The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit2 in the Budget, which necessitated3 travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated4. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.
My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated5, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’ food. “If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they’d get their next day’s rations6, it isn’t seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying — it’s seven hundred million,” said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him. We talked politics — the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off — and we talked postal7 arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward8. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch9 in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness10 where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury11, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.
“We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick,” said my friend, “but that’d mean inquiries12 for you and for me, and I’ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this line within any days?”
“Within ten,” I said.
“Can’t you make it eight?” said he. “Mine is rather urgent business.”
“I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you,” I said.
“I couldn’t trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It’s this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay. That means he’ll be running through Ajmir about the night of the 23d.”
“But I’m going into the Indian Desert,” I explained.
“Well and good,” said he. “You’ll be changing at Marwar Junction13 to get into Jodhpore territory — you must do that — and he’ll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? ’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States — even though you pretend to be correspondent of the Backwoodsman.”
“Have you ever tried that trick?” I asked.
“Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get escorted to the Border before you’ve time to get your knife into them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word o’ mouth to tell him what’s come to me or else he won’t know where to go. I would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him:— ‘He has gone South for the week.’ He’ll know what that means. He’s a big man with a red beard, and a great swell14 he is. You’ll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a second-class compartment15. But don’t you be afraid. Slip down the window, and say:— ‘He has gone South for the week,’ and he’ll tumble. It’s only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two days. I ask you as a stranger — going to the West,” he said with emphasis.
“Where have you come from?” said I.
“From the East,” said he, “and I am hoping that you will give him the message on the Square — for the sake of my Mother as well as your own.”
Englishmen are not usually softened16 by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully17 apparent, I saw fit to agree.
“It’s more than a little matter,” said he, “and that’s why I ask you to do it — and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it. You’ll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.”
“I’ll give the message if I catch him,” I said, “and for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I’ll give you a word of advice. Don’t try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the Backwoodsman. There’s a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble.”
“Thank you,” said he simply, “and when will the swine be gone? I can’t starve because he’s ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about his father’s widow, and give him a jump.”
“What did he do to his father’s widow, then?”
“Filled her up with red pepper and slippered18 her to death as she hung from a beam. I found that out myself and I’m the only man that would dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They’ll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there. But you’ll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?”
He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome19 horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar20 methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne21, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by Providence22 in order to supply picturesque23 scenery, tigers and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching24 the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the train I did business with divers25 Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted26 with Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured27 what I could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in a day’s work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs28. He woke with a grunt29 and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.
“Tickets again?” said he.
“No,” said I. “I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He is gone South for the week!”
The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. “He has gone South for the week,” he repeated. “Now that’s just like his impudence30. Did he say that I was to give you anything? — ’Cause I won’t.”
“He didn’t,” I said and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train — not an Intermediate Carriage this time — and went to sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento31 of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they “stuck up” one of the little rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately32 as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting33 them; and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from the Degumber borders.
Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian34 prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly35 inaccessible36 village; Colonels who have been overpassed for commands sit down and sketch37 the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on Seniority versus38 Selection; missionaries39 wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage40 of the editorial We; stranded41 theatrical42 companies troop up to explain that they cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifications43 in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses44 with the office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully expounded45; strange ladies rustle46 in and say:— “I want a hundred lady’s cards printed at once, please,” which is manifestly part of an Editor’s duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying, “You’re another,” and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions47, and the little black copy-boys are whining48, “kaa-pi chayha-yeh” (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as Modred’s shield.
But that is the amusing part of the year. There are other six months wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above reading light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or obituary49 notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling50 terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you sit down and write:— “A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely51 sporadic52 in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death, etc.”
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1
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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deficit
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| n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差 | |
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necessitated
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| 使…成为必要，需要( necessitate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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slippered
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| 穿拖鞋的 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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consorted
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| v.结伴( consort的过去式和过去分词 )；交往；相称；调和 | |
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devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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memento
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| n.纪念品，令人回忆的东西 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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deporting
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| v.将…驱逐出境( deport的现在分词 )；举止 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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43
specifications
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| n.规格；载明；详述；（产品等的）说明书；说明书( specification的名词复数 )；详细的计划书；载明；详述 | |
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44
prospectuses
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| n.章程，简章，简介( prospectus的名词复数 ) | |
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45
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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47
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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48
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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49
obituary
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| n.讣告，死亡公告；adj.死亡的 | |
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50
tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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51
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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52
sporadic
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| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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