A BRUSH ON THE FRONTIER.
Tell me not, love, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
The reign of peace and pleasure was not destined to last through the summer undisturbed. Conflicts, more serious than those which were agitating poor Boldero's breast, broke in upon the tranquil season and caused a hurried dispersion of many of the holiday-makers.
For weeks past the news from the frontier had not been reassuring. Blunt had gone off on his mission to the Rumble Chunder District, dragging the miserable Whisp, who could not ride and hated leaving head-quarters, in his train. He had mastered the whole matter, as he considered, from first to last and was resolved to bring his knowledge to bear with good effect upon the entanglements which his predecessors' ignorance and indistinctness had produced. He saw his way quite clearly and was resolved to have it. Other people had faltered and hesitated; but Blunt was resolved to strike, and to strike hard, and to finish the matter and have done with it once for all. He arrived, accordingly, in no mood to be trifled with, as Mahomed Khan, the first of the Zámindars who had an interview with him, discovered in about two minutes. Now, Mahomed Khan, a wily old gentleman, with a great turn for diplomacy, was deeply interested in the Rumble Chunder question, and had, at different times, interviewed a long succession of 'Sahibs' with reference to it. He had invariably found them long-suffering, conciliatory, anxious to learn and not difficult to puzzle. He had talked to them at ease in his own language and was accustomed to the elaborate courtesy due to the leader of a powerful and not over-loyal clan. His antecedents entitled him to respect. When Sutton was getting his troop together in the Mutiny a word from Mahomed Khan would have put the whole district in a blaze and rendered it impossible to recruit a man. The liking, however, which one good soldier feels for another had carried the day. The old fellow had ridden with fifty followers into Sutton's camp, unstrapped his sword, and, placing it in Sutton's hands, had sworn that he and his would follow him wherever he pleased to lead them. Well had the oath been kept; when some months later the fighting closed, Mahomed Khan's name was recorded as amongst the most deserving of Her Majesty's lieges, and his well-timed loyalty had resulted in a fine grant of fat acres, a conspicuous seat in the Durbar, and, not least in the estimation of men keenly sensitive to honour, a vast deal of complimentary writing and talking on the part of every British official with whom he had to deal. All this flattery had, perhaps, turned the old soldier's head, or, at any rate, had given him no small idea of his importance to the British 'Ráj' and of his claims to the gratitude of British administrators. His rights in the Salt matter had been left in convenient obscurity, and might, not without reason, be considered as tacitly conceded by the Power with whom he was on such affectionate terms.
This, however, was not at all the light in which Blunt saw the matter; he was annoyed at the man's bluster, pomposity and pretence. He was not in the least impressed by a well-worn packet of letters which his visitor produced, in which successive Generals and Commissioners had testified to his deserts; what he wanted was business, and this was essentially unbusinesslike. If Sutton had written, 'You have proved yourself a brave and loyal soldier, and I will ever be your friend,' this was no reason why Mahomed Khan should not pay his salt-dues like other folk, or should object to have his title-deeds rigidly overhauled. 'If it was just, why had Sir John Larrens Sahib never done it?' the old man objected; but Blunt did not care what Sir John Lawrence had done or had not done; what he wanted was his bond, and nothing else would satisfy him.
This was Blunt's first nettle, and he was grasping it firmly, with no doubts as to the propriety of the course. Then, at last, he got tired of the interview, and—fatal blunder for an Eastern diplomat—became abrupt and rude, and began to show his hand. Thereupon Mahomed Khan began to show his teeth and went away in a surly mood with the news, which spread like wildfire among the clansmen, that the Sirkar was going to rule them with a heavy hand; that all old rights were to be cancelled; a grievous land-tax to be imposed, and that a terrible 'Sahib,' of fierce aspect, had arrived to see this objectionable policy carried out.
Then Blunt found the investigation by no means the simple matter he had hoped. Statements, which looked so neat and clean when submitted to the Board and neatly minuted on by Whisp, assumed an aspect of hopeless inexplicability when Blunt had them face to face; and the more he questioned the less he understood. He was armed with powers to examine witnesses, but not a word of truth could be got out of any one. Fine old countrymen, whose noble bearing, well-chiselled features and long flowing beards would have made a fortune in a Roman studio, came before him and told him the most unblushing lies with a volubility and earnestness that fairly staggered Blunt's bewildered comprehension.
To say one thing to-day, the precise opposite to-morrow, and to explain with easy grace that it was a mistake, or that the evidence had been wrongly taken down, seemed to every man whom Blunt interrogated the correct and natural procedure for a person who was being pressed for information which it was inconvenient to produce. Some men remembered everything; others professed the most absolute obliviousness; each contradicted all the rest, except when Government interests were concerned, and then all swore together like a band of conspirators. To make confusion worse confounded, the accounts were kept on a system which none of the Salt Board people understood and which no one else could be induced to explain.
Then, by some fatality, the white ants had always eaten the precise documents of which Blunt stood in need, and the trembling officials produced a tattered mass of dirt and rags and assured him that this was the record which he called for, or rather all that could be found of its remains. Blunt became, day by day, more profoundly convinced that all men—all the Rumble Chunder men, at any rate—were liars, and let his conviction appear in short speeches and abrupt procedure. The old Zámindars, outraged by discourtesy in the presence of their retainers, came away from his presence quivering with rage and ripe for the first chance of mischief which offered. Blunt found the nettle stinging him sorely, and, like a rough, resolute man, grasped it with all the more unflinching hand. When at last he succeeded in making out a case he dealt out the sternest justice, not, perhaps, without a gratified vindictiveness against the people who had so long baffled and annoyed him. One Uzuf Ali, a large grantee, had been called upon to verify his claims; and this he proceeded to do with the utmost alacrity. He and his forefathers, he protested, had been in possession for centuries—look at the Revenue records, the files of the Courts, the orders of Government. Here, too, was a Sunnud from the Emperor Akbar confirming them in their rights. Twenty witnesses, all disinterested, honourable, unimpeachable, the entire village indeed, would attest the fact of continuous, open, rightful enjoyment from a period as far as memory could go. So the twenty witnesses did; but then appeared a gentleman, one Hosain Khan, on the other side, and blew the pretty story into the air. Uzuf Ali was an audacious impostor, everybody in the country knew that his father had come from Delhi not thirty years ago; he had no more right to an ounce of salt than the 'Commissioner Sahib' himself; the ground over which he claimed his rights was notoriously in the possession of another man: as for the Sunnud of Akbar, it was an obvious forgery, as the Commissioner Sahib might see for himself by merely looking.
Hosain Khan having had his innings, Uzuf Ali returned to the wickets and began to make great play. 'Ask Hosain Khan,' he said, 'if his uncle did not carry off my sister and if some of our people did not kill him for it?'