place. Then for the time all was forgotten in the warm welcome they received from their host, who gave them a dinner which was a strange combination of his own native style and English, but mingled with an evidently earnest desire to make the guests satisfied with their reception.
He spoke capital English, as had been before noticed, and in the course of conversation he said:
“I used to hate your people, and look upon them as enemies and intruders, till I awoke to the fact that in this world of change matters were altering—that our old superstitions and follies must pass away before the spread of European civilisation. I am not going to criticise the acts of the great Company, but I look upon it all as fate, and I want my people to think as I do, throw aside the bad old past, and welcome the newer and better.”
“And what do they say?” asked Hulton: while Dick listened with keen interest to all that was said, reading, as he did, that the young Rajah was a gentleman of high aspirations and keen intelligence.
“Unfortunately, I find I am making many enemies,” the Rajah replied. “My mother reproaches me as a degenerate son of my father, and sides with the Brahmins, who hate me and my rule.”
“Because you wish to improve your people,” said Hulton.
“Exactly. And because I wish to be friends with the Company, and march with the times. She wishes to do what my father would have done, she tells me—oppose the advance of the Company and help to drive them back into the sea, and go back to the old days of tyranny, superstition, and vice.”
“Which would be folly. She cannot have any idea of the British power.”
“She is a woman,” said the Rajah sadly—“one of our women, brought up in ignorance and seclusion. Help to drive the English into the sea! It is absurd.”
“Yes,” said Hulton; “absurd. As the enemy of the Company, the result would be that your raj would be lost. As the Company’s friend, you will always reign and your country will progress.”