The Mercy of the Lord Part 39

"The plague!" echoed the magistrate (I am the magistrate). "Nonsense, man! you're drunk--that's what's the matter with you. Inspector, remove that man: put him into the lock-up if he gives trouble."

The inspector approached, but the loafer stood his ground, not without quiet dignity; the dignity that comes to some people in the first stage of intoxication. "Excuse of me, sir," he said, "but I ain't going to make myself a noosance to n.o.body. That's w'y I came 'ere. That's w'y I spent my last bloomin' _hart hanner_ (eight annas) in takin' a _ticca ghari_ (hired carriage) to the 'orspitals, every one of 'em, so as there might be no infections. Bless your 'art, I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, that's all, afore I does any."

The magistrate smiled faintly: there was something likeable in the man's face.

"So you've been to the hospitals, have you? What did the doctors say!"

"Same as you, sir," he replied cheerfully, "as I was drunk; but if I am, Job Charnock--that's me, sir--never got real on afore with one gla.s.s o' _harrack_--an' beastly bad stuff it was, too--smelt like a dead dorg an' tasted like a tannery."

Perhaps the name, Job Charnock, awoke memories of the founder of Calcutta, who, before his fortunes were made, must have been more or less of a friendless wanderer in an eastern land; perhaps it was because the magistrate was waiting for a file to be brought from the record office; but the spirit of cross-examination entered into him.

"One gla.s.s of arrak--is that all you've had?"

The loafer paused, an expression of the utmost candour came to his face. "All I've 'ad to-day, sir, s'elp me, 'cos I 'adn't a pice more left ter buy a bit o' food with. Only the _hart hanner_ I spent Christian-like on a _ticca ghari_ ter try an' get seggergated afore it was too late. An' they said I was drunk!"

The mournful cadence of his voice was irresistible.

"Chapra.s.si, take that man to the serai, and tell the _darogah_ to give him some breakfast. I'll pay for it. Now you go quietly, my man, and sleep it off. You'll have got rid of the plague by morning."

The file had come in from the record office, I was immersed in the endless, hopeless attempt to drag truth from the bottom of the well in a land suit; so I thought no more of Job Charnock until I met the civil surgeon at tennis in the evening.

"Yes," he replied to my query, "Segregation was on his rounds again this morning. You're new, but he is a regular inst.i.tution here. He gets the funks on board, generally about a month after a bout, and comes to every one of us in turn to be segregated. I think he is a bit looney on the plague--has a real _phoby_ about it. He'll get it, I expect, some day, from sheer fright--but there's none about at present."

The something likeable in the man's face, however, returned to memory with the obvious fact that he had appeared chiefly concerned to "do no 'arm to anyone." So the next morning, having ten minutes to spare on my way from the city, I called in at the _serai_. It was like all other _serais_: a dreary cloistered square, deserted absolutely between five a.m. until eight p.m.; that is to say, the hours during which travellers are on the road. Now, close on nine o'clock, only the muck of last night's bivouac remained. A sweeper, with a broom and a basket, was busy removing some of the more salient rubbishes. Otherwise all was still as the grave. But, seated on a rush stool in one of the little octagonal turret rooms, which, built on either side of the gateway, are reserved for European wayfarers, I found Job Charnock. He had evidently paid a visit to the well, for he looked cleaner and was distinctly sober, but he was more voluble than ever.

"I give 'arf the breakfast you stood me away to the sweeper, sir," he said, "an' 'e brought me some _omum_ water as cured me in a jiffy.

That's all I was wantin', sir, an' none o' them doctors could spare me 'arf a pint. It seems strange, don't it, sir? And ter think the 'arm as I might do going about with the plague spot under my harm, as it's all writ truthful in that book by Mr. 'Arrison Hainsworth, Esquire. 'Ave you read it, sir?" he asked blandly.

I a.s.sured him I had, told him he was a fool, advised him to go north to the new railway to find work, gave him five rupees to find his way there. It was indiscreet and quite contrary to the rules of the Charity Organisation Society, but as I have said, something in the man's face appealed to me.

Thereafter he pa.s.sed from my memory under the usual pressure of work and worry which is the lot of an Indian official.

It was in the middle of the hot weather, when the civil surgeon rushed into me at my office with a telegram in his hand.

"Will you arrange with Spiller for my work," he said excitedly, "I must be off at once. Read that--you see, I gave the a.s.sistant surgeon at the Bimariwallah dispensary a few days' leave off my own bat, and there's only a dresser in charge; so there will be the devil of a row if anything goes wrong."

The telegram read as follows: "Outbreaks of much plague amongst European gentlemen here. Please arrange for supplies of sufficient brandy."

"But there are no Europeans at Bimariwallah," I began.

"I know that," broke in the doctor, "and, of course, brandy isn't the right treatment; but that's just where it is. The fool of a dresser doesn't know English, doesn't know anything, so I'm bound to go."

"Well, if you'll curb your impatience for two hours, till I've finished this case, I'll motor you so far down the Trunk road, and _dak_ you on.

I have an Executive Munic.i.p.al Council to-morrow morning at Raipur, and it's all on the way."

There had been a shower of rain--an advance scout of the coming monsoon to spy out the dryness of the land--so our spin of thirty miles down the road was pleasant enough, though the great wains of corn and straw that still defy the network of railways which has immeshed India, had possession of a large portion of the highway. But, to my mind, there is always something "satisfactory" in finding that no amount of preliminary hooting changes the path of the slow-moving wheels, and that, in the end, even a Siddeley-Wolsey car must either hold up until comprehension comes to the carter who moves as slowly as the wheels, or else pa.s.s by on a side-walking. It seems to presage safety; to give a.s.surance that India will not, after all, run off the rails.

The buggy and horse were waiting at the cross roads, and it only needed a _detour_ of three miles to drop the doctor at the very door of the dispensary.

Feeling some curiosity as to what was really the matter, I withstood his prayer to be set down and allowed to make his way on foot. I was glad I did; for the first glimpse I had of the dispensary compound a.s.sured me that something very unusual was taking place. To begin with, a long low reed shed, such as is used in cholera epidemics, had been hastily run up on the opposite side of the road, and in it were to be seen patients lying in their beds or out of them. Posts, each carrying a yellow streamer, were set up every ten yards around the compound itself, and at each gate stood a village watchman complete with speared staff and bells.

As we drove up, the dresser--pallid of face, but full of a vast importance--rushed out from a small hut which had been erected inside.

"Many, many thanks to Supreme Almighty," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; then added, with distinct complacency, "you will find all things necessarily in order, sir. Segregationalism is being much carried out. Patient having pa.s.sed through p--neumonic deliriums is now comatic and in _articulo mortis_."

I followed the doctor, who looked, as well he might, completely bewildered.

The dispensary was cleared out: saucers of disinfectants positively littered the ground. White sheets saturated with the same hung at every door; the smell of them stank in the nostrils, and, as I followed, a dank disagreeable wet flap from one of them on my cheek made me s.h.i.+ver; but the sight which met my eyes in the central room set me literally shaking with laughter. It was so inexpressibly comic.

Propped high on pillows, his face placid, composed, lay Job Charnock, snoring contentedly, while an empty brandy bottle beside him on the bed showed one cause at least of his somnolence. There he lay, peaceful as a baby, while the doctor, frowning at my inopportune laughter, turned angrily to the dresser.

"You cursed fool! The man's drunk. What the deuce do you mean by being such an a.s.s." Then the comic side of the situation took him also, and he joined me in my merriment.

"By Jove," he chortled, "Segregation has done it this time."

There was no use attempting to awaken him for the moment, so the doctor turned on the dresser again. How had it come about? How had he allowed himself to be so imposed upon?

It was quite simple, even when clothed in the babu's best "middel-fail"

English.

Segregation had come, had seen, had conquered. He had declared himself sick of the plague, and defied the dresser to deny it. He had thereupon taken possession of the dispensary, ordered the erection of the temporary sheds by enforced labour, cleared out the patients, used up all the disinfectants, and had then, but not till then, taken to his bed and drunk all the brandy! So "cometic symptoms supervening, and supplies of brandy exhausting," the dresser had appealed "through authentic sources for aid of the Almighty."

"Anyway, by Jove!" said the doctor, as he noted all the arrangements, "I couldn't have done it better myself. He has even"--he pointed to a row of men, evidently of the semi-savage Sansiya race, who were squatting in front of the village accountant's house--"set them to killing rats!"

And, in truth, each of these hardy hunters, bore a bamboo on which were strung the dead bodies of many rodents, young and old. Undoubtedly Job Charnock had a genius for organisation; and, with a mournful prescience of what would be the answer, I asked the nearest Sansi what he was to get for his rats.

It was half the Government rate: but the broad grin on the man's face showed him satisfied. Yes! Job Charnock had the gift of the Empire-builder!

"Look here!" I said to the doctor, "that man hasn't committed an indictable offence. He diagnosed his complaint as plague--that is not indictable; he went to your Department for advice and got confirmation of his suspicions; that was not his fault; and all he's done since then, is what _ought_ to have been done under the circ.u.mstances."

"Except the brandy," expostulated the doctor. "Brandy is not in the dietary for plague, and he's drunk up the year's supply! That amounts to stealing."

"Pardon me! You can have the dresser up for misuse of supplies, if you like," I said stoutly, "but every drop of that brandy was drunk out of one of your blessed measuring gla.s.ses." I pointed to the inverted crystal cone with cabalistic signs on it which lay beside the bottle.

"He couldn't have taken more than an ounce at a time, and that to a man of his habits is strictly a medicinal dose, and for that your dresser is responsible. No! send him in to me when he sobers. I'll settle him up."

I did so to the best of my ability, but there was no question that Job Charnock was, as the doctor had said, "a bit looney" at times, especially when he had any drink on board, though no one could have called him a habitual drunkard. Still, there was little use in getting him employment. He always drifted out of it again. Then, for a while, he would disappear, only to return after a few months with his usual, "I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, for I've got the plague, so 'elp me Gawd I 'ave." He was always, then, at the last point of dest.i.tution; more than once even the "_hart banner_"

for the _ticca ghari_ was not his, and he would come skulking into the office almost starving and barefoot. For he looked on me as a friend in need; and, indeed, I used sometimes to wonder if hunger were not as much responsible for the recurrence of his delusion as drink.

Then I was transferred to Rajputana, and apparently left Job Charnock behind me, until one hot weather morning when, in order to catch a train, I was galloping across a short cut of the wild Bar land which lay between the railway and the out-of-the-way-place where I was stationed. It is a strange desert, this Bar land, of wild caper bushes, stunted _jund_ trees, and hard resilient limestone soil, baked by the sun to whiteness. A horse's hoofs resounds over it for miles, but a man, if he left visible path, might, without the aid of the sun, lose his way in it almost any moment. Even I had to glance at the whereabouts of that luminary when a few moment's abstraction caused me to divert my eye from the faint traces of previous pa.s.sages which was all there was of path.

As I did so, my eye was caught by something curious in the gnarled branches of a _jund_ tree some fifty yards further away. It looked like a red cross. Instinctively I rode towards it. It was a red cross. Two strips of red Turkey cotton had been carefully tied crosswise between the branches. What did it mean? And why had that shallow trench--a mere sc.r.a.ping on the hard soil--been traced between that tree and the next!

And--yes!--that was another red cross in its branches also! I rode on only to find that here again the trench trended at right angles towards a further tree where yet another red cross showed.

The grey, green, leafless triangle of caper bushes, all set with tiny coral bud-flowers, had so far prevented my seeing anything within the traced square; but now I came upon a definite opening. Across it, however, from bush to bush, stretched a pair of men's braces, and pinned to this was a bit of paper on which something was written in what looked suspiciously like blood.

I jumped off my horse and bent to look at it. Though written in large characters it was barely decipherable, and seemed to have been drawn with difficulty by a pointed stick. This much I could read:

"_Tresp.u.s.s.ers will be persecuted_