To clinch everything, one travelled member of the community rose in his place and said:—“Why, I’ve been to Simla. Yes, to Simla! And even I don’t want it!” This compliment should be engrossed in the archives of the Simla Municipality. Sanitation on English lines is not yet acceptable to Jodhpur.
When the black dusk had shut down, the Englishman climbed up a little hill and saw the stars come out and shine over the desert. Very far away, some camel-drivers had lighted a fire and were singing as they sat by the side of their beasts. Sound travels as far over sand as over water, and their voices came into the city wall and beat against it in multiplied echoes.
Then he returned to the House of Strange Stories—the Dak-Bungalow—and passed the time o’day to the genial, light-hearted bagman—a Cockney, in whose heart there was no thought of India, though he had travelled for years throughout the length and breadth of the Empire and over New Burma as well. There was a fort in Jodhpur, but you see that was not in his line of business exactly, and there were stables, but “you may take my word for it, them who has much to do with horses is a bad lot. You get hold of the Maharaja’s coachman and he’ll drive you all round the shop. I’m only waiting here collecting money.” Jodhpur dak-bungalow seems to be full of men “waiting here.” They lie in long chairs in the verandah and tell each other interminable stories, or stare citywards and express their opinion of some dilatory debtor in language punctuated by free spitting. They are all waiting for something; and they vary the monotony of a life they make wilfully dull beyond words, by waging war with the dak-bungalow khansama. Then they return to their long chairs, or their couches, and sleep. Some of them, in old days, used to wait as long as six weeks—six weeks in May, when the sixty miles from Marwar Junction to Jodhpur was covered in three days by slow-pacing bullock carts! Some of them are bagmen, able to describe the demerits of every dak-bungalow from the Peshin to Pagan, and southward to Hyderabad—men of substance who have “The Trades” at their back. It is a terrible thing to be in “The Trades,” that great Doomsday Book of Calcutta, in whose pages are written the names of doubtful debtors. Let light-hearted purchasers take note.
And the others, who wait and swear and spit and exchange anecdotes—what are they? Bummers, land-sharks, skirmishers for their bread. It would be cruel in a fellow-tramp to call them loafers. Their lien upon the State may have its origin in horses, or anything else; for the State buys anything vendible, from Abdul Raymon’s most promising importations to—a patent, self-acting corkscrew. They are a mixed crew, but amusing and full of strange stories of adventure by land and by sea. And their ends are as curiously brutal as their lives. A wanderer was once swept into the great, still backwater that divides the loaferdom of Upper India—that is to say, Calcutta and Bombay—from the north-going current of Madras, where Nym and Pistol are highly finished articles with certificates. This backwater is a dangerous place to break down in, as the men on the road know well. “You can run Rajputana in a pair o’ sack breeches an’ an old hat, but go to Central Injia with pice,” says the wisdom of the road. So the waif died in the bazaar, and the Barrack-master Sahib gave orders for his burial. It might have been the bazaar sergeant, or it might have been an hireling who was charged with the disposal of the body. At any rate, it was an Irishman who said to the Barrack-master Sahib:—“Fwhat about that loafer?” “Well, what’s the matter?” “I’m considtherin whether I’m to mash in his thick head, or to break his long legs. He won’t fit the storecoffin anyways.”
Here the story ends. It may be an old one; but it struck the Englishman as being rather unsympathetic in its nature; and he has preserved it for this reason. Were the Englishman a mere Secretary of State instead of an enviable and unshackled vagabond, he would remodel that Philanthropic Institution for Teaching Young Subalterns how to Spell—variously called the Intelligence and the Political Department—and giving each omedwar the pair of sack breeches and old hat, above prescribed, would send him out for a twelvemonth on the road. Not that he might learn to swear Australian oaths (which are superior to any ones in the market) or to drink bazaar-drinks (which are very bad indeed), but in order that he might gain an insight into the tertiary politics of States—things less imposing than succession-cases and less wearisome than boundary disputes, but—here speaks Ferdinand Count Fathom, in an Intermediate compartment, very drunk and very happy—“Worth knowing a little—Oh no! Not at all.”
A small volume might be written of the ways and the tales of Indian loafers of the more brilliant order—such Chevaliers of the Order of Industry as would throw their glasses in your face did you call them loafers. They are a genial, blasphemous, blustering crew, and pre-eminent even in a land of liars.
XIII.
A King’s House and Country. Further Consideration of the Hat-marked Caste.
THE hospitality that spreads tables in the wilderness, and shifts the stranger from the back of the hired camel into the two-horse victoria, must be experienced to be appreciated.
To those unacquainted with the peculiarities of the native-trained horse, this advice may be worth something. Sit as far back as ever you can, and, if Oriental courtesy have put an English bit and bridoon in a mouth by education intended for a spiked curb, leave the whole contraption alone. Once acquainted with the comparative smoothness of English ironmongery, your mount will grow frivolous. In which event a four-pound steeplechase saddle, accepted through sheer shame, offers the very smallest amount of purchase to untrained legs.