CHAPTER VI
I take no man at rumor's price,
Nor as the gossips cry him.
A son may ride, and stride, and stand;
His father's eye—his father's hand—
His father's tongue may give command;
But ere I trust I'll try him!
BUT before young Cunningham was called upon to pay even a portion of the price of fealty there was more of the receiving of it still in store for him, and he found himself very hard put to it, indeed, to keep overboiling spirits from becoming exultation of the type that nauseates.
None of the other subalterns had influence, nor had they hereditary anchors in the far northwest that would be likely to draw them on to active service early in their career. They had already been made to surrender their boyhood dreams of quick promotion; now, standing in little groups and asking hesitating questions, they discovered that their destination—Fort William—was about the least desirable of all the awful holes in India.
They were told that a subaltern was lucky who could mount one step of the promotion ladder in his first ten years; that a major at fifty, a colonel at sixty, and a general at seventy were quite the usual thing. And they realized that the pay they would receive would be a mere beggar's pittance in a neighborhood so expensive as Calcutta, and that their little private means would be eaten up by the mere, necessities of life. They showed their chagrin and it was not very easy for young Cunningham, watching Mahommed Gunga's lordly preparations for the long up-country journey, to strike just the right attitude of pleasure at the prospect without seeming to flaunt his better fortune.
Mahommed Gunga interlarded his hoarse orders to the mule-drivers with descriptions in stateliest English, thrown out at random to the world at large, of the glories of the manlier north—of the plains, where a man might gallop while a horse could last, and of the mountains up beyond the plains. He sniffed at the fetid Bombay reek, and spoke of the clean air sweeping from the snow-topped Himalayas, that put life and courage into the lungs of men who rode like centaurs! And the other subalterns looked wistful, eying the bullock-carts that would take their baggage by another route.
Fully the half of what Mahommed Gunga said was due to pride of race and country. But the rest was all deliberately calculated to rouse the wicked envy of those who listened. He meant to make the son of “Pukka” Cunnigan feel, before he reached his heritage, that he was going up to something worth his while. To quote his own north-country metaphor, he meant to “make the colt come up the bit.” He meant that “Chota” Cunnigan should have a proper sense of his own importance, and should chafe at restraint, to the end that when his chance did come to prove himself he would jump at it. Envy, he calculated—the unrighteous envy of men less fortunately placed—would make a good beginning. And it did, though hardly in the way he calculated.
Young Cunningham, tight-lipped to keep himself from grinning like a child, determined to prove himself worthy of the better fortune; and Mahommed Gunga would have cursed into his black beard in disgust had he known of the private resolutions being formed to obey orders to the letter and obtain the good will of his seniors. The one thing that the grim old Rajput wished for his protege was jealousy! He wanted him so well hated by the “nabobs” who had grown crusty and incompetent in high command that life for him in any northern garrison would be impossible.
Throughout the two months' journey to the north Mahommed Gunga never left a stone unturned to make Cunningham believe himself much more than ordinary clay. All along the trunk road, that trails by many thousand towns and listens to a hundred languages, whatever good there was was Cunningham's. Whichever room was best in each dak-bungalow, whichever chicken the kansamah least desired to kill, whoever were the stoutest dhoolee-bearers in the village, whichever horse had the easiest paces—all were Cunningham's. Respect were his, and homage and obeisance, for the Rajput saw to it.
Of evenings, while they rested, but before the sun went down, the old risaldar would come with his naked sabre and defy “Chota” Cunnigan to try to touch him. For five long weeks he tried each evening, the Rajput never doing anything but parry,—changing his sabre often to the other hand and grinning at the schoolboy swordsmanship—until one evening, at the end of a more than usually hard-fought bout, the youngster pricked him, lunged, and missed slitting his jugular by the merest fraction of an inch.