“Not a bit, Sir, but I should be if I took up with a parcel of baboos, pleaders, and schoolboys, as never did a day’s work in their lives, and couldn’t if they tried. And if you was to poll us English railway men, mechanics, tradespeople, and the like of that all up and down the country from Peshawur to Calcutta, you would find us mostly in a tale together. And yet you know we’re the same English you pay some respect to at home at ‘lection time, and we have the pull o’ knowing something about it.”
“This is very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and perhaps you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will talk things over at leisure. And about all old friends and old times,” added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of disappointment in the mechanic’s face.
Nodding briefly to Orde, Edwards mounted his dog-cart and drove off.
“It’s very disappointing,” said the Member to Orde, who, while his friend discoursed with Edwards, had been looking over a bundle of sketches drawn on grey paper in purple ink, brought to him by a Chuprassee.
“Don’t let it trouble you, old chap,” ‘said Orde, sympathetically. “Look here a moment, here are some sketches by the man who made the carved wood screen you admired so much in the dining-room, and wanted a copy of, and the artist himself is here too.”
“A native?” said Pagett.
“Of course,” was the reply, “Bishen Siagh is his name, and he has two brothers to help him. When there is an important job to do, the three go ‘ato partnership, but they spend most of their time and all their money in litigation over an inheritance, and I’m afraid they are getting involved, Thoroughbred Sikhs of the old rock, obstinate, touchy, bigoted, and cunning, but good men for all that. Here is Bishen Singn—shall we ask him about the Congress?”
But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had never heard of it, and he listened with a puzzled face and obviously feigned interest to Orde’s account of its aims and objects, finally shaking his vast white turban with great significance when he learned that it was promoted by certain pleaders named by Orde, and by educated natives. He began with labored respect to explain how he was a poor man with no concern in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound of which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as he denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with words who filched his field from him, the men whose backs were never bowed in honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the Bengali. He and one of his brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there had Bengali carpenters given to them as assistants.
“Those carpenters!” said Bishen Singh. “Black apes were more efficient workmates, and as for the Bengali babu-tchick!” The guttural click needed no interpretation, but Orde translated the rest, while Pagett gazed with in.. terest at the wood-carver.
“He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali,” said the M.P.