Rung Ho! A Novel, Talbot Mundy [free ebook reader for ipad .txt] 📗

HE landed, together with about a dozen other newly gazetted subalterns and civil officers, cramped, storm-tossed, snubbed, and then disgorged from a sailing-ship into a port that made no secret of its absolute contempt for new arrivals.

There were liners of a kind on the Red Sea route, and the only seniors who chose the long passage round the Cape were men returning after sick-leave—none too sweet-tempered individuals, and none too prone to give the young idea a good conceit of himself. He and the other youngsters landed with a crushed-in notion that India would treat them very cavalierly before she took them to herself. And all, save Cunningham, were right.

The other men, all homesick and lonely and bewildered, were met by bankers' agents, or, in cases, only by a hotel servant armed with a letter of instructions. Here and there a bored, tired-eyed European had found time, for somebody-or-other's sake, to pounce on a new arrival and bear him away to breakfast and a tawdry imitation of the real hospitality of northern India; but for the most part the beardless boys lounged in the red-hot customs shed (where they were to be mulcted for the privilege of serving their country) and envied young Cunningham.

He—as pale as they, as unexpectant as they were of anything approaching welcome—was first amazed, then suspicious, then pleased, then proud, in turn. The different emotions followed one another across his clean-lined face as plainly as a dawn vista changes; then, as the dawn leaves a landscape finally, true and what it is for all to see, true dignity was left and the look of a man who stands in armor.

“His father's son!” growled Mahommed Gunga; and the big, black-bearded warriors who stood behind him echoed, “Ay!”

But for four or five inches of straight stature, and a foot, perhaps, of chest-girth, he was a second edition of the Cunnigan-bahadur who had raised and led a regiment and licked peace into a warring countryside; and though he was that much bigger than his father had been, they dubbed him “Chota” Cunnigan on the instant. And that means “Little Cunningham.”

He had yet to learn that a Rajput, be he poorest of the poor, admits no superior on earth. He did not know yet that these men had come, at one man's private cost, all down the length of India to meet him. Nobody had told him that the feudal spirit dies harder in northern Hindustan than it ever did in England, or that the Rajput clans cohere more tightly than the Scots. The Rajput belief that honest service—unselfishly given—is the greatest gift that any man may bring—that one who has received what he considers favors will serve the giver's son—was an unknown creed to him as yet.

But he stood and looked those six men in the eye, and liked them. And they, before they had as much as heard him speak, knew him for a soldier and loved him as he stood.

They hung sickly scented garlands round his neck, and kissed his hand in turn, and spoke to him thereafter as man to man. They had found their goal worth while, and they bore him off to his hotel in clattering glee, riding before him as men who have no doubt of the honor that they pay themselves. No other of the homesick subalterns drove away with a six-man escort to clear the way and scatter sparks!

They careered round through the narrow gate of the hotel courtyard as though a Viceroy at least were in the trap behind them; and Mahommed Gunga—six medaled, strapping feet of him—dismounted and held out an arm for him to take when he alighted. The hotel people understood at once that Somebody from Somewhere had arrived.

Young Cunningham had never yet been somebody. The men who give their lives for India are nothing much at home, and their sons are even less. Scarcely even at school, when they had made him captain of the team, had he felt the feel of homage and the subtle flattery that undermines a bad man's character; at schools in England they confer honors but take simultaneous precautions. He was green to the dangerous influence of feudal loyalty, but he quitted himself well, with reserve and dignity.

“He is good! He will do!” swore Mahommed Gunga fiercely, for the other emotions are meant for women only.

“He is better than the best!”

“We will make a man of this one!”

“Did you mark how he handed me his purse to defray expenses?” asked a black-bearded soldier of the five.

“He is a man who knows by instinct!” said Mahommed Gunga. “See to it that thy accounting is correct, and overpay no man!”

Deep-throated as a bull, erect as a lance, and pleased as a little child, Mahommed Gunga came to him alone that evening to talk, and to hear him talk, and to tell him of the plans that had been made.

“Thy father gave me this,” he told him, producing a gold watch and chain of the hundred-guinea kind that nowadays are only found among the heirlooms. Young Cunningham looked at it, and recognized the heavy old-gold case that he had been allowed to “blow open” when a little boy. On the outside, deep-chiseled in the gold, was his father's crest, and on the inside a portrait of his mother.

“Thy father died in these two arms, bahadur! Thy father said: 'Look after him, Mahommed Gunga, when the time is ripe for him to be a soldier.' And I said: 'Ha, huzoor!' So! Then here is India!”

He waved one hand grandiloquently, as though he were presenting the throne of India to his protegé!

“Here, sahib, is a servant—blood of my own blood.”

He clapped his hands, and a man who looked like the big, black-ended spirit of Aladdin's lamp stood silent, instant, in the doorway.

“He speaks no English, but he may help to teach thee the Rajput tongue, and he will serve thee well—on my honor. His throat shall answer for it! Feed him and clothe him, sahib, but pay him very little—to serve well is sufficient recompense.”

Young Cunningham gave his keys at once to the silent servant, as a tacit sign that from that moment he was trusted utterly; and Mahommed Gunga nodded grim approval.

“Thy father saw fit to bequeath me much in the hour when death came on him, sahib. I am no boaster, as he knew. Remember, then, to tell me if I fail at any time in what is due. I am at thy service!”

Tact was inborn in Cunningham, as it had been in his father. He realized that he ought at once to show his appreciation of the high plane of the