“He wants leave,” said the master. “The gun is only a pretext, but it’s as good as a dead grandmother any day. Let him go.”
But punctually on the evening of the tenth day Atma returned from his village shouldering a gun. Pride was in his port and pleasure in his countenance. It was an ancient muzzle-loader, respectable, useful, strong, in no way to be compared to a dead grandmother. The sahib gave it the honourable attention which all sahibs have for weapons of character, while Atma stood by and spoke of it as it had been indeed a relative.
“Behold it is a beautiful gun, and it shall bring fear. Now I am but a gardener and know nothing; but my father is a man with understanding of all things, and though there were five guns to be bought in the village, he forbade the other four. My father showed me how the ribs of this were thick and its stomach was clean—is it so, sahib?—and how it would speak well and loudly. But the price is also great. Though my father spoke for three hours, till he was in anger, the price is also great.”
“How much?” asked Tiglath-Pileser.
“It could not be lessened,” said Atma anxiously, “thirteen rupees.”
About seventeen and sixpence!
The gun speaks well and loudly, and the monkeys are much entertained by it. They make off at a report with a great jabber of concern, but they have already discovered that it is a mere expression of opinion, with nothing in it to hurt, and they come back when their nerves are soothed to hear it again. They know that you cannot shoot your own relations; they rest with confidence upon the prehistoric tie, and oh, they presume upon it! Too far, perhaps. There is a broad-faced Thibetan in the bazaar, behind whose cheerful grin I am sure no conscience resides at all. Every year he sells me pheasants and partridges which I know he poaches from the Kingdom of Patiala—I am sure he would pot a fellow-poacher for a suitable consideration. When I suggest this, however, Tiglath-Pileser asks me if I like the idea of a hired assassin. I do not like the idea. I would rather do it myself, although even justifiable homicide has never been a favourite amusement of mine.
Shoot a monkey? If it is a mother-monkey, and the baby that clings between her shoulders is a little one, you cannot even throw a stone at her.
I wonder if it is good for us to live among them like this. I wonder whether the constant spectacle of his original, glorious freedom may not produce a tendency to revert to his original habits even in a brass hat. It is a futile speculation, but there is a thrill in it. One would know him of course, by the hat, and the bit of red tape hanging to his collar....
What would you do about it—about this plague, if it plagued you? And does it not mark, like a picture in a book of travels, the distance that lies between us, that I should thus complain to you, not of sparrows or foxes or rats or rabbits or any of the ordinary pests of civilization, but of being overrun—simply overrun—by monkeys!