Rujub, the Juggler, G. A. Henty [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

I have worked quietly against you, as have most of those of my craft. We have reason to hate you. In the old times we were honored in the land—honored and feared; for even the great ones knew that we had powers such as no other men have. But the whites treat us as if we were mere buffoons, who play for their amusement; they make no distinction between the wandering conjurer, with his tricks of dexterity, and the masters, who have powers that have been handed down from father to son for thousands of years, who can communicate with each other though separated by the length of India; who can, as you have seen, make men invisible; who can read the past and the future. They see these things, and though they cannot explain them, they persist in treating us all as if we were mere jugglers.

“They prefer to deny the evidence of their own senses rather than admit that we have powers such as they have not; and so, even in the eyes of our own countrymen, we have lost our old standing and position, while the whites would bribe us with money to divulge the secrets in which they profess to disbelieve. No wonder that we hate you, and that we long for the return of the old days, when even princes were glad to ask favors at our hands. It is seldom that we show our powers now. Those who aid us, and whose servants we are, are not to be insulted by the powers they bestow upon us being used for the amusement of men who believe in nothing.

“The Europeans who first came to India have left records of the strange things they saw at the courts of the native princes. But such things are no longer done for the amusement of our white masters. Thus, then, for years I have worked against you; and just as I saw that our work was successful, just as all was prepared for the blow that was to sweep the white men out of India, you saved my daughter; then my work seemed to come to an end. Would any of my countrymen, armed only with a whip, have thrown themselves in the way of a tiger to save a woman—a stranger—one altogether beneath him in rank—one, as it were, dust beneath his feet? That I should be ready to give my life for yours was a matter of course; I should have been an ungrateful wretch otherwise. But this was not enough. At one blow the work I had devoted myself to for years was brought to nothing. Everything seemed to me new; and as I sat by my daughter's bedside, when she lay sick with the fever, I had to think it all out again. Then I saw things in another light. I saw that, though the white men were masterful and often hard, though they had little regard for our customs, and viewed our beliefs as superstitious, and scoffed at the notion of there being powers of which they had no knowledge, yet that they were a great people. Other conquerors, many of them, India has had, but none who have made it their first object to care for the welfare of the people at large. The Feringhees have wrung nothing from the poor to be spent in pomp and display; they permit no tyranny or ill doing; under them the poorest peasant tills his fields in peace.

“I have been obliged to see all this, and I feel now that their destruction would be a frightful misfortune. We should be ruled by our native lords; but as soon as the white man was gone the old quarrels would break out, and the country would be red with blood. I did not see this before, because I had only looked at it with the eyes of my own caste; now I see it with the eyes of one whose daughter has been saved from a tiger by a white man. I cannot love those I have been taught to hate, but I can see the benefit their rule has given to India.

“But what can I do now? I am in the stream, and I must go with it. I know not what I wish or what I would do. Six months ago I felt certain. Now I doubt. It seemed to me that in a day the English Raj would be swept away. How could it be otherwise when the whole army that had conquered India for them were against them? I knew they were brave, but we have never lacked bravery. How could I tell that they would fight one against a hundred?

“But come, let us go on. Por Sing is expecting you. I told him that I knew that one from the garrison would come out to treat with him privately tonight, and he is expecting you, though he does not know who may come.”

Ten minutes walking, and they approached a large tent surrounded by several smaller ones. A sentry challenged when they approached, but on Rujub giving his name, he at once resumed his walk up and down, and Rujub, followed by Bathurst, advanced and entered the tent. The Zemindar was seated on a divan smoking a hookah. Rujub bowed, but not with the deep reverence of one approaching his superior.

“He is here,” he said.

“Then you were not mistaken, Rujub?”

“How could I be when I knew?” Rujub said. “I have done what I said, and have brought him straight to you. That was all I had to do with it; the rest is for your highness.”

“I would rather that you should be present,” Por Sing said, as Rujub turned to withdraw.

“No,” the latter replied; “in this matter it is for you to decide. I know not the Nana's wishes, and your highness must take the responsibility. I have brought him to you rather than to the commander of the Sepoys, because your authority should be the greater; it is you and the other Oude chiefs who have borne the weight of this siege, and it is only right that it is you who should decide the conditions of surrender. The Sepoys are not our masters, and it is well they are not so; the Nana and the Oude chiefs have not taken up arms to free themselves from the English Raj to be ruled over by the men who have been the servants of the English.”

“That is so,” the Zemindar said, stroking his beard; “well, I will talk with this person.”

Rujub left the tent. “You do not know me, Por Sing?” Bathurst said, stepping forward from the entrance where he had hitherto stood; “I am the Sahib Bathurst.”

“Is it so?” the Zemindar said, laying aside his pipe and rising to his feet; “none could come to me whom I would rather see. You have always proved yourself a just officer, and I have no complaint against you. We have often broken bread together, and it has grieved me to know that you were in yonder house. Do you come to me on your own account, or from the sahib who commands?”

“I come on my own account,” Bathurst said; “when I come as a messenger from him, I must come openly. I. know you to be an honorable man, and that I could say what I have to say to you and depart in safety. I regard you as one who has been misled, and regret for your sake that you should have been induced to take part with these mutineers against us. Believe me, chief, you have been terribly misled. You have been told that it needed but an effort to overthrow the British Raj. Those who told you so lied. It might have seemed easy to destroy the handful of Europeans scattered throughout India, but you have not succeeded in doing it. Even had you done so, you would not have so much as begun the work. There are but few