Actions and Reactions
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Rudyard Kipling >> Actions and Reactions
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"But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?" she asked.
"My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of
sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to
show me a belt of black soil that was just the thing for cotton."
"Ah! What was your Chief like?" Stalky asked, in his silkiest
tones.
"The best man alive--absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose
yourself. The people call him"--Adam jerked out some heathen
phrase--"that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know."
"I'm glad of that. Because I've heard from other quarters"
Stalky's sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was
not long delayed. "Other quarters!" Adam threw out a thin hand.
"Every dog has his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!" The
shake of his head was as I remembered it among his father's
policemen twenty years before, and his mother's eyes shining
through the dusk called on me to adore it. I kicked Stalky on the
shin. One must not mock a young man's first love or loyalty.
A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.
"I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between
our shirts," said the voice of Imam Din.
"Does he know as much English as that?" cried the Infant, who had
forgotten his East.
We all admired the cotton for Adam's sake, and, indeed, it was
very long and glossy.
"It's--it's only an experiment," he said. "We're such awful
paupers we can't even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a
biscuit-box on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for
that"--he patted the stuff--"by a pure fluke."
"How much did it cost?" asked Strickland.
"With seed and machinery--about two hundred pounds. I had the
labour done by cannibals."
"That sounds promising." Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette.
"No, thank you," said Agnes. "I've been at Weston-super-Mare a
little too long for cannibals. I'll go to the music-room and try
over next Sunday's hymns."
She lifted the boy's hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across
the acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the
Infant's ancestors' banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress
disappeared under the musicians' gallery; two electrics broke
out, and she stood backed against the lines of gilded pipes.
"There's an abominable self-playing attachment here!" she called.
"Me!" the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. "That's
how I play Parsifal."
"I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps."
We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor.
"Now for the direct expression," said Stalky, and moved on the
Burgundy recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned
blood.
"It's nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed
me ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven't been able to
prove cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a
Sheshaheli offers you four pounds of woman's breast, tattoo marks
and all, skewered up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you--"
"Naturally burn the villages before lunch," said Stalky.
Adam shook his head. "No troops," he sighed. "I told my Chief
about it, and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man.
He advised me if ever I felt like it not to commit a--a barren
felo de se, but to let the Sheshaheli do it. Then he could
report, and then we could mop 'em up!"
"Most immoral! That's how we got--" Stalky quoted the name of a
province won by just such a sacrifice.
"Yes, but the beasts dominated one end of my cotton-belt like
anything. They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for
analysis--me and Imam Din."
"Sahib! Is there a need?" The voice came out of the darkness, and
the eyes shone over Adam's shoulder ere it ceased.
"None. The name was taken in talk." Adam abolished him with a
turn of the finger. "I couldn't make a casus belli of it just
then, because my Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang
of slave kings up north. Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn
Makarrah? He precious nearly lost us the Protectorate at one
time, though he's an ally of ours now."
"Wasn't he rather a pernicious brute, even as they go?" said
Stalky. "Wade told me about him last year."
"Well, his nickname all through the country was 'The Merciful,'
and he didn't get that for nothing. None of our people ever
breathed his proper name. They said 'He' or 'That One,' and they
didn't say it aloud, either. He fought us for eight months."
"I remember. There was a paragraph about it in one of the
papers," I said.
"We broke him, though. No--the slavers don't come our way,
because our men have the reputation of dying too much, the first
month after they're captured. That knocks down profits, you see."
"What about your charming friends, the Sheshahelis?" said the
Infant.
"There's no market for Sheshaheli. People would as soon buy
crocodiles. I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn
Makarrah dropped down on 'em once--to train his young men--and
simply hewed 'em in pieces. The bulk of my people are
agriculturists just the right stamp for cotton-growers. What's
Mother playing?--'Once in royal'?"
The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her
babe restored, steadied to a tune.
"Magnificent! Oh, magnificent! " said the Infant loyally. I had
never heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in
the tolerant morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond.
"How did you get your cannibals to work for you?" asked
Strickland.
"They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn
Makarrah--just at the time I wanted 'em. You see my Chief had
promised me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he
would not bag it for his roads this time, but I might have it for
my cotton game. I only needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues
didn't run to it."
"What is your revenue?" Stalky asked in the vernacular.
"With hut-tax, traders' game and mining licenses, not more than
fourteen thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months
ahead." Adam sighed.
"Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib's camp. Last
year it exceeded three rupees," Imam Din said quietly.
"Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather
strict on fines. I worked up my native clerk--Bulaki Ram--to a
ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits
of our cotton-scheme to three points of decimals, after office. I
tell you I envied your magistrates here hauling money out of
motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue
and expenditure just about meet, and I was crazy to get the odd
two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing grows on a
chap when he's alone--and talks aloud!"
"Hul-lo! Have you been there already?" the father said, and Adam
nodded.
"Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of 'Marmion' to a tree,
sir. Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking
nigger came in towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to
little things like that.) He said he'd found it, and please would
I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makarrah's men there
might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash
of Arab--a smallboned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering
how it had kept so well in our climate when it sneezed. You ought
to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted like--like
the dog in 'Tom Sawyer,' when he sat on the what's-its-name
beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I
could see it had been sarkied. (That's a sort of gum-poison,
pater, which attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer
is writing a monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out
the corpse one time, with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder,
and hot water.
"I'd seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off
his feet, and he stopped sneezing, I knew he'd live. He was bad,
though; lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged
the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a Hajji--had
been three times to Mecca--come in from French Africa, and that
he'd met the nigger by the wayside--just like a case of thuggee,
in India--and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable
enough by what I knew of Coast niggers."
"You believed him?" said his father keenly.
"There was no reason I shouldn't. The nigger never came back, and
the old man stayed with me for two months," Adam returned. "You
know what the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater?
He was that."
"None finer, none finer," was the answer.
"Except a Sikh," Stalky grunted.
"He'd been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could
quote poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess--you
don't know what that meant to me -like a master. We used to talk
about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between
moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about! He was
awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he
quite saw that it would have to die out. That's why he agreed
with me about developing the resources of the district by
cotton-growing, you know."
"You talked of that too?" said Strickland.
"Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don't know what it meant
to me. A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?"
"Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the
money for our cotton-play." Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind
Strickland's chair.
"Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He
brought me news when I was down with fever at Dupe that one of
Ibn Makarrah's men was parading through my District with a bunch
of slaves--in the Fork!"
"What's the matter with the Fork, that you can't abide it?" said
Stalky. Adam's voice had risen at the last word.
"Local etiquette, sir," he replied, too earnest to notice
Stalky's atrocious pun. "If a slaver runs slaves through British
territory he ought to pretend that they're his servants. Hawkin'
'em about in the Fork--the forked stick that you put round their
necks, you know--is insolence--same as not backing your topsails
in the old days. Besides, it unsettles the District."
"I thought you said slavers didn't come your way," I put in.
"They don't. But my Chief was smoking 'em out of the North all
that season, and they were bolting into French territory any road
they could find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they
circulated, but open slave-dealing in the Fork, was too much. I
couldn't go myself, so I told a couple of our Makalali police and
Imam Din to make talk with the gentleman one time. It was rather
risky, and it might have been expensive, but it turned up trumps.
They were back in a few days with the slaver (he didn't show
fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and we tried him in my
bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you how demoralized
the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a defeat),
he'd snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and was
offering 'em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered
'em to you, didn't he, Imam Din?"
"I was witness that he offered man-eaters' for sale," said Imam
Din.
"Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed, him both ways. You
see, he had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British
territory. That meant the double fine if I could get it out of
him."
"What was his defence?" said Strickland, late of the Punjab
Police.
"As far as I remember--but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at
the time--he'd mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he
was in French territory. Said he'd never do it again, if we'd let
him off with a fine. I could have shaken hands with the brute for
that. He paid up cash like a motorist and went off one time."
"Did you see him?"
"Ye-es. Didn't I, Imam Din?"
"Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the
Sahib also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them,
and they swore to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play.
The Sahib leaned on his own servant's shoulder the while."
"I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me
the papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the
money in the safe--two hundred and ten beautiful English
sovereigns. You don't know what that meant to me! I believe it
cured my fever; and as soon as I could, I staggered off with the
Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli about labour. Then I found out
why they had been so keen to work! It wasn't gratitude. Their big
village had been hit by lightning and burned out a week or two
before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me for a job.
I gave it 'em."
"And so you were very happy?" His mother had stolen up behind us.
"You liked your cotton, dear?" She tidied the lump away.
"By Jove, I was happy!" Adam yawned. "Now if any one," he looked
at the Infant, "cares to put a little money into the scheme,
it'll be the making of my District. I can't give you figures,
sir, but I assure--"
"You'll take your arsenic, and Imam Din'll take you up to bed,
and I'll come and tuck you in."
Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands
joined across his dark hair, and "Isn't he a darling?" she said
to us, with just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow
and the same break of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the
horses in the year '84. We were quiet when they were gone. We
waited till Imam Din returned to us from above and coughed at the
door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.
"Now," said Strickland, "tell us what truly befell, son of my
servant."
"All befell as our Sahib has said. Only--only there was an
arrangement--a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play."
"Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant," said Strickland.
But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din
hunker down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at
attention.
"When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupe,"
he began, "the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected
the names of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue
was beyond belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this
cotton-play. Being at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our
Sahib's forehead, to sink into his brain news concerning a
slave-dealer in his district who had made a mock of the law.
Sahib," Imam Din turned to Strickland, "our Sahib answered to
those false words as a horse of blood answers to the spur. He sat
up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the slavedealer.
Then he fell back. Then we left him."
"Alone--servant of my son, and son of my servant?" said his
father.
"There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come
in with the Hajji's money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our
Sahib died, she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given
me orders to depart."
"Being mad with fever--eh?"
"What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart's
desire. He talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his
heart's desire that the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji
could have given him money enough out of hand for ten
cottonplays; but in this respect also our Sahib's virtue was
beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange moneys.
Therefore the Hajji said--and I helped with my counsel--that we
must make arrangements to get the money in all respects
conformable with the English Law. It was great trouble to us,
but--the Law is the Law. And the Hajji showed the old woman the
knife by which she would die if our Sahib died. So I accompanied
the Hajji."
"Knowing who he was?" said Strickland.
"No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the
virtue of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to
occupy the seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram
feared the Hajji, because the Hajji had often gloatingly
appraised his skill in figures at five thousand rupees upon any
slave-block. The Hajji then said to me: 'Come, and we will make
the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my delight's delight' The
Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father for his son, of a
saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One. But I
said: 'We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred
rifles. We have here five.' The Hajji said: 'I have untied as
knot in my head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a
thousand.' I saw that he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on
his shoulder. Then I knew that he was a Great One with virtue in
him.
"We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the
second day--about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The
Hajji walked delicately across the open place where their filth
is, and scratched upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I
saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the
huts. They rolled off: they rose up, one behind the other the
length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves
whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate guarding his
skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: 'I am here once again.
Give me six and yoke up.' They zealously then pushed to us with
poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said:
"Fetch fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.' The
wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had
emptied his crock of fire in front of that which was before him,
the broadside of the town roared into flame, and all went. The
Hajji then said: 'At the end of a time there will come here the
white man ye once chased for sport. He will demand labour to
plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and your spawn
after you.' They said, lifting their heads a very little from the
edge of the ashes: ' We are that labour, and our spawn after us.'
The Hajji said: 'What is also my name?' They said: 'Thy name is
also The Merciful' The Hajji said: 'Praise then my mercy'; and
while they did this, the Hajji walked away, I following."
The Infant made some noise in his throat, and reached for more
Burgundy.
"About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only frights Sahib!
None had--none could--touch him. Since they were in pairs, and
the other of the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for
some heathen to do what was needful. There came at last Angari
men with goats. The Hajji said: 'What do ye see? They said: 'Oh,
our Lord, we neither see nor hear.' The Hajji said: 'But I
command ye to see and to hear and to say.' They said: 'Oh, our
Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves stood in a
Fork.' The Hajji said: 'So testify before the officer who waits
you in the town of Dupe.' They said: 'What shall come to us
after?' The Hajji said: 'The just reward for the informer. But if
ye do not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds, to
fall from the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.'
Hearing this, the Angari men hastened to Dupe. The Hajji then
said to me: 'Are those things sufficient to establish our case,
or must I drive in a village full?' I said that three witnesses
amply established any case, but as yet, I said, the Hajji had not
offered his slaves for sale. It is true, as our Sahib said just
now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and yet another for
making to sell them. And it was the double fine that we needed,
Sahib, for our Sahib's cotton-play. We had fore-arranged all this
with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the
Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: 'O God,
Refuge of the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this'
dog's meat by the roadside to gain his delight for my heart's
delight?" None the less, he admitted it was the English Law, and
so he offered me the six--five--in a small voice, with an averted
head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour milk as heathen should.
They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because they eat men."
"Maybe," said Strickland. "But where were thy wits? One witness
is not sufficient to establish the fact of a sale."
"What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji's reputation to
consider. We could not have called in a heathen witness for such
a thing. And, moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant
himself was making this case. He would not contest his own
evidence. Otherwise, I know the law of evidence well enough.
"So then we went to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the
Angari men, 'I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very
bright, and his mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old
woman had not loosened her hair for death. The Hajji said: 'Be
quick with my trial. I am not Job!' The Hajji was a learned man.
We made the trial swiftly to a sound of soothing voices round the
bed. Yet--yet, because no man can be sure whether a Sahib of that
blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly in the manner of
the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and the slaves
and the prisoner we kept without for his nose's sake."
"Then he did not see the prisoner?" said Strickland.
"I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it,
but by God's favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is
quite true he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the
money put away in the safe--two hundred and ten English pounds
and it is quite true that the gold wrought on him as a strong
cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner, and having speech with
the man-eaters--the Hajji breathed all that on his forehead to
sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard, has
remained . . . . Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib
called for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from
Europe with the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and
cotton=3Dmills--ah, then he laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib.
It was his heart's desire, this cotton-play. The Hajji loved him,
as who does not? It was a little, little arrangement, Sahib, of
which--is it necessary to tell all the world?"
"And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?" said Strickland.
"Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from
their visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our
Sahib says, the man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked
for spades to cultivate cotton. That very night, when I was
cooking the dinner, the Hajji said to me: 'I go to my own place,
though God knows whether the Man with the Stone Eyes have left me
an ox, a slave, or a woman.' I said: 'Thou art then That One?'
The Hajji said: 'I am ten thousand rupees reward into thy hand.
Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines for
the boy?' I said: 'What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy
life a thousand years!' The Hajji said: 'Who has seen to-morrow?
God has given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise
Him. See that the breed is not lost!'
"He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib's
office-table under the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a
blue envelope of Service newly come in by runner from the North.
At this, fearing evil news for the Hajji, I would have restrained
him, but he said: 'We be both Great Ones. Neither of us will
fail.' Our Sahib looked up to invite the Hajji to approach before
he opened the letter, but the Hajji stood off till our Sahib had
well opened and well read the letter. Then the Hajji said: 'Is it
permitted to say farewell?' Our Sahib stabbed the letter on the
file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The Hajji
said: 'I go to my own place,' and he loosed from his neck a
chained heart of ambergris set in soft gold and held it forth.
Our Sahib snatched it swiftly in the closed fist, down turned,
and said 'If thy name be written hereon, it is needless, for a
name is already engraved on my heart.' The Hajji said: 'And on
mine also is a name engraved; but there is no name on the
amulet.' The Hajji stooped to our Sahib's feet, but our Sahib
raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with his
shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and so he went away."
"And what order was in the Service letter?" Stalky murmured.
"Only an order for our Sahib to write a report on some new cattle
sickness. But all orders come in the same make of envelope. We
could not tell what order it might have been."
"When he opened the letter--my son--made he no sign? A cough? An
oath?" Strickland asked.
"None, Sahib. I watched his hands. They did not shake. Afterward
he wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heat."
"Did he know? Did he know who the Hajji was?" said the Infant in
English.
"I am a poor man. Who can say what a Sahib of that get knows or
does not know? But the Hajji is right. The breed should not be
lost. It is not very hot for little children in Dupe, and as
regards nurses, my sister's cousin at Jull--"
"H'm! That is the boy's own concern. I wonder if his Chief ever
knew?" said Strickland.
"Assuredly," said Imam Din. "On the night before our Sahib went
down to the sea, the Great Sahib--the Man with the Stone
Eyes--dined with him in his camp, I being in charge of the table.
They talked a long while and the Great Sahib said: 'What didst
thou think of That One?' (We do not say Ibn Makarrah yonder.) Our
Sahib said: 'Which one?' The Great Sahib said: 'That One which
taught thy man-eaters to grow cotton for thee. He was in thy
District three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked by
every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head.' Our Sahib
said: 'If his head had been needed, another man should have been
appointed to govern my District, for he was my friend.' The Great
Sahib laughed and said: 'If I had needed a lesser man in thy
place be sure I would have sent him, as, if I had needed the head
of That One, be sure I would have sent men to bring it to me. But
tell me now, by what means didst thou twist him to thy use and
our profit in this cotton-play?' Our Sahib said: 'By God, I did
not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was my friend.' The
Great Sahib said: ' 'Toh Vac! (Bosh!) Tell!' Our Sahib shook his
head as he does--as he did when a child--and they looked at each
other like sword-play men in the ring at a fair. The Great Sahib
dropped his eyes first and he said: 'So be it. I should perhaps
have answered thus in my youth. No matter. I have made treaty
with That One as an ally of the State. Some day he shall tell me
the tale.' Then I brought in fresh coffee, and they ceased. But I
do not think That One will tell the Great Sahib more than our
Sahib told him."
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