which the learned call Silurian, and tell us are relics of a creation older than ours.
So might the man have been. So might have been the background of sand and reed, spear and wigwam, the foreground of net and fish. Yet the fisher was not all uncivilized. This little survival of an aboriginal race, shifting about in the shifting river-bed, had always had an attraction for the Missionaries, who, as a rule, find the inferior races easiest to deal with. Gu-gu therefore--his name being as primitive as his appearance, since it is the first effort of infant tongues--belied his looks. He had at any rate a civilized eye to business, a civilized notion of the relations between supply and demand, for he shook his head at the customer opposite him.
"Not a cowrie less, Khân-jee. 'Tis the only one in the market, see you; besides on this day the 'Missen' miss comes to us folk, and she never haggles. She will pay the five annas gladly to be let read her book to my women."
The mumble-apparently a pious aspiration that the Most High would smite infidels hip and thigh--was the only recognizable point in the figure on the other side of the fish; for Akbar Khân, doorkeeper, messenger, assistant waiter, had not only discarded Saturn's rings--the loss of which about his head made his baldness something of a shock--but also every article of clothing except his waist-cloth. The reason for this was, in a way, like many another thing about the old sinner, pathetic. Briefly he liked to dissociate his inner self from occupations which he considered were beneath the dignity of the Akbar Khân of the past. Therefore being, for the nonce, a bazaar coolie in search of fish for his master's breakfast, he got up for the part; so finding it, at once, easier to forget, and to remember that past.
He mumbled of it as he strenuously opposed the price.
"Everything grows dearer, every day," yawned the aboriginal Gu-gu. "Even women, as thou shouldst know."
Akbar Khân clucked a pious denial. "We spread no nets for that game in the palace nowadays. Those evil times are gone; we live sober and virtuous." The piety held a distinct flavour of regret.
"And as for fish," continued Gu-gu, "they will be dearer ere they are cheaper. When the deep water begins to run canalwards, the fish will run too. Then good-by to our trade, since the Huzoors allow us nothing in their waters without payment."
He whined, however, to the wrong quarter for sympathy, the old retainer's views on preserving being absolutely those of a Shropshire squire who is also a J. P.
"Neither did we," he replied, indifferently. "Thy like, Gu-gu, would have had to bring thy fish to the palace and be satisfied with our leavings. Out on thee for an upstart! Take thy four annas, and be thankful--slave!"
Gu-gu's ill-tempered face became aggressive. "Not I!--the Miss will give it; nay! six, mayhap, since the child is sick, and she will be wanting leave to dose it. So--hands off--eunuch!"
The title, once dignified, was opprobrious now, and old Akbar rose in a perfect fury, his bald head wobbling, the flaming fringe of red hairs about his face giving him a ludicrous resemblance to a toothless old man-eating tiger, face to face with his lawful prey, yet unable to injure it.
"Oh! for the bastinado!" he stuttered, impotently. "Oh, for the cutting off of bodily members! Oh! even, for the tying up of heels, and roastings and duckings. But the Huzoors have taken them from us, and gifted them to the police, who know not the proper methods. Yâh! Gu-gu, had I but had thee fifty years ago!" his anger lessened with sheer wistful regret. "Fifty years ago when the Nawab gifted me as body-servant to the new Wazeer Bun-avatâr[1]-sahib because he brought him a bird that would sing of itself from Italy wilayat."
"But all birds do that," cavilled Gu-gu, feeling nevertheless a reverent curiosity about those legendary days.
Akbar gave a crackling, contemptuous laugh. "Not palace birds! they have to be wound up; and Bun-avatâr-sahib sent for this across the black water. So he kept favour with the Nawab. Birds that sing, and flowers that smell, and boxes that make music, and dolls that dance when you wind them. Lo! these, Gu-gu, are the pleasures of palaces; but how canst thou know, who hast not lived in them even, as I--"
The sense of his own superiority soothed him still more; he squatted down again, and hubble-bubbled for a space at the hookah which was an integral part of all his impersonations.
"Yea! those were times," he mumbled half to himself. "Even Pidar Narâyan--may Heaven protect him--could not say 'please God' to every mouthful, as he does now--as we all do now, and rightly, seeing that we have grown old." Once more the piety smacked of pity, and the old man, finding a listener, went on with a certain gusto. "Look you! he had to walk like the tongue among thirty-two teeth in those days, with Bun-avatâr-sahib, my master, like two peas in one pod with the Nawah. Except for women. Pidar Narâyan took his way there--mostly!"
The interrupting gurgle of the hookah gave time for an elaborate wink of a wicked old eye. Possibly this was due to the smoke, for the old voice went on as before almost dolorously.
"He had the money-bags, you see, and looked after the rents. But my master, Bun-avatâr--lo! thou shouldst have seen him when he came first--the picture of a man!--they say he was a prince in his own country, but fell into trouble; so came to make his fortune here with Pidar Narâyan--was called Wazeer. And let me tell thee, Gu-gu, it means something to be body-servant to a Wazeer! Lo! to think I might have been it still but for that jade, Anâri Begum!"
Despite the epithet, he smiled, and his pipe this time gave out quite a chuckling sound.
"As ill to keep within walls as a butterfly!" he muttered. "Up and down the garden, in and out the balconies, and the Nawab in two minds to use force, or put her in a sack. For she flouted him. The prettiest ones play that game for power always, and she was Walidâd, her brother's, last hope of favour. Walidâd, Kanjara, who had been king's caterer for years before my master, Bun-avatâr-sahib, came to make all the court cry sour buttermilk! Walidâd, who had once stood so high, that, in a drunken bout, the Nawab promised him his half-sister to wife. And he got her too! She wept on her wedding day, but we in the lower storey heeded not tears in the upper. For, see you, mine uncle was chief eunuch--we kept the honour thus in the family from generation to generation--so I was in and out, seeing what went on. Until somehow (mine uncle with the bowstring round his neck--as was right, honest man--swore he knew not how) Bun-avatâr-sahib caught a sight of her! Some say it was a plot, from beginning to end, of Walidâd's; others that his enemies feared lest Anâri should succeed. There be balls within balls, even in a plaything, if the workmen are cunning! Anyhow, he saw her.
"And I, his body-servant, was able to come and go where Pidar Narâyan hath made his church nowadays. But there! what matters it? 'Tis all one. Love and the Faith are in and out of men's minds like a shelldrake in weedy water; a body cannot tell which way its head may be and which its tail! Nevertheless I felt a choke at my throat, Gu-gu, many a time, as I waited for him in the boat below the balcony; yet in the end, it was not my throat, but mine uncle's. He died in the faith, Gu-gu, cursing women. His head was that way at the last!--'Tis mostly so--he--he--"
The chuckle of his pipe was fiendish, yet his wizened face was wistful. "Still, God knows, one could scarce look on at such a wooing, and not beat the drum in time, as musicians to a dancer. And it runs in our blood, see you, to watch, and beat the drum. That is our profession; and, by mine ancestors! I deemed it enough for mortal man. But Bun-avatâr-sahib, see you, was not of our race. He was of Italy wilayat and a prince. So, one day, my liver dissolved hearing that the butterfly was over the walls! But, as I said, it was mine uncle's neck, not mine. Yet the game ended for me when Bun-avatâr-sahib died."
"They poisoned
