LUTIONIST 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 HORACE W. CARPEOTIER 
 
 } 
 
 s 
 
SIRI RAM 
 
 REVOLUTIONIST 
 
By THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 ABDICATION 
 
SIRI RAM 
 REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 A TRANSCRIPT FROM LIFE 
 1907-1910 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND CANDLER 
 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • SYDNEY 
 
Firsi Publishtd x^ia 
 Re^nttd t^Ij 
 
 Reissvcd t^ta 
 
 iAKU^'-'^' 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Lucttbd, 
 bungay, suffolk. 
 
9^/ 
 
 TO 
 
 CECIL EATON 
 
 {535?rj7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGI 
 
 i 
 
 PART I 
 HE College i 
 
 PART II 
 The Village 53 
 
 PART III 
 The Cave 133 
 
 PART IV 
 The Kali-Yuga 189 
 
 PART V 
 The Sacrifice 253 
 
PART I 
 THE COLLEGE 
 
 And he said, as he counted his beads and smiled, 
 " God smite their souls to the depth of hell ! " 
 
 Sir Alfred Lyall. 
 
I 
 
 Skene's resolution nearly failed him as he 
 was driving to the meeting in the city. His pony 
 wanted to turn into the Club gates, and a similar 
 inclination nearly swung him round. He pulled 
 up a moment to watch the tennis-four in which 
 he ought to have been playing. It was a keen 
 game, and he drove on reluctantly, feeling that 
 he had been foolish to commit himself. What 
 is life worth if one is immured from five to seven 
 under a roof listening to talk ? And it was the 
 beginning of the cold weather. Exercise in the 
 interval between work and dinner is as essential 
 to an Englishman as air; but for the native of 
 India talk is the only recreation — at a meeting if 
 possible ; if not, at his own or a neighbour's 
 house. The Indian has no hobby. He is i t--/ 
 incapable of being bored. 
 
 For three years Skene had been pestered to 
 preside at meetings, or "to grace" some "occa- 
 sion " with his "august presence." But he was 
 lamentably wanting in public spirit. This was 
 only the second time he had undertaken to attend 
 a gathering at Gandeshwar. He had shocked 
 
 B2 3 
 
4 SjLRI , RAMryllEVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Lala Ram Prasad, "the energetic secretary" of 
 the municipality, by saying that anything that 
 needed to be said publicly might be said in a 
 dozen words. His students did not sympathise 
 with this trait in their Principal. Some of them 
 he used to herd off to cricket and football in the 
 evenings, but the majority were more voluble 
 than their elders. The more active-minded, if 
 they did anything at all, were happiest at a meet- 
 ing, reading or listening to addresses, votes of 
 confidence, memorials, resolutions — oceans of 
 verbiage leading nowhither. 
 
 So while Lala Ram Prasad was haranguing 
 the citizens in the Town Hall, saying that every 
 right-minded and self-respecting individual 
 viewed with horror and detestation the revolting 
 and heinous crime of some bloodthirsty and 
 abandoned anarchist, Banarsi Das would be 
 declaiming at the college that it behoved each 
 and every young man to shun the ways of 
 wickedness and violence as they would the 
 deadly adder and the hissing serpent. 
 
 The pony made an effort to turn down a side 
 lane to the polo ground, but Skene held him 
 citywards with grim humour, thinking of the 
 last meeting he had attended three years before 
 in a Gothic fsi^ade of red bricks with the ends 
 of the girders protruding from the wall. He 
 remembered the crowded hall, his ineffable 
 weariness and the smell of tightly-packed 
 
THE COLLEGE 5 
 
 humanity with the thermometer at i04°ffin the 
 shade. Every face set in a mould of serious 
 complacency that made it seem the wildest dream 
 in the world that any one of them could ever 
 possibly connive at an end. They spoke for 
 hours, and all the while he knew, and every one 
 else knew, that nothing would be done to pro- 
 mote the worthy end in view beyond the expres- 
 sion of its desirability in the same sequence of 
 platitudes. Still it was an opportunity for the 
 ingenious application of strange idiom. 
 
 Skene hardened himself with the thought that 
 it was his business to hear Narasimha Swami. 
 No doubt it would be physically exhausting, but 
 most of his students would be there, and he was 
 interested to see the little superman who had 
 gained such an extraordinary influence over the 
 youth of India and to discover if possible where 
 his magnetism lay. The Swami was going to 
 give a religious address to the young men in 
 Gandeshwar, and all the Europeans in the 
 station had been invited. The man was known 
 to be a dangerous agitator, but he was too clever 
 to be run down. He was identified with the 
 spiritual side of the revolutionary movement in 
 the same way as Tilak was with the political. 
 His influence in the north of India rivalled that 
 of Arabindo Ghose in Bengal, and it was the 
 more dangerous as the material he had to work 
 upon was hardier and more robust. 
 
6 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 When Skene arrived the Swami had begun 
 his address. As he had expected, there was only 
 one other European present, a missionary; but 
 the hall was crammed with natives, among 
 whom he recognised many of his students and 
 professors. Nearly all the Hindus of the college 
 were there and a sprinkling of Sikhs. It took 
 him some seconds to realise that the meeting 
 was different from anything he had imagined. 
 He was in an atmosphere of intense excitement. 
 He saw a thin, fragile little man standing alone 
 on a platform, a palpable ascetic. And out of 
 this weak frame issued a volume of sound which 
 rang true with a genuine message. The Swami 
 was informed with a spirit which seemed to 
 shake him like a gust of wind. Sometimes, 
 when he paused and threw out his arms and 
 held them motionless after some burst of 
 eloquence, you could see his thin, salmon- 
 coloured shift vibrate with inward emotion like 
 a dragon-fly's wing. The young men were 
 spellbound by it. Not a word would he utter 
 until the quivering was still. The outstretched 
 hand thrust the question home at them as the 
 thunder in which it had been delivered died 
 away. He seemed to be waiting for one of them 
 to answer him, but no answer was possible. 
 
 At last his hands dropped to his sides in the 
 hush, and a sad, mirthless smile stole into his 
 eyes, more eloquent than any declamation. 
 
THE COLLEGE 7 
 
 Every young man in the hall knew that he had 
 been weighed and found wanting, as if the 
 Swami had cried aloud, **Of course I know it 
 all — I have always known it. And yet . . .'* 
 
 Then, before the faint, irresistible appeal was 
 raised again that was to swell into an organ 
 note, every young man knew that he was 
 forgiven, that there was hope, individually and 
 for all. 
 
 Theatrical ! Skene felt it was too harsh a 
 word. This little husk of humanity, with his 
 shrunken limbs and his bright eyes sunk deep 
 in their sockets, was the most spiritual-looking 
 man he had seen. Yet he felt somehow that the 
 speech was disingenuous. There had not been 
 a word about politics. The few allusions to 
 Government, the British and the Christians 
 had been moderate and natural. Yet there was 
 more in it all than met the ear. He felt that 
 a message had been conveyed to the young 
 men that had passed over his head, and that they 
 had responded. 
 
 After that vibrating silence the address 
 became purely scriptural. The high, passionate 
 ring died out of it, and for twenty minutes the 
 Swami spoke in a hushed whisper, which pene- 
 trated every corner, as if he had just come 
 through a hidden door through which he was 
 going to lead them. But first he must prepare 
 them for the sacred mysteries that lay the other 
 
8 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 side. In another moment he would hold back 
 the curtain. The Samagists believed that they 
 were in the presence of a man who had seen 
 what he was speaking of. It was impossible 
 that they should not, for the slow, deliberate 
 accents were conveyed in just that pitch of voice 
 raised above a whisper which compels the belief 
 of every soul in the room. The pauses were 
 impressive for the fulness behind, the dammed- 
 up welling stream, to be distributed when all 
 channels were prepared but now withheld. The 
 restraint was as effective as the Swami's control 
 of the spirit that had seemed about to possess 
 his feeble frame in the earlier part of the speech. 
 He was telling them to go back to the Vedas. 
 
 , "Go back to the Vedas,'* he said; "they con- 
 v| tain all wisdom. Modern youths smile at them. 
 
 I * Wild fantasies,* you call them. Ah, do not 
 believe this. I myself was a young man and a 
 scoffer once like some of you. But I have come 
 to understand that the sayings of the Hindu 
 religion are not false. I realise more and more 
 the signs and symbols by which it has spoken. 
 It is my will to take you with me that way. To 
 help you to see those lights, to listen to those 
 voices. You will hear in them the voice of the 
 initiated speaking to the ignorant in fables. 
 You are proud of the knowledge you are carry- 
 ing away from your schools and colleges — 
 Physics, Chemistry, Electricity, Evolution. 
 
THE COLLEGE 9 
 
 That is well. Glean what you can from your 
 new teachers. But remember that in their search 
 for truth they are groping now through the 
 accumulated wisdom of centuries towards a 
 plane of knowledge which the ancient Vedant- 
 ists took at a leap. How ? By conquest of the 
 flesh ; by victory over self ; by communion with 
 the spirits; by the realisation of the Infinite." 
 
 Again the hushed voice, the vibrating pause, 
 the tremulous shift, the bright eyes sunk in their 
 sockets. 
 
 "Now I am going to prove to you that the 
 wildest dreams of modern Science were known 
 to the Rishis. 
 
 "Take first three simple truths — the date of 
 the Creation, the origin of sex, the magnetism 
 of the earth. 
 
 " How many years is it since the last Pralaya 
 — the last obscuration of life on the planet? I 
 do not mean the first beginnings of life which 
 we read of in the Book of Genesis in the Christ- 
 ian Bible. Genesis speaks of four thousand 
 years since the Spirit, that is God, informed 
 chaos and created the earth. Turn to the Vedas, 
 you will find a date that harmonises more with 
 scientific investigation — nineteen million years; 
 not since the first creation but since the last 
 Pralaya. And here, too, modern Science with 
 its carefully sifted data tells us of cataclysms, 
 upheavals, submergences, corresponding with 
 
10 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 our Vedic Manvantara and Pralaya, earth- 
 periods of energy and rest. 
 
 "And what do the Vedas teach you of the 
 origin of sex? Not the Christian conception 
 that mankind was always sexual, male and 
 female, as you read in the Bible, from the 
 beginning. Science tells us that is not so. In 
 all forms of life there is first the a-sexual, then 
 the bi-sexual, then the sexual. The Rishis knew 
 this, but how were the ignorant to understand ? 
 It had to be explained to them in the parables 
 which some of you in your ignorance despise. 
 
 "Then again, what of the magnetism of the 
 earth? You are told in the Vedas, when you 
 sleep, to lie with your head and feet north and 
 south. * Why not east and west?* you say. 
 * Is not this all of a piece with the other 
 mummery? Superstitious charlatanism — or at 
 the least mere forms and rules, a ritual to 
 impress barbarians ? ' Ah ! do not think it, my 
 dear young friends ! There is no babble in the 
 Vedas. Believe me, it is wrong to lie east and 
 west. Those grand old men, your ancestors, 
 who found God in Nature, knew this. The 
 properly sensitised body cannot sleep so. Many 
 of us Indians cannot now. But we have lost our 
 finer physical faculties. Like our souls they 
 have become deadened. We are no longer 
 attuned to the Universe. The old Rishis needed 
 no compass. They felt the North in their veins. 
 
THE COLLEGE 11 
 
 And when they stretched themselves out to sleep 
 their blood pulsed freely to the heart, and every 
 nerve and vein and cell played in harmony with 
 the mysterious current that pervades the earth 
 and links it with the stars. It is against nature 
 to sleep athwart this current." Thus we pervert 
 our organism, as we have perverted our souls. 
 Both are vessels which God has filled with the 
 Essence of life which we spill and squander 
 every day we live. 
 
 "In Europe a few years back Science pro- 
 claimed with great blare of trumpets the 
 Magnetism of the Earth, the Circulation of the 
 Blood. Dear young men, we are a fallen 
 people. Thousands of years ago your ancestors, '^ 
 whose word you despise, knew these secrets, the f 
 fringe of which you are now inheriting with an 
 alien culture. They did not publish them in 
 intellectual pride — pride, indeed, is a modern 
 birth — but every simple rule of life which they 
 inculcated upon the people was inspired by these 
 laws — laws which you now call mysterious, 
 though to the old sages they were the facts of 
 life which came without seeking. Free of the 
 dross, the deceits, the illusions of the world, they 
 were attuned to the Infinite. They could read 
 the book of Nature, the orderings of life. The 
 flesh did not enchain them. They communed 
 with spirits. They dwelt in the future and the 
 past. The beginning and the end were revealed 
 
12 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 to them, from the first dim consciousness that 
 informed matter to the ranging soul of man 
 losing itself in the Infinite. The first groupings 
 of the atoms, the energies that controlled them, 
 and the part each electron played in the cosmic 
 process upon which their fleeting lives were 
 reflected as in a dream. And they have 
 enshrined these truths in their sacred, obscure 
 books for you to read. Ah ! Go back to the 
 Vedas. You will find all wisdom there.*' 
 
 Skene watched his students. Siri Ram, 
 Banarsi Das, Lachmi Chand, the trio whom 
 he believed to be most affected by political 
 unrest, were clearly in the toils. His eyes did 
 not deceive him. Siri Ram was glowing with 
 the spiritual pride of his race. But he was per- 
 plexed. What of (he present? How were the 
 Hindus to take the place they should inherit by 
 their ancient wisdom ? Where was their power 
 and strength ? 
 
 Skene listened in vain for a breath of political 
 discontent, but there was no hint of it. Only a 
 few words about indolence and indifference, the 
 need to send out teachers, the loss to the religion 
 through apathy and disunion. But at these ^ 
 obvious truisms there was a stir in the assembly, 
 "a little noiseless noise among the leaves," and 
 the lecture was ended. 
 
II 
 
 Skene had been deeply interested in the 
 Swami, but he breathed the air of the Club with 
 relief. He had not spoken to an Englishman all 
 day. As he drove into the gates the impish, 
 uniformed little boys in red caps were taking 
 down the tennis nets, and the few men who had 
 been playing were putting on their sweaters or 
 drifting off to the bridge room or library. He 
 was warmed by the way they greeted him. 
 Working among Orientals makes a man observ- 
 anF of his own people : he notices distinctive 
 traits, which folk at home take as a matter of 
 course, with the acute perception of a foreigner. 
 Skene enjoyed the atmosphere of friendly, per- 
 sonal chaff in which he found himself. He liked 
 the easy way the Briton has of putting away 
 serious things and his horror of the profession 
 of a code. It was a relief to be among people 
 who never "inaugurated" or "promoted" or 
 "ameliorated " anything, though they did more 
 honest work in a day than a regiment of propa- 
 gandists. 
 
 No one looking at the two men who joined 
 him would have known that either of them had 
 13 
 
14 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 a thought outside polo or bridge or golf, yet 
 Hobbs commanded a regiment, and Innes was 
 Commissioner of the District. Their work was 
 part of their tissue, and tradition sat lightly on 
 them. Merivale, the smooth-faced little civilian 
 on the chair, would have disowned an "ideal *' 
 as hotly as the imputation of having shot a 
 pigeon sitting, and Innes, who had just fought 
 a famine, had been overheard by his secretary 
 profanely "damning causes" while waiting to 
 receive a deputation. 
 
 Skene, upon cross-examination, pleaded guilty 
 to having attended a seditious meeting. His 
 defence was curiosity. He deprecated the argu- 
 ment that he, qua Principal of a college, was 
 himself a sedition-monger and an instiller of 
 radical and subversive ideas into the callow 
 young. 
 
 Hobbs demolished Narasimha in a few forcible 
 phrases: "A mischievous agitator. A canting, 
 hypocritical humbug. His religion is all eye- 
 wash. Besides, these educated college fellows 
 are not the men the people want." 
 
 The others laughed. It was the voice of the 
 old school whose rule was comfortably paternal. 
 There was no sophistry in it. "Treat 'em well, 
 but no damned nonsense." A soothing echo to 
 the modern official who moves in intricacies and 
 knots. It would not have occurred to any of 
 them to discuss "legitimate aspirations" with 
 
THE COLLEGE 15 
 
 Hobbs, but Moon, a young Cambridge mission- 
 ary, who was standing near, overheard him and 
 politely remonstrated. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, but I was at the 
 lecture. There was really not a word of sedition 
 in it. Narasimha is absolutely pucca,*^ 
 
 Hobbs stared at him. 
 
 *• Do a lot of good if we strung a few of those 
 fellows up. Save trouble in the end." 
 
 Merivale intervened humanely. 
 
 "They didn't invite Englishmen to give them- 
 selves away. That was all a blind, of course. 
 What do you think was said afterwards ? " He 
 appealed to Dean. *'I suppose you had a man 
 there." 
 
 "The lecture was probably only ground-bait," 
 the policeman said. " Did he say anything 
 about the English?" 
 
 "Yes, but in praise only." 
 
 "Did he say anything about our unity?" 
 
 Moon had to admit that he did. 
 
 "Then you may be quite sure that it was 
 sedition. That is an old trick. They harp on 
 the absence of co-operation. No doubt Nara- 
 simha lauded the English in this respect, and 
 said that they trusted one another and hung 
 together in an emergency in a way the Indians 
 cannot do. And he flattered us by telling the 
 meeting to take a leaf out of our book. But 
 what did he mean ? You are fifty times stronger 
 
16 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 than the British if you combine your forces. 
 Combine them, then, and kick them out.*' 
 
 "I really think you are mistaken in Nara- 
 simha," Moon objected. "He has often been 
 over to the Mission. My impression is that he 
 is a deeply religious man, very sincere and single- 
 minded, and he is doing a lot of good here." 
 
 "A good bit too single-minded. My dear 
 fellow, I have his record in the office. The man 
 has all the instincts of a wolf. He has been 
 home and all that, taken a degree, sipped tea in 
 Bayswater drawing-rooms, read papers to the 
 Asiatic Society, lectured in America; but he is 
 a Bengali Lingayac still, and always will be. 
 They draw their religion from the Tantras. 
 They are just as fanatical as Wahabis, and far 
 more bloodthirsty. I know the breed." 
 
 "Talking about wolves," Hobbs interrupted, 
 yawning, "have you seen that borzoi of Mrs. 
 Lee's?" 
 
 " Don't ride him off," Merivale whispered. " I 
 want to hear about this fellow. What is he 
 doing among the Arya Samaj ? " ^ 
 
 "You may well ask. That is what damns him 
 more than anything. They have nothing on 
 earth in common. They are at opposite poles. 
 Cats and dogs. Nothing would induce him to 
 hunt with that pack but common hunger." 
 
 "The blood of an Englishman." 
 
 ^ See note at conclusion of volume. 
 
THE COLLEGE 17 
 
 "Of course. The union is political. His 
 mission is to introduce the Bengal system into 
 the Punjab. You know Narasimha is not his 
 real name. He adopted it for convenience. You 
 can't pin the man down to any dogma. He'll 
 take what suits him from anywhere." 
 
 Moon, remembering the Swami's "Back to 
 the Vedas " cry, which is the rallying-point of 
 the Aryas, began to feel uncomfortable. Hobbs 
 and Dean were drawn off to the bridge room, 
 and he gravitated towards Skene, hoping for 
 sympathy there. But Skene would not expatiate 
 on Swaraj. 
 
 "I don't like talking about the fitness or unfit- 
 ness of Indians for self-government," he said. 
 "It sounds too much like cant. The country is 
 ours after all, and we won it as fairly as countries 
 ever have been won. There is no question of 
 handing it over. When the Indians are strong 
 enough to govern it, they will be strong enough 
 to take it, and they won't ask us. But I don't 
 think it will be in our time." 
 
 "But you wouldn't retard them?" 
 
 "Of course not. Let them make themselves\^ 
 fit. I do not respect a man who is not a ( 
 nationalist." 
 
 "Then you respect Narasimha Swami ? " 
 
 "Certainly I respect him. He is doing what 
 he thinks the straight thing — the term is relative 
 — for his country, but it is our business to draw 
 c 
 
18 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 his leeth. If we hesitate on account of some 
 vague humanitarian principles we are not play- 
 ing the game. But Tm tired of politics. Let's 
 play bridge." 
 
 Moon did not play. He went off wrapped up 
 in ethical difficulties, and Skene was glad to 
 be left alone. He lay back in a long chair in 
 the verandah, ordered a drink, and watched his 
 own kind. It amused him to compare the people 
 he worked with and the people he played with. 
 The people he worked with had no interests. 
 Their minds were fallow when they were hitched 
 ofiP the particular routine that earned them a 
 living. It soothed him and made him feel at 
 home to spend the evening with his countrymen, 
 though their preoccupations were little more 
 logical, or creditable, if you analysed them, than 
 the Indian's apathy. Nevertheless the plunge 
 from one to the other was refreshing. 
 
 The door of the ladies' and men's bridge room 
 opened into the verandah where he was sitting, 
 and his chair commanded a view of two tables 
 at close quarters. At one a woman with a stern, 
 careworn face under a picture hat garlanded with 
 sweet-peas reviewed her cards with evident per- 
 plexity. Her partner, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, was 
 making furtive dabs at a plate of chipped 
 potatoes which she shared with a very solid, 
 gruff-voiced lady with three chins. The fourth, 
 a heavy, sub-bovine girl with sloe eyes, enjoyed 
 
THE COLLEGE 19 
 
 a plate to herself owing to Dummy's preoccupa- 
 tion, and was making headway with it. When 
 she had cleared the debris she asked — 
 
 •* Did any one declare ? " 
 
 "I left it to Sweet-peas." Mrs. O'Shaugh- 
 nessy's rich provincial brogue decorated the 
 commonplace. Spurred by her sally the sad, 
 equine-faced lady looked up solemnly and made 
 it spades. 
 
 The other table was more aristocratic, but 
 there was less bonhomie. Skene heard the acid 
 voice of the chaplain's wife, a palpable loser — 
 
 "I thought you were weak and weak." 
 
 "So I am." 
 
 "Then why discard a spade?" 
 
 "Wasn't it a club? I think it was." 
 
 "And didn't you see my call?" 
 
 The demure, frightened little mouse-like lady 
 did not know what a call was, but she dared not 
 admit it. In the meanwhile she had forgotten 
 to ask if she might play. After a long pause the 
 accusing silence of her partner awakened her to 
 the new dilemma. 
 
 "Oh yes, please. I am sorry. I mean, may 
 I play ? " and she began to lay her cards on the 
 table. 
 
 "You are not Dummy." 
 
 "Oh no, of course not, how stupid ! " 
 
 The chaplain's wife, with an expression of 
 infinite forbearance, asked the dealer if she 
 
 C 2 
 
20 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 claimed that the cards were exposed. She did 
 not, and Dummy laid her hand upon the table. 
 Three aces and a suit of six, and they only 
 wanted the odd. The little person was very 
 near tears, feeling that the acerbity of the chap- 
 lain's wife implicated her somehow unfairly in 
 the failure. Skene was sure that the padre's lady 
 was mentally cancelling an order for a ham, or a 
 new hat for one of the children. Even at those 
 low points it meant that the padre would have 
 to keep the lampshade in the dining-room, which 
 was already in rags, another month. He was 
 sorry for them both. 
 
 An uproar at the other table drew his attention 
 to the more plebeian group. Sweet-peas had 
 revoked. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy was hurling 
 recriminations on her head. "You ought to 
 look at your cards before you lay them on the 
 table," she said, and with much unnecessary 
 movement and calculated equilibrium of the back 
 of her head she gathered up her skirts and swept 
 out of the room. 
 
 The gruff lady with the three chins asked the 
 sub-bovine girl to put the score in the box on 
 the plea that she would not have time to change. 
 As she waddled out of the room the Com- 
 missioner's wife, Dummy with the three aces, 
 turned to the chaplain's wife and said — 
 
 "I didn't know people like that dressed for 
 dinner." 
 
THE COLLEGE 21 
 
 "Did you see the good lady's hat?" 
 "Yes, and she played tennis in it." 
 There was a rush and a roar in the passage, 
 and the folding door swung open to emit half-a- 
 dozen juvenile middle-aged men. "Been weigh- 
 ing O'Shaughnessy," one of them shouted to 
 Skene as he passed. "Eighteen stone without 
 the brogue." 
 
 Skene smiled to think that two hundred thou- 
 sand of these folk ruled three hundred million 
 of the others by virtue of the vitality that was in 
 them. 
 
 Narasimha Swami was saying much the same 
 thing to his young men. 
 
 After the lecture a few earnest and religious 
 youths were presented. Siri Ram was called up 
 by his teacher. The Guru spoke to him apart. 
 
 "Are you a patriot?" he asked. "Do you 
 love your country ? " 
 
 Siri Ram testified his love. 
 
 " Are you prepared for sacrifice ? " 
 
 Siri Ram was prepared for sacrifice. 
 
 "The youth of a nation are blessed, for in j 
 them lie its power and salvation. Youth is 
 selfless; it does not calculate peril. In youth 
 godliness first manifests itself; the perfection 
 of manliness is attained. Who but young men 
 have ever purified religion with their blood, 
 baring their breasts to the sword of the; 
 
N 
 
 22 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 oppressor? In every country oppressed and / 
 trodden underfoot by an alien government it is 
 the community of young men who have con- 
 quered resistance and oppression, created a new 
 nation, and reanimated the spirit of their fathers 
 and their pride of race." 
 
 The Swami fixed Siri Ram with a compas- 
 sionate appraising eye. The boy hung his head. 
 
 "Is not the army of our young men the 
 Nrsinha, the Vahara, the Kalki incarnation of 
 Vishnu, which is to rid India of the Mlecchas? 
 Do you wish to be enrolled in that army? Are 
 you aware that independence is at hand?" 
 
 Siri Ram wished to serve in the ranks, to be 
 part of the coming incarnation of the god 
 Vishnu. Thus the humblest is beatified. 
 
 *'The sword which is unsheathed for the pro- 
 tection of right in the name of religion is 
 invincible, but the weapon in the hands of a 
 persecutor has no power at all. For who can 
 destroy the seed of liberty when it has germin- 
 ated in the blood of a patriot? To-day our 
 religion is still of martyrdom ; to-morrow it will 
 be of victory. Consider, what are the numbers 
 of our oppressors ? " 
 
 "Less than two million." 
 
 "What are the numbers of our countrymen ? " 
 
 "Three hundred million." 
 
 "Oh, glorious is the heritage of our young 
 men ! The country is yours. If a thousand of 
 
THE COLLEGE 28 
 
 you here and there cherish the desire of inde- r 
 pendence in your hearts, then in a single day / 
 you can bring English rule to an end. But 
 there is the price. Are you strong enough to 
 pay it ? " 
 
 The Swami did not wait for Siri Ram's assur- 
 ances. He turned to a heap of books by his side 
 and chose six unbound pamphlets in Urdu, and 
 bade the boy take them and consider and weigh 
 them before he did anything in haste. If in a 
 month's time he felt the true fire which could not 
 be extinguished he must offer himself again, and 
 a task would be allotted him proportionate to his 
 love and zeal. He should pray to be worthy 
 of the highest crown. In the meantime he must 
 take his companions aside and instil into them 
 true religious and political ideas. But he must 
 work undergound. There must be no open 
 movement in the College. Students must be 
 compliant and appear to imbibe -the opinions 
 of Government. Premature divulgence would 
 injure the cause. There must be no general 
 action till the flame had spread. For a little 
 time it must burn secretly in hidden places until 
 the conflagration became so great that it would 
 consume all that was opposed to it. 
 
 "The saints of to-day are the guardians of ( 
 the flame of liberty. Sacrifice yourself at that \ 
 shrine. Without bloodshed the worship of the 1 
 goddess cannot be accomplished." J 
 
24 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Siri Ram felt that these words, delivered by 
 the Swami with such slow, solemn earnestness, 
 were the formula of initiation. He departed 
 swollen with pride. He slept ill that night in 
 the boarding-house. His mind was distracted 
 as he lay awake among his companions who 
 were still slaves — slaves of the English, slaves 
 of their families, slaves of their own pleasures. 
 One of them had a portrait of the King from 
 an illustrated paper pinned over his bed. Siri 
 Ram got up and tore it from the wall. He felt 
 himself steeped in anarchy. Remembering with 
 what sacrifice the goddess of Independence must 
 be worshipped, he pricked his hand with a nib 
 and licked the blood. He did not know how to 
 use a gun or a sword, yet he was dedicated. 
 
 When he fell asleep he was thinking of 
 Kamala Kanta in the Shop of Fame — where 
 nothing could be seen for the deep darkness. 
 Kamala was calling to the vendor, but no voice 
 could be heard ; only the infinite roar of thunder, 
 faUing rocks and cannon striking terror into the 
 hearts of all. In the faint light outside over the 
 door he could read, "The Shop of Fame. For 
 Sale, Eternal Glory. Price, Life." 
 
Ill 
 
 SiRi Ram was seven when his father's bullock 
 cart and a neighbour's borrowed for the occasion 
 took him and his parents to Gandeshwar. He 
 had never, save once when he was a sleeping 
 infant, been far from Mograon before that 
 memorable journey ; he had not even thought of 
 exploring the cart track which connected it with 
 the trunk road. He travelled in the hind cart 
 with his mother under the red campanula-shaped 
 purdah, and she held him at the parting of the 
 curtains, whence he looked out stolidly on the 
 world for the first time. The groaning of the 
 unoiled wheels and the rattling of the brass pots 
 as the cart jolted in and out of the permanent 
 rut were his lullaby for three days. Then he 
 passed through a city gate where men were 
 counting money and under the bastions of a fort. 
 The carts traversed a network of narrow streets 
 full of strange shops and temples, and serais 
 with intricately-carved doors and fretted win- 
 dows, and houses with flaming pictures daubed 
 on the walls, of Rajahs, and tigers, and peacocks, 
 and gods without animation or perspective. 
 
 An English boy at such a time would have been 
 
 as 
 
 
26 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 restless, darting from one side of the cart to the 
 other, or looking over his shoulder through the 
 opposite chink afraid of missing something better 
 on the other side of the road ; but Siri Ram sur- 
 veyed the traffic, dreamily content with what was 
 thrown in front of his eye. He saw a camel- 
 sowar with his bright belt and rifle, riding the 
 largest and cleanest camel he had even seen, 
 with bells jingling on its knees and chest, and 
 a bridle studded with cowrie shells and favours. 
 He passed through the metal bazaar, a whole 
 street of shops, where spectacled old men sat in 
 dark recesses hammering bowls and cauldrons of 
 copper and brass. He saw a young blood on 
 horseback with a falcon on his wrist; and in the 
 square in front of the fort by the big cannon 
 the cart had to pull up to let a Maharajah's 
 body-guard sweep by, forty straight square-set 
 men in green who passed on their cream-white 
 chargers like one wave. In the street by Siva's 
 temple Siri Ram saw more fakirs and holy men 
 than he had seen in his life, some in ashen 
 nakedness, and some in salmon-coloured shifts 
 with bowls and staves and leopards' skins and 
 matted hair. A shock-headed madman lurched 
 along the street beside the cart, slowly revolving 
 one arm and crying out with every revolution 
 that he was the father of a devil. Beggars with 
 lopped limbs and features all awry, with no eyes 
 or one, and that often webbed or wounded, with 
 
THE COLLEGE 27 
 
 twisted lips or mouth like a fleshy ring into 
 which the snout has fallen, squatted under the 
 walls crying aloud for alms and stretching out 
 their bowls with their hands in supplication. 
 Then, strangest of all, a carriage drawn by two 
 grey horses passed in front of them down a side 
 street, and Siri Ram had a momentary vision of 
 the white-and-pink face of a brazenly unabashed 
 woman who leant back on her cushions laughing 
 in the eye of all the world, the man by her side. 
 She wore a black hat with a white plume in it, 
 and the shape reminded Siri Ram of the large, 
 shallow vessel in which his sister pounded tur- 
 meric. Yet it was worn on the head. Before the 
 carriage had passed, his mother drew the purdah 
 to with a modest, frightened movement and 
 murmured "English." It was Siri Ram's first 
 sight of them. 
 
 The next morning Siri Ram was taken to the 
 great towered building which played so im- 
 portant a part in his life. The college was a 
 landmark for miles. It so dominated the country 
 that it left an impression even on the dull brain 
 of his father, Mool Chand, who on an earlier 
 journey had been led to remark that if he sent 
 his son to school anywhere it should be at 
 Gandeshwar under Iskeen Sahib. Thus it hap- 
 pened that Skene was the first Englishman 
 whom the boy saw at close quarters. 
 
 The white world did not trouble him much in 
 
 y 
 
'28 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 those early days. His first encounter with the 
 dominant race was one morning when his class 
 was invaded by a sudden, strange, violent man. 
 Siri Ram did not know it, but the lesson he was 
 attending was designed to explain the physical 
 features of the earth. The teacher had drawn a 
 series of cones on the blackboard like the teeth 
 of a saw, and he was leading the class in a kind 
 of chanted litany. 
 
 "What are these?" 
 J "Mountains." 
 ["What are mountains?" 
 t "Mountains are steep." 
 
 "What are plains?" 
 
 " Plains are low." 
 
 "What are these?" 
 
 "Mountains." 
 
 Siri Ram saw the teacher's back stiffen as he 
 raised his voice to catch the sure response. 
 
 "What are these?" 
 
 "Mountains." 
 
 "^tand I " 
 
 The boys leapt up. Action in the hall was 
 paralysed. The hot, red man filled the space 
 between the two classes. He was speaking to 
 Siri Ram*s teacher, evidently displeased. Then 
 he swung round to the class. 
 
 "Has any boy here ever seen a mountain?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Has any boy seen a mountain ? " the teacher 
 
THE COLLEGE 29 
 
 repeated. "Those who have seen mountains 
 hold up their hands. . . . Yes, it is very bad, no 
 doubt, after all. Every boy ought to have seen 
 a mountain. Teaching must be accompanied 
 by observation, of course. Eye must work 
 with brain. Other methods are wrong. In 
 future. . . ." 
 
 But these scraps of training-school remi- 
 niscence did not pacify the sudden violent man. 
 He stood there staring stonily at the class, very 
 angry, it seemed, because no one had ever seen 
 a mountain. Stillness and silence prevailed. At 
 last Siri Ram shuffled forward. There was 
 something in the boy that responded to an 
 appeal. He held out his hand. 
 
 "That is right. You have seen a mountain. 
 Tell us about it. Where was it ? " 
 
 "Mountains are steep," he shrilled. 
 
 "The Principal Sahib asks you: Have you 
 seen ?" 
 
 But the Principal Sahib waved him aside. 
 Wrath was clearly dissolved. He had been 
 seen to smile. At the same time a volcanic 
 sound issued from his inside which puzzled 
 everybody. 
 
 "Bring the class after you," he said. "I will 
 show you all the mountains." 
 
 When the dreadful man's back was turned 
 the urchins laughed and chattered as they 
 followed him down the corridors and up a flight 
 
80 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 of stone steps to the roof. It was a funny thing 
 this being taken on the roof by the Principal 
 Sahib instead of sitting in the class. 
 
 "There are the mountains," he said. 
 
 Siri Ram looked over the parapet and saw dark 
 purple masses on the far north-eastern horizon 
 lifted out of the clouds, palpable earth, with a 
 white rim of snow on them. Rain had fallen in 
 the night, and the wind blew keenly from the hills. 
 
 Had none of them ever seen it before ? They 
 did not know. Some said they had. 
 
 The Principal told them about the snow and 
 how the rivers were formed in the mountains 
 and cut their channels out into the plains, and 
 then on into the sea where the water was salt 
 and no one could drink it. Then he announced 
 a game. "Some of us will stand on the roof," 
 he said, "which is the mountain, and we will 
 make a river; and some of us will stand by the 
 w^aterpipe underneath, which is the plain, and 
 see what the river does when it comes down ; 
 but first we will make a bed of sand for it to flow 
 through." When the parties were divided Siri 
 Ram saw him go up to a huge water-butt and 
 overturn it unaided. They were not quick 
 enough to escape the deluge as they ran to the 
 parapet to see what would happen. 
 
 They did not return to their classes that day, 
 for the red man, dreadful no more, declared in 
 a loud voice that there should be cricket. 
 
THE COLLEGE 81 
 
 "Not play cricket? They must play cricket, 
 they must play today — now." 
 
 "The Principal Sahib has ordered a contest 
 of cricket. The competition will be the First 
 and Second Primary on the one side and the 
 Third Primary on the other. He has also said 
 with honourable condescension that he will pre- 
 sent a bat to the boy who makes the greatest 
 number of runs." 
 
 Few of them were big enough or strong 
 enough to hit the ball so far as to make a real 
 run. But there were overthrows. Siri Ram 
 stood in his fixed place in a kind of dream and 
 made ineffectual dives at the ball when it came 
 his way. It was his first initiation into the bar- 
 barous rites of his oppressors. The Principal 
 himself umpired. His thick, sunburnt neck, 
 broad shoulders and bulging calves, which 
 seemed to stretch out his wide trousers, made 
 him appear the impersonation of force. Siri 
 Ram stared at him. He did not brood or think 
 in those days, but this strange, unexplained 
 phenomenon waylaid his rambling attention as 
 often as his eye fell on the space it filled so 
 amply. It was a memorable visitation, and 
 there were many such. Everything was all 
 mixed-up and topsy-turvy when the Englishman 
 impinged on their lives. No one knew what 
 would happen next. 
 
 Siri Ram remembered one dreadful morning 
 
32 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 in the Fourth Primary. It was three years 
 after this encounter. Nihal Singh had thrown 
 a pellet of modelling clay across the class- 
 room and it had hit Abdul Hamid in the eye 
 and set him howling. The teacher was demand- 
 ing that the boys in the quarter whence the 
 missile issued should betray the culprit, and they 
 had all left their benches and were dancing 
 round him when tlie Principal entered upon the 
 pandemonium like a hawk on a parliament of 
 sparrows. The Head-master was called in with 
 his cane. First the noisy were chastised. Then 
 those who bore false witness, and all palpable 
 fabricators of untruth. Two canes were broken 
 upon these before the inquisition passed into an 
 inspection of exercises. Siri Ram was called 
 up, and watered his desk with tears when he 
 discovered that he, too, was to receive six sting- 
 ing cuts for saying that he had left his torn 
 copy-book in an almirah and a rat had eaten it. 
 It was the first time he had suffered intentional 
 physical hurt, and he burned with resentment. 
 The pellet thrower had not been dealt such harsh 
 measure. It was a full hour before the boys 
 discovered that the statement of unembellished 
 fact paid better than the aptest embroidery. So 
 after a time a kind of starveling truth emerged 
 born of loss and pain. There was a feeling that 
 the Principal had cheated, that he was angry 
 at his failure to detect the mischief-maker at the 
 
 I 
 
THE COLLEGE 38 
 
 start and was avenging himself promiscuously. 
 For how should it enter their heads that deceit 
 and evasion assimilated with their mother's milk 
 and inculcated indirectly every day by the 
 teachers themselves meant anything that was not 
 creditable. It was etiquette among the school- 
 masters to talk a great deal about truth and lies 
 as if they did not admire the cleverness of the 
 deceit they practised at home ; but every one 
 knew that the importance of the verbal distinc- 
 tion was only make-believe on the teachers' part 
 to help them to find out things. So the injustice 
 of the chastisement rankled the more. 
 
 Apart from these invasions of the Principal, 
 five years in the primary department passed 
 uneventfully enough. Siri Ram was taught 
 natural history through the medium of object 
 lessons. He learnt to sew patterns of animals 
 on cardboard with coloured threads, to model 
 fruit in clay, and to draw goats and hares with 
 stripes and collars. His decorative instinct sur- 
 vived the matter-of-fact accuracy of the kinder- 
 garten. In the four and fifth primary he learnt 
 a little English. In the first middle he was 
 taught composition. He sent a copy of one of 
 his first exercises to his father, and the village 
 writer translated it. 
 
 My dear poppa, 
 
 " I much glade seeing Gandeshwar College. 
 I cannot write because it each part made with a 
 
84 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 very beauty, two minarets on it both wings and 
 its entrance has its name and date in which it 
 estobelished upon its forehead. When I have 
 seen the College I went in boarding-house there 
 were all studdents very gentlemen and good they 
 received me with a so love that I was their friend. 
 All studdents here are civilised. When at last 
 I leave it but my mind not say me that I leave 
 it, please keep in this schole. I saw many things 
 good because I had never see any things like 
 these in our school teachers are very regular and 
 punctual and they wish that our schole do more 
 progress also they are all B.A. or F.A. trained 
 nowadays I have good head master. 
 
 "Your lovely son, 
 
 "SiRi Ram." 
 
 It was in the First Middle that Siri Ram 
 ventured on his earliest propaganda. A Cow 
 Agitator had moved the first stirrings of a cause 
 in him. He bought a sheet of foolscap in the 
 bazaar for the twelfth of a penny, and he cut it 
 into small slips, on which he inscribed this 
 warning — 
 
 *' The sky says 
 
 that sav the cows unless you should die 
 plese save the cows." 
 
 These he posted in yellow envelopes, unstamped 
 
THE COLLEGE 85 
 
 and curiously addressed, to servants of the 
 Crown. 
 
 As Siri Ram progressed in the collegiate 
 school, English became almost a hobby with 
 him. Copy-book headings and tags from his 
 moral reader were translated into his essays and 
 his daily speech. He became attached to par- 
 ticular words and idioms. There is safety in 
 the made phrase. One cannot go far wrong when 
 one is talking of "shuffling off one's mortal 
 coil," or of being "brought to books," or "being 
 made to eat the humble pie." So Siri Ram and 
 his companions made free with the language 
 of the hated barbarian. No one ever died at 
 Gandeshwar; they "shuffled off their mortal coil 
 amidst the unsuppressed wails of their family 
 members and all their nears and dears." And 
 no one ever improved; they "made up the 
 deficiency." That was a phrase which per- 
 meated to the College and disturbed the equa- 
 nimity of Skene. It was supposed to still all 
 manner of reproach ; to make idleness and ignor- 
 ance of no account, and to turn defeat into 
 victory. When Puran Singh fell a lap behind 
 in the half-mile race at the College sports. Ram 
 Sarup would pant after him on the other side 
 of the ropes, crying out to him to "make up the 
 deficiency." 
 
 In this way Siri Ram got a grip of the 
 language, which was the one asset which had 
 
 D 2 
 
86 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 stuck to him in the ten years' course from the 
 infants* class to the entrance, whence he passed 
 into the College. His mind had broadened very 
 little during all these years. His moral code 
 
 • was drawn from certain vague formulas which 
 
 had as little to do with his daily life as the 
 
 culture which he was supposed to assimilate 
 
 from his text-books in the college. And no 
 
 ] coercing had seduced him into cricket or foot- 
 
 \| ball or any of the games which might have 
 ] brought him into genial relationship with the 
 healthier-minded of his companions. 
 
IV 
 
 By the time Siri Ram 'had read two years in 
 the College he had become a typical product of 
 the age. His father was an orthodox Gat Hindu, 
 or, as his class-mate, Banarsi Das, would have 
 said, "an ignorant steeped in the Cimmerian 
 darkness." His associates were members of the 
 Arya Samaj, whose religious ideals might have 
 helped him had they not been perverted into 
 gall by his teachers for temporal ends. Religion 
 in his circle had come to mean something 
 approaching a deification of the early Hindus, 
 and an assumption that the same stuff was latent 
 in the modern youth of the country, and only 
 needed a spark to kindle it into the divine fire. 
 Against the sacred names of Rama and Arjun 
 and Bhima were inscribed the names of such 
 modern martyrs as Tilak, and Kanhya Lai and 
 Kudiram Bose who murdered the English ladies 
 at Mozaffarpur. History was going to repeat 
 itself. The English were the Asuras again, 
 who ravaged the Motherland, which was now 
 in the birth pangs of a new breed of dragon 
 slayers who were to rid her of the evil. So the 
 religious man was the man who most execrated 
 37 
 
38 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 the English, who most forswore English rule, 
 and English piece-goods and English every- 
 thing except ideas and idioms and the itinerant 
 Labour Member and his political catchwords. 
 Skene felt that the patriotism underlying all 
 this might have been good if there had been 
 any clean courageous note in it ; but the cant 
 and conscious misinterpretation of facts sick- 
 ened him. Still there was pathos enough in 
 some of its manifestations. A Hindu strong 
 man brought his circus to Gandeshwar, and he 
 was apotheosised. He rode an elephant in the 
 streets, preceded by bands and lictors. Rajahs 
 summoned him and sent him gifts. Ladies 
 threw strings of pearls to him from behind the 
 purdah in the circus. The coolies in the bazaar 
 whispered that he was another incarnation of 
 ^Vishnu. And that, allowing for the difference 
 of Aryan enlightenment, w-as very much what 
 the students believed. They garlanded him 
 and addressed him, and asked him to speak to 
 them ; and he raised his hoarse voice in their 
 midst, swaying like an elephant in the pangs 
 of articulation. They looked on the man as a 
 revival, as a witness of their ancient strength, 
 and an earnest of deliverance. And they lifted 
 weights, wielded clubs, broke stones on their 
 chests, and stood on one another's abdomens 
 for w^eks after he had gone. 
 
 Skene was the only Englishman whom Siri 
 Ram had spoken to, and somehow his general 
 
THE COLLEGE 39 
 
 abhorrence of the race was mitigated in the 
 individual. It was true that the Principal was 
 a flesh-eater, and his belly was a tomb, and he 
 had other disgusting habits inseparable from a 
 race given to "bloodthirst and matter- worship." 
 But he had a way with him. He gave himself 
 no airs; he had nothing of what Banarsi Das 
 used to call "the false pride and unreal haughti- 
 ness of the Englishman." Most of the students 
 liked him. He always appeared genuinely 
 pleased to meet them outside the College, when 
 he would stop and talk to them and ask them 
 questions. He knew them all personally by 
 name, and he remembered things they had said 
 and done. He poked fun at them good- 
 naturedly. His anger was sudden and unreason- 
 able, but the storm passed quickly, and his 
 smile was embracing. His lectures partook of 
 the nature of a conversation, and he was always 
 ready to answer any question on earth, relevant 
 or irrelevant, for he felt that it was something 
 to the good if a student took an interest in 
 anjrthing. He liked them unaffectedly. And 
 there was much to like in their gentleness and 
 natural dignity and patience and tact, and in 
 their responsiveness to any kindness. He felt 
 drawn to the cricket and football team. He 
 could talk to them on common ground, and he 
 coached them in both games and kept alive 
 their flickering keenness. A mutual cause made 
 them allies; he could count on their loyalty. 
 
40 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 t They had dash and spirit when their blood was 
 j up and things were going well, but they had 
 no backbone. At the slightest reverse they 
 went to pieces and became limp and apathetic, 
 and they had to be inflated again like their own 
 footballs. It was uphill work. 
 
 In the lecture room common ground was 
 harder to seek ; for their English text-books 
 meant unthinking drudgery to the bulk of the 
 students and offence to the intelligent few, 
 among whom was the morose group typified 
 by Siri Ram. Nothing but direct moral teach- 
 ing could appeal to their sombre reason. The 
 modern books they read must have been incom- 
 prehensible even if they could have had enough 
 English to appreciate the subtleties of meaning. 
 They read wantonness into the badinage of 
 Lamb. Thackeray sinned by condoning too 
 much. Shelley and Keats were frank sensual- 
 ists. Even Stevenson in his canoe shocked 
 them, for ever waving his handkerchief at 
 unknown maidens on the bank. Nor could 
 fiction, romantic or realistic, have any point 
 for them, as it offered a criticism of an exist- 
 ence as remote from their own as cobwebs in 
 the moon. The mischief of it was, as critics 
 of education were always pointing out, that the 
 books bore no conceivable relation with the 
 students' own lives. The Universities were 
 accused of grafting an alien culture, substituting 
 foreign for indigenous ideas. *'Not at all," was 
 
THE COLLEGE 41 
 
 Skene's caustic comment. "We supplant ) 
 nothing. We fill a vacuum. For what culture wr 
 or ideas would the like of Siri Ram gather from ' 
 his own people ? " 
 
 There is a popular fallacy that the Indian is \ 
 imaginative. Nothing is farther from the truth. , 
 In spite of his habit of inaccuracy he is the most 
 literal prosaic soul alive. Logic, philosophy, 
 ethics he can understand, even humour when 
 it touches his experience; but there is no film r • 
 in his mind that is responsive to poetic fancy. ' 
 Imagination means much the same to him as 
 multiplication. It is a kind of magnifying glass 
 through which he sees a swollen universe. The 
 imaginative man is the man who thinks in 
 crores and hecatombs and holocausts, in Kalpas 
 of time and vast compartments of space. The 
 light play of fancy does not touch him. Yet 
 Siri Ram and Banarsi Das were made to wrestle 
 with Shelley and Keats in a book of selections 
 prescribed — or /)roscribed, as Skene would have 
 said — for the first arts. Skene protested, but 
 the Syndicate insisted upon "culture." So the 
 spirit of Adonais was tortured and expired in 
 his presence every day, and he was a paid 
 accessory. 
 
 On the morning of the day when the Swami 
 lectured to them upon the eternal truths hidden 
 in the Vedas, Siri Ram and Banarsi Das had 
 been construing the "Ode to the Nightingale." 
 Siri Ram read out each stanza nasally, and at 
 
42 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 the end Banarsi Das ** consulted " the notes. 
 Then he interpreted 
 
 " O for a beaker fiiU of the warm South, 
 Full of the true, the blissful Hippocrene, 
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim 
 
 And purple stained mouth ; 
 That I might drink and leave the world unseen 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim.** 
 
 The comments in the notes did not help them 
 to the spirit of the piece. Still the central idea 
 was clear. The poet wished to forget the world 
 and to be with the nightingale in the forest. 
 The means to this end were definitely expressed. 
 Firstly, a long draught of wine ; secondly, 
 oblivion. Banarsi Das interpreted. 
 
 "The poet desired that he might drink the 
 warm wine of South in a peg full of true 
 fountain of Moses. He said that after intoxi- 
 cating myself with above-mentioned wine I shall 
 totally forget everything and be with you in 
 the jungle." 
 
 It was a fairly creditable effort for an F.A. 
 student. The only bad blunder lay in the inter- 
 pretation of "the blissful Hippocrene," and that 
 was due to a misprint in a locally annotated 
 edition. 
 
 In the lecture room afterwards Skene dis- 
 covered that the distinction between sensuous- 
 ness and sensuality was too subtle for them, 
 and his honest efforts to indicate a line of 
 demarcation failed. The lover of the nightin- 
 
THE COLLEGE 48 
 
 gale was debauched, it seemed, and the only 
 reason why he did not eat the bird after all, 
 when he had pursued it into the forest and 
 caught it, was that it was not good to eat. 
 
 "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird, 
 No hungry generations tread thee down." 
 
 "Nightingale is not the game-bird for table,** 
 Banarsi Das translated. "Therefore the hungry 
 sportsmen spare to tread on it." 
 
 Skene did not even smile. His sense of 
 humour was long ago dried at the roots. He 
 could still enjoy a parody of Owen Seaman, but 
 this living among inverted ideals had parched 
 up the true well of mirth. He had to live six 
 months away from the College, he told himself, 
 before he could replenish it. And when he 
 found himself defining the particular kind of 
 humour which he could no longer appreciate he 
 shuddered at the bear*s-hug of pedantry which 
 loomed over him like a persistent nightmare, 
 and he swgre roundly to his dog for half-an- 
 hour in the language of an Elizabethan bargee. 
 
 His students had unearthed a Hindu anno- 
 tator who had analysed the ingredients of 
 English humour, and who pointed out all the 
 passages in the text-books which came or seemed 
 to come under this head, so that they could 
 tabulate them to a nicety. Skene came upon 
 the scent of the mischief when he was reading 
 Adonais with them. He had set the clearest- 
 tongued to read the stanza beginning — 
 
44 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 " He hath outsoared the shadow of our night. 
 Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight 
 Can touch him not and torture not again." 
 
 when Banarsi Das rose darkling from his seat 
 and said — 
 
 "Sir, are not these lines humorous?" 
 
 "Good God," Skene began, but the youth 
 caught him on the recoil. 
 
 "The humour lies in incongruity. Poet 
 speaks of * that unrest which men miscaall 
 dee-light.' " 
 
 But it did not need Banarsi Das' discovery 
 of a humorist in Shelley to show Skene how 
 little their text-books brought his students into 
 touch with his world. 
 
 His struggle with Keats' "Ode to a Nightin- 
 gale " was Siri Ram's last adventure in the 
 fields of English literature. When he awoke 
 the morning after the lecture he picked up his 
 text-book from force of habit and found himself 
 reading a poem about a little girl and a 
 sparrow's nest. 
 
 " She looked at it as if she feared it, 
 Still wishing, dreading to be near it." 
 
 He threw the book aside. The piece was so 
 simple he did not give it another thought. If 
 any one had asked him the meaning of the 
 lines, he would have said that the European 
 sparrow is a ferocious bird, and that Emmeline 
 was afraid to provoke it by going too near its 
 
THE COLLEGE 45 
 
 nest. And he might have added, if there 
 were any consequence in his broodings, some 
 general reflections about European truculence 
 in men and sparrows. There was plenty of 
 material for it in the heap of pamphlets by his 
 side which the Swami had given him. Siri 
 Ram squatted at the end of his bed with his 
 blanket pulled about his ears poring over them. 
 There was no crime which the English had not 
 inflicted upon his Motherland, no indignity 
 which his people had not suffered at their 
 hands. The Imperial Government was pictured 
 as the monkey in the fable dividing a morsel 
 of cheese between two cats. In spite of the 
 scales, a specious show of justice behind which 
 the hungry maw went on grinding, she swal- 
 lowed the whole chunk herself. Then the story 
 of Naboth's vineyard was adaptvd with advan- 
 tages. Here was literature which Siri Ram 
 could understand. He could be vastly alle- 
 gorical over the wrongs of his country. History 
 was retold, not as it was taught in the schools, 
 but with coloured patches and all the statistics 
 of fraud which made it clear how the hated 
 foreigners were seated in authority. Here was 
 set down the bribe to a rupee which each traitor 
 had been paid as the price of his country. This 
 was soothing to pride. It was not a question of 
 three hundred thousand against three hundred 
 million after all. His country had been filched 
 from him by trickery and cunning. 
 
46 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 One book described how a demon had 
 drained the country of its wealth, sucked away 
 the trade and industries from the people, and 
 swallowed up all the products of the earth. 
 Then, dropping allegory, figures were cited 
 from which Siri Ram learnt that crores of 
 rupees realised out of the earnings of Indians 
 in their homes were sent to Europe every year, 
 and that millions of white devils luxuriated in 
 idleness upon them. The Indians, driven like 
 cattle at the plough, sweated in the eye of the 
 sun, while these pestilent feringhis squandered 
 the fruits of their toil. 
 
 Another pamphlet elaborated the colour 
 grievance with some eloquence. It was written 
 in America, and addressed to Indian soldiers. 
 They were taunted with being cowards and 
 dupes and slaves, submissive to insult, living 
 like animals, content with their miserable lot. 
 Every point inflamed an old sore. Their very 
 blackness was counted an offence. 
 
 "Miserable Indian soldier! Your eyes have 
 grown pale, subsisting on pulse and chapattis. 
 The redness and glow of your faces has faded. 
 The prisoners of other nations are treated better 
 than you. They have at least one meal a day. 
 But you ? Through bad pig-like diet your faces 
 have become clay-coloured and mud-like. This 
 is the reason the English call you black. You 
 and the English belong to the same Aryan race. 
 If they had given you the same food as their 
 
THE COLLEGE 47 
 
 own soldiers you would not be so black and 
 ugly. The negroes in this country are given \ 
 the same pay as the American ; but you, / 
 wretched and miserable, are paid for colour and 
 not for service." 
 
 Siri Ram had fallen on a text-book for 
 "Political Missionaries." It was the first of a 
 series of guides to disaffection, and it taught 
 how to seduce the Indian Army. A second 
 described how native soldiers had won England 
 an empire, and how they had been treated. A 
 third appealed to the worst passions of the 
 Sikhs, calling upon them to drive out the 
 British, whom they accused of lack of faith 
 after the Second Sikh War and in their agree- 
 ment with Dhulip Singh. It was made to 
 appear that it was due to the Sikh support 
 alone that the British Government had 
 weathered the Mutiny, and that if this prop 
 were removed the fabric must collapse. As 
 Siri Ram read, he saw himself a missionary 
 among soldiers. With this fuel to command 
 he would have more power in the lines at 
 Multan and Umballa than the red-headed, 
 Satan-like, beef-eating English Colonels. He 
 was a brand already lighted. The grizzled, 
 bearded faces of the Khalsa * already shone, 
 fired by his eloquence. In a year or two it 
 would not be safe for an Englishman to set 
 his foot upon the sacred soil of Bharat Mata. 
 * Sikh community. 
 
48 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Or if they were admitted it would be to pay a 
 poll-tax and a landing fee of a hundred pounds 
 like the Chinese in New Zealand, and to travel 
 in reserved compartments on the railway — 
 reserved, oh, how differently ! — lest they should 
 pollute, because the alien was offensive and 
 the carnivorous effluvium of him repulsive to 
 sensitive noses. 
 
 But the next pamphlet took Siri Ram into 
 a village, and he saw himself a pale-eyed 
 Sadhu sitting by a well. The tillers of the 
 soil, lean, vacuous, intense, encompassed him. 
 The husbandmen gaped to hear how they had 
 been deceived, as he discovered to them the 
 Satanic craft of the English in every affliction 
 of their lives. They learnt how the feringhis 
 were afraid that the Indians were becoming too 
 many, and how grain was being taken out of 
 the country that there might be famine, and 
 wells were being poisoned to spread the plague, 
 and trains were being wrecked to reduce the 
 numbers of the people. Already they were 
 killing off the cows in the big cities. Soon 
 children would cry out in vain for milk and 
 curds, and a poor man would not find a bullock 
 for his plough. 
 
 There was a special series with agonising 
 illustrations devoted to the slaughter of the cow. 
 Milton could not have described the savage 
 truculence of the butcher. Blake could not 
 
THE COLLEGE 49 
 
 have captured the helpless innocence of the calf 
 as its mother's scarlet blood spurted over its 
 white coat, and it lifted a gentle protestant eye 
 as the knife was raised again. 
 
 Siri Ram saw himself playing many parts 
 in the village and the camp, and the mills and 
 the bazaar; but in every environment he was 
 reminded that missionary work was but a 
 preparation. Sacrifice was needed, and the last 
 sacrifice of all. It always came to that in the 
 end. If one in five hundred gave up his life the 
 poisonous stock would be extirpated ; the country 
 would be freed. The cost was small at any 
 reckoning. Every year hundreds of thousands 
 were taken away by plague and fever and 
 famine and cholera in the Punjab alone. To- 
 morrow Siri Ram and his companions might 
 be summoned by the small-pox goddess. 
 Would it not be better to die like heroes 
 to-day? But who would accompany him? Siri 
 Ram looked round the dormitory and saw little 
 hope there. None certainly in Ram Sarup, the 
 bunniah*s son. He was not inflammable. Ghi 
 and molasses clogged his aspirations, if ever 
 he had any. Nor in Hashmat Ali ; Muham- 
 madans were not to be trusted with these secret 
 matters. There was even less hope in Puran 
 Singh. He was captain of the cricket, an ally, 
 if anything, of the Satan-like Mlecchas. He 
 would rather defeat Government College by one 
 
50 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 wicket than drive all the English into the sea. 
 As Siri Ram*s eyes searched his bed he saw 
 the torn edge of the King's portrait protruding 
 underneath, and he remembered how he had 
 stripped the almanac from the wall in his 
 passion the night before. And there was 
 the bloodstain on his shirt where he had 
 pricked his arm with a nib. He felt a little 
 frightened at his work and the collision it must 
 involve. 
 
 Siri Ram slept in his clothes. In the chill of 
 the morning he had drawn his blanket and his 
 stained quilt over his ears, and he sat motion- 
 less, brooding, like a bird on the edge of a tank, 
 insensible to the thick reek of his companions' 
 breath in the air-proof room and the perfume 
 of stale hookah smoke and sweat-sodden clothes. 
 The windows and doors were closed hermetic- 
 ally, as the boy's mind to true values. Pride 
 and apprehension coursed dully through him, 
 merged in a vague stream. He saw the hand- 
 cuffs, and the Court with its splendid publicity, 
 and the gallows; and he saw the crown beyond 
 — his portrait handed round among the faithful, 
 or in the zenana painted upon mirrors, or 
 stamped upon home-spun shirts and pantaloons, 
 an exhibit to incite children, and possibly, when 
 the English were gone, a statue in the square. 
 He fumbled in his locker and produced a small 
 blurred hand-glass and gazed at himself with 
 
THE COLLEGE 61 
 
 solemn admiration. His companions awoke 
 and saw him regarding his sullen swart features 
 in dumb ecstasy, but it provoked no remark 
 or surprise in that matter-of-fact crew. An 
 Englishman observing him at the moment 
 would have divined an intense wobbly soul 
 given to moods and sullenness and passion ; 
 and there might have come the suggestion of a 
 marish pool with the scum disturbed in the 
 centre in such a way that there could be no 
 re-settling of the viscous stuff or clearing of 
 it away to the edges. But Siri Ram was 
 enamoured of the image. He felt that his eye 
 "pried through the portage of his head." He 
 thought of Swami Dyanand, and believed that 
 his lips had caught the straightened-bow curve 
 of the evangelist, though his eyes had not the 
 calm. He was engrossed in the lines of the 
 chin and thinking of the obscure inky repro- 
 ductions of them on a thousand cheap pill-boxes 
 and parcels from druggists' stores, when he was 
 rudely disturbed by Puran Singh standing over 
 him. 
 
 *' Why you have torn my picture ? " 
 
 "It fell.'* 
 
 Siri Ram was taken unawares; the hero was 
 dormant in him. Siri Ram was frail and weak; 
 Puran Singh was tall and strong, five foot ten 
 to the cord which bound his plaited hair. He 
 was taller and stronger than many of the 
 
 E 2 
 
52 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 English Siri Ram had seen. It was for the like 
 of him to save the country. But he was a slave. 
 He laughed and played with the feringhis and 
 joined in their games, and because the Principal 
 cared for him like one of his ponies, the foolish 
 young man was pliant and obedient like a beast 
 trained to the shaft or yoke. Some thought of 
 this kind was struggling for utterance in Siri 
 Ram when he blurted out in reply to thick 
 recriminations — 
 "You are horse. You are bullock." 
 "You are monkey. You will be beaten.** 
 "You are slave to worship white King." 
 "You are ill-begotten bastard. Why you tear 
 my picture ? I will tear your book.** 
 
 Puran Singh snatched a copy of the Vedic 
 magazine from Siri Ram*s table and tore it in 
 halves. Siri Ram, blind with indignation, 
 seized an Indian club and raised it with a 
 parody of menace; but Puran Singh wrested it 
 from him and threw him back upon the bed. 
 He struck his head against the table edge as 
 he fell, breaking the skin at the back of his ear. 
 He picked himself up with no little dignity and 
 made a martyr's exit, aglow with this witness- 
 bearing. It was a step. 
 
 He found Banarsi Das in his cubicle. Lachmi 
 Chand had already joined him. His grievance, 
 distorted already, precipitated the campaign. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE VILLAGE 
 
 'Or, where old-eyed oxen chew 
 Speculation with the cud, 
 Read their pool of vision through 
 Back to hours when mind was mud." 
 
 George Meredith 
 
I 
 
 Skene's tennis four was broken up again. 
 The horoscope of Siri Ram was dark reading; 
 sinister influences threatened him on two sides. 
 Merivale had marching orders at twelve hours' 
 notice to the Harpur district where Magraon, 
 our hero's village, lay. Plague was suspected 
 at Mehlgahla near by, and it was said that the 
 villagers were dying off like rats. Chauncey in 
 the I. M.S. was detailed from Jullundur to work 
 with him, and they met at a small wayside 
 station, whence they rode out to Mehlgahla, 
 fifteen hours on camels over ruts and sand. 
 
 They found a suppressed panic. The 
 villagers were gathered in a conclave by the 
 well outside the wall, and greeted the English- 
 men suspiciously. It was a huddled, sinister 
 crowd, darkly secretive, and fearing the 
 meddling Sahib-log more than the plague 
 itself. They denied all pestilence and fever. 
 
 •' What are the flames at the ghat ? " Merivale 
 asked, alighting from his camel. "I am told 
 the pyres are burning night and day." 
 
 "Death walks among us at all times," the 
 55 
 
56 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 headman said, and he unfolded an embroidered 
 tale of misadventure. An old woman had been 
 bitten by a snake. A little girl had fallen down 
 a w^ell. A centenarian had crawled home from 
 his pilgrimage to the Ganges at Hardwar, and 
 his heart had ceased beating on the threshold of 
 his home. 
 
 "We sprinkled the Gunga water he brought 
 with him on his pyre," an old man with a goat's 
 face added circumstantially. 
 
 "He died religiously," the headman added. 
 
 " Why are the Granthis reading the Book ? " 
 Merivale asked, and pointed to the village gate, 
 whence a melancholy religious drone issued like 
 an incantation. Merivale knew that it was a 
 path, the reading of the scriptures from end to 
 end, and that it was for no ordinary visitation. 
 Two priests of the Khalsa sat side by side in 
 an alcove of the arch. One intoned with the 
 rapid dignity that priests alone attain. The 
 other stared at the ground at his feet, looking 
 like a physician who has been given a charge 
 and waits the decree of the Almighty, confident 
 that he has done his part. 
 
 "Why are they reading the Granth ? " Meri- 
 vale repeated. 
 
 "The Lumbadar of Razian has been near 
 death, and he wishes to appease God. He has 
 ordered the path in five villages." 
 
 Merivale called for the chowkidar to bring 
 
THE VILLAGE 57 
 
 the village register of births and deaths. After 
 many mischances the chronicles were found. 
 Merivale scanned them. 
 
 "Where is the snake-bite, and the drowned 
 child, and the religiously dying pilgrim?" 
 
 The chowkidar mumbled a bewildered pro- 
 test, resentful that his registers had played him 
 such a trick. Then there rose a woman's wail- 
 ing within the walls, a measured rhythmic 
 ululation. Chauncey looked at Merivale. "We 
 had better go in," he said. "Perhaps we may 
 hear something." 
 
 The crowd followed them sullenly; one or 
 two ran on quickly in front, casting furtive 
 looks over their shoulders. The headman and 
 the chowkidar followed on their heels. As they 
 passed, the Granthi on duty in the arch did 
 not raise his head. His companion eyed them 
 stedfastly with a patient remote gaze as one 
 regards some unexplained phenomenon, to 
 which one has become accustomed from time 
 to time. He waved his holy peacock-feather 
 chauri over the book. Merivale had never seen 
 such repose in movement. The oval beard, the 
 far-seeking eyes under the turban wound in 
 three flat plaits put him in mind of a priest in 
 an old picture. 
 
 A figure was moving in the heat haze at the 
 end of the street; it was one of the men who 
 had run on in front tearing down the threaded 
 
58 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 ncem leaves hung from house to house over the 
 way to avert calamity. Then they passed some 
 tell-tale funeral meats on the threshold of one 
 of the first houses inside the gate. But they 
 did not stop at these. They were guided by 
 the woman's cries to the mohallay where the 
 trouble was the heaviest. Here they found her 
 in her small mud-paved courtyard opening 
 on the street, a poor uncomely hag, with 
 unloosened hair grey with age and grit, squat- 
 ting on her haunches and swaying backwards 
 and forwards, crooning — 
 
 " Ahyce ! Ahyee ! I am accursed, abandoned. 
 The fields lie untilled ; the fruit of the earth perishes. 
 He is gone who protected me, who looked to the 
 
 tillage, 
 He is gone whom I bore with pain, and nurtured 
 
 motherly." 
 
 She wailed to a measure. It was a prescribed 
 dirge. The simple words were not her own. 
 They had been sung with variations by widows 
 and mothers and orphans for ages untold — 
 maybe on the Scythian steppes in the back- 
 ground of time, before the earliest Jat shepherd 
 descended through the western passes into the 
 Punjab. But the pathos was true. If the words 
 had been spontaneous they could not have 
 betrayed a deeper grief. 
 
 Merivale entered the courtyard and stood by 
 her side until the lament was finished. Then 
 
THE VILLAGE 59 
 
 he asked her gently, "What is the matter, 
 Mother?" 
 
 " Ahyee 1 Ahyee ! I am accursed, abandoned ! 
 The fields are untilled . . . ." 
 
 She rose and fumbled with some sticks for 
 fuel and wailed her story intermittently. It was 
 her son. He had died of a fever three days ago 
 with a raging sore under his arm. 
 
 Merivale turned to the headman. "Is this 
 your centenarian, your Gunga water-bringer ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Certainly it occurs to me after consideration 
 that the pilgrim in question may have died at 
 an earlier date." 
 
 "Enough! Enough I The doctor Sahib and 
 I have come to rid you of this pest. We must 
 purge the village, or you will all die like the 
 house-rats in the drain. Come, now. Help to 
 save yourselves." 
 
 The headman salaamed. "The Sahib is lord 
 and master. Whatever he wishes will be done." 
 
 But this time-worn formula did not hide the 
 sullen obstruction in the man's face. It was an 
 angry, menacing crowd that dogged their steps 
 in the search. In the first house they entered 
 they found a corpse hidden away in a granary 
 with the bubo on the groin. It must have been 
 concealed by one of the furtive forerunners. 
 They searched every house in that mohalla and 
 every stack and courtyard. The pest had fallen 
 
60 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 on the village like a flail. As they stumbled 
 out of one death chamber into the haveli they 
 heard a splash in the well and found the parched, 
 scabby, thirst-maddened rats stretched limply 
 on the stone coping. There was no scurry at 
 their approach. Some lay where they had died 
 with the smell of the water in their nostrils; 
 others slid forward and dropped over, one by 
 one, into the well — a prudent suicide. Chauncey, 
 looking over the edge, saw the surface covered 
 with their distended bellies and fattened paws, 
 and to his horror he saw the upturned face of 
 a woman with her lips parted and her hair 
 floating among them. He learnt that a 
 Ramdasia's wife, driven by the same mad thirst 
 as they, had leapt to her repose on the noon 
 of the day before. 
 
 In another dark hovel they barked their shins 
 against a charpoy. They could see nothing in 
 the gloom at first, but Chauncey knew they were 
 in the presence of a corpse. Near at hand they 
 could hear children's voices. As the darkness 
 dwindled and revealed the long, low-raftered 
 room, they unfolded the sheet from the figure 
 on the bed and found a woman with the bubo 
 behind the ear. On a charpoy beyond, where 
 the passage led off to the stall of the cow, there 
 was a man lying unconscious with his face 
 uncovered. His eyes were open and staring, 
 and devoid of intelligence ; but for a momentary 
 
THE VILLAGE 61 
 
 twitching of the legs he might have been dead. 
 Then, as they watch, he is shaken by a spasm 
 of breathing, hurried, noisy, laboured, ending 
 in a rattle in the throat and the last quiet. 
 
 It was only then that they discovered that 
 the children were in the passage leading out 
 of the chamber — three little urchins playing 
 unconcernedly within reach almost of their 
 parents' clay, two little girls and a boy making 
 mud pies, shirtless, trouserless little mites, 
 naked but for their little open coats covering 
 the back to the buttocks. A small girl was 
 playing with a sieve. She had made a circle 
 in the dust with the rim of it, and was piecing 
 out a coloured wheel with marigold petals and 
 chili-pods and red powder for the spokes. 
 Beside her were the ruins of a mud Persian 
 well which she had just fashioned with care, 
 the water still oozing out of the trough, the 
 clay jar overturned by the infant's foot which 
 was now menacing a segment of the wheel. It 
 was her shrill protest that had merged with the 
 rattle of the dying man. Looking up now from 
 her serious employment, and seeing Merivale 
 and Chauncey standing over her, she shrank to 
 the wall, crying out in alarm to her mother, 
 who could listen to her no more. Then she 
 toddled into the empty room, looking back at 
 the Englishmen suspiciously over her shoulder. 
 
 Merivale came out of that house a tyrant. 
 
62 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 He cared not for man or law. He was law. He 
 might have had sealed orders in his pocket to 
 frame new codes every day to meet each new 
 emergency. One thing only mattered. The 
 village had to be evacuated, the houses disin- 
 fected, segregation camps and hospital camps 
 built. He saw the work at his feet and leapt 
 at it. Responsibility warmed him like wine. 
 The pitfalls all round, the dozen different ways 
 that offered themselves every day of being 
 "broke" for playing the game, the official 
 inquiries, the radical on his hind legs in the 
 House, the glimpse of the tethered civilian 
 scapegoat with his own smooth features, half- 
 amused, half-protesting — these were the blind 
 fences youth loves to take with a stout horse 
 under him on fresh October mornings before 
 the leaf is off the hedges, when the first nip is 
 in the air. "We must go the whole hog," he 
 said to Chauncey. "It is no good tinkering 
 
II 
 
 Through the heat of the morning they were 
 moving out the sick. Chauncey had marked 
 out a hospital camp in a mango clump round 
 a well a quarter of a mile from the gate. And 
 on the other side of the village he had laid out 
 the health and segregation camp, giving every 
 caste its own quarter outside pollution distance, 
 as in their homes. The Jats were in the centre, 
 and the Kamins, or serfs, in detached camps all 
 round, according to their degree; and the 
 untouchables, the sweepers and the hide-defiled 
 cobblers, farthest from the shade and the well. 
 
 In the meanwhile Merivale had started the 
 evacuation. The sick were carried out on their 
 beds by their relatives, who were forced to lend 
 a sullen hand. As the first detachment filed 
 through the streets Merivale was met with sour 
 looks. The men were removed without much 
 palaver, but when it came to the women's turn 
 it looked like a riot. The first to go was an 
 old hag; Merivale saw to that. He knew the 
 '* purdah " cry would be raised; it was inevitable. 
 But in the beldam's case it would be the pre- 
 cedent only they feared, and what it might lead 
 63 
 
• MyilRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 to. No one cared enough for the old lady to 
 make a stand on her behalf, and it was with a 
 poor heart that the nearest of kin intervened — 
 
 "No, Sahib. Do not move her. She is only 
 a woman, and an old one. Let her stay. An 
 old dame is worth half a pice, and it costs two 
 pice to have her head shaved." 
 
 The headman muttered something about the 
 sanctity of purdah, and his fear of a disturbance 
 if the women were touched. But Merivale 
 answered so that all might hear. 
 
 *'I understood that in the villages women 
 went with their heads uncovered. But, perhaps, 
 when they get to a certain age *' 
 
 The beldam was in the grip of the pest and 
 beyond understanding, or Merivale*s chivalry 
 might have lost him his point. His coarse jest 
 raised a laugh, and in a few minutes the poor 
 old bundle was being carried out. 
 
 A woman had been moved. It was the thin 
 edge of the w*edge. Merivale knew how thin, 
 and that it was touch and go whether the whole 
 village might not be up in arms. He had sent 
 for fifty military police from Jullundur to form 
 a cordon round the place, but they could not 
 reach Mehlgahla for three days. The thing 
 was started now, and there was no turning 
 back. Nothing could save him but his own 
 pluck and initiative and his good star. Defeat 
 was disgrace. If the village was stirred to the 
 
THE VILLAGE 65 
 
 point of riot it must at least be saved. Govern- 
 ment would not brook a burning sore, a hundred 
 illegalities, the purdah violated, authority defied, 
 prestige half-mast high, or lower, and an 
 enduring precedent for resistance. But when 
 everything was over, and the villagers responsive 
 and reconciled, as they must be, and turning 
 to the Englishman, as they always do, in a 
 tight place, however jealously they may assert 
 their rights in fair weather, authority might 
 wink at Merivale's "You see, sir, we had to 
 save these men : they were dying off like rats ; 
 but of course they didn't like it." Yet even 
 this might mean a good deal of grumbling and 
 little thanks. ^ 
 
 Chauncey left his assistant in the camp and 
 met Merivale at the gate. The beldame had 
 been deposited, and a younger woman, heavily 
 veiled, was being borne through the street. An 
 angry man strode beside the litter crying out 
 that foreigners were dogs, and calling on the 
 bearers to stop. As the crowd pressed in, the 
 man grasped the charpoy, and the bearers laid 
 it down in the street. It seemed that every voice 
 in Mehlgahla was raised at once. The headman 
 was invisible. A gang was issuing from a side 
 alley armed with sticks. A brick struck the 
 arch by Chauncey 's head. "They are going 
 for us," he shouted to Merivale. "We must 
 attack, or we won*t have a chance." 
 
 F 
 
66 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 As they ran through the gate a youth lifted 
 an arm to bar their way. "We do not want 
 you here," he said, and flung a disgusting insult 
 at them. Chauncey knocked him down. The 
 two sprang on the crowd, clearing a lane with 
 their sticks. In a moment they had the street 
 to themselves. The tide had receded to where 
 the litter lay on the ground abandoned by the 
 bearers. The side alleys leading to the 
 mohallas were crowded with curious peeping 
 faces. The young Jat who had encountered 
 Chauncey's right arm lay on the ground as 
 if dead. Chauncey stooped over him and felt 
 his pulse. "Shamming," he cried to Merivale, 
 and looking up he saw a providential waterman 
 at the mouth of one of the alleys with a bulging 
 skin on his back. 
 
 "Bring water quickly," he cried to him. 
 "The young man has swooned." 
 
 The whole waterskin was emptied on the Jat's 
 face, and he bore it with shut eyes and clenched 
 teeth, lying still. "Another!" 
 
 He endured it manfully without the twitch 
 of a limb. "Another!" But he opened his 
 eyes to the spout of the third, leapt to his feet 
 and fled, the most animated thing in Mehlgahla. 
 
 The little scene had been observed by all, 
 and Merivale and Chauncey, bent double with 
 laughter in the middle of the road, infected the 
 crowd with their merriment. The hostile space 
 
THE VILLAGE 67 
 
 filled with grinning faces, and for the moment 
 there was no talk of sticks. 
 
 The headman appeared from nowhere, the 
 offending youth behind, pushed forward by the 
 elders, expecting swift judgment and the gaol. 
 He threw himself at the Sahib's feet, imploring 
 pardon. But Merivale laughed again at the 
 sight of him. 
 
 "Give him this to heal his pate," he said 
 Fluellen-like. "The tamasha was worth it. I 
 am not in court here." His jolly laugh and 
 his composure were worth all the penalties of 
 the law. 
 
 •'Now to work," he said. "I do not wish to 
 offend you, but the Sircar has ordered me to 
 help you to save your own lives." 
 
 This raised another laugh, which was only 
 half protesting, and the headman, seeing that 
 it was a moment in which he might publicly 
 discover himself on the side of authority, said 
 that he had sent for the budmash who had 
 stopped the litter, if it were the Sahib's pleasure 
 that he should be punished. 
 
 "No. Let all be forgotten. The present 
 danger must be met quickly, and we will work 
 together bearing no grudges." 
 
 The litter was already moving, and by two 
 o'clock the sick, man, woman and child, were 
 all in the plague camp. But the trouble was 
 not over. The Sahib had ordered that every 
 
 F S 
 
68 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 soul, sick or hale, must leave the village within 
 twenty-four hours, and take with them what 
 was needful for six weeks' stay in camp. All 
 the afternoon, while Merivale was erecting huts 
 and shelters for the sick, he was plagued with 
 deputations. Now it was a farmer — 
 
 "Sahib, how can we do this thing? If we 
 keep our cattle out at night they will die. How 
 can we take out turi in one day to feed them 
 for six weeks? Also the turi will be blown 
 about by the wind and destroyed in different 
 ways, and without cattle we will starve. More- 
 over, if they do not die they will be stolen.*' 
 
 Then the bunniah — 
 
 *' Sahib, I am a poor man. How can I remove 
 my property in so short a time? I cannot pay 
 for the labour. The food I have prepared to 
 keep hunger from my poor children — and by 
 your honour's grace they are many — the jars 
 of treacle and the jars of ghee if they be taken 
 out into the sun they will be spoilt. You are 
 my father and mother, and would grieve if the 
 little ones perished. Permit me to enter the 
 village every third day and withdraw sufficient 
 for the hour. Also there are moneys " — the 
 fat man lowered his voice — "not of my own, 
 but in my keeping — God knows I am a poor 
 man. Moneys advanced for my shop, and 
 now by my thrift and your honour's protection 
 the advance with interest is almost ready to 
 
THE VILLAGE 69 
 
 be paid. If I take this into the fields it will 
 be stolen; if I leave it in the house it will also 
 be stolen." 
 
 Then the carpenter — 
 
 "Sahib, we have laid up wood for two seasons, 
 deodar and shisham, timber of price. If we 
 abandon it, it will be burnt or stolen. You are 
 our lord and master. Of your mercy do not 
 condemn us.'* 
 
 Then the chamar — 
 
 "Nourisher of the poor I If we go out into 
 the fields we leave our tanning. Without 
 labour day by day we cannot subsist, but if it 
 is our lord's pleasure " 
 
 All were heard with patience and dismissed. 
 The farmer was told that the Sircar would be 
 responsible for every head of cattle that was 
 lost. He could get the turi in in time and 
 stack it himself after the manner of his fore- 
 fathers, so that it was not blown about by the 
 wind. The bunniah was ordered to bring his 
 shop into camp. The carriers would be paid, 
 and the property that he left behind locked and 
 sealed and a watchman put over it. Merivale 
 would be responsible for everything left in the 
 village. A special chowkidar would be given 
 the carpenters for their wood. The chamars 
 might go daily to their yard which lay outside 
 the walls. But no one might enter the village 
 save the watchmen, when once it was cleared. 
 
70 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Any man else who passed the gate would be sent 
 to the gaol to labour there without reward. In 
 three days the police would arrive from Jullundur 
 to keep the cordon. In the meanwhile the two 
 Englishmen held patriarchal sway. 
 
 The pest was new in the Punjab. Merivale 
 had never seen a plague case before ; Chauncey 
 had been through a bare month's training in 
 Bombay ; so they worked by the light of nature. 
 They understood the people, which was the 
 main thing. A strong hardy stock, assertive 
 of their own rights, men of the toughest fibre, 
 innocent of nerves, with little or no physical 
 fear, but helpless as cattle when there was no 
 one to lead them. Merivale laughed to think 
 of their heads bobbing at the end of the alleys 
 off the street after the fracas of the morning. 
 Each of these lanes was a cul-de-sac leading 
 to its own mohalla from which there was no 
 exit, so that the village was honeycombed into 
 different cells, the symbol of the Hindu's per- 
 petual instinct of segregation, fear, suspicion, 
 distrust of his neighbour, shrinking into him- 
 self. Had it been otherwise Merivale and 
 Chauncey would never have seen Mehlgahla. 
 They certainly would not have turned the 
 village out into the fields. Yet it was done, 
 and the peasants helped. In a few days the best 
 of them had fallen into line and lent an 
 ungrudging hand. And it was no small thing 
 
THE VILLAGE 71 
 
 for these folk, separated as they were from 
 their sick friends, terrified by European medi- 
 cines, their privacy disturbed, their roofs broken 
 down to let in the purging air, their lares and 
 penates and iheir very clothes soaked in the 
 distressful phenyl, business at a standstill, the 
 village cordoned round with police, and the 
 harvest stayed while they assisted in these real 
 evils and many more imaginary ones, born of 
 their superstitions, which haunted them as 
 persistently. 
 
 Chauncey worked day and night between the 
 camps and the village. The purging of 
 Mehlgahla was an epic task. He was followed 
 everywhere by two men, always at his elbow, 
 with lantern, keys, chisel and hammer, spare 
 locks and pots of paint, tongs for dead rats, and 
 kerosene oil and straw to burn them in. In the 
 camps the very donkeys and goats were dis- 
 infected and plunged in their carbolic bath. 
 And the villagers soon spoke of "phnail" as 
 if it had always been a household property. 
 The faint sting of it in their purifying baths 
 gave them the confidence of a spell, and it 
 became known that no one who had performed 
 this rite was afterwards stricken down. 
 
 The disinfecting of the houses was more 
 difficult. In many there was not an airhole 
 even, and the roofs had to be breached to let 
 in the sun. Every crevice and rat-hole was 
 
72 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 scoured with phenyl, all the chests and the 
 cupboards which were let into the wall, and the 
 granaries and stalls for the cattle. For if the 
 work was not thorough, if a rat-flea survived, 
 the whole business was undone. What faith 
 would the people have in the Sahibs and their 
 mantras if the pest sprang up again in their 
 steps ? 
 
 It was the most unpleasant part of their cam- 
 paign. Nothing was so much resented or so 
 provocative to the peace. There was hardly a 
 peasant who did not protest, though Merivale 
 paid on the spot for any damage that was done. 
 For the first day or two he picked his w^ay warily 
 through chattis of carbolic and the villagers* 
 great iron cauldrons brimming with phenyl. 
 Happily the disinfectant left no stain. The 
 women's clothes, a blaze of embroidered flower- 
 work, were laid on charpoys over the dun earth 
 like a swarm of butterflies settling on a clay 
 bank, and the relentless squirt played over all. 
 The holy Granth in its rich silk wrappings alone 
 was spared, but for another ordeal — to warp 
 and blister on the roof in the sun. There 
 were genuine grievances and misadventures. 
 Chauncey never forgot an old hag who clung 
 to his feet sobbing, clutching his ankles with 
 her bony fingers and refusing to be removed. 
 In the end she whimpered for leave to go on to 
 
THE VILLAGE 73 
 
 the roof for the last time before it was broken 
 in. She clambered up the rough tree-trunk 
 ladder feebly and still sobbing, and, gaining the 
 top, she measured five spans with her fingers 
 from the smoke-hole to the east in a line with 
 the neem tree in the haveli. Then, with furtive 
 looks to either side, she broke the surface of 
 the caked mud and grubbed out her hoard — two 
 or three rupees and some annas and pies. It 
 was her secret purse, hidden away from her 
 goodman against some mysterious need of her 
 own. 
 
 The work in the camps was no less heavy. 
 Merivale had called in some gharamis from a 
 neighbouring village to build up rude shanties, 
 huts of reed matting nailed on a wooden frame, 
 in place of the four stakes over which they had 
 stretched their blankets, and he made the people 
 help so that in a day or two they were able to 
 build their own camp. It was his business, too, 
 to see that the women suffered as little as need 
 be. He provided grinding and spinning wheels 
 for them, and took care of their jewellery. And 
 when they complained of hunger he issued paper 
 vouchers daily for two or three annas on his 
 own authority. These were accepted by the 
 bunniah, who exchanged them for grain on 
 Merivale's word that the Sircar would honour 
 them. 
 
74 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 So in the grip of the plague with their back 
 to the wall the villagers turned to Merivale as 
 to a Providence. And his respect for them grew 
 daily. He admired the magnificent calm with 
 which they took their bludgeonings, and he was 
 happy in their trust. 
 
Ill 
 
 In twenty days they had left Mehlgahia to a 
 staff of subordinates, every house disinfected and 
 the village ringed in with police. By this time 
 a large encampment had sprung up with nurses 
 and apothecaries and babus, and assistants and 
 all manner of stores. The sick were dead or 
 recovering in the hospital camp. Those who 
 had escaped infection were bringing in their 
 harvest. The women were spinning and grind- 
 ing corn. And the villagers knew the work had 
 been good. Thirty-two had died in the three 
 days before the evacuation and two only in all 
 the days afterwards. 
 
 Innes, the Commissioner, paid a flying visit to 
 the camp. He sanctioned evacuation "with tact- 
 ful persuasion where necessary." Merivale was 
 all attentive deference, but he had done the work 
 already, and the Commissioner knew it, and was 
 glad to have a man. The only thing that had 
 given Merivale any real uneasiness was his 
 budget; but he was given a liberal grant, and 
 the vouchers and compensation were passed with 
 merely formal objections — just the official salve 
 75 
 
76 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 and break on the wheel. The Commissioner 
 agreed with him that it was worth it. 
 
 Mehlgahla was saved. It was but one battle 
 in a campaign which the Englishmen fought 
 all through the hot weather. For the plague 
 goddess was multicephalous. Barbers and 
 pilgrims and leechwomen and Sadhus had 
 carried her germs about before ever Merivale 
 had set foot in Mehlgahla, and for the next six 
 months he and Chauncey scoured the ravaged 
 land searching out her tracks and exterminating 
 them as best they might. Other citadels held 
 out and capitulated, and bands of deputies were 
 left behind to see that the work they had set 
 afoot was carried out. The peasants were her 
 allies as often as not ; and when it became known 
 that these cranky Sahibs were offering rewards 
 to the man who first laid information of her 
 presence in any new spot, corpses were intro- 
 duced surreptitiously, and the vicious circle by 
 which the goddess revolved was set spinning 
 anew. Twice this trick was played, and the 
 informer betrayed by a counter-informer and 
 sentenced duly. 
 
 Everywhere Merivale found the relatives of 
 the sick of every age and degree sitting round 
 the bed. Thus the ball was set rolling. But 
 in one or two small villages where the men were 
 merely decimated the women perished almost to 
 a soul. Here, it seems, an idea had spread 
 
THE VILLAGE 77 
 
 abroad that the suffering could be eased if all 
 the women in the village bore their small share 
 of it. So the goodwife called the cobbler woman 
 in to open her bubo, and every gossip who came 
 to condole with her touched the sore with the 
 edge of her sheet, hoping to carry off a little of 
 the pain. Sacrifice and charity met Merivale 
 at the door where he had expected selfishness 
 and indifference. 
 
 As the weeks passed the work grew, but it 
 became easier. The fear of the peasants became 
 more rational. One day Merivale came upon a 
 village that was evacuating of itself ; the people 
 were literally running out. Soon it became the 
 rule for the villagers to help; only the crabbed 
 few lurked in their houses until they were made 
 to budge. They had a wide beat, a hundred- 
 mile point from east to west and stretching north 
 almost to the foot of the Himalaya. One day 
 they would be galloping off to a newly-infected 
 village; the next returning on their tracks to 
 inspect a camp they had left behind. 
 
 Siri Ram's village was inside the wide-infected 
 circle. The pest had laid its tentacles all round, 
 but spared Mograon. Merivale and Chauncey 
 inspected it and reported it immune. They had 
 speech with the old patriarch, Mool Chand, the 
 boy's father, who told them about his son in 
 Gandeshwar under '* Iskeen Sahib," and showed 
 them his horoscope, a sad one, and a blurred 
 
78 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 photograph of a College group in which Siri 
 Ram's thin, melancholy, resentful visage was 
 decipherable. And there was a book which 
 Skene had given him as a prize. Then he 
 unrolled the boy's matriculation certificate from 
 its tin case and held it upside down, scan- 
 ning it curiously. He spoke of Siri Ram with 
 qualified pride, a little puzzled at the unaccus- 
 tomed product. He was a queer, sage lad, he 
 said; but he had lost in reverence, and when 
 at home he would sit alone idly brooding. 
 
 All the while they were talking Shiv Dai, 
 the conspirator's small sister, watched the Eng- 
 lishmen with wide-open eyes. She did not speak 
 or smile. When they rose Merivale felt in his 
 pocket and produced a tiny hand-mirror and a 
 coloured rag-book, which she accepted with the 
 serious grace of a lady of quality. 
 
 Mool Chand showed them the dark recesses 
 of his home. It was like every other dwelling 
 in that mud world. You went through the gate 
 into the haveli, a cramped courtyard strewn with 
 cow fodder, save where a little mud wall divides 
 off a square for cooking. The mud floor here 
 is scrupulously polished; the five brass vessels, 
 as scrupulously clean, are laid beside the chula 
 where the pulse is being cooked for the family, 
 or some sort of herbal concoction for the cow. 
 The ashes of the fire under the pot are invisible 
 for the intense glare. In the shrine-like cup- 
 
THE VILLAGE 79 
 
 board of clay let into the wall and protruding 
 like a peaked cowl the boiled smoked milk is 
 kept all day immune from the sun. From the 
 sacred hearth you creep through a low door into 
 a long, low, mud-walled room with a roof of 
 beams and twigs caked with clay pierced some- 
 times with a smoke hole to let out the smoke or 
 to let in a shaft of light. Coming in out of the 
 sun you have to wait awhile before you can see 
 what is round you, the chattis of water propped 
 against the wall, the second hearth for winter 
 cooking, the cupboard for grain, the square 
 chest for clothes, the charpoys laid against the 
 wall, the low, square, six-inch stool of matted 
 twine where the housewife sits tending the fire. 
 A minute will have passed before the geometri- 
 cally designed peacocks in their bas-relief of 
 clay take shape out of the gloom. 
 
 An open door leads into a darker chamber 
 beyond for the cow, almost as comfortable, and 
 a chamber beyond that for the turi, its 
 provender. The cow walks through the dwell- 
 ing room to reach the outside, picking her way 
 through the urchins sleeping on the floor. Yet 
 there is an instinct of cleanliness followed every- 
 where to a certain point. The floor is a com- 
 position of mud and cow-dung plastered into a 
 smooth polished surface — "lepai'ed" as they 
 call it, and brushed carefully. The hearth out- 
 side is lepai'ed, and sometimes the part of the 
 
80 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 haveli nearest the threshold. The greater part 
 of the housewife's life is taken up with lepai-ing. 
 The faint warm smell of it pervades the village, 
 and is not unpleasant. Apart from the little 
 shisham wood that is needed for the props and 
 doors and beams, and the little brass for the 
 hearth, mud and cow-dung supply every need 
 and elegance of the home. Every house is the 
 same, built of mud inside and out, and there 
 is little that does not shade into that hue from 
 Mool Chand's skin to the rubble by the well 
 and the banyan trees outside the village. The 
 crumpled leaves of the neem, the garbage heap, 
 the plough, every utensil in the house or the 
 street except the brass cooking things is the 
 colour of dust or mud. The cow, the buffalo, 
 the cat, the children, the pig, the sleeping 
 pariah dog, all more or less prostrated by the 
 sun, look as if they had been modelled out 
 of the different strata of discoloured clay in 
 the blistered, cracked hollow which has served 
 for the village pond. "Dust to dust*' is easy 
 to understand in Mograon. Every hour of the 
 villagers' lives is a text for that sermon. Eye 
 and mouth and nostril inform the brain of little 
 else. The stages between being gathered out 
 of the clay and being gathered into it are so little 
 distinguishable that birth and death and toil and 
 sleep and resignation are part of the same slow- 
 moving dream in which different states merge 
 
THE VILLAGE 81 
 
 indifferently. Nowhere does life look so much 
 like some phase of an excrescence exuded from 
 the earth, a hummock of gritty soil disturbed by 
 ants of the same hue. As you watch, you cannot 
 distinguish the insect from the particle of clay 
 it is carrying to the new earthworks on the path, 
 which the first wayfarer will crush just as the 
 plague goddess will plant a careless foot on 
 Mograon and pass on. 
 
 If a child of this clay is ever stirred to think 
 at all, it is only natural that it should be of first 
 and last things, of first things when there is still 
 a little sap in him; of last things only too soon, 
 at an age when a boy in England is getting 
 some grip of life. Think of Siri Ram in his 
 mud hutch reading of beaux and coquettes and 
 of Belinda's toilet, and the conquests of Blanche 
 Amory and Ethel Newcome. Think of him 
 among the clay and the cow-dung under the 
 eternal blistering sun spelling out "The Rape 
 of the Lock." 
 
 "Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 
 Or some frail cl^ina jar receive a flaw, 
 Or stain her honour, or her new brocade, 
 Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade, 
 Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball. 
 Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall." 
 
 Siri Ram knew one kind of man and woman 
 only, one kind of food, one kind of house, and 
 one kind of thought born of physical urgency or 
 
82 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Uie puzzle of being. An Englishman or woman 
 was nothing to him but a violent gross pheno- 
 menon. Yet the mill of his mind was set 
 slowly grinding on Thackeray and Pope and 
 Stevenson as an introduction to life. 
 
 For hours of every day in his first College 
 vacation he \Vould squat under the air-hole 
 mumbling each dainty passage like a mantra, 
 as if light came that way, with the same 
 unintelligent sing-song cadence. Heaven knows 
 with what dim, vague suggestions or stirrings 
 of the heart he read of that bevy of girls on the 
 river bank at Pr^cy, corseted and ribboned, a 
 company of coquettes under arms, that con- 
 vinced the Cigarette and the Arethusa at once 
 of being fallible males ; or how in his mud hutch 
 where children and kine were procreated indiffer- 
 ently, and flea-bitten rats ran over both, he 
 visualised the foremost of the three Graces of 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite, she of the neat ankles, 
 more of a Venus than a Diana, who leapt on to 
 a tree trunk and kissed her hand to the canoeists 
 and called to them to come back, or whether it 
 was through any pangs of thwarted appetite that 
 he crushed the persistent cockroach between the 
 leaves of his book in the middle of the passage 
 where Stevenson conjures up his visionary menu 
 of oyster-patties and Sauterne at Compi^gne. 
 
 One can imagine the astonishment of Merivale 
 when a much-bethumbed copy of An Inland 
 
THE VILLAGE 88 
 
 Voyage dropped out of the chest in Mool 
 Chand's house on to the floor. He could con- 
 ceive the husks of wit and grace and laughter, 
 words without the spirit, solid chunks of Nuttall 
 and Webster, all baked into the mind like 
 flowers in a child's mud pie. For in Mograon 
 mud doesn't stop at matter; it permeates mind. 
 The spirit that informs the dust here has some- 
 thing of its hue and consistency, coarsened to 
 sustain the resisting dross, like the little, soft 
 crabs that move the clay about in the bed of 
 an estuary. Education is supposed to quicken , 
 it, and it does beyond doubt, but the early ' 
 phases of the process are too ugly to dwell on. 
 Here and there a father, moved by the same 
 self-protective evolutionary instinct that assimi- 
 lates crustaceans to some new strata laid open 
 by a river current, sends his son to school and 
 the boy becomes an F.A., and perhaps after- 
 wards a B.A. The Hobbs half of Anglo-India 
 resents the hybrid and all dabbling in organic 
 chemistry for such ends, but there is no doubt 
 that the B.A., however clumsily or absurdly 1 
 contrived, is a better man in the end than the | 
 untortured product of sunburnt clay, though at 1 
 first sight he may not appear as lovable. 
 
 Mool Chand, you would say, is a dear old 
 man, slow-moving, slow-speaking, patient, 
 strong, enduring, unbent in adversity. He is 
 like an old prophet, clear-eyed, grizzled in the 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 sun, the brow and beard of Abraham, the 
 gestures of an apostle. He salaams with a sub- 
 missive dignity, raising both hands. The Com- 
 missioner loves him as his horse. But he would 
 leave his aunt, or his little girl, at a pinch, to 
 die in her plague-bed alone. The odds against 
 that sort of thing increases with a lad's grade 
 in school or college, though grace is at first 
 perfunctory. Skene could give you the exact 
 statistics of it. 
 
 But Mool Chand did not consider the 
 formative influences of Gandeshwar. He sent 
 Siri Ram there as one invests a bit of money 
 in a life insurance. As an F.A. he would be 
 worth thirty rupees a month, as a B.A. from 
 fifty to eighty any day in the week, whereas the 
 whole profits of Mool Chand's land might be 
 covered by three hundred rupees in a good year. 
 Knowing nothing of the vagaries of enlighten- 
 ment, the Jat looked on his son as a safe 
 investment. He did not know that Siri Ram, 
 rejected of co-ordinated progress, was already 
 drifting home, pledged to his shameful and un- 
 remunerative campaign. He was indeed contem- 
 plating how much his heir could contribute in 
 three years towards the expenses of his small 
 sister's marriage when the young patriot was 
 trudging darkly out of Gandeshwar, the personi- 
 fied bankruptcy of his father's hopes. 
 
 But worse ills awaited his house. 
 
IV 
 
 SiRi Ram and Barnasi Das and Lachmi Chand 
 found consolation in the pamphlets of the 
 Swami. If any beam of happiness could enter 
 Siri Ram's head it must radiate from some such 
 pyramidical grievance as this. Siri Ram had 
 been building in the air, loose architecture 
 which impressed few of his companions. But 
 here was a substantial fabric, plinth on plinth 
 of cunning masonry. A monumental grievance. 
 And they were to put the apex on it so that the 
 blindest must see; the most subservient, syco- 
 phantic, shoe-licking slave of the English must 
 understand how the Indians were being deceived. 
 
 Siri Ram had never dreamt of such body for 
 his vapourings. He was almost drunk with it 
 and his late witness-bearing. He was for calling 
 all the students together that very day and per- 
 suading them to take an oath never to wear any 
 foreign cloth, never to salaam to an English- 
 man, never to let a chance go by of instilling 
 true political ideas into the people. The unfold- 
 ing of the ideas would be their province. Then 
 he would call for volunteers among the true 
 patriots who were willing to take the life of 
 85 
 
86 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 an Englishman. Siri Ram had forgotten the 
 Swami's advice to work underground. 
 
 "You must not worship goddess in open 
 manner," Banarsi Das reminded him; "in this 
 way the cabal will be bruited to extremities. 
 It will be bruited to Comorin and to similar 
 city in north of map, and you would be ex- 
 pelled the University. English people are very 
 cunning." 
 
 Banarsi Das had already made up his mind 
 to serve the goddess as a school-master, a safer 
 if less glorious part. He was not a man of 
 blood. 
 
 Lachmi Chand was also for deliberation. 
 
 "Siri Ram is awfully a hasty gentleman," 
 he said; "he is like the individual who sits on 
 the branch of some tree with axe in his hand 
 and cuts the root at the trunk, by which he is 
 probable to fall down." 
 
 Banarsi Das was in sympathy with this criti- 
 cism. Neither he nor Siri Ram saw the weak- 
 ness of Lachmi Chand's metaphor. The 
 Swami*s warning came into the conspirator's 
 mind, to appear to imbibe the opinions of 
 Government until the day of awakening should 
 come, and so he capitulated. 
 
 "First let us know what is in these books," 
 Lachmi Chand continued. "Then when some 
 patriot is sent to gaol let us hold a meeting. 
 We would know what to say." 
 
THE VILLAGE 87 
 
 The occasion fell opp>ortunely before many 
 days had passed, when the Mahratta Brahmans 
 were deported and nobody knew what the charge 
 was. Questions were being asked in the House 
 and the Indian Press was in a ferment. 
 
 They met in the boarding-house reading-room 
 to discuss Justice, as Banarsi Das announced, 
 hoping to discourage students who cared nothing 
 about politics, and who might be a danger to 
 them, yet fearing to make the thing too secret 
 lest it should attract scoffers like Puran Singh. 
 Whatever happened there was no fear of any 
 student betraying them. 
 
 The hour was six on a sultry May evening, a 
 time when no abstract question would have kept 
 an English youth indoors. Siri Ram was in 
 the chair. Banarsi Das on his right, Lachmi 
 Chand on his left, and all down the long benches 
 of the reading table a company of capped and 
 turbaned youths, with here and there a red fez. 
 Many waited in the verandah and courtyard out- 
 side, whence they would drop in at any time of 
 the proceedings, for it was the custom at Gan- 
 deshwar for every one to wait for some one else 
 to begin. In this case the cause had begotten 
 initiative, and the dawdlers missed the opening 
 of Banarsi Das' speech. 
 
 Politics was a hobby with this young man; 
 he was drawn to it as a means to the self- 
 assertion which was his only need in life. Speech 
 
88 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 was his forte. He had none of Siri Ram's 
 burning sincerity, no rankling bitterness in his 
 heart. He was a vain, meddling, town-bred 
 youth, superficially cocksure and alert, inwardly 
 dense as the mud of Mograon, which had not 
 mixed its melancholy with his clay. In the 
 College he was half leader, half clown, and spoke 
 glibly with an inconsequent, muddle-headed 
 stream of verbiage which impressed his com- 
 panions. No argument could take the bottom 
 out of his conceit, and his temerity led him into 
 paths of eloquence which delighted Skene, and 
 bred a kind of amused liking in him for the 
 youth as a rather pathetic type of the hybrid we 
 are responsible for. And the liking was recipro- 
 cated. Banarsi Das was flattered by the interest 
 the Principal took in him. He was human 
 enough after all. He could not have endured 
 the sight of a weapon, and it would have made 
 him quite sick to see a drop of blood shed, 
 whether of an Englishman or any one else. 
 This did not impair his sanguinary declamation. 
 
 Called upon by the chair, Banarsi Das rose 
 with a self-assured air, his little brown cap 
 pushed back over his short-cropped hair, and 
 smiling under his spectacles like a swimmer 
 about to take the stream and conscious of his 
 strength. 
 
 "Gentlemen, it is not enough for us to place 
 upon record our loathing and detestation of the 
 
THE VILLAGE 89 
 
 cowardly and dastardly crime of British Govern- 
 ment, who have removed this high-souled and 
 noble-spirited patriot out of our middle to rot 
 in chains somewhere else. Poet has said, ' Stone 
 bars do not make prison.* No, they do not 
 make prison for soul. This is familiar to you. 
 We are met here for a great purpose. Gentle- 
 men, we are potent if we are unanimous to make 
 the English not to stay in this country. 
 
 "The English are jungly and weak. By union 
 only they have attained empire. Gentlemen, I 
 put question to you, are they as plentiful as the 
 blackberries and ants upon the seashore? No, 
 they are not as plentiful. As Emerson says. 
 The Englishman is a * rarer avis ' in this country. 
 It is easy to muzzle him and to turn him into sea. 
 
 "Why he is ruling over us? Why you arci 
 afraid of Englishmen? They are not gods but 
 men like yourselves, or rather monsters who 
 have ravaged Sita-like beauty of your country. 
 If there be any Rama among you, let him come 
 forth to bring back your Sita." 
 
 Banarsi Das paused to mark the effect of his 
 appeal. His vanity was satisfied. 
 
 "Who are Englishmen?" he went on; "how 
 they have become our rulers? They have not 
 taken India by sword. They have thrown noose 
 of dep)endence round us by cunning. The orna- 
 ment of a man is a weapon, but they have taken 
 all these away from us. Now are all Indians 
 
/lM) SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 
 worthless, they have become timid and afraid 
 eunuchs. They are worse than women. They 
 are accounted criminals for using the article of 
 their native country. 
 
 "Gentlemen, when I look upon foreign-made 
 things my whole body catches fire. I wish to 
 <kill one of these Satans who defile sugar with 
 the bones of pig and cow and any dead animal to 
 make Hindus and Muhammadans faithless alike. 
 
 "Are we to be taught courage by Bengal " 
 
 Banarsi Das was skilfully preparing the 
 meeting for the Swadeshi vow. When he sat 
 down after a moving peroration the forty 
 students still in the room took it without demur. 
 It was a formula in language less impressive 
 than his own. 
 
 "I swear this veiy day in the presence of my 
 Guru (or my priest or in the name of the goddess 
 of Independence) never to wear any foreign- 
 j made cloth or to eat any foreign-made food or 
 I to keep money in English banks or to purchase 
 any promissory notes. Also that I will consider 
 ./every Indian, whatever his caste or creed, as my 
 real brother, and that I will sacrifice myself for 
 my country and devise means to uproot the 
 enemy by secret bands, and to ruin the Feringhi 
 all at once after making preparations for a suit- 
 able date which can fall within ten years if we 
 work as one people." 
 
 This was strong meat for the novices, but 
 
THE VILLAGE 91 
 
 none save a red fez or two dared refuse or slink 
 out of the room. One hysterical youth stood 
 up, stripped his wilaiti ^ shirt off his back, tore it 
 into shreds, flung it on the floor, and buttoned 
 his coat over a naked breast. 
 
 The milder Lachmi Chand followed with his 
 religious appeal. He was a gentle, patient- 
 looking youth with a sad face, and his melan- 
 choly was vested in the spiritual decay of the 
 Aryans. Political dependence did not distress 
 him so much as the cause of it, the falling away 
 of his people from the ancient stock whom he 
 saw telescopically magnified. Giants in stature 
 and in soul striding over the mountains to 
 occupy their birthright, men whose strength lay 
 in their nearness to God, and who spent three 
 parts of their lives in serving Him, giving a 
 fourth part only to the family and the home. 
 He spoke always of the Golden Country and the 
 Aryan revival and the Lahore Samaj. The 
 deported martyr was his text. 
 
 "India's golden land has not lost all her 
 heroes. They are springing up in our midst, 
 though brutal imprisonment reduce them to 
 skeletons. The English are making us forget 
 our old faith, they are making us forget our 
 old learning, they are leading us along the path 
 of sin. It is shame for them to think that with 
 swords and guns they can shut in the Vedas. 
 * Foreign. 
 
92 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 It is shame for them to think that with bricks 
 and stones they can lock in the truth. What is 
 that truth ? It is the truth that consoled people 
 hundreds of thousands of years before the Koran 
 and the Bible, when the ancestors of these 
 demons were in disgusting state of barbarism. 
 The truth that gave light to the people lakhs 
 of years before Zoroaster. They are fpols^ who 
 believe th#y can lock in the Vedas." 
 
 Siri Ram rose with a bundle of notes, but 
 he did not look at them. He had learnt his 
 speech too well. He kept his eyes strained upon 
 the wall, as if he saw the goddess of Independ- 
 ence materialised there above his companions' 
 heads. First he drew a picture of the innocent 
 patriot condemned without a trial to rot in 
 chains, and his family members and nears and 
 dears weeping and disconsolate. Then he 
 expatiated upon the barbarity and injustice of 
 the English, dwelling particularly on the 
 slaughter of cows, and the deliberate impoverish- 
 ment of the land that they might hold it the 
 more easily. "A dragon is sucking the life- 
 blood of our Bharat Mata," he cried. "She is 
 weeping. Her wound is ours. Shall we sit 
 still at our meals amid laughter and merry- 
 making without care? Or shall we not rather 
 give up our pleasures and smear our bodies 
 with ashes every day until we have rescued her 
 and trampled the demon under our foot ? " 
 
THE VILLAGE 98 
 
 Then he went through the Swami's pamphlets 
 one by one, all the old lies about the economic 
 drain, which he half believed, and the perverted 
 history of the occupation. How the English 
 took the country step by step with fraud and 
 broken faith, and how the native army won an 
 empire for them and were despised and down- 
 trodden for their pains. When he had probed 
 every old sore and added new venom to race- 
 hatred with the catchwords of the hour he began 
 to repeat the names of the patriot heroes of the 
 world, coupling Nana Sahib with Garibaldi. 
 And this brought him to the Mutiny of '57, and 
 the impending anniversary of it which the 
 English were preparing for themselves. 
 
 "Thirty crores will not be idle. They will 
 wash the land again in blood, and not an 
 English head will rise from the slaughter-pit. 
 Our country was the crown of all countries, and 
 was called the Golden Land. Her hour has 
 come again. Drums are beating. Heroes and 
 martyrs are preceding. See to Sivaji, and 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, and other heroes in 
 Germany and France. See to Japan. Take only 
 a life for a life. If one thousand sacrifice 
 themselves " 
 
 But here a gross impersonation of British 
 force blocked the door at Siri Ram's back. The 
 students shuffled to their feet, and he saw in 
 their faces what had happened. Turning round, 
 
94 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 he looked into the large, inquiring eyes of Skene. 
 For a moment not a word was said. An irre- 
 sponsible youth at the far end of the room 
 slipped out at the door opposite, betraying his 
 guilt. The rest stood their ground shame- 
 facedly. 
 
"What does this mean?" Skene asked. But 
 Siri Ram only looked at him with shifty defiance, 
 too confused to speak. Banarsi Das, entering 
 the breach, explained glibly — 
 
 "Sir, we held meeting of Students' Improve- 
 ment Society. The aim of Society is to provide 
 lecture and discussion of moral and religious 
 problem. It also serves purpose of English B. 
 paper by improving idioms and etiquettes." 
 
 "I know too much about what is going on," 
 Skene interrupted. "I have been suspecting it 
 for some time, and Tm afraid some of you must 
 suffer. Now stay here and listen to me. You 
 have been taught a great deal about the English 
 lately, haven't you? They are cruel, unjust, 
 cunning, godless, selfish, matter-worshippers, 
 bloodthirsty — you see, I know your text-books 
 — and it is your duty as patriots to hate them. 
 How many English have you met?" 
 
 The conspirators were silent. 
 
 "You know me, and perhaps some officers 
 who have come here to play cricket. Now you 
 must judge people by how you find them, not by 
 95 
 
96 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 what professional politicians tell you. Ask your 
 fathers and grandfathers what dealings they 
 have had with the English, and whether they 
 have found them honest, true and sympathetic, 
 and ready to give of their very best to the people, 
 no matter of what caste or creed. 
 
 "Mind you, I am not here to defend the 
 English ; we are strong enough to take care of 
 ourselves. Stronger, indeed, than we were fifty 
 years ago." Here Skene looked at Siri Ram. 
 "Only it is better that we should be friends 
 when we have to work together, and not go about 
 with bitter, suspicious thoughts in our hearts. 
 
 "As for the deportation, the papers you have 
 been reading compare the treatment of political 
 agitators in India and in Europe. You are told 
 that Indians are denied freedom of speech and 
 the liberty of the Press; but you must remember 
 things are very different here. Rumours of cow- 
 killing will stir blood to a white heat; the story 
 of a defiled mosque will raise a Jehad. There 
 is all the difference between holding a lighted 
 match to an iron safe and to a haystack. 
 
 " Well, now, supposing men have gone about 
 among the village folk arousing in them feelings^ 
 of hatred and rebellion against their rulers by 
 the recital of wrongs existing purely in their own 
 imagination ! Would not any Government be 
 justified in taking measures to protect itself 
 against the mischief wrought by such irrespon- 
 sible agitators? Surely no Government worthy 
 
THE VILLAGE 97 
 
 of the name could consent to tolerate unchal- 
 lenged the insidious influence of these misguided 
 men ! But you may be sure that persons who 
 have been deported will be well cared for and 
 released as soon as it is safe. 
 
 "But this is only a side issue. What I wish 
 you to understand is how we have won India, 
 and with what right and justice we hold it. I 
 know all about these seditious leaflets that have 
 been circulated among you. I have seen them 
 myself. We must have these charges sifted 
 above ground. Bring the pamphlets to me. I 
 will expose each lie and distortion of fact, point 
 by point. You may ask me as many questions 
 as you like, I won't be angry. And when I have 
 done, I think you will agree with me that the 
 British have been straight and honourable in 
 their dealings with you. Clive played one dirty 
 trick, it is true, and we are all ashamed of it. 
 It is a single black blot in an otherwise clean 
 record, the blacker because it is so utterly foreign 
 to the national character and traditions that 
 Englishmen become hot to-day when they think 
 of it. But for that, you will find that the English 
 have always tried to do the straight and dis- 
 interested thing. 
 
 "India for the Indian nation is a fine raHying 
 cry, and I don't wonder it appeals to you. But 
 a nation is not merely a geographical term ; it 
 implies a compact people, united and inspired 
 by common aims and traditions. India, as you 
 
 H 
 
98 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 ^know, is not one people any more than Europe 
 is one people. If ever she does become one, 
 with a genuine sense of nationality, and the 
 courage and unselfishness to defend it without 
 any thought of individual interest or class 
 privilege, she will be strong enough to take the 
 reins from us, and no shame to us to drop them, 
 
 Qseeing that it is we who have taught her to 
 drive. But you are not going the right way to 
 work. You must look facts in the face. Every 
 
 r one respects an honest nationalist, but you 
 must be the thing first before you can enjoy 
 
 , its privileges. No nation was ever built on 
 
 \ lies. 
 
 "Don't think I want you to believe that India 
 is a distressful burden which we bow under from 
 a sense of duty only. I hate cant. India is as 
 much the property of the English as the estate 
 of one of your zemindars is the property of the 
 landlord whose ancestor won it by the sword, 
 or was given it for service. Tell your zemindar 
 he must divide his property among his tenants 
 because they are becoming fit to manage it 
 themselves, and hear what he will say. Yet 
 this is what some of our politicians are saying 
 about India. It is quite true that if we left the 
 country each community would be at the other's 
 throat. This is one good reason for our staying. 
 But it is not the reason. We are here because 
 it is our country. Incidentally it happens to be 
 our way to recognise our obligations to our 
 
THE VILLAGE 99 
 
 tenants as no other rulers have done or are ever 
 likely to." 
 
 Skene had never talked politics to his students 
 before. He shrank from it ; for, when all is said 
 and done, the case resolves itself in the end to 
 the privilege of the weak to be ruled by the 
 strong, and this is a very difficult thing for an 
 Englishman to say without suspicion of brutality 
 or pride. Skene was not pleased with his effort. 
 In some of the students' faces he fancied he saw 
 intelligent sympathy, but others were sheepish 
 and sullen, obstinately grieved, as he might well 
 have been if the situation had been reversed. 
 He felt that he had bungled it somehow, but 
 anything was better than saying nothing. Only 
 he wished that one of them would speak. It 
 would be so easy to put the case to them if they 
 were not Indians. 
 
 Clive once behaved like a Bengali politician, 
 and it left a stain on our honour like a drop of 
 ink in a phial of pure water. But where was 
 the diplomatist in their ranks who would have 
 behaved like Admiral Watson ? 
 
 It was impossible to suggest the shadow of 
 the thought. 
 
 In the meanwhile there were Siri Ram, 
 Banarsi Das and Lachmi Chand to be dealt 
 with. Skene passed sentence on the spot. He 
 expelled Siri Ram from the University, and 
 he rusticated Banarsi Das and Lachmi Chand 
 for a year. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 **I am sorry for you," he said, "but you must 
 go. I have warned you once, and I can*t have 
 the College spoilt like this. I will help you as 
 far as I can because I think you have been 
 misled, and really believe the mischievous lies 
 which your heads have been stuffed with. Any- 
 how I hope that you are too honest to circulate 
 charges which you know are false. Banarsi Das 
 and Lachmi Chand may rejoin the College after 
 a year provided there is nothing new against 
 them. And you, Siri Ram, come to my office 
 to-morrow morning at ten, and Til see what I 
 can do for you." 
 
 As Skene left the boarding-house the sup- 
 pressed murmur of the students became an angry 
 babel. It had been one of the most depressing 
 moments he had known in Gandeshwar. For 
 the first few years his relations with his pupils 
 had been friendly and unstrained, but he had 
 gradually become aware of a hostile element 
 which was part of the growing trouble all over 
 India. On the whole he was rather glad that 
 things had come to a head, for it might relieve 
 the charged atmosphere. Everything depended 
 on his personality. If the students ceased to 
 like him he could do nothing with them. 
 
 As he crossed the football field the cloud in 
 his mind lightened. The College were playing 
 a regimental team, and he reached the corner 
 flag just in time to see Puran Singh take a neat 
 
THE VILLAGE 101 
 
 pass from the half-back, dribble through to front 
 of goal with the ball at his feet, and make a 
 clean shot along the ground just inside the posts. 
 The cheering all round was like a tonic. He 
 could have slapped Puran Singh on the back. 
 
 "Shabash, Puran Singh," he shouted. *'That 
 is better than lifting it over the bar, isn't it?" 
 
 Puran Singh beamed when he saw the Prin- 
 cipal had been watching his feat, and every one 
 laughed at Skene's chaffing allusion to a match 
 against Government College, lost by a high, wild 
 kick in the air when Puran Singh had the goal 
 at his mercy. Skene had taught him after that 
 to shoot clean and low in front of goal with a 
 straightened instep or with the side of his foot. 
 
 "You are playing tennis with me to-morrow 
 against the regiment. Don't forget." 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 Skene w^as almost pleased with the way things 
 were going when he reached the Club and met 
 Dean the policeman coming down the steps. 
 
 •'You got hold of the right men," he said. 
 "Thanks for the information. I've fired one out 
 and rusticated the other two. Had to do it, but 
 I am devilish sorry for them. Children all 
 three." 
 
 "What is the expelled youth going to do ? I'd 
 keep an eye on him." 
 
 "I was thinking- of sending him to Everitt in 
 the XlXth. He wants a clerk on his own." 
 
102 STRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "That's the man on the mule transport 
 registration in the Hills, isn*t it?" 
 
 "Yes. He has to trek half the year at the 
 back of beyond, and his Babu stays down at 
 headquarters in Sialkote. Government won't 
 sanction another clerk." 
 
 "I shouldn't risk it. He can do a lot of harm 
 in those little States." 
 
 " Are they touched ? " 
 
 "You haven't heard of Blimba? People 
 wondered where the resurrected Dhandora 
 leaflets came from. Well, they had a small 
 press up there. There were only two Babus in 
 the State, but they worked it all right, and sent 
 five hundred copies every week into Simla in 
 khiltas covered with apricots and pomegranates. 
 
 "They had the time of their lives. The little 
 Rajah man hates the English. He was fed up 
 with his salute, and thought it a huge joke. 
 There was no fear of a surprise. You can see 
 the white road winding seven miles through the 
 pines into Blimba, and a topee or a policeman's 
 cap would have sent the whole warren skid- 
 dadling down the khud, press and all." 
 
 Skene learnt a lot about sedition before dinner. 
 Dean turned back into the Club with him, and 
 they sat on a garden seat overshadowed by 
 hibiscus and duranta, while he unfolded the 
 schemes of the extremist gang in Lahore. 
 
 It was the most complicated organisation, and 
 
THE VILLAGE 108 
 
 the police believed that the whole body of the 
 Arya Samaj was involved in the nexus, so that 
 every postal and telegraph clerk and every 
 subordinate on the railway knew exactly what he 
 had to do on the day of reckoning. Many 
 Aryas, of course, cared nothing for politics, but 
 those who were well-disposed to Government 
 dared not betray their associates if they would, 
 so it was impossible to say how many knew what 
 was going on in the inner ring. 
 
 "And the best of it is," Dean went on, "in 
 some of these centres they have got a register in 
 which they have booked all the best appoint- 
 ments for the fraternity after we have been wiped 
 out. They have done us the honour to preserve 
 our system, and the salaries will stand as they 
 are. A hospital assistant at JuUundur on eight 
 rupees a month will be P.M.O. of the Sirhind 
 Brigade, and a Jemadar of the Nth Punjabis is 
 to be Station Staff Officer at Dalhousie." 
 
 "And who is to command the Division?" 
 
 "That is still in the lucky bag. The General 
 is not nominated yet. They have chucked in a 
 few Muhammadans just to look well, but they 
 daren't give the command to one, and they 
 daren't give it to a Sikh or a Dogra, as they 
 know the Pathans would be at their throats." 
 
 "And the Constitution?" 
 
 "A limited Monarchy. The beggars have had 
 the impudence to approach Nepaul." 
 
104 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "Pharaoh's feet, what a muddle! What 
 wouldn't I give to be at the first Parliament! 
 It would be almost worth being a disembodied 
 spirit." 
 
 "Yes, I dare say. This paper Empire won't 
 do much harm, but they are doing a lot of real 
 mischief. Take the Hills alone. They are 
 working them pretty thoroughly with their 
 political missionaries as they call them." 
 
 Skene learnt that young men in the guise of 
 Sannyasis were being sent to every little hill 
 State and Zemindari ostensibly as pilgrims to 
 visit Gangotri or Kedarnath, or to circumam- 
 bulate Kailas, or to scatter flowers on Siva's 
 frozen spring in the ice caves of Amarnath, but 
 in reality to spread the tale that the white throne 
 was tottering in Hindustan, that Englishmen 
 were held of no account, and that all lonely 
 Sahibs who visited the solitudes of the mountains 
 should be done away with sing^ly. That Sahibs 
 fallen over cliffs, or shaken from rope bridges, 
 or shot in ambush could tell no tale, and that 
 merit and reward would fall to their assassins in 
 this world and the next. 
 
 "If you sent Siri Ram you would be playing 
 into their hands," Dean said. "Everitt wouldn't 
 have the ghost of an idea what was going on.'* 
 
 "Poor little devil," Skene thought. "He has 
 no luck." 
 
 But Siri Ram's horoscope was cast in sadder 
 
THE VILLAGE 105 
 
 lines that Skene knew. A day or two after 
 Merivale's visit the pest had fallen on Mograon 
 like a flail. It broke out in Uttam Singh, the 
 headman's, house, and Shiv Dai, Siri Ram's 
 little sister, must have caught it when she was 
 combing Uttam Singh's wife's hair. A leech- 
 woman from Mehlgahla had brought it into the 
 village. She had got through somehow in the 
 early days unsuspected at the time before the 
 cordon was formed, and passed from village to 
 village putting leeches on the buboes of the sick 
 and trailing the plague after her. In three days 
 Mool Chand's mohalla was decimated. The rats 
 crept out of their holes and lay dying in the 
 street and in the houses, indifferent to man, and 
 the fleas swarmed over them till they were cold, 
 and then sought warmer pasture. 
 
 Siri Ram's mother had been one of the first 
 stricken, and lay unconscious several days, but 
 survived, and rose a crazy skeleton from her bed. 
 Then his little sister, Shiv Dai, lay in the toils. 
 When Mool Chand felt the gland on her groin, 
 a smooth, round, movable tumour like an Qgg^ 
 he thought her doomed; the little girl was so 
 thin and frail. For two days she lay unconscious 
 almost, with her eyes half-closed, sleepless, rest- 
 less, for ever moving her arms and legs, raising 
 her knee slowly and then straightening it out 
 again and moaning in her pain. Soon she 
 passed into a stage of muttering delirium. She 
 tried to fling herself off her bed, and Mool 
 
106 STRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Chand tied her down with his turban. The 
 presence of death was felt everywhere. Day and 
 night the wailing of mourners rose from the 
 houses all round. Soon Mool Chand*s neigh- 
 bours were all running out into the fields. The 
 fear gripped him, and he felt that he, too, must 
 go. He put some chappates and water by Shiv 
 Dai's bed, more to appease the lemures of the 
 hearth than for any good it might do her, and 
 he shambled out into the street supporting his 
 wife. 
 
 He left the corn in the locker and the milk in 
 the alcove by the hearth, and the square chest 
 with the family clothes. He drove the cow out 
 before him and left Shiv Dai alone to die. "If 
 she is to die, why disturb her? " he said. "And 
 
 if she lives " He thought of the sorrow in 
 
 the house when the woman-child was born, and 
 the coming marriage expenses. It would be 
 three years before Siri Ram, a full-blown B.A., 
 could contribute. 
 
 He did not know that Siri Ram had been 
 expelled from the college after all his outlay, and 
 that he was an unmarketable product and a 
 source of insecurity to quiet folk rather than 
 profit. 
 
VI 
 
 Merivale was back on his tracks at 
 Mehlgahla again. There had been no rain, 
 but the moon was barely visible for the dense 
 air, and not a star was to be seen. The 
 villagers were drooping like sick crows, 
 sprawling on their charpoys, and pitched 
 forward on their haunches like birds on a bough, 
 suspiring for air. But there was not a breath 
 anywhere. 
 
 After a hard day Merivale had arrived in 
 Mehlgahla before his tent and kit. The 
 villagers came out to meet him. Some clutched 
 at his feet and knees and greeted him as their 
 saviour. They brought him warm smoked milk 
 and eggs and chapattis. He dined off them. 
 Then he braced himself to go round the camp. 
 The quarantine was nearly over, and the plague 
 had not touched a soul since he left. The 
 unaffected pleasure of everybody at the merest 
 glimpse of him kept him upright, and he had 
 a smile and a joke for them all in spite of the 
 trouble he had to keep on his feet. For the 
 clogging air had to be resisted, and Merivale 
 107 
 
108 SIRI T^ A AT— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 had not had more man three hours' broken sleep 
 any night of the week. 
 
 He lay on the rickety charpoy he had 
 borrowed from the headman, watching the 
 moon, waiting for the haze to clear which filled 
 his throat and nose and eyes with hot particles 
 of grit. Yet he dreaded the moon more, for 
 he could not sleep under her malignant rays, 
 and cover was stifling. She was an enemy in 
 Mehlgahla, red, bloody, passionate, exacting, 
 exhaling weariness. Not the same Cynthia who 
 swims over quickening hazel copses and prim- 
 rose dells at home, and peeps into dimpled becks 
 breasting cool clouds. Cynthia and Diana there, 
 silvery and chaste; here a bronze pan of fire, 
 phantom of the destroyer, the reverse of Durga's 
 shield, more malignant than the Sun-god be- 
 cause stealthier and more insidious in her 
 embrace. Merivale felt sick inwardly to think 
 of the primroses glimmering palely in a meadow 
 he knew well by an old ivied church in Devon 
 under the caressing moonlight. On hot-weather 
 nights he always thought of the old country in 
 the freshness of spring. 
 
 He shut his eyes to a hot wave of air that 
 flickered over him. But darkness was hotter, 
 and he opened them soon to watch the brazen 
 sphere slowly concentrating her light — and her 
 heat, it seemed — as the mist thinned. In the 
 coppery haze the hot, gritty stars glowed dully 
 
THE VILLAGE 109 
 
 like exhausted embers. The night sky of June 
 burnt itself into his mind through those inter- 
 minable hot-weather vigils. Corvus and Corona 
 and Scorpio and Bootes were sparks that added 
 their rays to his firepit. It was only at 
 Mehlgahla that he came to know the constella- 
 tions, but he had the map in his head long 
 afterwards. Sometimes even by lakes and above 
 cool mountains Scorpio would unfold her scaly 
 length for him over the segregation camp, and 
 a feeling would come to him that if he wanted 
 to inspect the cordon he must steer for the 
 plough. 
 
 He was waiting for the last star of Scorpio 
 to rise above the mango clump when he heard 
 the creaking of bullock carts in a rutty lane. 
 It was his belated camp. He recognised the 
 heavy, premeditated tramp of his new orderly, 
 who was conscious of the dignity of boots and 
 lifted them with pain like an honourable burden. 
 Merivale called the man to him and told him 
 to take his meal at once and go to sleep, 
 and pitch tents in the morning. Then as an 
 afterthought he asked him if there were any 
 news. 
 
 "The plague is at Mograon. Many have 
 died, and there is great fear. The people all 
 went out before midnight yesterday." 
 
 "Is it far?" 
 
 "Perhaps eighteen miles." 
 
110 SIRI RAM— REVOHJTIONIST 
 
 "You need not unload the carts. We go 
 there to-morrow." 
 
 A chaprassi arrived as he spoke, drag- 
 ging his feet wearily. Wishing to be of 
 some account, he supplemented the orderly's 
 tale. 
 
 "Ah, Sahib, and they have left one woman 
 behind." 
 
 "They have, have they? Then we go 
 to-night." 
 
 Merivale sat up on his charpoy and thought 
 of means. Both his ponies were dead beat, and 
 one had not come in from the last stage. He 
 sent to the headman for camels, and in a few 
 minutes he was swinging through the night 
 again. The hair and saddle of the brute were 
 hotter than his bed, and when once he was 
 mounted the sleep he had sought so long came 
 uninvited, and he found it hard to throw off 
 his drowsiness. A fall to earth might mean a 
 broken limb, so he hung on and began to think 
 he was swimming through a hot sea in which 
 sleep was death, and port the scene of more toil, 
 with sleep perhaps afterwards. Every time the 
 camel lurched forward he breasted a wave, and 
 in this mood his spirit became numb, and he 
 ceased to care for anything, feeling like a bit 
 of flotsam, cast here and there by the waves as 
 he watched the strange veering pilot neck of 
 the camel, so dainty and so gross and so 
 
THE VILLAGE 111 
 
 eternally indifferent, swaying between him and 
 the last star of Scorpio. 
 
 After five or six hours of this travail the 
 leading camel pulled up and swerved round 
 alongside of him, and the driver waved his 
 whip at a clump of trees on the right and 
 called out in his profoundly melancholy voice, 
 "Mograon." 
 
 There was a small plank over a nullah, by 
 crossing which Merivale would save half a mile. 
 He sent the camels round and took the footpath, 
 and in a few minutes found himself alone in 
 the deserted village. The sky was now clear, 
 and, in the intense moonlight, the shadows of 
 the posts and eaves and the thin kikar leaves lay 
 etched in the white street wth pin-point clear- 
 ness. The doors of all the houses were chained 
 and barred. The place was abandoned. There 
 was no sound save the tread of the retreating 
 camels beyond the nullah, and not a stir save 
 where a furtive pariah slunk by with its shadow 
 double. The very dogs, affected by the ghostly 
 silence of the place, would not bark. 
 
 Merivale recognised the house in which the 
 old Jat had given him milk and spoken of his 
 firstborn, the morose Gandeshwar student who 
 brooded in his holidays — for choice on the 
 nature of God and of necessity upon the 
 coquettes of Pr^cy and the Graces of Origny 
 Sainte-Benoite. It was a favourite passage he 
 
112 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 had come upon in Siri Ram's book so unex- 
 pectedly discovered in that mud world, and the 
 picture rose again in his mind as he sat down 
 on the threshold for very weariness, and won- 
 dered how he was going to find the woman they 
 had left behind, and whether she would be alive 
 or dead. 
 
 His head kept falling sideways against the 
 doorpost as sleep captured him, and he almost 
 forgot his errand, dreaming all the while of 
 the girl on the tree stump so fresh and clean 
 and cool and far away, waving her hand to the 
 Arethusa and Cigarette. He saw the willows 
 dripping over the stream and heard the church 
 bells of Pont. Then, falling forwards on to the 
 step, he thrust a hand forward to save himself, 
 and clutched something cold and dead. It was 
 a plague rat. He left the infested corner and 
 wandered down the alley looking for an open 
 door or some sign of life. 
 
 Under a neem tree in the next street he came 
 upon a huddled figure crouching over a drain. 
 It was an old woman, who turned an emaciated 
 face to him in the moonlight. She had been 
 sobbing tearlessly. Merivale awoke her from 
 her sad dreams. 
 
 " Why, Mother ! What is the niatter ? Why 
 do you stay here alone ? " 
 
 ** Why should I go ? I shall not find my sons 
 there." 
 
THE VILLAGE 113 
 
 "When did you last eat anything?" 
 "It may have been the day before yesterday." 
 "You should come now. Can you walk? 
 We will look after you in the camp to-morrow." 
 "They said * Come,' but I would not. What 
 should I gain there?" 
 
 "It is better to live than to starve." 
 "If it is fated that I am to die, I shall die like 
 the others." 
 
 Merivale tried to explain that there was no 
 need to die, but she was unconvinced, and his 
 argument sounded vain to himself. The wisdom 
 learnt of suffering upsets all values. She knew 
 her own plight best, and the saving of the poor 
 old thing could only be perfunctory. He asked 
 her about her sons. Two had died in one night. 
 He learnt that there was no one else left in the 
 village save the small daughter of Mool Chand 
 in the next mohalla. But it was probable that 
 she too was dead. 
 
 He left the old woman with words of sympathy 
 and the promise to return — vain utterances, he 
 knew, in the face of such sorrow — and he made 
 his way back to the Jat's house near which he 
 had slept. He found the door of the haveli 
 locked, and wrenched the rivet open with the 
 broken yoke of a plough. The inner door was 
 ajar, and as he entered he heard the girl's voice 
 calling for her mother, and thanked God he 
 was not too late. He struck a match and found 
 I 
 
114 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 a liny ciay lamp in an alcove of the wall — a 
 wick floating in oil — and he lighted it. Shiv 
 Dai lay still, her large black eyes open and 
 staring. She looked at him without fear or 
 wonder, too exhausted for either. She called 
 for her mother again, feebly looking at the door, 
 and mumbled of her thirst. Did she know her 
 parents had abandoned her? He took the 
 empty bowl by her side and filled it from the 
 chatti in the haveli, and she drank from his 
 hand, defiled as the vessel was by his touch. 
 He felt her wrist. The fever had left her. Then 
 he unloosened the turban by which she was 
 bound to the bed. Mool Chand had not thought 
 of untying it before he left, though he had been 
 careful to lock the door. "I am going to take 
 you to your mother," he said. But it is doubtful 
 if Shiv Dai heard or understood. He lifted her 
 wasted little body in his arms, and carried 
 her into the street and out of the village. He 
 hoped to see the camp fires of the plague 
 fugitives from the embankment above the 
 nullah. 
 
 Merivale ran into a clerkly youth on the plank 
 across the nullah. He was astonished to see a 
 brown cap and cropped hair at that hour and 
 place. 
 
 To his salaam *' Who are you ? " the lad 
 answered in English — 
 
 "I am the son of an agriculturist of this 
 
THE VILLAGE 115 
 
 village. I come now from Gandeshwar 
 College." 
 
 "Who is your father?" 
 
 " He is cultivator." 
 
 "It is you who read Stevenson, The Inland 
 Voyage, isn't it? You are Mool Chand's 
 son ? " 
 
 "Ye — es, no doubt after all." 
 
 "Then this is your sister. She is recovering 
 from plague. They left her behind in the 
 village." 
 
 "Certainly that is very ba-ad. It is the duty 
 of every one " 
 
 Siri Ram was answering the indignation in 
 the Englishman's voice, but Merivale cut him 
 short. 
 
 "Take her," he said, holding out the tiny 
 frail bundle, "while I go and find out the 
 camp." 
 
 Siri Ram hesitated. "Sir, if you would put 
 her on the ground," he said, "it would be more 
 sateesfactory." 
 
 "Afraid of infection! Well, some one will 
 have to look after her till we fix up a hospital 
 camp. Stay with her, anyhow, until I come 
 back." 
 
 Merivale laid her gently on the earth. Siri 
 Ram said he would stay. He watched the 
 retreating form of the civilian with inward 
 bitterness. 
 
116 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Here was a man risking his life and forfeiting 
 his sleep to save an Indian girl abandoned by 
 her own people, and he was pleasant in his 
 speech and there was no pride in him. Siri 
 Ram did not put the whole case to himself like 
 this, for he hated the Englishman and felt 
 ashamed and uncomfortable in his presence. 
 
 It never occurred to him to analyse his sense 
 of uneasiness or to sift prejudice from fact; for 
 if he had he might have found in Merivale the 
 practical contradiction of his most cherished 
 grievances. And the man was the type of the 
 race. The only questions Siri Ram asked him- 
 self were : " Why is this hated foreigner here 
 at all ? How is he superior to the Aryans ? Is 
 it his white skin that gives him authority to 
 come to my village and send my people here 
 and there and meddle with their affairs, and 
 to carry my sister about in his arms as if she 
 were of no account ? ** 
 
 Also it was a bitter thought that his father, 
 Mool Chand, an ignorant who knew nothing 
 about Mill and Burke and John Morley and 
 advanced liberal thought, would greet the 
 feringhi salaaming with both hands, with tears 
 in his eyes, as if the English were the divinely 
 appointed guardians of the Bharat Mata. 
 
 Siri Ram would not go with Merivale and 
 Shiv Dai to his father. Greatly wavering, he 
 was resolute in that. He feared the rage of 
 
THE VILLAGE 117 
 
 the rude cultivator. Somehow he had half 
 known that he would not see his parents again 
 when he left Gandeshwar led by an undefined 
 homing instinct to his village. He would have 
 liked to see the house and the cow and to speak 
 to his mother and to visit all his old haunts 
 again, but he could not explain his new life to 
 anybody. They would be very angry, and they 
 would not understand. 
 
 He made up his mind to go away and write 
 to them, but first he must learn what had 
 happened to his father and mother. The 
 dreadful thought came to him that he might 
 have to stay and perform their funeral rites. 
 
 Dawn broke at last, and Siri Ram could hear 
 the distant camp of the villagers wakening. A 
 speck of dust advanced from the direction in 
 which Merivale had disappeared. Soon it dis- 
 closed a boy driving a donkey with baskets on 
 its back to collect the humble offerings of the 
 cow for the domestic hearth. Siri Ram learnt 
 from the urchin that his mother had been 
 stricken, but had recovered, and that Mool 
 Chand was well. So there was no need to stay. 
 He turned to Shiv Dai, but could not make her 
 understand anything. She was awake, but half 
 crazy, it seemed. He reasoned with himself that 
 the English pig would soon come back, and that 
 no harm could come to her now in the daylight. 
 Then he turned wearily on his tracks to 
 
118 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Gandeshwar, hungry and sad at heart in spite 
 of his mission. 
 
 In a few days Mool Chand received a letter 
 from his son in Urdu, and he summoned the 
 village writer to read it. 
 
 "The Bharat Mata calls, so it behoves me 
 not to stay at home any more. Is this the time 
 to stay at College? Now do I leave College, 
 but not my learning. I leave my home and 
 relatives, and perhaps I do this for ever. I 
 shall again return to Gandeshwar, but not to 
 my home in this life if I cannot finish my work. 
 I am going alone, and must go alone if no one 
 follows hearing me. Many will say many 
 things. Parents and sister will weep, but it 
 will not do if I look to them any more. What 
 do I fear, and where is my sorrow, when I am 
 going into the lap of her who is the mother of 
 three hundred millions of men." 
 
 The three conspirators had put their heads 
 together over it. They had drunk deep of the 
 well of Bengal. The Swami did not sow seed 
 in waste ground. And he knew it was not in 
 vain that he watched the zigzag path to his cave 
 every day for the dejected face of Siri Ram. 
 
VII 
 
 Shiv Dai lived, and the old hag whom 
 Merivale found in the gutter was restored to 
 her folk to see another summer, but Chauncey 
 was sickening of the plague and at death's 
 door. 
 
 The two had taken war risks all the while. 
 The serum — then in its tentative stage, a dis- 
 puted prophylactic — did not arrive from Bombay 
 until three weeks after they had started their 
 campaign, and Chauncey's work was so exact- 
 ing he could not spare the day or two needed 
 to lie up after the inoculation. There had 
 always been some new outbreak to grapple with, 
 and as soon as he had got the pest under in 
 one village and organised the camps he was off 
 to another. 
 
 Merivale got the news in Mograon, and he 
 arrived just in time. Chauncey had come in 
 from the segregation camp looking well, the 
 hospital assistant told him, but he felt cold in 
 his joints. Soon he was very sick and the ague 
 shook him. He lay on his bed holding his 
 forehead, and for hours lie would not utter a 
 119 
 
( 
 
 120 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 word except now and then to ask for Merivale 
 with laboured and hesitating speech, breathing 
 painfully. Merivale, when he came, was not 
 sure that Chauncey recognised him. He tried 
 to say something, but stopped in the middle 
 of his sentence with a blank look, and turned 
 over on his side. He threw off his sheet and 
 kept his arm away from the gland in his armpit, 
 and when Merivale brought him water he 
 poured some of it over his body. 
 
 Merivale sat by his side all night trying to 
 soothe his restlessness, his own wits sunk in 
 exhaustion. From time to time Chauncey 
 muttered incoherently. His pain was pitiful. 
 One could see the straining of his heart. At 
 the end he beckoned to Merivale to lean over 
 him, and gas[>ed out as if each syllable were 
 an intolerable strain — 
 
 "Get inoculated, old man. This is hell." 
 
 Merivale pressed his hand. "Don't talk," he 
 said, "if it hurts," and he let a tear fall on his 
 burning wrist. Chauncey clutched his friend's 
 palm as if he had spoken. 
 
 " Thanks!" he said. And Merivale knew jt^ 
 was his farewell. Soon a heavy drowsiness fell 
 on him which deepened into a coma, from which 
 he never woke. 
 
 Merivale was tired out. He had kept himself 
 going somehow through those long nights, but 
 
THE VILLAGE 121 
 
 now exhaustion acted on him like an opiate, 
 easing his distress. The whole thing seemed 
 like some vague, remote nightmare. Only 
 Chauncey had gone, and they were building a 
 stone over his grave at Mehlgahla. 
 
 The saddest part of it was that he was almost 
 the last to die — one of those "dropping cases," 
 as the doctors call them, which come in the 
 dog days at the end of the visitation when the 
 sun seems to burn the virus out once for all. 
 
 Merivale had now only to stay and wind up. 
 It was all routine office work, disbanding the 
 camps, paying the bunniahs, allotting com- 
 pensation. Things went very smoothly in the 
 villages. Chauncey and Merivale had laughed 
 over the bilious comments of the vernacular 
 Press and their echoes in Parliament, but now 
 Chauncey was dead they jarred on his friend. 
 
 He had been "the fatted doctor," and Merivale 
 "the fat-salaried bureaucrat," and between them 
 they had swallowed up half the collection which 
 might have fed the poor. "Every Indian 
 knows," shrieked the Sahaik, "that the plague 
 is a pest brought by the English, and is due 
 to the poverty of the people and their physical 
 weakness, caused by the miserable condition to 
 which they have been reduced." 
 
 "The plague is a disease which thrives 
 specially amidst poverty," cries our philo- 
 sophical Radical in the House, "and its fresh 
 
122 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 outbreak in India on a large scale is in itself 
 a warning ag^ainst optimism, plague being now 
 endemic under our rule." Whence he argues 
 with glum satisfaction that all is not so well 
 with our great Eastern Dependency as some 
 would have us believe. 
 
 "How do the bureaucrats explain the pest?" 
 shrilled the KoeL "They lay it to the door of 
 the poor harmless rat, just as they attribute 
 malaria, which was never so rife as under their 
 rule, to the innocent mosquito." Whence the 
 unphilosophic revolutionist goes on to hint what 
 was being openly proclaimed by itinerant "mis- 
 sionaries" in the villages, that the plague 
 patients were being poisoned in the hospitals, 
 and Government was making deliberate attempts 
 to spread the disease. 
 
 "Only a question of degree," Merivale 
 observed. "The spirit is the same. Each goes 
 as far as he dare. Listen to this — 
 
 "* The cunning English are preparing a fluid 
 which they pretend to be charmed, and this is 
 to be squirted into the poor through a hole 
 made in the arm. Thousands of gallons of this 
 mixture, which contains all kinds of pollution 
 destructive to caste, are being distributed among 
 the villages, and lakhs of rupees are going into 
 the pockets of English shopkeepers and 
 chemists. In the same way lakhs* worth of 
 
THE VILLAGE 128 
 
 quinine is being sold to poor Indians that 
 English manufacturers may fatten.*" 
 
 It was The Koel that described how a body 
 of pampered bureaucrats sat in the clouds on 
 the heights of Simla under the name of a Com- 
 mission, drinking wine and brandy, and dancing 
 with half-clothed women, and how in the 
 interests of debauchery they devised means to 
 develop the trade in drugs and to deceive the 
 poor. The tax gatherers were busy, for one 
 night's orgy would impoverish a village for 
 a year. 
 
 Chauncey had sent the cutting to Merivale 
 with a picture of Higgins, his precise, Presby- 
 terian, bald-headed P.M.O., waving an empty 
 brandy bottle at his ddcolletee vis-a-vis. The 
 blameless, vacant head of old Fooks in the 
 Secretariat protruded from under a neighbour- 
 ing chair where he lay supine. 
 
 But Merivale could not wax merry over these 
 things any more. When the mail came in he 
 was surprised to find that there was quite a 
 pother at Home about Chauncey and himself, 
 and that Mehlgahla had become a household 
 word. He had never realised the bitterness, and 
 meanness, and ignorance of the Little England 
 group in the House before. The same agitators 
 who had screamed in the Punjab Press had 
 written in more moderate terms to Radical 
 
124 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Members of Parliament who were known to 
 be sympathetic. 
 
 Dr. Byleman asked the Under Secretary of 
 State whether it was true that Mr. Merivale, a 
 Punjab civilian, and Captain Chauncey of the 
 Indian M< (li( il Service had fon ibly entered the 
 houses of high-caste villagers during the plague 
 operations and violated the privacy of the 
 zenana; and whether such profanation of the 
 Indian reverence for home and women would 
 be tolerated by the Government. 
 
 The Under Secretary of State said that full 
 inquiries were being made into the case. He 
 understood that purdah was not observed as a 
 rule in Jat villages. 
 
 Dr. Byleman rose a second time in the same 
 week and asked whether the charges had been 
 substantiated, and if so, whether under the 
 circumstances the two officers would be retained 
 in the Service. 
 
 The case cropped up in one way or another 
 once or twice a week. The home Radical papers 
 made capital out of it with their headlines of 
 "outrage" and "violence" and the "high- 
 handed insolence of Anglo-Indian officialdom." 
 And every little rag in Bengal and Poona and 
 Madras echoed the cry, and every school-boy 
 who read believed. For how could the charges 
 be false if they were brought by the English 
 against their own people? Dr. Byleman had 
 
THE VILLAGE 125 
 
 reason for elation. He had knocked more nails 
 into the coffin of our prestige than anybody 
 could count. 
 
 Perhaps the only district in which the charges 
 did no harm was in Mehlgahla itself and in the 
 villages round. Political "missionaries" were 
 sent there, but they did no good. Mool Chand 
 only looked perplexed when it was explained 
 to him that his house had been forcibly entered 
 and the privacy of his zenana outraged. 
 
 "But the Sahib saved my little daughter," he 
 said. The truth of it w^> the people were 
 grateful. They were too stupid to understand 
 their own wrongs. Merivale cannot go through 
 that country now without a pageant, and 
 Chauncey's grave is honoured like a shrine. 
 They buried him on a mound outside Mehl- 
 gahla, as he had wished, and built an obelisk 
 over his tomb, and the people scatter marigolds 
 at the foot as they pass. It was Innes, the 
 Commissioner of the District, who said, "He is 
 doing good work even in his grave." Thou- 
 sands died, but the villagers did not doubt that 
 Merivale and Chauncey saved the Punjab from 
 a far greater scourge. 
 
 Government, however, took the hint from the 
 agitators. Nowadays methods are changed. 
 There is no searching of houses or general dis- 
 infection or forced evacuation. Inoculation and 
 health camps are the rule. Persuasion is dis- 
 
126 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 couraged, and the plague rages with Hitle check. 
 In the Punjab the villagers have learnt to 
 evacuate for themselves. And perhaps the new 
 system is as well. It would be impossible for 
 any one to do what Merivale and Chauncey did 
 without their tact and sympathy and knowledge 
 of the people. The breed that yap at West- 
 minster — to use Hobbs* phrase — would make 
 the most unholy mess of it. 
 
 The rains had broken, and a stray Memsahib 
 or two had come down from the Hills when 
 Merivale found himself again in the Club. It 
 was more by luck than any sparing of himself 
 that he survived, presumably to increase "the 
 pampered annuitants of Cheltenham and White- 
 hall." He had not spoken to an Englishman 
 since Chauncey died, and he hungered for his 
 kind. The first person he saw was the equine- 
 faced lady, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy's partner, in 
 her huge black picture hat. The mould of the 
 superstructure was the same ; only roses had dis- 
 placed sweet-peas. Merivale made a dive down 
 a side passage to escape her, and almost ran into 
 the Chaplain's wife. 
 
 " Why, it is Mr. Merivale I *' she gasped ; 
 "where have you been all these months? 
 Famine, wasn't it ? '* 
 
 Merivale explained that it was plague. 
 
 " But how romant-ic ! Is it near here ? And 
 have they plague carts and red crosses on the 
 
THE VILLAGE 127 
 
 doors? I suppose it is all dirt; clean people 
 don't get it, do they?" 
 
 "We lost Captain Chauncey in the LM.S." 
 
 " But oh, how dreadful ! He had to go near 
 them, of course, hadn't he?" 
 
 Merivale was grateful to the Providence which 
 made the lady answer her own questions. 
 
 "And what is Government going to do?" 
 she went on. "Teach them to be clean, I 
 suppose. Prevention is so much better than^ 
 cure, isn't it?" 
 
 But Merivale couldn't wait to bandy eternal 
 truths with the padre's wife. Besides, he was 
 afraid she would ask him to play Badminton, 
 and he was a pitiful prevaricator. 
 
 "I've got to go and write a report on it," he 
 said, and made a gesture of escape as if the pen 
 and ink lay ready for him on the table, and the 
 chaprassie waited at the door. "Shall I send 
 you a copy of the Blue book?" he called back, 
 when he had a safe start. 
 
 "Oh, thank you, that would be so ni-ice." 
 
 The Chaplain's wife regarded his retreating 
 back sadly. Badminton had been in her mind. 
 She reflected that Mr. Merivale was not quite 
 at his ease in ladies' society. "It's a pity," 
 she thought, "because he is such a nice man. 
 It must be because he is so much in the 
 jungle." And she began to devise plots for 
 his socialisation of which he was happily 
 unaware. 
 
128 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 A thirst for cold drinks and human com- 
 panionship drove him along the passage to the 
 men's Bridge room. He saw Skene and Hobbs 
 through the glass door playing at the familiar 
 corner table. And there were several strange 
 faces. A new regiment had come in since he 
 left. He pushed the door open slowly with that 
 little catch of joy and excitement with which 
 one surprises old friends, and he stood on the 
 mat waiting for one of them to look up. 
 
 "Merivale!" 
 
 "Hullo, Skene! Hullo, Colonel!" 
 
 "Killed the plague?" 
 
 "Scotched it, I hope." 
 
 "Had much dik?" 
 
 "Bit of a swat. Good chaps, though, these 
 Jats. Behaved well." 
 
 "Come and cut in. You're dining with me 
 to-night. Boy 1 Four whiskies and sodas, and 
 
 ^^m^^^i^^Hefivale restored to the lap of 
 civilisation with little comment, but much 
 inward relish. Skene had heard something of 
 his plague adventures from Innes, but he knew 
 it would be difficult to make him talk. Little 
 by little, perhaps, by leading questions, he 
 might piece out a story. 
 
 "Did you see they had been baiting you in 
 the House ? " he asked, when the rubber was 
 finished. 
 
THE VILLAGE 129 
 
 "Dr. Byleman, yes." 
 
 "It's a compliment to be yapped at by that 
 rabble," Hobbs observed. 
 
 Skene thought of the pariahs at the tail of 
 his bulldog in the bazaar. But metaphor was 
 not in his line. 
 
 "How many questions has he asked?" 
 
 "Five, I think. It won't do me any harm. 
 He leaves Chauncey out now." 
 
 "Wonderful delicacy! " 
 
 "It ought to be a good advertisement if the 
 sun-dried bureaucrat has a sense of humour." 
 
 "Did you see the question in yesterday's 
 Pioneer? Dr. Byleman asked the Under 
 Secretary of State if the food in Alipur gaol 
 was strictly vegetarian, or whether it was true 
 that the Brahmin anarchist under trial for the 
 Hughli bomb outrage had been made to eat 
 rice cooked in fat." 
 
 "Put up to it by a native rag. If a school- 
 boy in the bazaar writes Byleman an anonymous 
 letter, he'll get up on his hind legs about it in 
 the House. And the sedition-mongers know 
 it." 
 
 "Why don't they snub them?" 
 
 "Can't afford it. Means votes." 
 
 "It is a mistake to hang these anarchists," 
 Hobbs interrupted. "They like it. A martyr's 
 crown, and all that. A life sentence is the 
 thing. Solitary confinement. And take 'em 
 
130 SIR! RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 out once a month on the anniversary and give 
 *em a dozen with the cat. Just a little reminder.'* 
 
 Merivale laughed. It was jolly to hear the 
 old fellow again. But Hobbs* partner, a very 
 young subaltern, ventured — 
 
 "But, sir, wouldn't that be a bit mediaeval ? " 
 
 Hobbs glared at him. 
 
 ** Mediaeval ? Common sense I Humanity I 
 Take the glory out of them. Ridicule is 
 the only thing that kills. You'd soon stop 
 it." 
 
 "What has happened to Narasimha Swami ? ** 
 Merivale asked. 
 
 "Disappeared. 'Spirited away,* as the 
 Radical papers say of the deportees. No one 
 has seen him since he came here. He gave the 
 police the slip." 
 
 " I believe they've got enough against him for 
 the Andamans." 
 
 "The High Court would quash it," Hobbs 
 said. 
 
 " He got at your students, didn't he, Skene? '* 
 
 Skene nodded. "One or two, but they*ve 
 gone.** 
 
 "By the way,** Merivale said, "I ran against 
 one of your hopefuls in his village. An odd 
 youth not particularly endowed with the family 
 affections, I should say. He read Stevenson.'* 
 
 "Where was it?" 
 
 "Mograon." 
 
THE VILLAGE 181 
 
 "That would be Siri Ram. What has hap. 
 pened to him ? " 
 
 "Gone clean off like our friend Narasimha. 
 His father is an old Jat farmer, a nice old 
 fellow. He counted on the youth to support 
 the whole family in a year, and he is naturally 
 cut up." 
 
 "I had to expel him, you know. He was one 
 of Narasimha Swami's victims. He wouldn't 
 come to me for a job." 
 
 "Here's Dean, he can probably tell you where 
 Siri Ram is." 
 
 Merivale greeted the policeman with laconic 
 warmth. 
 
 " Have you got Siri Ram on your register ? " 
 Skene asked. 
 "Yes, he is in the city somewhere now." 
 "Better keep an eye on him," Hobbs said. 
 "He'll be pinking one of us soon." 
 
 "He has never seen a firearm," said Skene. 
 "He couldn't hit a tree." 
 
 "It is easy enough to jab a revolver into any 
 one in a crowd and pull the trigger, isn't it, 
 Dean ? " 
 
 Dean laughed. He would have been dead if 
 a certain revolver had not jammed. 
 
 "I always tell you, Skene," Hobbs went on. 
 "It's all you College fellows. You turn out 
 anarchists as quick as sausages in Chicago. 
 They ought to stop education. Shut up all the 
 
 K 2 
 
182 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 schools and use the savings to police the district 
 where the trouble is. By Gad, I wish I were 
 Viceroy ** 
 
 Skene's explosive rumble of a laugh startled 
 every one in the room. 
 
 "Come along and dine," he said. **I am jolly 
 glad you are not." 
 
PART III 
 THE CAVE 
 
 "I asked a wild yogi 
 With dust in his hair 
 As thin as a bogey 
 And cross as a bear, 
 But this funny old fogey 
 Did nothing but stare. 
 If you meet a wild yogi, 
 Dear children, beware." 
 
 Santa Claus^ Geography. 
 
I 
 
 The goatherds of Zojpal would come and 
 peep at Narasimha. Great was his reputation 
 for occult power. He could project himself 
 across the valley, they said, render himself in- 
 visible or dual, pass through a chink in the 
 wall, and endure a month without food. The 
 bowls of milk, the handfuls of grain, the little 
 oundles of firewood they placed in front of the 
 cave were often found untouched in the morning. 
 
 He would sit for hours, his eyes fixed on 
 two pebbles at his feet, restraining his breath 
 until the material world slipped away from him 
 and his spirit floated in ether, looking down 
 indifferently upon his shrunken body and his 
 bowl and his staff and the grey sheep beside 
 the stream as passing phenomena detached for 
 the moment as the atoms cohere in the dance of 
 matter and are reflected in the glass of illusion. 
 Soon nothing objective would remain, and he 
 would be drawn to the centre of light, conscious 
 only of the rush and beat of wings as he was 
 swept along with the eternal energy which 
 informs all life. 
 
 Power and influence came out of these trances. 
 >35 
 
136 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 The Swami owed much of his magnetism to 
 them and the extraordinary hold he had upon 
 the affections and imagination of his country- 
 men. Long ago before he visited Europe he 
 had practised Yoga at Ujjain. Then he had 
 studied the Vedanta philosophy nine years at 
 Benares. Thus he became a kind of superman 
 in his own country. Images of him carved in 
 wood and stone and cast in metal were sold in 
 the idol shops of Kashi, where he had a great 
 name for piety and transcendental power. 
 
 When he went to Europe the extreme forms 
 of yoga asceticism which he had practised at 
 Ujjain had left their print on his character and 
 his face. He had a great deal of what is called 
 in the jargon of the s^nce psychic force. He 
 was of the stuff that founds sects among im- 
 pressionable people, and in any other country 
 than England he would have had disciples to 
 apotheosise him. As it was, he became some- 
 thing of a lion. He addressed societies and 
 sipped tea in fashionable boudoirs; romantic 
 hostesses felt that he brought more of the 
 mystery and repose of the East into their draw- 
 ing-rooms than a shelf-ful of bronze Buddhas, 
 and more than one emotional woman, English 
 and Russian and American, embarrassed him 
 with chelaship. A spirtualistic lady in Notting 
 Hill literally knelt at his feet and offered herself 
 to him wholly. 
 
THE CAVE 187 
 
 At Cambridge he lectured on Sanskrit and 
 Indian philosophy. He spent two years on the 
 Continent, and learnt to speak French and 
 German and Russian and Italian fluently. He 
 was six months at Gottingen. Then he went 
 to the States and preached Vedantism. He was 
 a figure in the West, and he found himself in 
 danger of becoming the centre of a coterie of 
 faddists, seekers after a new thing, women and 
 degenerates, who would make him their Guru 
 and call themselves Hindus. Esoteric was a 
 word they were fond of using, though they 
 would not have wasted an hour on the subtlest 
 of philosophers if it had suddenly been made 
 the State religion, or if they had been born 
 under its orthodox sway. The Swami measured 
 them and went his way. 
 
 In the end he took more from the West than 
 he gave it. He never lost his transcendentalism, 
 but his spirit became tempered like a sword, 
 his ideals were crystallised. He remembered 
 that the Vedas and all that they stood for were 
 embodied in his own people. Gradually his 
 flame-like energy became narrowed and concen- 
 trated into a cause. Nationalism became a 
 religion with him. 
 
 The Swami was proud of his race and the 
 stock to whom the eternal verities had been 
 revealed, and in whose heart alone truth could 
 germinate. When Narasimha's history became 
 
138 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 known the Englishmen who had met him in the 
 West could not associate the dreamer and mystic 
 with the revolutionist who pulled the strings 
 of the Bharat Red Flag Society. But the 
 Swami was an anarchist because he believed 
 that his people could not become regenerate until 
 they were free, a much more dangerous doctrine 
 than that they could not be free until they 
 became regenerate. He had no scruples. He 
 would sacrifice a thousand Siri Rams and foster 
 a nursery of young murderers. And no service 
 rendered to his people could lessen his hate of 
 the English. The most disinterested reformers 
 must go with the others; they were, in fact, 
 more dangerous because they stemmed the tide, 
 and he would devote them and the Hobbses, the 
 " mart iai-law-and-no-damned-nonsense- wallahs," 
 indifferently to the bomb. His father, the 
 Lingayat, would not have hesitated between a 
 black and white goat at the altar, and Nara- 
 simha had a good deal of the old Lingayat in 
 him yet; only the crude religious fanaticism of 
 the sect had been diverted into politics. Dean 
 was right. The man had all the instincts of a 
 wolf. "To sacrifice a white goat to Kali," 
 that is, to dedicate an Englishman to 
 the altar of independence, the ironical catch- 
 word of young Bengal, had emanated from 
 him. 
 
 He had despised the English even before the 
 
THE CAVE 189 
 
 demon of anarchy had entered into his head. 
 He hated their materialism and insensibility. 
 Save for a scholar or two whom he respected, 
 his associates had been mostly shallow dabblers 
 in the occult, key-hole peepers, without power 
 of abnegation or self-forgetfulness. The yogi 
 would sweep aside the curtain while they 
 fumbled with the woof, seeking an interstice in 
 the hope that the light behind might steal 
 through somehow upon their blind eyes. The 
 best of England, the true tempered steel of the 
 country, he did not meet and could never have 
 understood. And Demos was an unclean beast 
 he could not touch, projected obliquely across 
 his vision like the ugly figures on the frieze of 
 a temple wall that one passes by. The monster 
 was symbolised for him sometimes in his 
 memory by a country bumpkin in cap and 
 gown, who had brushed up rudely against him 
 in the Petty Cury at Cambridge and called him 
 "a damned nigger." 
 
 He had more in common with the Gaelic 
 American of the Western States. 
 
 On his return to India Narasimha was irre- 
 sistible. He had studied man in two hemi- 
 spheres, and to the open appeal of mystic and 
 reformer was added the hidden one of the revo- 
 lutionary. He was the superman who alone 
 could unite and direct the dissipated energies 
 of the national spirit. He captured the imagina- 
 
140 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 tion of the people. He preached to young 
 Bengal, and he based his message on the 
 teachings of Krishna to Arjun in the Bhagavad 
 Gita. It was an insidious appeal, this doctrine 
 of yoga by action and death in the discharge of 
 one's own dharma, rousing passion by the creed 
 which preaches freedom from passion and 
 denounces anger and fear and all manner of 
 attachment, and giving secret murder the 
 sanction of divine law. 
 
 From Bengal Narasimha carried the message 
 north, preaching to a hardier and more dogged, 
 if less subtle and impressionable, stock. Among 
 the young men who were being put into the 
 mould was Siri Ram. The Swami knew that 
 he would come. 
 
 Sometimes when he was exhausted by yoga 
 Narasimha would walk knee-deep through 
 meadows of fritillary and iris and yellow spurge 
 to the frozen stream where the striped lizards 
 flicked in and out of the crevice between the 
 rock and the snow. He would look down on 
 the marg speckled with grey stones and sheep 
 while the eagles swept under him, swerving from 
 his feet by the turn of a point of a feather. Or 
 he would go down the valley to the last outpost 
 of the silver birches which hung over the Zojpat 
 stream. Here he would sit in a sunny belt of 
 thyme which fringed the shadow of a lonely 
 tree like a fairy ring, or in a warm, close-cropped 
 
THE CAVE 141 
 
 hollow bright with forget-me-not and marjoram 
 and meadow rue and turreted with the yellow 
 spires of the mullein. Fritillaries and tortoise- 
 shells lighted on his bowl; the murmur of bees 
 soothed him into a trance. The silence and the 
 space carried his mind far away until he was 
 without attachment, at rest in hrahm, and all 
 the colour and life that danced and quivered 
 before his eyes became a vague, illusory, opal- 
 escent gleam cast upon the plane his spirit 
 traversed. 
 
 Narasimha's flight to Zojpal had fulfilled the 
 religious bent of his mind. He was life-weary ; 
 he needed peace. For the last few years politics 
 had been the most Sisyphean task. And he had 
 not practised yoga since Ujjain. Once more 
 he sat on the antelope skin, head erect, immov- 
 able, his gaze fixed steadily on his feet, con- 
 trolling the incoming and outgoing breath, free 
 of attachment, closing the passage to each sense. 
 When the herdsmen brought him his bowl in 
 the evening he would be performing the 
 pranayam, and he would look at them without 
 speech, or rather over and through them, and 
 they would depart in awe. 
 
 As darkness gathered he climbed the 
 mountain-side to perform another exercise, an 
 unspiritual one — to prepare his physical escape. 
 Every night he dug with the axe-head of his 
 staff at the foot of a great rock. The herdsmen 
 
142 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 would have been frightened if they had seen the 
 sprite-like little man delving in the moonlight 
 as if he had found a passage to the unseen. 
 ^The Swami was loosening a pinnacle of the cliff 
 which held back a mass of tumbled shale, and 
 if dislodged would precipitate an avalanche 
 upon the cave. 
 
II 
 
 SiRi Ram did not go to Skene for help and 
 advice when he returned from Mograon. He 
 had dreams of personal as well as national inde- 
 pendence. He did not want an appointment. 
 He thought that if he gave himself up to the 
 cause the Society might help him. It was not 
 likely to be for long. Government offered board 
 and a roof for conspirators. It might be 
 Amritsar gaol ; it might be the Andamans ; he 
 rather hoped that he would become a political 
 deportee. There would be pride and glory in 
 that as well as comfort. He could have forgiven 
 the Imperial Government their "barbarous 
 unconstitutionalism " if this particular kind of 
 martyrdom had fallen on himself. He brooded 
 much on the future, but the gallows always 
 loomed at the end of these vistas. 
 
 He lingered in the city several days, and the 
 students visited him surreptitiously. He and 
 Banarsi Das and Lachmi Chand got themselves 
 photographed, singly and in a group, and he 
 enjoyed the first taste of hero-worship. He was 
 a conspirator and capable of hurt. That inert 
 143 
 
144 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Leviathan, the Government, would soon receive 
 a prick from him. He would have been flattered 
 if he had known that the C.LD. had a copy of 
 his photograph. But his thoughts always 
 returned to the Swami, who had disappeared so 
 mysteriously and completely after his lectures 
 at Gandeshwar. If he could find him he felt 
 certain of being put on the right track. 
 
 Every morning he climbed the rickety stairs 
 to the chamber of Ramji Das, the secretary of 
 the Achar Sadhani or the "Students* Improve- 
 ment Club," as the local branch of the Bharat 
 Red Flag Society was named. Ramji Das, the 
 bunniah, lived in a kind of wooden dolPs house 
 above a druggist's shop in the bazaar. The 
 ends of the iron girders protruded into the 
 street, giving the flimsy second storey of wood 
 built upon brick a much more substantial basis 
 than it appeared to need. The balcony was 
 painted in bright blue and yellow and green 
 stripes, and roofed with strips of kerosene oil 
 tins. The interior of the house was no more 
 beautiful than the outside, and the fat bunniah 
 who lurked within was a fitting complement to 
 the dwelling. 
 
 Ramji Das was always sitting in the same 
 corner. He would greet Siri Ram suavely, and 
 seemed to encourage his coming, but said 
 nothing directly helpful. They would talk 
 politics. Economic grievances were the 
 
THE CAVE 145 
 
 bunniah's forte, though he owed his great 
 riches to British rule. Under no other Govern- 
 ment could he have amassed wealth openly, nor 
 achieved the three chins and three paunches 
 which in his thrifty class always indicate 
 immense reserves. 
 
 His grandfather would have been afraid to be 
 so fat, lest he should become a too palpable 
 object for loot, official and otherwise. But 
 Ramji Das kept a bank openly, and sent his 
 son to a technical school, and owed his security 
 to the police and his growing business to 
 improved communications. 
 
 Yet he sat on his oily mat and oozed venom 
 and spleen. 
 
 "Do not use currency notes, Siri Ram." 
 
 "No, I will not use."' 
 
 "It is easy to make a piece of paper and sell 
 it for rupees fifty, or hundred, or thousand. 
 By this means they take money away from the 
 peoples of Hindustan. If they leave India we 
 have then nothing left in our hand but pieces 
 of paper." 
 
 "I would rather leave the mineral wealth 
 buried in the bowels of the mother," Siri Ram 
 remarked sententiously, "than have it dug out 
 by feringhis,^* 
 
 "You have the true political ideas. You read 
 the Kali Yuga?" 
 
 "Yes, I have written a letter to it." 
 
 L 
 
146 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "You see this morning the death of poor 
 Indians has risen from twenty-two to thirty- 
 four per thousand under British Government ? " 
 
 "Yes, I saw." 
 
 "Do not forget that when you go to the 
 villages. Also the poor have only one meal 
 since the Mlecchas are come here. Remember 
 that also. How does it sound? The ryots toil 
 through hard times by tightening up their 
 bellies." 
 
 Siri Ram looked at the folds of the bunniah*s 
 paunch. He wore no shirt ; he had ample breasts 
 like a woman. 
 
 "You will see I am qualified to spread ideas 
 of independence. Swami-ji called me to him. 
 He gave me books. I want to become political 
 missionary." 
 
 Siri Ram spoke almost pleadingly. He felt 
 sure that Ramji Das knew where the Swami 
 was hiding, but he could learn nothing from 
 him. He had a feeling that Narasimha had 
 discussed him with Ramji Das, and that he was 
 part of a reserve force to be used in an emerg- 
 ency. But surely his witness-bearing and 
 expulsion from the College had qualified him 
 for the cause. 
 
 One morning he noticed a difference in Ramji 
 Das* manner which made him more hopeful. 
 The bunniah admitted that he had heard from 
 the Swami. The police were searching for him; 
 
THE CAVE 147 
 
 there was evidence at last. An informer had 
 implicated him in a political dacoity in Bengal. 
 He was in a very safe place, hundreds of miles 
 beyond the frontier, living in a cave amongst 
 the ice and snow. But it was difficult to com- 
 municate with him. 
 
 The Society wanted a few young men who 
 could be trusted like the youths who had devoted 
 themselves in Bengal. 
 
 Siri Ram volunteered to go. 
 
 "You must be a very secret man. Can you 
 be confeedential ? " 
 
 Siri Ram could. 
 
 *' Have you any money ? " 
 
 Siri Ram had not. 
 
 "You have a father?" 
 
 "I have left him. He is pig-head, he will 
 do nothing." 
 
 Ramji Das considered his bulging calves. 
 "The Society is very poor," he said, "perhaps 
 a subscreeption among friends. Your ticket to 
 Rawalpindi. It will cost three rupees. After 
 that you will beg." 
 
 Siri Ram looked at him with inquiring 
 wonder. 
 
 "You will go as Sadhu," the bunniah ex- 
 plained. "You will accompany the pilgrims 
 on thorny path. Narasimha will meet you at 
 Amarnath. You understand? You must be 
 secret man. If you go in full blaze of public 
 
 L 2 
 
U8 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 gaze it would not be poleelical. And use your 
 cautions at Rawalpindi. Spies will be roaming 
 there." 
 
 Siri Ram was almost happy. 
 
 "You had better go to-night. The pilgrimage 
 is starting, and if you go separate you will 
 attract noteece. I will send quarter anna post- 
 card to Jaganath in Rawalpindi — 
 
 *'* Despatch homespun cloth, Sadhu-wear.* 
 He will understand. I do not waste money 
 on p>ostal tickets. Besides, the police open 
 letters." 
 
 There was a scarcely perceptible twitching of 
 the folds of the lower part of the bunniah's face, 
 which in other men might have been a smile. 
 It did not travel as far as his eye. 
 
 "You go to his shop in Sadar Bazaar. He 
 will make you Sadhu. He receives all our 
 young men." 
 
 "And my ticket?" Siri Ram asked, "who 
 will pay ? " 
 
 Very slowly the bunniah unfastened the knot 
 in his loin cloth and drew out three rupees and 
 handed them reluctantly to Siri Ram one by 
 one. Then he got up and waddled across the 
 room to a safe in the corner. It was the first 
 time Siri Ram had seen him on his legs. He 
 took out a small parcel sewn up in oiled cloth. 
 "You will take care of thees," he said, "it is 
 the Swami's dak. Eef you lose it, he and a 
 
THE CAVE 149 
 
 number of others will be hanged before we kick 
 bastard foreigners into sea." 
 
 Siri Ram clutched the packet reverently. 
 
 "Narasimha is living in cave," the bunniah 
 continued. "The pilgrims will pass under it 
 two days before they reach to Amarnath. Do 
 not leave the path or pay attention to it. Nara- 
 simha will come down. He will be walking 
 with the pilgrims. The name of the place 
 is " 
 
 Ramji Das searched among some papers on 
 the floor. '"It is at Zojpal,' " he read out 
 slowly in Urdu, " * below the goojar's track to 
 Wardwan, two hundred paces south of the 
 second bend in the path.' Narasimha is 
 preecise. 
 
 "Also if you hear that Narasimha has shaken 
 off the coil," the bunniah added as an after- 
 thought, "do not turn back. He may have 
 another eencarnation." 
 
 Again Siri Ram saw the tightening of the 
 folds of flesh as if they had been moved by 
 some involuntary twitching of a thread inside 
 which held cheeks and chins together. He was 
 shocked to hear the Swami spoken of so lightly. 
 "I do not understand," he said. 
 
 "It is nothing at all. A mere sop in the 
 pan, only do not return if you hear that Nara- 
 simha has breathed his latest. Also when you 
 leave the railway station do not go straight to 
 
150 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Jaganath*s. Go first to the Hindu Ashram. 
 You will find a brother there who will take you 
 to the shop after it is dark. I will send him 
 message in ciphers. Jaganath will give you the 
 incognito — when you leave the shop you will 
 be the Sadhu." 
 
 As Siri Ram was descending the steps into 
 the inner courtyard Ramji Das called him back. 
 
 "Keep cautions/* he said. "Remember 
 * Namaste * will open all the doors. I had for- 
 gotten," he added, "there is another young 
 man, a poleetical missionary like yourself. Very 
 clever. He was in this shop last week. You 
 will look out for this young man, Mohan Roy, 
 on the road. His bodical structure is very 
 small ; he has three golden nails in his front 
 teeth; and he is fond of living in the English 
 costume." 
 
 Siri Ram was exalted. He was a political 
 missionary at last. Ramji Das had styled him 
 so. The Swami had remembered and trusted 
 him and chosen him for this mission. He 
 gripped the little packet in his coat. 
 
Ill 
 
 When Siri Ram had left the shop of Jaga- 
 nath he had discarded the sacred thread, and 
 cut off the tuft of hair on his crown, and he 
 wore the rudraksha^ the necklace of beads, 
 emblem of Siva. 
 
 Siri Ram ate away the miles slowly and with 
 pain. His pilgrim muscles were of later 
 growth ; he dawdled by the road and spent the 
 first night at the dusty village of Barakao, 
 fourteen miles from the city. On the third 
 evening he crawled painfully into Murree. 
 These were the first hills he had seen since 
 Skene pointed out the long, white line of the 
 Himalayas that cold winter morning from the 
 College roof. He might have seen that distant 
 outline often, but Siri Ram was not an observant 
 youth ; he did not notice the different colours 
 of the hills, the smoky blue of the pines under 
 rain, the extraordinarily delicate, almost timid 
 freshness of the young rice beneath the gather- 
 ing storm-cloud. The Jhelum almost in flood 
 raced by him. The white horses reared and 
 plunged round the bends, tossing the great 
 151 
 
152 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 pine-logs forwards and sideways like splinters 
 of wood, and the spray fell on the rocks at his 
 feet. But he did not notice the timber or the 
 freshets; he was conscious only of a volume of 
 water and a noise in his head, and he remem- 
 bered that the road had tunnelled in places 
 through the rock. Yet he must have carried 
 in his head some impression of a strange land, 
 for at Baramulla he wrote to Banarsi Das : 
 "The sceneries of this happy valley have 
 benefited me, the ambrosial retreats of nature 
 are not far oflf." 
 
 Truly he had entered a land different from 
 anything he had ever seen. In the last few miles 
 before Baramulla the torrent had become a wide, 
 unbroken stream ; the valley broadened out in 
 rich pasture-land. He might look in vain for 
 the starved kikar and shisham of Mograon. 
 Large, generous trees spread a bountiful shade 
 on the well-nurtured land. Walnut and willows 
 and elms enfolded snug villages. In the heat 
 of noon Siri Ram would lie under the thick 
 foliage of the chenar. His daily tramp led him 
 through straight poplar avenues. Mile upon 
 mile of graceful, tapering white-stemmed trees 
 from Patan to Srinagar. Snow glittered in the 
 gap at the end of the long vista, and rocks 
 seamed with frozen water-courses, a mesh of 
 silver that disappeared in the black forest under- 
 neath. Lush marsh flowers twinkled in the 
 
THE CAVE 153 
 
 ditch at his feet. The wraith of Nanga Parbat 
 hung between earth and sky; the massive 
 dromedary back of Haramokh and many a 
 crenellated peak shut in the plain with firm 
 buttresses. 
 
 Trees and flowers and snowy peaks were new 
 to Siri Ram, if there can be new or old to such 
 a mind. Day after day he marched dully on, 
 the personification of a wrong, looking neither 
 to left nor right, nor up nor down, wrapped 
 solely in his broodings. For in abstraction or 
 contemplation — call it what you will — he was 
 already the perfect Sadhu. 
 
 Seventeen days after he had left Rawalpindi 
 he saw a low golden hill with a yellow fort 
 scrambling over it, glowing in the slant rays 
 of the sun and etched vividly against the hills 
 which loomed dark under the storm-clouds. It 
 was Hari Parbat, a landmark that even a 
 Sadhu must see. Siri Ram learnt that he had 
 reached Srinagar. The greater part of his 
 journey was done. The cave of Amarnath 
 where the Swami was to meet him lay among 
 the glaciers to the north, now only eight 
 marches distant. 
 
 He stayed two nights in Srinagar in the 
 ancient serai of Bhairon Asthan, a three-storied, 
 balconied, latticed caravanserai with windows 
 fretted and carved, and a roof overgrown with 
 moss and irises. The Mahunt had gone on to 
 
154 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Amarnath, but Siri Ram met other pilgrims in 
 the serai, the last few stragglers to be herded 
 in the great camp that was gathering at 
 Pah 1 gam. 
 
 On the road to Islamabad he overtook large 
 camps of Sadhus. At Pampoor there were 
 three hundred naked Vishnuites from Mooltan ; 
 at Avantipur a hundred and eighty Shivaites 
 from Nepal, but he had speech with none of 
 them. Then he met a group of musicians under 
 a tree. A family of bangle-sellers went by, 
 hung with their wares in long strings from 
 head to foot and glittering like ringed serpents. 
 A Muhammadan woman overtook him in a 
 white burka with a purple crown, astraddle on a 
 piebald tat hung with favours, her husband 
 striding by the rein. Farther on he passed a 
 group of Kashmir Pundits, hard, keen, unspirit- 
 ual-looking men, priests and usurers in one. 
 They sat by the roadside under the shade of a 
 chenar in a ring of stone lingams — their spiri- 
 tual ware — which were covered over with faded 
 flowers and smeared with paint like blood. 
 
 An English subaltern rode by on his ambling 
 Kashmir tat, a slim, keen, untroubled youth 
 returning from first leave, his face and knees 
 dark with the sun and snowdrift of Ladakh. 
 As he passed, one of the spiritual robbers with 
 the triple brand of Siva on his forehead 
 advanced towards him from the shade, calling 
 
THE CAVE 155 
 
 after him in a half insolent, half cringing 
 voice. 
 
 **Hu7n Padree hai. Holy man. . . . All 
 Sahibs give backsheesh." The boy rode on 
 without answer, a trifle perhaps added to the 
 sum of his contempt. Siri Ram was ashamed. 
 
 The road left the river and stretched through 
 a desert, stony plain under the parched hills, 
 then joined it again, skirted by willows and 
 sedges and flowering rushes. The scent of hot 
 water-weed penetrated the shade ; racing stream- 
 lets babbled of coolness. At noon the heat haze 
 danced; the glare was blinding; and Siri Ram's 
 throat and eyes were filled with dust. Light 
 showers fell at sunset. Pearly mists rose out 
 of the valley and hung in the jagged clefts of 
 the hills, catching the slanting lights and 
 etherealising everything. But Siri Ram was 
 not uplifted or depressed. Bharat Mata, the 
 mother of whom he talked always, was an 
 abstraction to him. To bask in her loveliness, 
 to gaze on her physical beauty, gave him no 
 thrill. 
 
 It was at Islamabad that Siri Ram met 
 Mohan Roy. They had passed each other 
 often on the road, but Siri Ram had forgotten 
 to look out for the Bengali. He had been too 
 engrossed in his own mission. Chance only 
 revealed his fellow conspirator, or was it Mohan 
 Roy's intuition ? Siri Ram was sitting under 
 
156 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 a willow by the sacred spring of Ananti-Nag, 
 when he looked up and saw the little man on 
 the grass quite close to him eating a pear. He 
 would not have noticed the Bengali even then 
 if it had not been for the glint of gold in his 
 teeth, which recalled somehow the rickety stairs 
 over the druggist's shop and something Ramji 
 Das had said to him about the road. There 
 was a clue somewhere in teeth and gold. Siri 
 Ram regarded the Bengali more closely, his 
 grey chequered cotton trousers and coat, his 
 bare head and short cropped hair, his glare 
 spectacles and the necklace of tulsi beads, and 
 the trifala, mark of Vishnu, on his forehead, made 
 up a picture which seemed familiar. Suddenly 
 Siri Ram remembered the conspirator he was to 
 look out for on the road with three golden nails 
 in his front teeth. Mohan Roy was grinning, 
 he showed them clearly. Certainly his "bodical 
 structure " was small, and he was living in the 
 English costume. 
 
 "Namaste," said Siri Ram. It was the key 
 to open all doors. 
 
 "Namaste," said Mohan Roy. 
 
 "Ramji Das told me to look for you." It 
 was a safe thing to say. There are five thou- 
 sand Ramji Dases in the Punjab. 
 
 "He told me, too, you might come after. 
 You have the foreign letter ? " 
 
 Siri Ram clutched his cloak nervously. They 
 
THE CAVE "157 
 
 were silent a little. Then Siri Ram said 
 awkwardly — 
 
 "You love Swaraj, is it not? Why you wear 
 the wilaiti clothes?" 
 
 "I like these clothes," Mohan Roy said. "I 
 would wear them if Shaitan made them." 
 
 Siri Ram was angry. 
 
 "You belong to the cause of independence, 
 do you not?" he asked. 
 
 "How do you define independence?" 
 
 "Certainly, it is fredom, liberty." 
 
 "Yes, I belong. I am free — free to choose 
 the clothes I wear and other things." 
 
 Siri Ram did not understand badinage or 
 the Bengali's inconsistencies. There was no 
 life-weariness in this bright-eyed little man. 
 He seemed to have a zest for pilgrimage. 
 Though a rationalist and a philosopher, he spent 
 half his days on the road, passing from shrine 
 to shrine, and endured all manner of hardships 
 in order to kneel before some monstrous image 
 in a cave, or scatter flowers upon a lingam 
 hidden away in the innermost recesses of the 
 hills. And he did not even try to square his 
 inclinations with his faith, as so many of the 
 educated, emancipated and orthodox do. Only 
 he argued that his caste mark and trifala and 
 his badges of pilgrimage, and the regularity of 
 his wandering life from shrine to shrine threw 
 off suspicion, and made his revolutionary work 
 
158 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 the easier. He even affected a sect and repeated 
 a special version of the Gyatri, and had the 
 symbols of Vishnu, the conch shell and the 
 discus and the lotus and the club, branded on 
 his right arm. 
 
 Siri Ram wondered. It had been the fashion 
 in his hybrid student set to despise these things. 
 The Aryas rejected them. When he left 
 Gandeshwar he did not know the difference 
 between a Sivaite and a Vishnuite. And his 
 mistakes mattered little on the road, for there 
 was room for every kind of anomaly in that 
 motley pilgrim crew; men who put on the 
 Sadhu's robe to escape the police or the dis- 
 cipline of work as well as the temptations of 
 the world. 
 
 Mohan Roy had to be at Thaneswar for the 
 eclipse and at Amritsar for the Dewali, and he 
 would be at Hardwar during the Holi in the 
 spring. He led a life of freedom with no one 
 to annoy him except the plague inspection 
 officers on the road. It was the true independ- 
 ence; Siri Ram was impressed. He sat under 
 the willow for an hour listening to a tale of 
 adventure, and when he took the road again he 
 knew that the Bengali was reckless and daring, 
 and indifferent to life. He had been tried often 
 and found sufficient. When they left Islamabad 
 they separated. 
 
 " We had better not be seen together," Mohan 
 
THE CAVE 159 
 
 Roy said, "for if one of us is discovered it will 
 be more difficult for the other." 
 
 Siri Ram was proud of the dual "we." But 
 he was soon overwhelmed with shame. Mohan 
 Roy passed him on the road a mile outside the 
 city. 
 
 "You had better take this," he said, handing 
 him the oiled cloth packet with a smile. "You 
 left it on the ground when you were feeding 
 the fish." 
 
 From Islamabad the pilgrims turned up the 
 Lidar river, the loveliest, greenest, and sweetest- 
 scented valley in the hills, past the blue springs 
 of Bawan, where the pilgrims feed the holy 
 carp, and the rock caves of Bomtzu, and the 
 temple of the sun. It was a green world, and 
 bubbling streams chattered among the poplars 
 and walnut trees and ran underneath the road. 
 The blue stars of the succory shone in the little 
 grassy banks between the rice. Siri Ram might 
 have seen a pageant of English flowers if he 
 had had eyes for anything besides his wrongs, 
 borage and milfoil and mullein and bladder 
 campion and the tall lousewort which smells 
 like a hayfield and beanfield in one. He slept 
 that night on the terrace of the monastery at 
 Eismakhan. 
 
 The next morning he passed through the 
 walnut village of Patkote, before the sun had 
 entered the valley, and by noon he had reached 
 
160 STRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 the great camp under the limestone cliffs of 
 Pahlgam. Here he pitched his umbrella on a 
 rock and sat, Sadhu-like, feeling more lonely 
 among these seven thousand holy men than he 
 had ever felt in his life. 
 
 His companions on either side, low-browed, 
 naked, ash-strewn mendicants, sat motionless, 
 with silent movements of the lips as if they 
 had worked themselvs into a trance. Half 
 hypnotized by their stillness, half deafened by 
 the roar of the torrent, Siri Ram sat dreaming 
 through the hours in a sort of numb physical 
 Nirvana. 
 
 Shivaites and Vishnuites, Sannyasis and Bai- 
 ragis squatted in little groups, and drew circles 
 round their fires, and when intoxicated enough 
 with charas, beat any one who came within the 
 ring. 
 
 At twilight a thick veil of smoke hung over 
 the valley, but the Sadhus* cooking fire sug- 
 gested spare diet. A ten-foot blaze on the bank 
 opposite, the pyre of one of them, looked 
 cheerier. Siri Ram became used to these 
 beacons to the faithful at every camp. 
 
 The next morning he found himself in a 
 strange human medley. It was a burning hot 
 march up the valley to Tanin. The rocky path 
 was a serpentining thread of black and white 
 and yellow where the umbrellas of the faithful 
 wound along the valley. The slaty-blue stream 
 
THE CAVE 161 
 
 leapt between the dark pines below. Sometimes 
 the track descended to it, and the torrent swirl- 
 ing by drove the fresh, icy spray across the 
 six-foot path between the bank and the 
 cliff. Siri Ram would have lingered here, but 
 he was borne along in the human stream to 
 Amarnath. 
 
 Troops of Sadhus of different sects followed 
 the road with different kinds of staffs and pails 
 and water jugs. There were men sick to death 
 carried on coolies' backs. Old ladies in light 
 palanquins with red-tented covers peeping 
 through the folds, young ladies pulling the 
 folds back, little girls curled up in baskets and 
 half asleep; old women and young, plain and 
 weather-beaten, drawn to the cave in the hope 
 of motherhood, riding astride on peaked cloth 
 saddles, their anxious husbands walking by the 
 rein. Sadhinis who alone in all that crowd obey 
 Diana's law, and who may not ride or be carried, 
 striding along in one shift, saffron- or scarlet- or 
 wallflower-coloured, tied in at the waist and 
 opening in a modest V at the bosom. Siri Ram 
 passed along among all these unheeding. It 
 was one of his vows as a Sadhu that he must 
 not look at or speak to a woman. 
 
 A mile below Tanin a sheltered-snowdrift lay 
 across the path. A Sadhu dislodged a chunk 
 with the axe-head of his staff and carried it in 
 his hand and moistened his lips with it, and 
 
 M 
 
162 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 every pilgrim who came after followed suit. Ii 
 was the first snow Siri Ram had touched. 
 
 The next day the pilgrims left the forest. 
 The zig-zag up from Tanin was a trial of faith. 
 Siri Ram panted up it for hours. At the top 
 the path led through narrow defiles beneath the 
 cliflF, and he looked down upon the Zojpat 
 tunnelling under the snow bridges a thousand 
 feet beneath. He had soon passed the last 
 straggling outpost of the birches. High up in 
 the mountains above Zojpal, east of the goojars' 
 track to Wardwan, Siri Ram looked for the 
 Swami*s cave in vain. He lingered by the 
 stream until he met a cowherd tending his flock. 
 He asked him if there was a hermit dwelling 
 in the cave above the valley. 
 
 "The cave is destroyed, the hermit is dead/' 
 the goojar told him. 
 
 "When did he die?" Siri asked, with a 
 sinking heart. 
 
 "Nearly a month ago. Part of the hill fell 
 down in the night. They found his drinking 
 vessel and his cloak outside. They called to 
 him in the morning, but there was no sound 
 within. It is certain that he was crushed by 
 the falling rock." 
 
 The goojar pointed to a bare scar on the 
 hill-side, the track of an avalanche, and a heap 
 of debris on a terrace where his flock were 
 feeding. 
 
THE CAVE 163 
 
 "The cave was behind that," he said. 
 
 Tears started to Siri Ram's eyes. 
 
 "Do not be distressed or turn back," a voice 
 said by his side in English. "He had work to 
 do. Eef he has kicked the bucket, he may have 
 another eencarnation." 
 
 Siri Ram started. It was the voice of the 
 bunniah. Looking up, he met the ironic gaze 
 of Mohan Roy. 
 
 " He told you, too ? " he asked. 
 
 "Surely he told me." 
 
 The Bengali stooped to drink from the spring 
 in the rock. Then he went on, leaving Siri 
 Ram to the cowherd and his perplexity. 
 
 That night they camped at Shisha Nag. 
 Even Siri Ram was uplifted. Flowers and 
 fruits and trees, lights and shadows, the delicate 
 greenery of the earth, left him unmoved. But 
 here was the peace of the eternal. He recog- 
 nised the hand of God at last, the region of 
 the spirits. But at night the physical need of 
 warmth gripped him. He sat up for hours 
 shivering in his blanket. The image of Jupiter, 
 a long red torch, lay in the shallow basin to the 
 west. The moon rose above the Koh-i-noor 
 and suffused the lake. The clean shadow of a 
 rock cut the water in half with a line as clear 
 as doom. Then the shadow of a hand was 
 thrown upon the precipice, firm and sinister, 
 pointing down the valley. It frightened the 
 
 M 2 
 
164 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 pilgrims; an excited chatter arose from the Sita- 
 Ramis just as the camp was sinking into sleep. 
 Whenever Siri Ram lifted his head from the 
 blanket he saw the hand there, a palpable 
 menace warning them back. It crept along the 
 rock. Hours afterwards, when the moon was 
 swimming overhead, it had disappeared. But 
 Siri Ram was beyond wonder or fear or any- 
 thing but cold. 
 
 In the morning all the pilgrims bathed in 
 the lake. 
 
 The path rose from Shisha Nag and wound 
 gently up to a pass still under snow. "Man's 
 country is passed," they said, as they looked 
 beyond ; " now we enter the country of the 
 gods." The last tree had been left a march 
 behind ; even the swart juniper had disappeared ; 
 the flowers became smaller and brighter. They 
 had crossed the water-shed. The grey and buff 
 and ochre rocks which hemmed in the valley 
 became wilder and more fantastic. Splintered 
 towers guarded the ravine. Streams flowed into 
 the valley from the glaciers to the east, and the 
 Sadhu who looked aside from the path might see 
 the abode of the gods. 
 
 For what other purpose could these massive 
 sky-communing mountains serve, approached 
 by vast untrodden fields of snow, and visitable 
 only to the eagles and the wandering spirits? 
 
 At last the road bends down into a valley 
 
THE CAVE 165 
 
 which seems to be closed in on both sides in 
 the far distance by a barren mountain too steep 
 for snow to lie on. A small red path ascends it 
 into the clouds. It is the end of all things save 
 mist and shadow and ice and snow. Hidden 
 somewhere in that tumbled chaos is the cave of 
 Amarnath whence the divine creative energy 
 proceeds which fashions mind and clay. 
 
 But Siri Ram thought only of one deity to 
 whom he addressed his wrongs. At Panjitani, 
 on the eve of Amarnath, he wrote the letter he 
 had promised Lachmi Chand. 
 
 "May the goddess of Independence be 
 pleased," it began, "I have given up all plea- 
 sures and smear my body with ashes every day. 
 The water of this place is very bad. It con- 
 duces to shortness of breath. Also there are 
 a great number of flowers whose smells create 
 sickness among the pilgrims. I have a number 
 of unpleasant feelings in my inside. But I do 
 not care at all for the so-called bowels and other 
 obscure parts if I can serve my mother. There 
 are thousands of pilgrims here, but they are all 
 nearly ignorants, and worship stalks and stones. 
 I have conversed with some who are serving 
 the mother. They are here performing her 
 business. I hope I would meet the good man 
 to-morrow, your understanding will tell you 
 who I mean. He will not return soon. Govern- 
 ment are looking at him with a black eye." 
 
166 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Siri Ram had not scattered flowers on the 
 lingam since he was a child, when his mother 
 used to take him to a little shrine under a 
 banyan tree near Mograon. Faded marigolds 
 and hibiscus and greasy red paint smeared over 
 the black stone always carried him back there. 
 But there were no marigolds at Amarnath. He 
 gathered the grey-blue harebell and purple 
 geranium and the mauve heads of the wild onion 
 instead. He thought of his classmates as he 
 toiled up to the cave, Aryas and scoffers at 
 superstition, who would affect ignorance of the 
 very attributes of Vishnu or Siva, and if 
 approached on any point of sect or Puranic 
 lore would repeat some platitude about the 
 oneness of God. But all things were honour- 
 able in the service of the Mother; so Siri Ram 
 found himself drilled in the line; jammed in 
 between a gross, low-caste, charas-smoking 
 Bairagi, "a very menial man," who knew 
 nothing of the Vedas and could not read or 
 write, and a naked yogi, a husk of humanity, 
 who, the pilgrims said, practised the last 
 austerities, and had renounced even speech. 
 
 Siri Ram could not help being infected a 
 little with the atmosphere of the place, and the 
 magnetism of that rapt, inspiring crowd. It was 
 a world unlike any he had dreamed of, savage 
 and untamed, terrible in its rugged uncom- 
 promising bleakness. He had not thought of 
 
THE CAVE 167 
 
 the surface of the earth as unapproachable to 
 man anywhere. No wonder the superstitious 
 people these valleys with spirits or the grosser 
 manifestation of a personal God. 
 
 The strain on body and spirit began to tell. 
 Siri Ram saw a Sadhini swoon by the road and 
 the hospital Babu consign her to a basket in 
 which she was borne quickly back to Panjitani 
 from the very threshold of the god. An emaci- 
 ated grey skeleton threw itself on the sharp 
 stones and progressed to the cave by the 
 asthangam, the progression of the eight 
 members, dragging its heels to the spot where 
 its forehead had rested in little jerks like a 
 wounded caterpillar. The only flesh on the 
 man was a pendulous goitre which trailed on 
 the ground, a ninth member, lacerated by the 
 sharp stones so that you might have tracked 
 the man by his blood. The pilgrims stepped 
 over him with half-envious wonder. As they 
 approached the cave the auspicious pigeons flew 
 out, and they uttered a loud cry, which was 
 repeated all down the line; for the birds were 
 Shiv's messengers, and the Sadhus knew that 
 the pilgrimage was acceptable and their travail 
 not in vain. 
 
 The cave compelled wonder. The brow of 
 the rock, its roof, could only have been con- 
 ceived by a god for his dwelling-place. The 
 solid shafts supporting it were built for eternity. 
 
168 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Such a vault must shroud the Primal Cause, the 
 green mysterious ice lingam in which all 
 energy and force reside. Even Siri Ram, the 
 rationalist fed on text-books and annotations, 
 could have believed as he approached to scatter 
 his flowers on the ice, that the cave was no mere 
 haphazard design of the changing strata of the 
 earth, but a mansion built by hands at the nod 
 of Shiv. 
 
 In this atmosphere of the marvellous Siri 
 Ram thought he heard the dumb man behind 
 him speak. He believed that he was being 
 addressed, and there was something familiar in 
 the voice that stirred him, something bass and 
 vibrant, brought up from the depths, dis- 
 proportioned to the frame. He looked behind 
 him. The eyes of the man, sunk in their 
 sockets, stared straight in front with no sign 
 of recognition, but the voice carried without a 
 movement of the lips. 
 
 "Stay behind at the overhanging rock of 
 Goojam." 
 
 Siri Ram started. It was the voice of Nara- 
 simha. The Swami himself, but how changed ! 
 He had become a Lingayat mendicant, naked, 
 ash-strewn, with the casket on his neck and the 
 little tinkling bell on his arm. The flowing 
 white prophet's beard had vanished. There was 
 less pathos in the face without it, but more 
 force. Siri Ram recognised the sad, earnest 
 
THE CAVE 169 
 
 gaze which the Swami had fixed on the students 
 at Gandeshwar. There was less appeal in it 
 now; the chin and eye dictated. He looked 
 thinner without the salmon shift, the quivering 
 shell of a man. He had become a voice, an 
 influence, an energy personified, like the lingam 
 in the cave. 
 
IV 
 
 SiRi Ram blinked downwards, fixing his eyes 
 on the top of his nose, and thinking of nothing 
 till his head swam, and he fell into something 
 like a trance. Like Narasimha Swami he was 
 life-weary. At times he almost forgot his 
 dedication. The first days at Amarnath were 
 the happiest he had known. Here abstraction 
 was a merit, action a remote dream. He had 
 never realised before how troublesome temporal 
 cares had become. Here he could let go his 
 hold on life. The escape from it was what he 
 had needed all along. He felt born to Yoga. 
 He watched Narasimha and imitated him 
 always, believing that the Swami had escaped 
 the mesh of desire. 
 
 Narasimha watched Siri Ram. He saw that 
 he was not likely to carry anything to an end. 
 He w^as a moody, impulsive youth, capable of 
 resentment. There might be work in him of a 
 kind at the proper moment, but he was a tool 
 that needed careful sharpening, and one easily 
 blunted ; to be used, perhaps, and thrown away. 
 He would not advertently betray a trust. 
 
 170 
 
THE CAVE 171 
 
 Narasimha warmed him with confidences. 
 Under the snows of Amarnath the Gaelic- 
 American-Indian plot gathered. Siva's mansion 
 had become the Swami's office. The oiled cloth 
 packet lay open at his feet ; the floor was littered 
 with his torn correspondence; envelopes with 
 the American postmark fluttered on to the ice 
 lingam. Siri Ram collected them in the evening 
 with pious pride; there were letters from Paris 
 and Dublin and Seattle and Portland and Los 
 Angeles, envelopes with strange stamps — postal 
 tickets Siri Ram called them. The cave had 
 become the hub of the universe; the civilised 
 world was conspiring with his master to set his 
 country free. Sometimes Narasimha would hand 
 the boy a private letter as carefully as he would 
 lay a bit of juniper scrub on the dying embers. 
 "Read this, remember it, and burn it," he 
 would say. Siri Ram would read it and 
 remember every word. Sometimes it would be 
 a letter from an Indian in Paris or London, or 
 an Irish professor in an American University, 
 or some well-meaning Radical in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 "My dear Swami," the professor wrote, "the 
 last mail brought sad news. The Rawalpindi 
 imeute fell flat because the people were not 
 ready. It was a little premature. You must 
 have a day, a definite day, and fix it well ahead. 
 Three years, four years, five years, ten years 
 
172 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 even, but we must all work steadily for that. 
 All our forces in one channel, and let there be 
 no leakage of energy in the meanwhile. We 
 will send you the arms — you will distribute the 
 men. 
 
 "A thousand fires will break out in one day — 
 in a city where there are ten English there will 
 be ten thousand desperadoes, and many of them 
 will be armed. They need not even come to 
 close quarters. You can leave the large canton- 
 ments, where the British troops are, alone. 
 Your own army will come in when they see 
 what you have done. 
 
 "Where shall the outbreak begin? Not in 
 Peshawar or Rawalpindi; my friends here tell 
 me that was a mistake, and the Pathans would 
 take everything from you. Not in Delhi — the 
 name is as sinister for us as for them. I hope 
 you liked my leaflet to the Sikh regiment. The 
 colour stigma was a good touch. It will sting 
 them up. Read Garibaldi, Henderson *s Art of 
 Waty and Hewitt's Christianity and Civilisation 
 in the East, and make your young men read 
 them. You know Bruce-Morton's little book, 
 I see Sowaran Singh has translated it into 
 Gurmukhi. It ought to have a good efiect 
 among the Sepoys. Ramji tells me the Punjab 
 University have set Seeley's Expansion of 
 England for the F.A. course. That is a capital 
 joke." 
 
THE CAVE 173 
 
 Mohan Roy read it and smiled. 
 
 "They will be putting Ramji Das on the 
 Text-book Committee," he said. 
 
 Mohan Roy was always smiling. The more 
 he smiled, the more resentful was Siri Ram's 
 brooding. There can be no occasion for 
 laughter, he thought, when the Mother is 
 bleeding. 
 
 Mohan Roy laughed at the Labour Member's 
 letter. He read it aloud slowly, with appreciative 
 pauses and comments. 
 
 "He wishes to create suffragettes among our 
 toiling sisters 1 
 
 " * The labour movement is not a sex move- 
 ment,* he read; ' you should not exclude women 
 from any organisation you may form in the 
 future. They should sit side by side with you 
 in Council. If you ask for benefits you must 
 ask them both for women and men too.' " 
 
 Mohan Roy smiled to think of the washer- 
 women and the female mill-hands sitting beside 
 the Swami voicing their wrongs. 
 
 "Ah, this is personal — most complimentary, 
 I am sure." 
 
 "' I enjoyed your friend Mr. Mohan Roy's 
 article in The Eastern Review. His generous 
 tribute to our party's liberal interpretation of 
 our obligations to your countrymen was much 
 appreciated in political circles here : though the 
 bureaucrats will not enjoy some of his strictures. 
 
174 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "The very ideas of National Progress and 
 National Advancement have come into being in 
 India only after the spread of English educa- 
 tion." Such sentiments from the lips of an 
 Indian patriot in these troubled times are most 
 encouraging. I showed the article to Dr. Byle- 
 man, who is going to pay a hurried visit to 
 India next December. He wishes to study 
 Indian questions on the spot, so that he may 
 secure a thorough grasp of the difficult problems 
 which are facing us at this parting of the ways. 
 It may be hoped that on his return his voice 
 will carry even more authority in the House of 
 Commons than it does at the present moment. 
 He will be in Bengal three weeks. During this 
 time he will require the services of a bright 
 young Secretary who will be able to put him 
 into touch with the inner life of the teeming 
 millions of our great Eastern Dependency. He 
 is especially anxious to study the question of 
 the suffrage and representative government 
 from inside. Dr. Byleman was very much 
 struck with your brilliant young friend's article, 
 and I suggested to him that Mr. Mohan Roy 
 would be a very suitable young man for the 
 work. Will you kindly ascertain if he is ready 
 to accept the appointment ? The salary would 
 be at the rate of ;{^20 a month ; it will be pro- 
 vided out of party funds. Dr. Byleman will be 
 leaving Bombay early in January.* 
 
THE CAVE 175 
 
 "Yes, I accept," Mohan Roy said with a 
 grin. **You may tell Dr. Bylesman Mohan 
 Roy is wiUing." 
 
 The Bengali's levity incensed Siri Ram. He 
 saw nothing humorous in the letter. He had 
 been told that Dr. Byleman, though a feringhi, 
 was one of his country's saviours, like Tilak or 
 Arabindo Ghose or Bepin Chandra Pal, with 
 whom he fought in line. Good should come 
 of his visit. Freedom, perhaps, without blood. 
 
 To the Swami all this talk of reform was so 
 much meaningless patter. He was, if anything, 
 opposed to it. He tolerated the meddling of 
 sympathetic politicians because to detach him- 
 self from them too openly would be to show his 
 hand. But he wanted no gifts, no concessions. 
 They only delayed the millennium. The Indians 
 must take everything for themselves. Repres- 
 sion was a dam against which the silent waters 
 were gathering ready to burst. 
 
 He watched Siri Ram and understood his 
 thoughts. He fed him with another scrap, a 
 piece of brown paper, the outside of a bag, 
 redolent of coarse sugar and the bunniah's 
 shop. Siri Ram read. 
 
 ** ' Send a strong robust sepoy shirt to take 
 charge from Mr. Khaddar (homespun cloth), so 
 that there may be no derangement in our store 
 work.' " 
 
 "Can you translate?" the Swami asked. 
 
176 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Siri Ram remembered the bunniah's postcard 
 to Jaganath, in which he had been called 
 "homespun cloth, Sadhu wear." With this clue 
 he slowly interpreted the metaphor. 
 
 "Some patriot is leaving an employment 
 where he is useful to the Society, and they are 
 asking for another patriot, a bolder one, to take 
 his place. No doubt it is some dangerous 
 work.'* 
 
 The Swami commended him. 
 
 No commendation was so sweet. He loved 
 the cabalistic touch with its honeyed irony and 
 the jargx)n of anarchists — "the bridegroom and 
 the bride " for the destined victim and the bomb 
 or pistol he was hurrying to meet. "Marriage 
 expenditure" — on picric acid and chlorate of 
 potash ! And the "sweets prepared in every 
 city and village in the land for the day of 
 thanksgiving." He himself would prepare "the 
 sweets," or distribute them. He heard their 
 deafening detonations in the thunder of the 
 avalanche which awoke him from his dreams. 
 
 Sometimes Narasimha translated for him. 
 The letters from the Secretary of the Red Flag 
 Society in America were in cipher. One told 
 of the export of five hundred revolvers packed 
 in sewing machine cases and among condensed 
 milk tins, booked through foreign houses in 
 Bombay, and distributed among small retail 
 merchants "in sympathy with the cause." A 
 
THE CAVE 177 
 
 cryptic letter from a Bengali in the Calcutta 
 Customs advised him with the most extra- 
 ordinary circumlocution of the receipt of seventy 
 Browning Automatic Pistols and thirteen 
 Derringers smuggled in by Chinamen through 
 the Lascars of Penang. 
 
 Thus the Swami fed him day by day with 
 just the scraps that were good for him, sufficient 
 to keep his resentment warm and swell his pride 
 and fill him with a sense of the strength of the 
 organisation behind him. It was only in the 
 cave that he began to understand the magnitude 
 of the scheme, the width of the web Narasimha 
 was weaving. One day his imagination would 
 be fired; then, the next, it all seemed so far 
 away, so hopeless, and life so short and effort 
 so exhausting. He fell back into the Yogi 
 mood. He did not wish to live, but he did not 
 wish to die violently. 
 
 The Swami watched him, and saw he was not 
 ripe. Mohan Roy observed him with his 
 caustic smile. "He is a goat," he said to the 
 Swami. *'He may be useful for a sacrifice, but 
 you will have to lead him right up to the altar." 
 
 And he told the Swami of the meeting at 
 Islamabad. 
 
 When Siri Ram saw the Swami and Mohan 
 Roy talking together he was jealous. He hated 
 the Bengali, who made him feel insufficient. He 
 distrusted his humour, and was uncomfortable 
 
178 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 under liis smile, and he felt that he was too 
 familiar with the Swami. He had disliked him 
 from the first, and had not forgiven him easily 
 for finding the oiled cloth packet by the sacred 
 tank. And he hated his English clothes. One 
 day when his patience had been overtried by a 
 long muttered conference from which he was 
 excluded he broke out into passionate protest. 
 
 "Why you still wear wilaiii clothes," he said, 
 *' which are polluted with the blood and fat of 
 animals? You swear by the Mother, and then 
 you go and disobey her and defile her temples." 
 
 Mohan Roy heard him with a smile. He 
 only said :**! like these clothes. I am habitu- 
 ated to them." 
 
 Siri Ram got up sulkily and walked out of 
 the cave. He sat brooding among the wild leeks 
 and geraniums and dwarf willow scrub. The 
 choughs sailed over him, crying plaintively. A 
 russet-bosomed marmot sat up by her burrow 
 over the snow-ridge and piped her shrill menace. 
 
 Siri Ram was tired of everything. He wanted 
 to become a Sannyasi. Mohan Roy had smiled 
 at his exercises in Yoga. The Bengali always 
 smiled. Yet he had the ear of the Swami ; he 
 could hold his attention for hours. The Swami 
 would sit silent listening while he talked, and 
 Siri Ram would squat in the far corner of the 
 cave watching the glint of the "golden nails " 
 in his teeth as if there was some occult spell in 
 
THE CAVE 179 
 
 them. Sometimes the two would glance across 
 with mutual understanding to where he sat by 
 the small ice lingam of Ganesh, and he knew 
 they were talking of him. Narasimha was 
 always considerate, But Siri Ram felt that he 
 took less interest in him than at first, and he 
 attributed his diminished esteem to Mohan Roy, 
 whom he hated. 
 
 He was counting the little pinnacles on the 
 bluff of the cliff opposite, his resentment merged 
 in dull abstraction, when he heard the Bengali's 
 unwelcome voice behind him. 
 
 "I hope I do not intrude upon Raja Yoga, 
 Or are you contemplating the beautiful 
 scenery ? " 
 
 Siri Ram did not speak. The Bengali seated 
 himself on a stone by his side. 
 
 "No doubt you have already made the 
 acquaintance of this lethal weapon ? " he said. 
 
 Siri Ram saw that he held a dark black metal 
 thing in his hand. He looked at it fascinated. 
 
 "It is revolver?" he said, with a question in 
 his voice. It was the first he had seen out of a 
 picture, though he had often held them in his 
 dreams. 
 
 "You are cracked marksman, no doubt?" 
 
 "No. I have not used." 
 
 "Take it. I will teach you. Patriots must 
 learn to shoot." 
 
 Siri Ram held out his hand. He was cold 
 
 N 2 
 
180 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 with fear, but he was ashamed to shrink. It 
 lay in his open palm ; he dared not press any 
 part of it. Mohan Roy showed him how to grip 
 it, and placed his first finger on the trigger- 
 guard. 
 
 "Now," he said. "You see that janwar 
 there." And he pointed to the marmot, which 
 still sat upright by her burrow, uttering her 
 shrill warning pipe. 
 
 "Consider that is his Excellency. He is safe, 
 as you are amateur. Point the deadly missile 
 at his breast." 
 
 Siri Ram took the revolver and held it out at 
 arm's length. "Do I look down pipe?" he said 
 after a long pause. 
 
 "Yes. And put your finger on the hook 
 underneath." 
 
 Again there was a long pause. The revolver 
 was not cocked, and Siri Ram dared not pull 
 hard enough. 
 
 " I will lift the trigger," Mohan Roy said. " It 
 will explode easier." 
 
 Siri Ram took it a third time. Immediately 
 there was a deafening explosion, which echoed 
 through the narrow ravine like the roar of a 
 distant avalanche. The bullet was thrown high 
 up against the opposite cliff, and bits of splin- 
 tered rock rolled slowly down to the ice roof of 
 the stream. Mother marmot dived into her 
 burrow as if she had been shot. There was a 
 
THE CAVE 181 
 
 smell of burning. At the last moment Siri Ram 
 had brought his left wrist up to the barrel to 
 steady it, and his sleeve was burnt and his wrist 
 singed. Drops of perspiration stood on his 
 forehead. 
 
 "His Excellency has fled," Mohan Roy said. 
 "Never mind. You will be cracked shot soon. 
 Some of the volunteers only shoot touching." 
 
 He went away smiling, and Siri Ram hated 
 him more than ever. 
 
 The next morning when he woke in the cave 
 he saw that Mohan Roy had gone, and he felt 
 injured because he did not know why. All the 
 morning the Swami was wrapt in an ecstatic 
 trance, and afterwards when he spoke to Siri 
 Ram he made no mention of the Bengali. 
 Mohan Roy had vanished on some mysterious 
 political errand, and he who at the first call had 
 become a martyr to the cause was left in the 
 cold. Siri Ram was sunk in gloom. He could 
 not understand in what way he was inferior to 
 the dwarfish Bengali. In the evening when the 
 Swami was stirring he approached him, awkward 
 and self-conscious. 
 
 "I wish to practise Yoga," he said. 
 
 "You have other work." 
 
 " Have you work for me ? " 
 
 "Proportionate to your love and zeal. You 
 must have patience." 
 
 "It is not diminished." 
 
182 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "Your hour will come." 
 
 Narasimha poked the fire with the axehead 
 of his staff and stared fixedly into the ashes. 
 Siri Ram knew that he must ask no more. 
 
 " Why do you wish to practise Yoga ? " the 
 Guru asked after a long pause. 
 
 "I want to become spiritual man." 
 
 "You wish to escape from yourself?" 
 
 Siri Ram could not answer. 
 
 "I am a Yogi first of all for the cause. I 
 strengthen myself thus. By this means I can 
 communicate with others hundreds of miles 
 away. To-day while you were gathering fuel 
 I sent a message to Bengal. You can never 
 attain this power." 
 
 "Can Mohan Roy send air messages?" 
 
 "I can communicate with him." 
 
 Siri Ram knew at once that his spiritual 
 hopes were vain. 
 
 " The true Yog is attained through concentra- 
 tion, not through abstraction. It is for the 
 master, not for the servant. You have not the 
 strength. It will be your part to act and obey. 
 Your business is with the action now, not with 
 the fruit. You will be found a task, and you 
 will perform it. Nobly, I have no doubt." 
 
 Once more Siri Ram felt drawn within the 
 fold. Content shone in his eyes. 
 
 Narasimha observed him, and he remembered 
 that he had neglected him. He had barely 
 
THE CAVE 188 
 
 noticed him for days. Now he must make 
 amends. He must lead the goat a little further 
 on the path towards the altar. 
 
 "You wish to know why Mohan Roy has 
 gone ? " 
 
 Siri Ram started. The Swami read his mind 
 always like a scroll. 
 
 " Mohan Roy has gone for two reasons. First 
 he will discover whether my tracks are covered, 
 whether I can safely go back. I must finish 
 my work in Bengal. You know, it is believed 
 that I have perished in a fall of stones. After- 
 wards he will find means to let me know. It 
 will be difficult. He himself, I think, will not 
 return." 
 
 There was a note of deepened dejection and 
 pathos in the Swami's voice which recalled the 
 lecture at Gandeshwar. 
 
 "Why he will not come back?" Siri Ram 
 asked. 
 
 "He will die, I think,, but the future is not 
 clear." 
 
 Siri Ram gaped for more. 
 
 "You have heard of Ghulam AH of the 
 Criminal Investigation Department in Bengal. 
 He has learnt too much ; he is dangerous to the 
 cause. Mohan Roy has gone for that. He is 
 clever and bold, but it will be difficult for him 
 to escape." 
 
 Siri Ram looked into the Swami's eyes 
 
184 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 and dropped his own. A cold fear crept over 
 him. 
 
 "You wish me " he began falteringly. 
 
 "No, you are not ripe for this work yet. 
 Besides there is only this one, and Mohan Roy 
 will not fail. You understand. We kill 
 informers and spies only now, and we kill them 
 because we must — not because we hate them, 
 but because they hinder us. The Englishmen 
 will fall later, all together. Perhaps your turn 
 will come then. We want Government to sleep 
 now. A sacrifice here and there does more 
 harm than good. It prepares them, and it 
 frightens the Liberals in England." 
 
 "Will Byleman give us freedom without 
 blood?" Siri Ram asked innocently. 
 
 "Do not hope it. Do not care for their gifts. 
 Scorn them rather. They mean nothing to true 
 patriots. The Mother can be delivered only by 
 her own sons. But we must not frighten them 
 yet. When they are frightened it is more 
 difficult for us, because they do not hold 
 Government back, they do not oppose the 
 reactionaries. The army budget is increased; 
 troops are quartered where we do not want 
 them ; it is more difficult in a hundred ways." 
 
 Siri Ram thought of the Professor's letter. 
 ** You must have a definite day and fix it well 
 ahead. We will send you the arms. You will 
 distribute the men." 
 
THE CAVE 185 
 
 "Can you repeat it?" the Swami asked. 
 
 Siri Ram started. When the Guru looked at 
 him intently he felt that a searching light was 
 thrown upon his mind. Nothing could be 
 hidden from Narasimha. Men's thoughts were 
 naked for him to read. 
 
 "Ye-es. I have committed it to memory. 
 ' Dear Swami, the last mail brought sad news. 
 
 The Rawalpindi emmoot * He droned it 
 
 out word for word, as he would have repeated 
 a page of annotator's stuff at Gandeshwar. 
 
 "That is well done. Keep it in your mind. 
 We had decided on this course before you 
 brought the Professor's letter. Remember. 
 The awakening will come in one day. The 
 sword of your country is in your hand. Shrink 
 not. What if ye fall ! There is no other door 
 of admission into life after death." 
 
 When Siri Ram fell asleep that night the 
 Sadhu was submerged in him. Again he was 
 the conspirator and patriot. 
 
 The next week the snow lay lower on the 
 mountains. Fuel was scarce and the cold 
 intense. The ibex came down to within a bow- 
 shot of the cave. Siri Ram wandered down the 
 valley to collect juniper scrub, and climbed back 
 over the frozen stream. The work was good for 
 him. He brooded less, and often when he 
 returned to his rice and mess of leeks thoroughly 
 tired out' he sank into a mood of something like 
 
186 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 passive cheerfulness. On these frosty evenings 
 by the flickering fire in the cave the Swami 
 would devote an hour sometimes ta his 
 education. 
 
 At Amarnath Siri Ram learnt the whole of 
 the Bhagavad Gita. He would chant it in the 
 cave. Sometimes the Swami *s full, rich voice 
 would take up the hymns, vibrating with 
 passion, and they would sing alternately, and 
 then as the echoes died away the Swami would 
 become exalted, and he would preach to Siri 
 Ram as if he were a great company, just as 
 he had preached at Gandeshwar, as if all the 
 youth of India were in the cave listening at his 
 feet. 
 
 "Remember the teaching of Krishna to Arjun 
 and you will not draw back. This dweller in 
 the body is invulnerable. Slain, thou wilt 
 obtain Swarga; victorious, thou wilt enjoy the 
 earth ; therefore stand up, resolute to fight. 
 
 "Shrink not from blood. Heed not the voice 
 of the weaklings who chatter of ' rebellion.* 
 You cannot commit this sin. Against whom 
 can ye rebel ? Tell me. Can a feringhi rule in 
 Hindustan whose very touch, whose very 
 shadow compels Hindus to purify themselves? 
 
 " Every patriot who removes one of these pale 
 fiends from the sacred soil of Hindustan becomes 
 a Saint. 
 
 "Listen to the sacred Shastras. It is in the 
 
THE CAVE 187 
 
 young men alone that the salvation of the 
 country lies. Blessed is your birthright. You 
 are the Valki — the god is incarnated in you who 
 will rid India of the Mlecchas. 
 
 "Come, offer your sacrifices before the altar 
 in chorus, and let all white serpents perish in 
 the flames ye are kindling even as the vipers 
 perished in the serpent-slaying sacrifice of 
 Janmayog." 
 
 It was an impressive scene — this wraith of a 
 man illumined by the dancing firelight which 
 threw the shadow of his uplifted hand against 
 the dark, dripping, buttressed rock above the 
 lingam, a lighted husk, a bursting chrysalis, too 
 weak almost to hold the straining spirit within. 
 And the voice which issued from this shell was 
 rich and vibrant, and it awoke echoes which beat 
 along the massy roof of the cavern like lapping 
 waves until they escaped into the eternal frosty 
 silence of the starlight and the snow. And the 
 message was delivered to the youth of the 
 nation, to the Valki incarnation of Vishnu, 
 which was personified in Siri Ram. It was 
 enough to inspire the dullest and send him 
 hot foot on any sacrifice. 
 
 But Siri Ram's hour had not yet come; the 
 fire that the Swami had lighted in him must 
 smoulder long. In the morning he was sent on 
 a homely errand. He had to descend twenty 
 miles to Zojpal to bring back white bark for the 
 
188 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Swami's letters, and to find some empty gujar's 
 hut for him to dwell in. For the time had come 
 to abandon the cave. The snow was encroach- 
 ing. Soon all exit from the valley would be 
 blocked. The herdsmen below had already 
 driven down their flocks, and the reign of the 
 eternal stillness was already spreading wider, a 
 sovereignty to be disturbed by no living voice 
 until the snows melted in the margs in the 
 spring. 
 
 Siri Ram slept in a gujar*s empty stone hut 
 and returned on the evening of the second day 
 with the bark. As he approached he saw Nara- 
 simha standing in the entrance to the cave as if 
 he expected him, and looking cold and thin. 
 The Swami took the bark from Siri Ram with 
 a quiet word of greeting, and sat down by the 
 fire and wrote in cipher for an hour. 
 
 "Wrap this in your loincloth," he said, "and 
 give it to Ramji Das. Go with the dawn." 
 
 Then, seeing his chela's surprise and dismay, 
 he added — 
 
 "Mohan Roy has been quick. He is dead. 
 Both are dead. I had a message in the night." 
 
PART IV 
 
 THE 'KALI-YUGA' 
 
 The determinate reason is but one in this mortal life, 
 Many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the 
 irresolute. 
 
 The Bhagavad Gita. 
 
 The man of perfect knowledge should not unsettle the 
 foolish whose knowledge is imperfect. 
 
 The Bhagavad Gita. 
 (Mrs. Besant's Translation). 
 
1 
 
I 
 
 SiRi Ram did little in the cold weather for 
 the cause. The Swami's birch-bark letter to 
 Ramji Das repeated Mohan Roy*s estimate. 
 He was wobbly and unstable. One could never 
 tell what foolishness he might commit, undoing 
 with one hand what he did with the other. But 
 to Banarsi Das, still at a loose end, he was 
 something of a hero. That glib youth tersely 
 defined the progress of the three conspirators 
 when he said, " I am still seeking an employ- 
 ment. Lachmi Chand has become unpaid 
 teacher in the Gurukul. And Siri Ram has 
 taken the bitch between his teeth." 
 
 When half his term of rustication was over 
 Banarsi Das approached Skene for pardon. 
 First came the petition, a lengthy screed with 
 capitals in red and the weightiest words in 
 capitals. Skene was humbly reminded that he 
 was a moral father. Banarsi Das solicited an 
 opportunity of "ameliorating" himself "under 
 his kind control." "I cannot thole this mis- 
 fortune," he added, "I hope you would be my 
 father. I think I have not gone worse than the 
 191 
 
192 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 prodigal son.*' The conclusion showed signs 
 of a maturer hand. 
 
 *'In the end I beg to invite your kind atten- 
 tion to the notorious lines of Mr. Shakespeare, 
 Esq., and request that you would be kindly 
 disposed to pardon me for the sake of the master 
 who taught us this lesson — 
 
 "The Quality of Mercy is not Strained." 
 
 Banarsi Das quoted the whole passage. 
 
 The position of the hybrid weighed heavily 
 on Skene, for he understood the pathos of it 
 more than most Englishmen. He was genu- 
 inely sorry for the youth, and he could not see 
 what place there was for him and his fellows 
 in the general scheme. Banarsi Das followed 
 up the petition — which had been sped shaftlike in 
 advance to penetrate official callousness, by a per- 
 sonal interview. He wanted to be recommended 
 for a teachership. Skene told him to come back 
 to the College after his year's rustication and 
 start again with a clean slate. He would find 
 an opening for him somewhere, but he advised 
 him to give up the idea of educational work. 
 
 "You must see," he explained, "that with 
 these ideas in your head you would be out of 
 place in a school." 
 
 But Banarsi Das did not see. Since he had 
 been away from the College his education had 
 progressed on lines prescribed by the Students' 
 Improvement Society. He had swallowed 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 198 
 
 chunks of undigested history washed down with 
 heady libations of political tracts. 
 
 '*Sir," he ventured, "if you were an Early 
 Briton would you not resist to the Romans? If 
 you were an Italian would you not resist to 
 Austrian tyrants ? " 
 
 Skene smiled sadly. 
 
 *'If I were an early Briton resisting the 
 Romans, I should not think it reasonable to 
 ask them for an appointment, certainly not an 
 educational one." 
 
 But this was vindictive evasiveness to Banarsi 
 Das. He was really incapable of seeing a point 
 turned against himself. 
 
 "I would not openly preach against Govern- 
 ment," he began. 
 
 "Where is Siri Ram?" Skene interrupted. 
 
 "Sir, he contemplated the adoption of the 
 teaching profession. I hear he is walking in 
 the Academe's groves with Mr. Lachmi Chand." 
 
 Banarsi Das shuffled his feet, self-consciously 
 pleased at the successful delivery of so neatly- 
 turned a trope. He watched for the effect of 
 it in Skene's face, and noticed a slight muscular 
 movement at the corner of his mouth which he 
 took for approbation. The gift of eloquence 
 atones for much. 
 
 He retired, not discomfited, and answered an 
 advertisement in The Tribune for a Teachership 
 in a Native State. 
 
194 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 ** I am young man of commanding appear- 
 ance and winning personality. I have read up 
 to F.A. I sometimes use the English costume. 
 To enable you to get at the true idea of my 
 managing capacity and other abilities I send 
 under separate cover photo of myself in College 
 group. The sixth one, second row, commencing 
 from left, with crossing legs, head bare, and 
 right hand grasping firmly with the wrist bone 
 of the left is my own photo. I hope if you 
 would kindly appoint me to situation under 
 your kind control you would find me ornament 
 who would pull on with you. A postal ticket of 
 i an anna is sent herewith and intended for 
 sharp reply." 
 
 Skene was relieved to hear the news of Siri 
 Ram. The Gurukul at Hardwar was perhaps 
 the best melting-pot for him if he had the 
 patience to endure it. The school is the nursery 
 of the Arya Samaj, and its aim is the realisa- 
 tion in modern life of the " Back to the Vedas " 
 cry. They believe that in the golden days, 
 before Self was made a god, the Indians were 
 lords of the earth and of themselves and of all 
 knowledge. The Vedas were the repositories of 
 all Science, and there was no modern revelation 
 that did not lurk in some cryptic saying of the 
 Rishis. And the conquest that this implied 
 arose out of the conquest of Self. So long as 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 195 
 
 they remained their courage and purity and 
 austerity of mind the splendour remained with 
 them; when they became enmeshed in the web 
 of delusion, given over to gratification of desire, 
 it passed away. 
 
 The only way to recapture the lost heritage 
 was a return to the discipline of life which made 
 it possible. That was the truest and sanest 
 form of patriotism, the only sure road to political 
 independence, and better for body and soul than 
 any wheedling of authority for privilege and 
 concession. The wiser half of the Samaj — even 
 the Aryas were divided — had the courage to face 
 the fact which Skene had explained to his 
 students, that they must be the thing before they 
 could enjoy its privileges. If there is any health 
 in this survival, Skene thought, nothing could 
 fall out better for Siri Ram than that he should 
 be caught up in it. 
 
 Lachmi Chand wrote happily from Kangri. 
 The austerity of the life was in keeping with 
 the deeply religious bent of his mind, for the 
 ideal at the Gurukul was nothing less than a 
 return to the old Bramacharya system of Vedic 
 times. Lachmi Chand was Superintendent of 
 a group of boys, and lived under the same 
 discipline as his pupils, sharing their spare diet, 
 sleeping on a plank bed, rising at four every 
 morning, and bathing in the river and perform- 
 ing the same physical and devotional exercises, 
 o 2 
 
196 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 It was a_sixteen-year course for_the__young 
 Bramacharis, who were admitted in their eighth 
 year, after which they were cut off from all 
 outside influences, and not allowed to go to 
 their homes or write to their parents or receive 
 letters from them until they were twenty-five. 
 They were eight years old when they took the 
 vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, and 
 their guardians pledged themselves not to 
 remove them. 
 
 Siri Ram did not feel drawn towards Hardwar. 
 The life was too tedious and obscure, the 
 fruition too remote, and the patience and self- 
 discipline beyond his resources, though he 
 would not have admitted it even to himself. 
 But the months passed, and he was not called 
 upon to do any desperate thing. The revolu- 
 tionists were very quiet; there had been no 
 political assassination since Mohan Roy had 
 despatched Ghulam Ali in Hooghly railway 
 station, winged a Moravian missionary and shot 
 himself. All this time Siri Ram supported him- 
 self on twelve rupees a month by teaching the 
 son of a cloth merchant in the bazaar. The 
 prospect of the pedestal receded. He ascended 
 the steps into Ramji Das* chamber almost daily, 
 but that obese worthy blinked at him uncon- 
 cernedly from his corner like an overfed spider, 
 and gave him no material encouragement. If 
 he was to remain a Nationalist, it seemed that 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 197 
 
 he must fall into line with the band of silent 
 workers whose sacrifice was unheeded, and 
 whose names were never heard — a sad anti- 
 climax for Siri Ram. 
 
 In the train he felt half afraid that he might 
 be persuaded to stay at the Gurukul. Lachmi 
 Chand expected it. His letter glowed with zeal 
 and devotion. He spoke of the great anni- 
 versary when thousands would flock to the camp 
 by the Ganges. Siri Ram was to meet him in 
 the Punjab students' serai in time for the first 
 day's celebration. Banarsi Das would be there, 
 and they were to go to the fandal together to 
 hear the lecture on "Service and Sacrifice." 
 
 It was the time of the Holi festival and the 
 pilgrim train carried a double stream to 
 Hardwar. Hordes of the enlightened were 
 going to the anniversary, but the superstitious 
 outnumbered them. Siri Ram found himself 
 with three other Samajists jammed in a carriage 
 full of his illiterate countrymen, priest-ridden 
 idolaters groping in the dark and unconscious 
 of their degradation. These simple folk were 
 going to bathe in Mother Gunga and wash away 
 their sins. It was an opportunity for missionary 
 zeal. 
 
 They were a bewildered crowd, taxed and 
 bullied by the police and the subordinate railway 
 officials. Herds of them were penned in at 
 every station, and not allowed to pass the barrier 
 
198 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 until they had paid some imaginary toll. Then 
 the train would start off as they were clambering 
 in, and they would be thrust back roughly by 
 the guard to await another turn, perhaps twelve 
 hours afterwards, when the weakest were likely 
 to go to the wall again. Some of them had 
 camped outside the station platform for two or 
 three days. 
 
 A group of sad-eyed villagers ran in a dazed 
 way beside a first-class carriage, staring blankly 
 at the strange forbidden emptiness in which a 
 subaltern reclined aJone with his little bear-like 
 dog and fishing rods and bedding. The boy, 
 looking up, saw an old man's forlorn face just 
 in time to pull him into the passage at the end 
 of his carriage and make a sign to his three sons, 
 laden with pots and pans and blankets and 
 sugar-cane, to jump in behind as the train moved 
 off. A disgusted official ran alongside protest- 
 ing, but they were already squatting on the floor, 
 stolid and expressionless, as if it were the most 
 natural thing in the world, and secure until the 
 next junction, where the subaltern found room 
 for them in a carriage. 
 
 All these venturesome ones who hoped to 
 reach Hardwar quickly by the iron road, per- 
 forming a journey of weeks in one or two days, 
 knew that they had submitted to an unseen 
 agency which was all-powerful but perverse and 
 capricious, and to be circumvented by rites 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 199 
 
 which the policemen and ticket collectors alone 
 understood. At every station there was con- 
 fusion and bullying and apparent resentment 
 that the pilgrims should take the train at all. 
 It was "Hat jao. Hat jao. Get out of the way. 
 Make room.** Then the glib sedition-monger 
 slipped in among them. They were ready to 
 listen to any tale, though they had not taken it 
 much amiss when they were mulcted at the 
 barrier, knowing that every coveted door in 
 Hindustan, whether of courts or shrines or 
 offices, is guarded now as it always has been by 
 some initiate priest or parawalla who is happily 
 appeasable. 
 
 There were an old man and woman in Siri 
 Ram's carriage who had come from their village 
 with a concession for a party of twenty-four. 
 The youth with the ticket had been lost in the 
 crowd at the junction, and some of them had 
 already been discovered and turned back. 
 The old couple hoped to get through unde- 
 tected. Their case was discussed in the frequent 
 sidings. 
 
 "You will have to pay again," a clerkly Sikh 
 said to the old man. 
 
 "I cannot pay, and the paper was to take us 
 all back." 
 
 A tear rolled down the old woman's nose and 
 broke on the quoit-like earring which covered 
 her wrinkled face from ear to mouth. 
 
200 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "See how they treat you," Siri Ram said. 
 "The Sircar only want your money. They 
 don't care whether you see Hardwar or not." 
 
 "Or whether you live or die," the clerkly Sikh 
 added. 
 
 One of the Samajists began to talk at the 
 old man. 
 
 "Did you hear of the railway accident last 
 week?" he said to Siri Ram. "It was to kill 
 ofif the black men. I heard it from a labourer 
 who is working on the line. A red-faced man 
 with white hair asked him to remove a rail, 
 but he would not." 
 
 Siri Ram recognised a trained hand, perhaps 
 a Bharat Red Flag man. He tried the sitting 
 sign, the thumb resting two seconds on the right 
 knee, the first finger on the shinbone. The 
 man repeated the sign on the left. 
 
 "It is these big trains they destroy most 
 often killing hundreds at a time. There are 
 too many black men, they say." 
 
 "They will be enough to eat up the feringhis 
 soon." 
 
 "Whoever heard of an Englishman being 
 destroyed in a railway accident ? " 
 
 "Indeed, the road is better." 
 
 The train drew up in a siding with a violent 
 jerk, flinging the Samajists and pilgrims 
 together pell-mell. Each man thought it was 
 his end, 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 201 
 
 They reached Hardwar eighteen hours late. 
 They had been shunted into sidings for every 
 goods or passenger train that passed. The 
 engine had jibbed and started and stopped dead 
 as if it knew the cheapness of the human freight 
 behind. The hustled carriages had charged into 
 each other at intervals, and the couplings 
 resisted with a straining and clanking which 
 might have awakened the dead. The pilgrims 
 who had been shaken together with violence all 
 the night emerged in the noonday heat instead 
 of in the cool of the vigil. 
 
II 
 
 The belated Samajists hurried off to the camp 
 at Kangri, five miles away, but Siri Ram was 
 drawn with the superstitious into the city. He 
 loitered dreamily by the bathing ghat. He stood 
 on the bridge and looked down on the clear 
 stream of the Ganges and the crowds of pilgrims 
 waist-deep in the cold water. He had been 
 taken there when a child by his mother, when 
 he had been plunged in like the little howling 
 black-haired urchin, clasped to the breast of the 
 enormous matron underneath, lost almost 
 against the ample folds of the pale bosom. He 
 watched the happy naked crowd with a kind of 
 envy, until he was drawn to the ghat and became 
 one of them, dancing youths, slim maidens, 
 wizened old men, mountainous matrons, wading 
 out to Hari's Island temple. He circumambu- 
 lated it with them, and patted the stones, round 
 and round in the ecstatic queue, and it made 
 him happy to feel the stream lapping his waist 
 and the great holy fish nosing his legs, as the 
 Brahmins threw in the atta from the bridge. 
 
 When he had bathed he sat on the Island in 
 the dry breeze that followed the stream, looking 
 
 202 
 
 ^^V 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 203 
 
 north to the woods where the River Houses of 
 the Chiefs ended in the scarlet dhak forest at 
 the foot of the hills. The tender green of a 
 Shisham plantation in the river bed spoke of 
 spring, while the sal forest of the Sewaliks on 
 either bank formed an amphitheatre glinting 
 with the red and gold of the turn of the year. 
 In the far background the purple mountains 
 were lifted up, cleft by Gunga. If Siri Ram 
 marked them, it was only in a vague dreamy 
 way with an inner consciousness that he was 
 in a land associated with the beginnings of 
 things, and a thrill of something like pride that 
 he walked in the country of his old gods. His 
 day dreams were rudely disturbed. 
 
 "Why you have been bathing at the temple? 
 You are a superstitious." 
 
 It was Shiv Narain, an acquaintance of his 
 own Samaj. But Siri Ram had not time to 
 think of anything to say before the superior 
 youth had passed on and was lost in the crowd. 
 
 "Am I polytheistic heathen?" he asked him- 
 self. "No, I was heated and unclean. Why 
 not in the waters of Ganges? " Then he remem- 
 bered a newspaper article he had read, and he 
 wanted to run after Shiv Narain to explain to 
 him how the Ganges water had been analysed 
 by Bengali chemists, and had been pronounced 
 purer than any other water, having no germs 
 but rather a virtue that destroyed them, so that 
 
204 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 those who were "habituated" to bathe in it and 
 drink of it lived healthily and attained a ripe 
 old age. 
 
 "Sound mind may be had in the sound body, 
 no doubt," he muttered. 
 
 He thought of Swami-ji's lecture. It was 
 another proof that the old Rishis knew by direct 
 revelation what western scientists have been 
 groping after for thirty centuries in the dark. 
 And they knew more. 
 
 "Yes, I am going back to the Vedas," he 
 said, with a reminiscence of Swami-ji. "When 
 I bathe in the Ganges I am obeying purely 
 rationalistic principles of health, revealed to 
 ancient sages, and inculcated by them upon 
 ignorant masses in allegorical shape." 
 
 But he found it hard to be esoteric all alone. 
 The human throng appealed to him. He looked 
 at the sea-green bottles for the holy water on 
 the stalls, and the baskets and the lingams and 
 the flowers for the shrines, and he thought he 
 i remembered being led by his mother past the 
 /j shops when a tiny child, and he felt a faint 
 I regret that these things had ceased to mean any- 
 thing for him. He wandered into the courtyard 
 of Sarwanath's temple, and he was nearly 
 knocked down in the gate by a band of singing 
 Sadhus, who had smeared one another all over 
 with the scarlet paint and were emerging with 
 a triumphant chant, dancing and swaying and 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 205 
 
 posturing and waving their open palms, running 
 at passers-by and daubing their clothes and 
 faces, or pouring their brass lotahs full of the 
 purple dye down their backs. Siri Ram shrank 
 into a corner of the arcade and regarded them 
 sadly. His sleeve was stained with carmine. 
 
 Before evening the stones of Hardwar and 
 Kankhal were dyed red and purple, doorsteps 
 and lintels, stalls and booths, even the sacred 
 bulls were smeared so that one seemed to be 
 looking at everything through crimson-stained 
 glasses. And the companies of bacchanals came 
 rolling out of the great houses, singing their 
 indecent songs, leaping and beating drums with 
 an inhuman flame-like glow on them like fiends 
 in a devil's smithy. 
 
 The hours had slipped by. Siri Ram was 
 due at the Gurukul at five. He had promised to 
 meet Lachmi Chand and Banarsi Das in the 
 Punjab Students' Camp and go with them to 
 the pandal to hear the lecture on Service and 
 Sacrifice; but the Pundit was half-way through 
 his discourse when Siri Ram was passing the 
 Mahatma's house at Khankhal, star-gazing as 
 was his wont, looking up vacantly into the bare 
 wintry twigs of the pipal and the green flowers 
 of the mango and toon, whose fragrance scented 
 the road. 
 
 At the end of the street a cart track tilted 
 down the bank of the river, where an unfinished 
 
206 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 causeway led over the Ganges bed towards the 
 distant flag of the Gurukul. Here Siri Ram met 
 another stream of people toiling home on foot, 
 and in slow, labouring bullock-carts through the 
 boulders and deep sand. These were the Aryan 
 Protestants returning from the camp : a sombre- 
 clad procession. In Khankhal the two streams 
 mixed, the thread of grey and black was soon 
 lost among the Bacchanals — as a mountain 
 stream debouches into a yellow silted torrent, 
 and flows beside it a moment before its clear 
 waters are merged in it. If Siri Ram had been 
 given to parables he would have seen in the 
 current from the Gurukul the beginnings of the 
 Reformed Church which was to purge the 
 nation, and in the opposing stream the stains 
 of superstition which were ultimately to be 
 absorbed in the increasing volume which flowed 
 from the direction of the Vedic flag. And he 
 might have reproached himself with "the unlit 
 lamp, the ungirt loin." As it was, he remem- 
 bered that he had failed to keep his tryst with 
 Lachmi Chand, and that he had lingered a whole 
 day among the superstitious, attracted by their 
 empty gawds, while he might have been listen- 
 ing to the discourse of the Pundit. He was 
 ashamed of the vermilion stains on his coat, 
 and he kept to the left of the track, so as to hide 
 his sleeve as much as possible from the 
 Reformers. 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 207 
 
 The sun was almost setting when he crossed 
 the wattle bridge over the third channel and 
 was near enough the flag to decipher the mystic 
 Om. In the courtyard the young Bramacharis 
 were sitting round the white fires, chanting their 
 mantras, and casting their rice and ghee into 
 the flames, just as their Aryan ancestors had 
 done long ages ago, centuries before the 
 Puranas, when they streamed across the 
 Peninsula from the mountains in the full pride 
 of their race, singing glad hymns as they 
 camped among their herds by the river-side. It 
 was the first time Siri Ram had seen the sacrifice 
 of Horn, the oldest surviving ritual in the world. 
 "It is no superstitious rite," Lachmi Chand 
 explained, "but the symbol of purification. 
 They keep no idols or lingams here, they do 
 not worship stalks and stones. It was in this 
 way. the old Aryans used to purge the air." 
 
 Lachmi Chand was already a devout convert. 
 The Pundit's lecture, though it had offended 
 most of the Samaj, had left a deep impression 
 upon him. The gist of his dismal creed had 
 been that the Indians had lost their country 
 because they were not worthy of it. They had 
 no character. They could not trust one another 
 even in little things, not at all in great things. 
 They had no sense of duty, responsibility, dis- 
 cipline, organisation. And until they had 
 developed these characteristics in the way 
 
208 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Englishmen have done, they could not hope to 
 do anything. They must wait for a new genera- 
 tion — a distant generatipn, when the system of 
 Bramacharya which was being taught in the 
 Gurukul had leavened the whole nation and 
 recaptured some of its past glories, before they 
 could dream even of Swaraj. In the meantime 
 they must serve the British Government faith- 
 fully, and they must imitate the good qualities of 
 Englishmen, and learn to speak the truth and 
 depend on one another, and to do their duty 
 for its own sake, wherever they were placed, 
 apart from selfish motives, and they must be 
 ready to forget their mutual differences when 
 their country was in danger or in need of them. 
 In theory, the Pundit went on, no people were 
 more thorough and systematic than the Indians. 
 They could draw up schemes and societies, and 
 rules of life, appoint leaders and office-bearers, 
 and issue eloquent appeals towards union and 
 nationalisation. But in practice nothing came 
 of it. Every new community was divided up 
 into half-a-dozen different opposing factions 
 before it had been in existence a month, accord- 
 ing as its members were influenced by pride or 
 greed or envy, or the hope of personal gain, or 
 class privileges. Societies whose professed aim 
 was solidarity afforded fresh examples of dis- 
 integration. Reformers who were always talk- 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' i 209 
 
 ing of self-effacement and national self- 
 consciousness cared more for the glitter and 
 prominence of their position at the head of their 
 ineffectual factions than for any real good to 
 the cause. And this was not so much due to 
 calculating selfishness as to lack of character and 
 steadfastness. Young men were carried away 
 by their dramatic sense and the heady and 
 superficial emotions which quickly-assimilated 
 ideas always bring to the surface. The ideal 
 of Progress and national advancement which 
 was on everybody's lips was a new cry which 
 had not been heard in India before the spread 
 of English education. 
 
 This was strong meat for the Samajists. 
 Their leaders had talked a great deal about the 
 degradation of the country, but always as due 
 to British influence and education. The aim 
 of their teaching was to impress the Brama- 
 charis with the sense of their glorious national 
 heritage, and to lead them back to it and away 
 from the meretricious glitter of western refine- 
 ment. They believed that it would be India's 
 part some day to rescue Europe from the slough 
 of materialism into which she was sinking. 
 This was to come in the age of universal 
 Bramacharya. 
 
 So, as the Pundit continued, discontent grew 
 louder. It was felt that he had exceeded decent 
 
210 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 bounds. He was destitute of national self- 
 respect. Young men at the edge of the pandal 
 interrupted loudly. Ready catch-words, some 
 in English, often tags of text-book reminiscence, 
 were exchanged. "Sycophant, time-server, lick- 
 spittle, subserviency, fouler of his nest " — and 
 such burrs as stick to graduates who have 
 struggled through the tangled idiom of our 
 classics. It was a bitter draught, but there was 
 worse to follow. 
 
 "It is not enough to found a Sabha or Samaj 
 and call yourselves patriots. We must change 
 ourselves before we can change others. It is 
 because the Englishmen possess these qualities 
 which we do not possess that a million of them 
 are able to control three hundred lakhs of 
 Indians just as one small boy can control a 
 hundred sheep which nourish the blind life 
 within the brain, because he is morally and 
 intellectually on a higher plane than the dumb 
 animals. And just as sheep cannot escape from 
 the control of the boy as long as they are sheep, 
 in the same way the Indians " 
 
 But the Pundit was not allowed to finish his 
 speech. 
 
 "F^ was drowned in stream of angry 
 voccables discharged with torrential violence." 
 So Banarsi Das described the scene in his letter 
 to a friend. The Pundit may have spoken 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 211 
 
 sincerely. Or it may have been strategy, another 
 way of rousing the young men against the 
 English. His speech certainly had this effect 
 on Siri Ram, though he only heard the diluted 
 version from Lachmi Chand, who had taken it 
 in literal earnest. But, disingenuous or not, it 
 had incensed the Aryas. 
 
 Lachmi Chand took Siri Ram over the 
 "Academy," and showed him the Library and 
 Laboratory and the huge cow-sheds and dormi- 
 tories furnished only with plank beds. Then 
 he took him to the great pandal where the meet- 
 ings were held and the Visitors' Camp, a mile 
 almost of whitewashed, tin-roofed sheds and 
 thatched wattle outhouses. He had approached 
 the Guru about his friend, and there was a 
 humble office, almost menial, which Siri Ram 
 might have at once. Lachmi Chand was full 
 of zeal. Siri Ram had to run by his side to 
 keep up with him. He was busy from morning 
 to night, and at the next bell he had to be with 
 his brachmacharis, a tender group of novices 
 which he was shepherding. 
 
 As they strode back they met a continual 
 stream of visitors going towards the river, 
 Lachmi Chand took Siri Ram on to the) roof 
 of a shed and pointed to the plain where a sea 
 of black- and white-robed Aryas, swollen by 
 tributaries from every side, extended for over a 
 
 P2 
 
212 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 mile. "It is the initiation ceremony of the first 
 Muhammadan convert," he said proudly. But 
 somehow Siri Ram was not uplifted like his 
 companion. He was strangely depressed. The 
 mountains laboured with these birth pangs for 
 so small a mouse. He thought of Narasimha 
 Swami and Mohan Roy, and even longed for 
 Amarnath, forgetting his jealous humours there. 
 And all the while Lachmi Chand was inform- 
 ing and preparing him, as he panted by his 
 side, talking as if he were already dedicated. 
 
 "We rise at four in response to the tintinna- 
 bulation of the bell. In winter it is four-thirty. 
 After bathing there is drill. The exercises are 
 very profitable to the body. Then yagna and 
 Agni Hoira, Milk is at seven. Then teaching 
 to ten-thirty. In the interval " 
 
 Siri Ram was relieved at the thought of the 
 interval. He admired rather than envied his 
 friend's service. He wished to dream and 
 moralise and talk until the hour of his call, 
 and then to do his work all at once and with 
 one stroke. Suddenly a bell "tintinnabulated," 
 interrupting his friend's discourse and his own 
 apprehensions. Lachmi Chand started from 
 him running, and calling back to him to be 
 ready in the courtyard at four in the morning. 
 
 It would be wrong to say that Siri Ram slept 
 on it. He knew already that he would drift 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 
 
 along some other current. When he thought 
 he was wondering whether to stay or not he 
 was only wondering how he could escape 
 without appearing lukewarm. He dreaded the 
 routine and di scipline of th e place, but he had 
 not the courage to admit his shrinking. In the 
 end he did what most young men of his tem- 
 perament would do. He said he would come, 
 and went away meaning not to come. He 
 persuaded himself that the machinery of the 
 Gurukul was too slow, and that he would go 
 back to Gandeshwar and do some desperate 
 thing. 
 
 The next morning, having bathed with his 
 charges, Lachmi Chand saw Siri Ram to the 
 bridge, happy at the prospect of reclaiming his 
 friend. He had the true pastoral spirit. They 
 walked hand in hand. 
 
 "You will return in three days?" Lachmi 
 
 Chand asked. 
 
 "Yes, I will return. I have a few businesses." 
 
 "And your father? Are you going to 
 
 Mograon ? " 
 
 "I will write a letter. I shall not mind him." 
 
 They unclasped hands. Siri Ram turned his 
 
 back on the Vedic flag and^pursued his vacil- 
 
 Tating path over the rough boulders of the old 
 
 channel. Without raising his head he followed 
 
 the line of least resistance, which would have 
 
(^214 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 brought him back to the island if Lachmi Chand 
 had not called after him, pointing to the ford. 
 Siri Ram swerved on to the track again. By 
 the time he had become a wobbling black dot 
 on the sand Lachmi Chand knew in his heart 
 that he would not come back. 
 
Ill 
 
 A WEEK after the anniversary at Gurukul 
 Siri Ram was given his chance. Much fre- 
 quenting of Ramji Das' staircase had brought 
 him preferment. He was appointed acting 
 scapegoat prison-editor of the Kali-Yuga. The 
 post did not carry a salary, and it required no 
 special gifts. The issue was prepared for the 
 new Editor, who had to be on the spot when 
 the press was raided, and claim responsibility. 
 The reward was honourable confinement. 
 
 The KaluYugay^ as the name implied, was a 
 political journal of a pessimistic turn. It was 
 the policy of the gentlemen who financed the 
 organ to sail as near the wind as possible, and 
 occasionally to let the bark capsize, when they 
 would throw some callow youth overboard to 
 right her. Several immature patriots had 
 already been sacrificed, while the nebulous 
 authors of the enterprise escaped. But they 
 did not get off scot-free. The press had been 
 confiscated, and the profits had been inconsider- 
 able. Still the sheet emerged in a new quarter 
 under a new name — the Kali-Yuga, the present 
 incarnation of the local spirit of disaffection, 
 * Era of Darkness. 
 
 215 
 
216 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 was also to go. The people needed waking up. 
 A red-hot number had been prepared. The 
 lamps in the temple of Independence were to 
 be lighted again. It was a commination service, 
 and Siri Ram was chosen High Priest. 
 
 The policy of the KaluYuga was opposed 
 to Narasimha*s method. The Swami wanted to 
 let the Flame burn secretly. Ramji Das and 
 his circle were for noise and advertisement. 
 They were all for a panic. If one talks enough 
 about revolution, they said, it will come. It 
 was half the battle to get the people used to the 
 idea, and a murder here and there, and a few 
 flaming leaflets would go a long way. They 
 liked to see oflicialdom agitated and suspicious. 
 They chuckled at all of)en signs of uneasiness, 
 talking with their tongue in their cheek of "a 
 flutter in the Anglo-Indian dovecotes." That 
 was a phrase that occurred two or three times 
 in an issue in their most moderate organs. 
 They felt that they had gained a point when 
 any of the less responsible Anglo-Indian jour- 
 nals lent themselves to the scare, unable to 
 resist a bid for sensationalism. 
 
 Siri Ram had wits enough to see that Nara- 
 simha would have condemned the Kali-Yuga, 
 He remembered the Swami 's conversation ift 
 the cave, and his warning that the time had not 
 yet come to act, and that Government should 
 sleep. Narasimha had never impressed the 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 217 
 
 imagination so much as on that morning. He 
 wished now that he could serve him, though 
 his errands were perilous, rather than the 
 pampered, worldly-looking bunniah. But no 
 word had come of the Swami for months past. 
 He had been ill in the mountains in the cold 
 weather, and his name was not heard in the 
 conspirators' talk so often as it had been. 
 
 The Kali'Yuga was not badly edited. Its 
 harmony of tone and idea might have extracted 
 admiration from a connoisseur. Hate had dis- 
 torted its features into a kind of consistency. 
 The notes, correspondence, telegrams, leaders, 
 even the advertisements and notices, were all 
 the complement of one another, so that it had 
 the physiognomy of an astutely edited London 
 paper which comes out every day pervaded with 
 some one idea, its features regular and propor- 
 tionate, its expression set in the smirk or smile 
 or frown demanded by the moment. It did not 
 subscribe to Reuter, but items of European news 
 which would interest Indians were telegraphed 
 by a correspondent in Allahabad within an hour 
 of their appearance in The Pioneer. The 
 weekly London letter, by an Indian barrister in 
 the Temple, which was taken up with India in 
 Parliament and the sayings and doings of 
 retired bureaucrats, generally narrowed down 
 into an attack on Lord Curzon, who was still 
 the "Aunt Sally '* of Indian journalists. When- 
 
218 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 ever " His Ex-Magnificence " made an after- 
 dinner speech or wrote a letter to The Times, 
 the London correspondent's letter was full of it. 
 The Kali'Yuga and a dozen other sheets were 
 never tired of throwing mud at him. It was 
 not strange that Siri Ram*s next obsession, after 
 his anti-cow-killing campaign in the school, 
 should have been Lord Curzon, and that he 
 should have come to regard him as the author 
 of all evil. Whenever he saw the headlines: 
 "Cock-a^Joodle-doo," "The Prancing Pro- 
 consul," "The Arch-Panjandrum,*' he longed 
 to be an editor himself, and lacerate the feelings 
 of ex-Viceroys. Ramji Das had warned the 
 proprietor that Siri Ram was a strange, obstinate 
 youth, and it might spoil everything if he were 
 thwarted. So, as part of his reward over and 
 above the glory of martyrdom, he was allowed 
 one column for his own lucubrations. He had 
 thought of giving a paragraph to Banarsi Das. 
 Siri Ram had often frequented the offices as 
 an interested loiterer. He had nearly left a 
 finger in the lithograph roller, and one day he 
 had fallen into the machine for making ink. 
 The premises of the Kali-Yuga took up three 
 sides of a courtyard, and were approached by a 
 remote alley, leading out of a mohalla in the 
 bazaar. The rooms were small and cell-like and 
 filled with tables of type, or stacks of superfluous 
 forms and circulars, and dirty-looking paper 
 
THE 'KALIYUGA' 219 
 
 which dry-rotted in every corner. In the yard 
 one tripped over broken stone slabs for litho- 
 graphs and the remains of prehistoric hand- 
 presses. The third side of the building was 
 taken up by the press, and the fourth by the 
 engine, which also worked a flour-mill, the only 
 one in Gandeshwar which did not belong to 
 Ramji Das, for that astute capitalist was not 
 going to be mixed up even indirectly with such 
 machinery. 
 
 When Siri Ram's instructions were complete, 
 he was left in the editorial chair. The por- 
 tentous issue of the Kali-Yuga, for which he 
 was to stand sponsor, was already in type save 
 only his own column, which was still unfinished, 
 an advertisement or two — payment uncertain — 
 and the telegrams from Allahabad. It was an 
 eloquent appeal, an open bid for revolution, as 
 defiant and outspoken as any document that had 
 seen the light in the Punjab. The leaders 
 opened with an appeal by Narasimha Swami : 
 "Which way does Salvation lie?" It was the 
 work of an inspired fanatic, strong, nervous, 
 impassioned, all trumpet-call and drum-beat, 
 without a flourish to weaken it or a superfluous 
 trope. The Swami had delivered the address at 
 a secret meeting in Gandeshwar two years 
 before, but held it too provocative at the time 
 for publication. Now the Society decided that 
 the moment for it had come, and the prophet's 
 
220 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 wishes were forgotten. The second article was 
 in a different vein, bitter and cynical. Its text 
 was a train outrage in which a young subaltern 
 of a British regiment had deposited a portly 
 Bengali grandee out of his carriage on to the 
 platform of Howrah station. As ill-luck would 
 have it, the gentleman was a member of the 
 Viceroy's Legislative Council, and, as the Kali- 
 Yuga pointed out, probably of much more 
 ancient lineage than his ill-bred assailant. 
 Beginning thus painfully in the right, the editor 
 went on to enlarge upon the different law that 
 held everywhere for "black and white" in the 
 face of Christian professions of brotherhood. 
 He glanced off to the case of the Indians in the 
 Transvaal, speaking of black men in mental 
 inverted commas, and playing on the delicate 
 theme with such skill that the brown-skinned 
 man who read might well run amok at the first 
 white face he saw. A white man could not read 
 it without feeling guilty and sick. Siri Ram, 
 to whom man's equality was an undebatable 
 fact, rose in his chair as he read and called out 
 to the foreman and the type-setters in his craving 
 for indignant sympathy. But none of his staff 
 had come. 
 
 The third article offered a salve to his 
 inflamed resentment. It was headed, "The 
 Awakening of the Agricultural Classes," and it 
 held out hints none too vague as to how the 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 221 
 
 awakening might be completed. It ended with 
 this sinister peroration — 
 
 "The Feringhee does not yet know us. He 
 has long dealt with us, but no amount of famili- 
 arity has grown between him and us. Hidden 
 amongst the mango groves of Plassey, without 
 having even a semblance of battle, and by fraud, 
 forgery and deceptive means, they have taken 
 possession of Bharat Mata. That is why they 
 fail to understand us. Now they have the 
 audacity to tread on the tail of the cobra. The 
 very sedition cases of which we now hear will 
 start the ' fire.' Feringhee! let us tell you 
 beforehand that you will soon know for yourself 
 of how much each and every heart in Hindustan 
 is capable. We know that you are thick-skinned, 
 and cannot understand subtle words. The 
 Indian now seeks to settle accounts with you. 
 We thought of understanding one another's 
 feelings in an altogether different way. But 
 you would not let that be. You seek introduc- 
 tion to us by treading on our tail. Do whatever 
 you please. Only remember the hideous cobra 
 and its sting." 
 
 The Notes and Comments were equally 
 virulent. A new Honours list had just been 
 published, and there was a caustic paragraph 
 on the Indian gentlemen who had been given 
 titles, which had come to mean "nothing but 
 the price of sycophancy and subservience." 
 
222 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 More venom was spilt on the Anglophiles than 
 
 on the English themselves. Muhammadans, 
 
 who were counting on British favour and 
 
 privileges over the Hindus, were warned to 
 
 prepare themselves for that rude awakening 
 
 which might come any moment without any 
 
 notice or warning. To a letter published in 
 
 the Pioneer from a native of a disaffected district 
 
 upholding the justice and consideration of 
 
 Government, the Kali-Yuga published a reply 
 
 pointing out that the writer was a candidate for 
 
 Government service, and that his application 
 
 was still pending. Empire-Day celebrations 
 
 brought down a shower of scornful gibes. The 
 
 Kali'Yuga derided the "Flunkeyism" of 
 
 Lahore. As a lesson to " Empire-Day-wallahs " 
 
 it resuscitated a grievance which ought to have 
 
 been "an eye-opener to all who were not 
 
 ashamed to take part in such — for Indians — 
 
 meaningless demonstrations." 
 
 Siri Ram read on fascinated. He did not 
 notice the inconsistencies of his chiefs, the 
 column of abuse evoked by the letter of a person 
 "whose opinion is of no consequence," and the 
 demand for extradition and a trial in British 
 Courts for the political suspects who were taking 
 their chance before the tribunal of a native 
 State. 
 
 It was not till noon, when the telegrams were 
 coming in from Allahabad, that he began to 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 228 
 
 realise that his foreman had failed him. He 
 sent for the man, but the old press chowkidar 
 returned half-an-hour later with the news that 
 he was drunk. Siri Ram was in a desperate 
 plight. The proof-reader had already made off, 
 fearing to be involved in the prosecution. The 
 editor was beyond call, making good a distant 
 alibi. It was understood that no written word 
 should pass between them. The drunken fore- 
 man was now his only stand-by. There were 
 still three blank columns to fill ; the mails north 
 and south carrying the spawn of the Kali-Yuga 
 to Bombay, Calcutta and Lahore passed through 
 Gandeshwar between nine and ten in the night, 
 and Siri Ram was left to see the complex 
 business through with two or three gaping 
 assistants who knew no English, and could not 
 be trusted even to set type. 
 
 Responsibility, it is said, stiffens the most 
 fibreless, and Siri Ram was responsible. He 
 came to decisions and rose almost to initiative, 
 investing himself with the dignity of office. He 
 distributed the telegrams among the type-setters, 
 he sent the chowkidar to the foreman again, 
 praying him to awake from his drunken stupor, 
 and he made up his mind to let the uncertain 
 advertisements go and use the space for his own 
 fiery rodomontade. 
 
 Three o'clock struck, the pressmen were still 
 setting up the telegrams, the foreman had not 
 
224 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 listened lo his pravt r. when a bright idea struck 
 him. He looked up "Drunkenness" in the 
 dingy old office Encyclopaedia, and sent the 
 chowkidar a third time with a note praying his 
 debauched assistant "for the love of the 
 Almighty to take an emetic." Then he began 
 fumbling in the type boxes on the sloping 
 tables. In five minutes he had set four words 
 and bungled these, mixing up different sizes of 
 type and putting them in backwards and upside 
 down. In the middle of iliis he remembered 
 Lord Curzon, and ran back to his den, hot all 
 over with the fear that his lordship might escape 
 his castigation. 
 
 The office to which he retired was little more 
 than a pigeon-hole, littered with files and old 
 proofs up to the small barred window which 
 looked out on to the courtyard. Here he sat in 
 state patching up for the hundredth time the 
 long-considered attack upon "His Ex-Magnifi- 
 cence," which had been rejected of many editors 
 and which he was now at last to father himself. 
 It was a mosaic of the most haphazard kind; 
 for Siri Ram had pieced together all the abusive 
 catchwords of Indian journalism which had been 
 levelled against his political bete-noir since his 
 retirement. And as all his most cherished 
 epithets and phrases had been culled from 
 different journals on different occasions, the 
 result was the oddest mixture of '* moderate " 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 225 
 
 and "extreme," shrieks and playful irony in the 
 same breath, the hysteria of the fanatic, and the 
 sad smile of the injured friend. Siri Ram threw 
 vitriol with the smirk of tolerance. He was the 
 mentor and assassin in one. 
 
 "Who is Lord Curzon ? " he asked. Lord 
 Curzon was a "Satan" and a "high and dry 
 imperialist" and a "prancing pro-consul." He 
 was "a sun-dried bureaucrat " and an "Imperial 
 Bounder." He was a "Judas," an "Arch- 
 Panjandrum," "a superior Purzon " and "the 
 common Enemy of Man." And he was a 
 "Barnum." Siri Ram looked up "Barnum" 
 in Cassell's Concise Dictionary, and not finding 
 it, he respected the word more, feeling certain 
 that the shaft would tell. 
 
 He ended moderately, having learnt the trick 
 of restraint in climax, a common device in the 
 journals of his school, with its inimitable sug- 
 gestion of tolerant aloofness and power with- 
 held. He had intended to write — 
 
 "It is true we have not been accustomed to 
 blow Lord Curzon *s trumpet or to praise him 
 with faint damns. Though it seems he has 
 not learnt humility, his Lordship may now 
 chew the cud of his thoughts for some days to 
 come." 
 
 But much of this pure salt was thrown 
 away. The pressmen blundered, and the dark 
 Philippic through which he had held the torch 
 Q 
 
226 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 to Curzonicide ended in an advertisement of 
 Dr. Huri Natn's pills. 
 
 "Only see. A single dose will produce 
 the desired effect in the marginally-noted 
 diseases. Its eflFect is like thunderbolt." 
 
 The Proconsul, if these lines ever met his 
 eyes, must have shuddered at the grim innuendo. 
 Siri Ram cannot have been aware that they gave 
 point to his eloquence. Had he perceived their 
 extra-minatory significance, he would have hesi- 
 tated to add a word that might have restored the 
 peace of mind of his lacerated victim. As it 
 was, he inserted a slip in all the copies that 
 had not gone to press. 
 
 "NOxIdE. 
 
 "We regret to say that by mistake of Press- 
 man first eight pages of this journal were 
 printed in a wrong order. The readers are 
 requested to read such forms according to the 
 number put on the head of the page, and not 
 according to the place they at present occupy, 
 as mistake has unfortunately been found out too 
 late for the correction. The Editor begs to be 
 excused for the inconvenience to our readers by 
 the above-mentioned Pressman. Also in some 
 parts of the columns the horse precedes cart. 
 In each and every such case the readers would 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 227 
 
 kindly do likewise. With some little trouble he 
 may do the needful. 
 
 "Editor." 
 
 Siri Ram had no luck. Nevertheless he was 
 filled with pride. When he discovered the 
 mistake at the last moment, he thought that his 
 Notice would make everything right. The 
 foreman had arrived at six o'clock, touched 
 perhaps by Siri Ram's appeal. He certainly 
 looked as if he had tried the remedy. He spoke 
 no word, but drifted solemnly round the press 
 with injured gravity. The man had a drop of 
 white blood in him which may have explained 
 his debauched habits. He was extraordinarily 
 competent. In a few minutes the engines were 
 working, and the whole shed throbbed with the 
 song of triumph. Siri Ram watched the advance 
 and retreat of the rollers, certain and deliberate 
 almost as fate. He had set them in motion, and 
 they gave him a sense of power, of finality even, 
 which he had never felt before. He listened to 
 the rhythmic pulse of the crank. He stood by 
 the press as the sheets were delivered, watching 
 the birth of its prodigious issue with the pride 
 of a parent. 
 
 Q2 
 
IV 
 
 f Merivale tried Siri Ram, the "Prison- 
 editor " of the Kali-Yuga. The unhappy youth 
 [ only presided at the birth of one issue, but he 
 was a most competent scapegoat. He stood 
 his trial manfuTly, and gave no one away. The 
 prosecution found him obstinately loyal. He 
 burnt every page of manuscript on the premises 
 except his own incriminating essay, to which he 
 owned up with pride. The police found him 
 sitting beside the conflagration when they raided 
 the office. It was Dean's first actual encounter 
 with the youth. He told Merivale he had never 
 seen any one so much on the defensive. Siri 
 Ram rose up to confront them as if he expected 
 to be led off to the gallows out of hand. At 
 first his manner was an odd mixture of aggres- 
 siveness and "funk "; then human pride crept in. 
 Perhaps he felt that he had scored a point, and 
 could afford to be generous. Before they had 
 finished turning out the office he had shown 
 them one or two small details of the press on his 
 own initiative, as if he had it in his mind to be 
 hospitable. 
 
 In the street his manner was perfect. His 
 228 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 229 
 
 friends had come to see him taken ; hundreds 
 of sympathisers lined the road. His face was 
 bright and smiling; he looked as if he had 
 expected an ovation, and bowed to the crowd 
 with little jerks of the head which would have 
 made Dean shriek with laughter if the whole 
 thing had not been so pathetic. 
 
 He kept up this demeanour through the trial 
 and forgot his sullen broodings. He had 
 become positive, almost alert, as if for once he 
 were on the winning side. When the Counsel 
 for the Prosecution examined him after his 
 statement in the hope that he might draw 
 his instigators into the case, he hugged his 
 criminality and quoted Mazzini and Garibaldi 
 sententiously. The gaol as yet had no terrors 
 for him. 
 
 The Kali-Yuga trial was followed with great 
 interest in the Club. The confiscated issue with 
 Siri Ram's Curzon article in it became a 
 treasured possession, and every evening Merivale 
 was expected to entertain his friends with new 
 humours. He and Skene alone, perhaps, sawi 
 the true pathos of it. f 
 
 Siri Ram an editor ! Skene remembered the 
 nightingale, the **bird that lived in thicket," 
 neglected of hungry sportsmen, and encouraged 
 debauchery in poets. "Can't you track the other 
 fellows down ? " he asked Merivale. He and 
 Dean and Merivale and the very young subaltern 
 
or 
 
 (28^y SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 were drinking tea in the verandah after a hard 
 set of tennis. *'I suppose the whole thing was 
 in type before they let him into the office." 
 
 "Yes, but we can't get hold of them. I can 
 only confiscate the press.** 
 
 "You'll let him off light?** 
 
 "Two years, perhaps. I can*t make it less. 
 The scapegoat ruse is too convenient.** 
 
 "He is a game little beggar. I didn't think 
 he had it in him.'* 
 
 "He plays up like all of them,** Dean said, 
 "when people are looking on. Hullo, here*s the 
 Colonel man.** 
 
 Hobbs approached Skene sadly. 
 
 "One of your fellows, isn't it? What did 
 y r I tell you ? I see they are going to have 
 Board Schools now for the little sweeper 
 boys.** 
 
 He laid a hand on Skene's broad shoulders 
 with mock reproach, and tried to sway him 
 backwards and forwards. The burly pedagogue 
 rocked sympathetically. 
 
 "No place for a soldier. Eh, old man? We 
 all know what you are going to say.** 
 
 "No. Tm damned if it is.** 
 
 "It may be soon." Merivale was thinking of 
 the enemy within the gate. "Our own Press 
 run the Kali-Yuga hard,*' he said. "Did you 
 see that article in The Planet, ' Can we hold 
 India? Probably not.'" 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' .281 
 
 "That sort of sensation-mongering does more 
 harm than Radical slop." 
 
 "Of course. We couldn't play into their 
 hands better. It is just what these agitators 
 want — to make the people think we feel jumpy. 
 Once let them think we are on the edge, and 
 they'll try to push us over." 
 
 **Do you think they'd put up a fight?" said 
 the very young subaltern. "I don't suppose 
 they'd have a chance." 
 
 "Not in the long run, perhaps. But we don't 
 want another mutiny." 
 
 "The sooner we have a little blood-letting the 
 better," Hobbs said. "It'll quieten things down 
 a bit. Come and play Bridge." 
 
 Skene refused. "I'm too sleepy," he said. 
 "I'd revoke." 
 
 Dean stayed with him, and they discussed 
 the Kali-Yuga. 
 
 "Do you think Narasimha had anything to 
 do with this? " Skene asked. 
 
 "No, not directly, though part of it reads like 
 his style. You remember Mohan Roy ? " 
 
 "The man who shot Ghulam Ali at Hooghly 
 and blew his own brains out?" 
 
 "Yes. Siri Ram was seen with him in 
 Kashmir, and Mohan Roy was here in Gan- 
 deshwar two days before he did it, asking about 
 Narasimha Swami. He had just left him, but 
 he wanted to find out if we knew anything." 
 
 / 
 
282 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "The avalanche business was all a ruse, 
 wasn't it?" 
 
 "Yes. Mohan Roy's visit was a feeler. The 
 Swami sent him here to find out if it was safe 
 for him to come back." 
 
 ** And he decided it was not ? " 
 
 "I am not sure. Anyhow he is beyond harm 
 now." 
 
 " Have the Kashmir people caught him ? " 
 
 "No. He is dying, I hear, up in the hills. 
 Pneumonia after exposure." ^ 
 
 "That may be a ruse too." 
 
 "I don't think so. Anyhow, he is an extra- 
 ordinarily single-minded man. I can't help 
 admiring him." 
 
 "Mv students would follow him like the Pied 
 Piper." 
 
 "It's only natural. They love to see a super- 
 man among their own people. ' In Vishnu-land 
 what avatar?' Yet I don't believe he made a 
 single friend in Europe." 
 
 "Talking about colour prejudice. Don't you 
 Uhink it is rather a misnomer? I mean the whole 
 I thing is chemical. You might as well talk of 
 the prejudices of acids and alkaloids." 
 
 "Simple as litmus paper." Dean knocked 
 the ashes out of his pipe and left his friend to 
 his moralisings. 
 
 "Oh, Hades! " Skene muttered. "Have I got 
 liver?" And he reminded himself of the 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 288 
 
 physical origin of depression and the incon- 
 stancy of humours. "This is Tuesday," he 
 said. "If history repeats itself I shall be smiling 
 on Thursday at the forlorn ness of my condition, 
 but I'm dashed if I see it now." 
 
 The truth was, Skene was life-weary like 
 Narasimha. He was tired, and the Siri Ram 
 trial had made him think. He liked his young 
 men. They were friendly and responsive, but 
 he had become a little sceptical about his influ- 
 ence. He felt stale and off his work. It was 
 like pumping air into a football with a huge 
 puncture. 
 
 Skene did not turn to his own kind for 
 comfort. The instinct of the wet blanket was 
 too strong in him ; he subsided into a long chair 
 in the verandah and watched the crowd. He 
 saw Mrs. O'Shaughnessy stalk into the ladies' 
 room followed by the Chaplain's wife, whom 
 men called "The Voucher," because of her sus- 
 picions and her great concern. 
 
 Skene would have laughed if he had known 
 the common peril that had drawn these strange 
 allies together. They were discussing the sub- 
 bovine girl. The trouble was about the scores 
 in the Ladies' Bridge box, of which the monthly 
 account had just been posted on the wall. 
 
 "I know I was up at the end of the month," 
 the padre's lady was saying. "It isn't safe 
 to leave a chit with her when she loses. I'm 
 
234 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 sure she tears them up when she gets the 
 chance.*' 
 
 Here Mrs. Innes, the Commissioner's wife, 
 the *' hurra-mem " ^ of the station, passed 
 through the room from the verandah, and was 
 appealed to as an oracle. 
 
 "I should be very careful another time," she 
 ventured graciously, with an air that indicated 
 her aloofness. 
 
 "AnotlicT lime indeed!" the Voucher sniffed 
 when Mrs. Innes was out of hearing. '*I refuse 
 to play with the girl. The point is — can we put 
 it right? Hadn't some one better SF>eak to the 
 Secretary ? " 
 
 Here Mrs. Waddilove, the gruff-voiced lady 
 with the three chins, entered, following in Mrs. 
 Innes' wake, but was detached and initiated into 
 the scandal. She recommended caution. It might 
 have been a mistake. Perhaps she really forgot. 
 
 The Irishwoman's voice rose high in chal- 
 lenge. "Forget! Don't you believe it, she's 
 no chicken." 
 
 Here the conversation became subtly dis- 
 paraging. The girl was stripped of her sparse 
 plumage. If she had been a chicken she would 
 not have had a feather left. It was noted that 
 she had been almost partnerless at the last dance, 
 and the padre's wife was evidently glad. 
 
 "She has seventeen pads in her hair," Mrs. 
 * Great lady. 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 285 
 
 O'Shaughnessy screamed. "Sweet-peas went 
 to see her when she had influenza, and counted 
 them." 
 
 "Hssh ! " the Voucher protested. The social 
 sense in her warned the natural woman that she 
 was being smirched. *'It is never safe to say 
 anything in Gandeshwar," she added, "unless 
 you are standing in the middle of the maidan." 
 
 Mrs. O'Shaughnessy looked uneasily at the 
 door in the corner and through the jalousies 
 at the much-partitioned verandah which was 
 divided into recesses as if for perpetual "sitting 
 out.'* A young subaltern was having tea with 
 a dark-haired, Semitic-looking girl in a habit, 
 whose air of nonchalance was meant to dispel 
 the idea of an assignation. In the sudden hush 
 scraps of their conversation were borne across 
 to the card-room. 
 
 "They're the limit," the subaltern was saying. 
 "I don't mind padres as a rule, but any one can 
 see he is a bit hairy about the heel." He looked 
 approvingly at his neat ankles, and socks which 
 matched his tie. "And she's all fluff and claw," 
 he added. 
 
 "All women are cats," the habit agreed 
 sweetly. 
 
 "Did you hear that?" Mrs. O'Shaughnessy 
 asked. "The Passover girl. And talking of 
 limits, too. Well, I'm O-P-H." 
 
286 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 But in the doorway she nearly ran into the 
 dreamy, substantial young lady they had been 
 discussing. The girl stood still to prevent a 
 collision. She had the knack of looking sleepy 
 and startled at the same time. 
 
 "I owe you two-eight," she said stolidly. 
 
 The unexpected avowal nearly took their 
 breath away. 
 
 "That's all ricfht," Mrs. O'Shaughnessy said 
 in her cheerful brogue. "Come to tea here 
 to-morrow, anyhow. You can have your 
 revenge." 
 
 "Thanks. Tm sorry I didn't put it in. I 
 only found the chit last night in a book I was 
 reading." 
 
 Then she turned to the Chaplain's wife. 
 
 "And I owe you two-ten. Shall I put it in 
 this month's account, or pay you now?" 
 
 "Oh, please don't bother. I had forgotten 
 about it." The wife of the "man of God" 
 spoke with laboured indifference. Then she 
 added as an afterthought, "Oh, I forgot. It 
 would be convenient, if you don't mind. I've 
 got to go into Spratt's on the way home about 
 a lampshade." 
 
 Skene witnessed the settling up, and remem- 
 bered the lady's apt nickname. He tried to 
 picture her in her husband's parish, if he ever 
 had one. 
 
 "Gad, how India does spoil them," was his 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 287 
 
 inward comment. "You wouldn't think they 
 were the same breed. I wonder if they'd get 
 any of the virtue back if they were trans- 
 planted." 
 
 One of his recurrent fits of homesickness came 
 on him with the thought of the Englishwomen 
 he knew in their own country; women who 
 worked and gardened and hunted and visited 
 the poor. He thought of their fresh, untroubled, 
 open-air faces; the peace and sympathy in their 
 eyes, the tones of their voices, rich and deep as 
 an old bell ; the way they had of entering a 
 cottage and talking to the folk inside. The 
 memory was so vivid that he could see the path 
 to the door with its phlox and sunflower borders 
 and low box hedges. A girl on a moor came 
 into the picture leaning against the wind like 
 Diana of the Uplands, and a slim woman riding 
 to a meet with her neck turned away from the 
 blustering gusts of the east wind which flung 
 the raindrops from the dead leaves into her face. 
 And he thought of the insides of their homes, 
 the new books on the table, the bowls of daffodils 
 or snowdrops, the hostess sitting by the fire, a 
 woman with a dozen different interests in life, 
 who could work for a cause and keep her sense 
 of humour at the same time. 
 
 Skene was like the sailor dedicated to the sea 
 who never ceased to long for the wet furrow 
 and the heath and pine-woods and the autumn 
 
288 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 coverts which shed their leaves all at once and 
 at the prof>er time. He devoured books that 
 smelt of the English soil. Tess; Puck of Pook*s 
 Hill; Helbeck of Bannisdale. He had a new 
 novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward under his arm. 
 He would dine alone, inspect the College 
 Boarding-house, and then give half the night 
 to it. The women she drew were just the 
 corrective he needed. The strong English air 
 of the book inspired him. Pagan as he was, he 
 could even envy Mrs. Ward's clergymen. A. 
 scene in the story brought to his mind a par- 
 ticular church in the low meadows by a Norfolk 
 river. A lime avenue led up to it from a road 
 where there was a ruined priory ; the old monks 
 used to traverse the path daily to chant their 
 hymns or catch the fat pike under the reeds. 
 He remembered the sweet June scent in the air, 
 the moths hovering among the blossoms, the 
 snipe booming in the marshes, the barrier of 
 sedge and flowering rush by the water's edge, 
 and the streaks of red light reflected in the water, 
 and broken by the rising fish as the sun set under 
 dark clouds. He had envied the vicar of the 
 place. *'I would captain the village cricket 
 team," he thought, "and fish on Mondays and 
 perhaps Thursdays, and go round every day 
 bucking everybody up. Why shouldn't I? I 
 could do it as well as any one else." And there 
 was nothing to stand in his way save a few 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 289 
 
 words in the Creed and some films of dogma 
 which he could not swear to, but for which he 
 would have been as ready to die as Lyall's 
 agnostic if a Mussulman captor had offered him 
 Islam or the denial of his faith. 
 
 "By Gad," he said as his reverie became 
 articulate, "I'd give my hat to be a Christian." 
 
 His great rumble of a laugh echoed down 
 the passage, and every one who heard was 
 infected by it. Hobbs, playing Bridge in the 
 next room, said, "Listen to old Skene." And 
 the Chaplain's wife, looking up from The 
 Ladies* Field, saw him sitting alone and grin- 
 ning to himself. He met her envious stare, and 
 remembered that she had started the train of 
 thought. "The most priest-like thing I can 
 do," he thought, with a weary smile, "would be 
 to go and see that poor little devil in gaol." 
 
Merivale convicted Siri Ram of conspiracy 
 to deprive his Imperial Majesty the King 
 Emperor of India of the sovereignty of British 
 India, and of attempting to promote feelings of 
 enmity and hatred between different classes of 
 his subjects. He sentenced him to two years' 
 rigorous imprisonment. 
 
 Every day during his trial he had been led 
 by two policemen between the lock-up and the 
 court along the same streets by which he had 
 entered Gandeshwar with Mool Chand as a child 
 peeping between the folds of his mother's 
 purdah. He passed the treasury where men 
 were counting money, and under the bastions 
 of the fort where the maimed beggars sat, along 
 the street of the cloth merchants, and through 
 the metal bazaar where the same grizzled, 
 spectacled old men were hammering brass and 
 copper in the dim recesses of their shops. 
 
 Public safety demanded that he should be 
 handcuffed. At first he was attended by large 
 and sympathetic crowds, but as the trial dragged 
 on with constant interruptions his friends grew 
 indifferent. There were days when he did not 
 
 240 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 241 
 
 meet a single student on the road. As he passed 
 the shopkeepers did not look up from their bales. 
 Siri Ram tasted the bitterness of disillusion. 
 Only on the day of his sentence there was a 
 faint revival of zeal, some timid plaudits from 
 the back of the crowd, which helped him for a 
 time to wear his manacles and prison-clothes as 
 a crown and garland. 
 
 But the utter dreariness and desolation of the 
 place soon closed in on his spirit. In the day- 
 time he ground corn with the other prisoners, 
 and in the evening he was shut into one of a 
 row of cells from which men looked at each 
 other through bars across a courtyard like caged 
 beasts. Beyond lay untilled, sandy spaces inter- 
 rupted by the long, dormitory roofs with their 
 tiaras of iron ventilators. On Sundays when 
 Siri Ram kept his cell he could see the shadow 
 of the watch-tower fall across them, and the 
 everlasting kites over the roof of the kitchen 
 and the white wings of the pigeons fluttering 
 beyond the adobe walls. There was no other 
 stimulus to the mind in that drab, dun-coloured 
 world, save as he passed to and from the mill 
 the glimpse of the condemned cells in a far 
 distant corner with the little green-bordered 
 pathway to the garden where the gallows stood. 
 
 This, then, was the scene of the exit he had 
 pictured. Siri Ram had touched a condemned 
 man. In the Registration Office where they had 
 
242 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 filed his record, and given him his prison cap 
 and pyjamas, the convict in front of him had 
 been a murderer who had torn the jewellery 
 from a little girl and tlirown her down a well. 
 The details were entered on a small folded 
 cardboard sheet with a green label like the one 
 which held his own record, and he had seen the 
 furtive-looking brute with his sullen, earth- 
 bound scowl limp through the porch and heard 
 the bolt clang behind him. The murderer was 
 alone now in one of those solitary cells by tlu 
 garden, and in a few days he was to be taken 
 out and destroyed with calculated violence. The 
 saviours of his country died in the same way. 
 It was gradually borne in on Siri Ram that the 
 gloi:y_jof^ martyrd om must be se lf-natured in 
 ^litujde. He might be the mirror of patriots ; his 
 image might be enshrined in zenanas, his 
 picture sold in the bazaar, but no reflected 
 light could enter his cell ; he could not read 
 his achievement in the hard faces of the 
 warders. 
 
 Solitary confinement at night alternated with 
 periods in one of the dormitories, where he slept 
 with casteless vagabonds, gipsies and eaters of 
 snakes and crows. There was a whole gang of 
 them in his ward, all sentenced in the same riot. 
 He tried to proselytise among them, but when 
 he spoke they would break out into a jargon he 
 did not understand, or they would look at him 
 
THE 'KALI-YUGA' 248 
 
 with a passing concern as they might examine 
 one of their own hobbled donkeys which browsed 
 too near their earthen pots. All day he laboured 
 with these men grinding corn, and in the even- 
 ing he was mewed up with them. There were 
 only three other "litefates" in the dormitory 
 besides himself. Siri Ram had seen them arrive 
 spick and span in clean raiment, their hair long 
 and smooth, men sensible to refinement and 
 courtesy. Now in their prison clothes they 
 looked coarse and degraded with low cares, 
 hardly distinguishable from the habitual con- 
 victs. They might ha^e seen a similar change 
 in Siri Ram if they had observed him at all, 
 but they formed a sullen group apart, and did 
 not respond to his tentative advances. 
 
 It was a relief almost to be in his cell again. 
 Here he could brood, and it was all he wanted. 
 Often he forgot his country's wrongs in his 
 own. His burden had become intolerable. He 
 hated Merivale, of whom he was always think- 
 ing. In the days when he frequented Ramji 
 Das' staircase he and Banarsi Das had often 
 seen the smooth-faced civilian driving past in 
 his trap, spotlessly accoutred, cool, complacent, 
 superior, masterful, infinitely remote. The 
 young conspirators, newly fledged in liberal 
 principles and the equality of man and inflated 
 with a diet of Mill, would look up from some 
 squalid clerkly threshold as he passed and hate 
 
 R 2 
 
244 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 him for material and abstract reasons. Siri 
 Ram cursed him now in his cell, thinking of 
 him as his inquisitor and judge, or as an ahen 
 parasite sucking the life-blood of his Bharat- 
 Mata, or perhaps with more bitter resentment, 
 as he had seen him first in Mograon carrying 
 his small sister Shiv Dai in his arms across the 
 plank bridge. 
 
 Skene found him one Sunday afternoon in a 
 black mood, squatting on his oblong bed of 
 mud-plastered brick built into the floor, the size 
 of a coffin. He would not rise or respond, but 
 pretended to be wrapped in a religious trance. 
 The depressing picture recurred to the English- 
 man for months afterwards. 
 
 As the days passed Siri Ram sought escape 
 in Yoga; but it was more difficult in his prison 
 cell than in Shiv*s rock-hewn mansion under 
 Araarnath. "The dweller in the body is 
 invulnerable," he reminded himself, and recalled 
 the rich tones of Narasimha in the cave. No 
 message had come from the Swami for months 
 before the trial. Siri Ram had heard that he 
 was ill. Often as he lay in his narrow cell he 
 thought of his guru wandering in the illimitable 
 hills, and how sometimes when he was gather- 
 ing juniper fuel he used to look for his salmon- 
 coloured shift across the valley, a faint speck 
 barely distinguishable from the lichen patches 
 on the streaked rock. He and the marmots and 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 245 
 
 the ravens were all part of that spirit-haunted 
 ravine. 
 
 Siri Ram did not know that the Swami had 
 left the gujar's hut in November, bitten by the 
 cold, and drifted down the valley to Tanin and 
 Patkote. The monks had found him insensible 
 in the snow under the walnut trees at Eismakhan. 
 They took him into the monastery, where he lay 
 all the winter, his spirit at the ebb. It was not 
 until the fruit-trees blossomed and the purple 
 irises were flowering on the roof that he knew 
 he was still capable of desire. His soul thirsted 
 for the plains. 
 
 "I should be delusion-free," he said; "this 
 wish is contact-born." But the folk of the 
 monastery took his longing for a behest. They 
 had the palanquin of a lame Sadhini woman 
 who had died at Amarnath. One morning his 
 chela showed it to him and said, "We will carry 
 you to Hindustan." 
 
 But the Swami demurred. 
 
 "He is at peace," he said, "into whom all 
 desires flow and are still as rivers perish in the 
 sea." 
 
 "But see," the chela continued, "suffer me 
 to lift you thus. You are no more burden than 
 a small bird in its nest poised on the bough of 
 a tree." 
 
 Indeed, the Swami did not weigh more than 
 a peasant's winter clothes. A boy might 
 
246 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 have carried him all day in a basket on his 
 back. 
 
 So the next morning, when the air was warm, 
 they bore him down the Lidar valley to the 
 sacred spring of Anantinag. His carriers rested 
 under the very same willow tree under ^hich 
 Siri Ram had met Mohan Roy when he left 
 Ramji Das* oilskin packet in the grass. All 
 the third day the great valley of Kashmir 
 narrowed in front of them until it became a thin 
 rift in the hills below the Banihal. The path 
 rose gently through a rich country dotted with 
 shady villages. Fat marsh flowers bordered the 
 dykes, green lanes led off to hamlets on either 
 side through willow avenues. The trees were 
 all lopped of their twigs, which had been cut 
 as winter provender for sheep when the snow 
 was on the ground, and were stacked now in 
 huge bundles, looking black and ugly, between 
 the upright boughs to dry. They crossed the 
 twelve rivulets that make the Jhelum and saw the 
 bare red flank of Achibal in the east crowned 
 with larch and pine, and beyond it the snows 
 of the Brahma peaks and the Nun Kun. That 
 evening they reached the orchard village of 
 Vernag at the foot of the pass, and laid a bed 
 for the Swami in one of the latticed chambers 
 over the aqueduct in the old Mogul garden. 
 The stream babbled under him all night as it 
 leapt from the basin of the sacred spring chant- 
 
THE *KALT-YUGA' 247 
 
 ing a mantra to him of continual life in death, 
 ebbing and flowing and renewing, to which his 
 tired spirit responded but not his mind. 
 
 In the morning the Swami appeared to be 
 sinking. The ague had gripped him; he was 
 chilled to the bone. The devoted chela, who 
 had come with him from Eismakhan, carried 
 him to the cloisters built in the rock wall of 
 the spring; he spread a charpoy for him and 
 stayed by him all day, dragging him over the 
 flag-stones round the tank, pursuing the sun. 
 The holy carp crowded to his shadow, expectant 
 of grain, a wriggling, scrambling swarm. In 
 the evenings he drew Narasimha into one of 
 the cells and lighted a charcoal fire in the 
 wicker-covered kangar by his feet. 
 
 It was weeks before the sun had strength to 
 warm the Swami into life; he lay so still that 
 the kingfishers perched on his bed and plumbed 
 the clear spring from it. To his ranging mind 
 the flash of their dripping wings was merged 
 in the iridescent gleam of Swarga.^ In those 
 days the spirit almost escaped its husk. The 
 parcelling of the earth between the fat and lean 
 was no more his concern. His mind was well 
 F>oised. The particular was lost in the infinite. 
 Siri Ram, Mohan Roy, Ramji Das were nothing 
 more than busy spectres. j 
 
 In the dark half of Bhadon he was able to sit 
 
 * Heaven. 
 
248 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 out a little in the fruit gardens. He would walk 
 a few steps and then rest his back against one 
 of the ruined marble bridges that spanned the 
 conduits, sunning himself like a lizard. And 
 when his blood was warm the desire came back 
 to him to see the open stretches of the plains. 
 He longed for the evening smells and cries of 
 the villages, the sun rising and setting on a level 
 with his eyes, the homing cattle, and the dust 
 in their track caught in a web of light, and the 
 dull red gleams of sunset flickering through the 
 mango leaves like fairy lamps. 
 
 When he spoke of going the chela obeyed; 
 not that he thought that his guru had recovered 
 sufficiently to move, but because he knew his 
 heart was in the south, and that he would never 
 be so strong again. 
 
 For safety's sake the Eismakhan monks had 
 urged him to cross the frontier as a high-caste 
 purdah lady, belonging to the household of a 
 pundit in Jammu. But now the Swami would not. 
 
 "There is no need," he said. "They would 
 not take me, seeing that I must leave this empty 
 shell upon their hands. It would work them 
 more ill than good." 
 
 So he travelled openly along the unfrequented 
 route. On the Banihal Pass he turned his back 
 for the last time on the beauty of the snows. 
 The pure white summits of Kolahoi, Haramokh 
 and Nanga Parbat fell behind the ridge, and 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 249 
 
 the carriers dropped into a hot, bare, treeless 
 valley. For three days they followed the 
 Bechlari stream by Ramsu and Digdool to the 
 Chenab. The path, which was cut out of the 
 sheer rock, hung over the torrent, and pursued 
 every tributary deep into the enfolding hills. 
 The Swami lay with the curtain of the palanquin 
 drawn back, steeped in the sun, his eyes burn- 
 ing with a quiet fire deep in their sockets. The 
 narrow track was often blocked by gangs of 
 road-menders or drovers with their pack 
 bullocks, carrying piece goods into Kashmir, or 
 herds of promontory goats standing on end and 
 stretching out for the sparse blades of grass on 
 the bright mica-strewn rock. 
 
 In the Chenab valley at Ramband they were 
 almost on a level with the Punjab. The sand 
 and blistering sun, the dry parched scent of 
 the earth and the smell of cow dung in the fires, 
 the low pomegranate bushes rooted mysteriously 
 in the hot, gritty soil made Narasimha feel that 
 he was on the threshold of the plains. He who 
 had attained Yoga was in the end earthbound. 
 
 He husbanded his spirit for the goal, coaxing 
 the ebbing breath which strained to break its 
 thin warped chrysalis shell. His tired brain 
 revolved many images. Hour after hour in the 
 garden at Vernag he had sat beside the con- 
 duits watching the water flow by, and now he 
 felt like a weed in a stream sucked through a 
 
250 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 sluice. He was being drawn towards the land 
 of his birth, his Bharat Mata, the womb of 
 avatars, nurse of his spiritual life. Would the 
 weak tissues of his mortal envelope hold together 
 till he reached the gate? There was another 
 spur to pass and fifty miles of devious mountain 
 paths before he reached the foot hills at 
 Udhampur. 
 
 Two days afterwards on the Looralari ridge 
 above Batot he saw the Sewaliks and the plains 
 glimmering beyond. The heat hung visibly 
 over the valley. There were a few stunted firs 
 and deodars on the top of the pass, and the 
 carriers rested in the shade drawing in the last 
 breath of mountain air. 
 
 They passed Chineni and Dramtal, and on 
 the evening of the next day struck into the 
 Sewaliks at Udhampur. After this they forded 
 many torrents, and the Swami was sometimes 
 lifted shoulder high. Between the streams the 
 land was not rocky ; it was a rock — unbroken 
 for miles, save for an interstice here and there 
 where a spring bubbled or a palm rose like a 
 promise, or a patch of intense green caught the 
 eye where the water lay shimmering in the 
 scooped shallow depressions that made the 
 oasis. Where the solid rock ended, crumbling, 
 torn chasms fretted the earth, filled with the 
 debris of the hills. T he bear ers toiled through 
 these chasms, which Uecame wider and hotter 
 
THE *KALI-YUGA' 251 
 
 and more boulder^trewn as they neared the 
 plains. 
 
 The parched, gritty hillocks of loose sand, 
 which looked as if they had been shovelled 
 there from the refuse of some firepit and were 
 still smouldering, refracted heat like Satan's 
 marl. The Swami slept through these burning 
 miles. His soul was comforted ; he was entering 
 the door of his escape. When his eyes opened 
 they searched the south patiently, but there was 
 always some obscuring ridge thrown between. 
 
 The hour came when his spirit was almost 
 sped. In the intense heat of an August noon 
 the curtain of his palanquin was drawn aside, 
 and the mortal husk of Narasimha was lifted up 
 in his couch by pious hands. He saw a yellow 
 fortress on a rock, the hold of Jammu, running 
 out into the mist of the plains like a headland 
 between an estuary and the sea. It was the gate | 
 qf the Punjab. * 
 
 A train of baggage camels swayed between 
 him and the revetment, laden with neem 
 branches for their evening meal, their uncouth 
 necks hung with strings of coloured beads. 
 The unsubstantial world rocked to the Swami 
 in rhythm with their mincing steps. His eyes 
 became dim. The fortress flickered and was 
 blotted out ; he had a sense of moving mountains. 
 One of the beasts bent a nozzle over the litter, 
 fastidious and inquisitive, scenting some dry 
 
252 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 provender. The driver struck the beast on the 
 head, swearing volubly. 
 
 "It is enough," the Swami said, raising him- 
 self on one arm. "I have seen. Our caravan 
 has made a bed with the dead in sleep." Then 
 he fell back into the arms of his chela. 
 
PART V 
 THE SACRIFICE 
 
 "And you shall see how the devil spends, 
 A fire God gave for other ends." 
 
 Browning. 
 
I 
 
 SiRi Ram wondered why liberty was not f 
 sweet. The fruit he had pined for was insipid. 
 There was no ovation for him at the gate ; it 
 seemed that no one cared for his goings and 
 comings. Yet day after day, week after week, 
 for eighteen months the end of his term had 
 seemed to offer him a blessed rebirth. Then he 
 had fallen ill ; he had become too tired to care ; 
 his spirit was numbed. The gaol had made him 
 less philosophical, and the presence of the 
 English became more and more a personal 
 wrong. His hate was concentrated on Merivale. 
 On the day when his clothes were restored to 
 him and the few rupees he had earned from the 
 Kali-Yuga, when the door clanged behind him 
 and he was free, he had never felt so much alone 
 in his life. 
 
 His friends might have welcomed him, but his 
 release was unexpected. Good conduct marks, 
 little as he had sought them, had reduced his 
 term by thirteen days. No one knew of his 
 release except Ramji Das, who was in touch 
 with tentacles of the Society everywhere, and 
 had sent a scout along the road between the 
 255 
 
256 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 city and the gaol to intercept him. Siri Ram 
 missed the bunniah's emissary. He went to a 
 house frequented by Banarsi Das, but learnt 
 that he had gone to his village. He drifted 
 despondingly to the chamber above the drug 
 shop in the bazaar. He did not love Ramji 
 Das, but he did not know where else to go. He 
 felt that he ought to be f^ted and garlanded, 
 but that God hated him and that he was 
 betrayed. The moment he laid a hand on the 
 banisters of the staircase in the courtyard a 
 servant ran out, crying excitedly — 
 
 "The door is closed. You must not come 
 here." 
 
 Siri Ram stood at the foot of the stairs 
 bewildered. The sweets of liberty were turned 
 to gall. "Pity it is,*' he murmured to the empty 
 courtyard; "he is afraid Government will look 
 at him with a jaundiced eye. I am old tool after 
 all, no doubt." 
 
 He passed dejectedly into the street, wonder- 
 ing what in the world he was to do and where 
 he was to go. 
 
 Ramji Das had not forgotten him. He and 
 his confederates were awaiting him at that 
 moment in another house which the Society 
 frequented in a deserted quarter of the city. 
 Siri Ram was no disused tool; he was still 
 serviceable to the Cause. While he sat morosely 
 brooding on an iron seat in the public gardens. 
 
-J> 
 
 THE SACRIFICE ^267 
 
 they were discussing his worth, which to the 
 bunniah's appraising eye was much enhanced. 
 He remembered Mohan Roy's caustic comment. 
 Siri Ram was a goat which might be useful for 
 sacrifice, but he must be led right up to the 
 altar. 
 
 "He is now at the very steps," he thought. 
 "If we are careful we may lift him up between 
 the knife and the stone." 
 
 All were agreed that something must be done 
 quickly, something that would be cried aloud 
 from end to end of Hindustan. The lull had i 
 been too long. No white man had been sacri- I 
 ficed for seven months ; the waverers would be ( 
 becoming indifferent; the people must be shown ! 
 their strength. And here was the inflammable, 
 self-devoted Siri Ram coming out of gaol, ripe > 
 for murder and marked out for it. ' 
 
 " He may be broken-spirited," one of the con- 
 spirators, a too-cautious vakil, objected. 
 
 "I think not. He broods much. We shall 
 see." 
 
 "We must be careful with him." 
 
 "He will come straight here. He will see no 
 one alone." Ramji Das was quietly persuasive. 
 He put the lacquered stem of his hookah to his 
 fat lips and inhaled. Then he added as an 
 afterthought, "We can make him think it is 
 the day." As he spoke he watched the effect 
 of his strategy upon his lieutenants. His small 
 s 
 
258 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 dull eyes were quite expressionless in their 
 fleshy folds. His chest and paunch heaved. 
 Only the eyes were oddly still. 
 
 As the possibilities of the manoeuvre began 
 to dawn on the conspirators, they regarded the 
 amorphous fat heap in the corner with increased 
 respect. The vakil gaped in admiration. Dr. 
 Hari Chand, the least adventurous of the crew, 
 was visibly excited. Here was generalship. If 
 Siri Ram could be made to think it was the 
 day nothing would stop him. 
 
 ** He will not leave the house until the moment 
 has come," Ramji Das continued. "When he 
 enters the street you will keep him in view." 
 
 "1 have heard that he is timid and weak- 
 willed," the vakil said. 
 
 "It is true that he may bungle, but whom else 
 will you find?" 
 
 "Even if he fails the attempt will strike terror. 
 In any case we gain." 
 
 "Except for our danger." 
 
 "He will not betray us." 
 
 "But if they use violence." 
 
 "You will see. I will provide against dis- 
 covery." 
 
 The overcautious one was persuaded. 
 
 "Let us leave all to Ramji Das," Dr. Hari 
 Chand said. "What time does the bridegroom 
 start ? " 
 
 "The mail to Bombay goes at ten in the 
 
THE SACRIFICE 259 
 
 ni^ht. He goes to his own Motherland. May 
 he go farther." 
 
 "Have you got the bride?" 
 
 Ramji Das produced a small revolver. "It is 
 a Browning Automatic," he said. "The zenana 
 is full. It contains brides for six, and you may 
 carry it concealed in your hand." 
 
 His own flabby palm closed over it. He 
 looked at his watch. "Siri Ram ought to be 
 here," he said; "we will receive him with 
 honour. It will be best if he is elated. The 
 Society will provide a Red Flag banquet." He 
 called a servant from below. 
 
 "Are the balu-shahi prepared? Do not forget 
 the garlands." 
 
 The word awoke Dr. Hari Chand from his 
 meditations. "If we cannot have the day, let 
 us at least have a day," he said. 
 
 Every one knew what was in his mind. 
 Bloodlessness was the hobby the Doctor rode. 
 His theory was that liberty could be won by work 
 among the depressed classes. In the public eye 
 he was an honoured propagandist. He had 
 lectured on the improvement of the condition 
 of the poor; he was the author of pamphlets. 
 After his speech on "The Degradation of the 
 Untouchables" the Kali-Yuga had called him 
 the Wilberforce of the Punjab, and associated 
 him with "the moderate camp." Still officialdom 
 remained curiously unsympathetic. Ramji Das 
 s a 
 
260 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 and his fellow opportunists had flirted with his 
 ideas before he became one of them. Now he 
 had met the Red Flag half way. He did not 
 mind sacrifice if there were no blood. He 
 objected to the idea of weapons or wounds on 
 either side, but poison was a compromise. 
 - They discussed Dr. Hari Chand's day. 
 
 "What will you mix with the tonic pills?" 
 the vakil asked. 
 
 "Hydrocyanic acid.*' Being on scientific 
 ground the Doctor forsook the vernacular. 
 "Even if a hundred taste they will be no more. 
 We can despatch them from post offices where 
 we have our own men ; all officials will receive 
 them the same morning. There will be a 
 circular letter in the packet from some 
 European drug store saying, * Tonic Pills are 
 sent you. Please state your experience after 
 tasting.' " 
 
 The vakil admired the plan, seeing in it the 
 minimum of risk with the maximum of success. 
 "No one need fall into law's clutches," he 
 remarked in the speech of the hated foreigner. 
 
 Ramji Das did not think the Europeans would 
 take the pills. He believed in surgery more 
 than medicine, and said so, with a curious 
 wrinkling of the cheek and chin which nearly 
 travelled into a smile, but stopped short of the 
 eye in a way which made the physician feel 
 uncomfortable. 
 
THE SACRIFICE 261 
 
 "I have the labels of Smith for the packets," 
 he said uneasily. 
 
 "It would be better to remove the informers 
 and spies first," the vakil suggested. "If you 
 strike terror into the traitor camp the officials 
 will be left helpless so that they cannot carry 
 out their plans in any way." 
 
 Meanwhile the bunniah's confidential agent 
 had found Siri Ram. His ''Namaste'' startled 
 the brooder on his seat in his melancholy 
 dreams. 
 
 "Ramji Das sent me to you," he said. " Have 
 you spoken to any one since you came 
 out?" 
 
 Siri Ram gave him a sullen "No." 
 
 "Then you have not heard ! Ramji Das will 
 tell you all. The English are not long for 
 here." 
 
 Siri Ram's dull resentful stare lightened in a 
 moment. 
 
 "I have been in the tomb," he said. "Tell 
 me what has happened. Is the Swami here ? " 
 
 " He is dead. But we must not be seen 
 speaking here together. These are secret times. 
 They have prepared to garland you. You are 
 the hero in this city. There is a ticca ghari 
 waiting for you by the larnp-post at the entrance 
 to the vegetable bazaar opposite the Mori Gate. 
 Get into it ; the man will drive you to the place." 
 
 As he walked away he added without looking 
 
262 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 round, "I have come to this stall for betel nut. 
 Go now without me." 
 
 As the ghari rattled through the streets Siri 
 Ram's self-respect came back to him and his 
 devotion to the cause, the keener for his own 
 wrongs. Why had he doubted? He had been 
 a hero all the time. He thought of the English 
 falling singly and in bands or being led in 
 chains to the prisons. He thought of Merivale 
 shackled. There was retributive justice in that. 
 Perhaps it would be possible to see him in his 
 cell. Hope and doubt visited him in turn. 
 
 The ghari, after some seemingly aimless 
 deviations, drew up in a silent, sunbaked square 
 deserted in the heat of noon. The driver called 
 to Siri Ram to alight, and, pointing to the mouth 
 of an alley too narrow for wheels, drove off 
 without waiting for his fare. Siri Ram was 
 surprised to find the bunniah*s agent loitering 
 by a passage near the entrance. The man 
 started walking as he approached, and beckoned 
 him to follow. Siri Ram found himself in an 
 unfamiliar quarter. They threaded a network 
 of narrow passages where they could not walk 
 abreast without treading on the garbage heaped 
 against the wall. It was a tnohalla of rich men's 
 houses, presenting dead walls or barred windows 
 to the street. The great brass-studded gate- 
 ways of carved Shisham wood were closed or 
 ajar, giving glimpses of the mysterious silent 
 
THE SACRIFICE 268 
 
 life within, a world of sleepy and drowsy 
 capitulation to the invading sun. The pungent 
 smells from the choked kennels thickening as 
 they receded from the area of main thorough- 
 fares told Siri Ram that they were approaching 
 one of the city's endless culs de sac. 
 
 The guide paused by an archway with his 
 hand on the wicket gate. Looking round, he 
 asked Siri Ram if he knew the mohalla or the 
 house. 
 
 Siri Ram did not. 
 
 They entered the spacious deserted haveli and 
 felt their way up a corkscrew stair; the walls 
 were smoothed and blackened with groping 
 hands. Siri Ram heard voices in the upper 
 storey. A door was thrown open, and he felt 
 that he was among a company. To his surprise 
 the room was dark. Figures were rising from 
 the floor all round, approaching him, hailing 
 him, strange familiar voices. Men were hang- 
 ing wreaths of jasmine round his neck ; he was 
 almost overpowered with the sweet scent. He 
 thought he recognised the fugitive Editor of 
 the KalUYuga, Then he heard the throaty 
 voice of Ramji Das. Even the bunniah, who 
 for physical reasons was generally quiescent, 
 upheaved himself pantingly to greet the restored 
 hero. 
 
 " Welcome to our meedst, Siri Ram I " he 
 said, relapsing into English. For with all his 
 
264 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Swadeshi and swaraj there was something west- 
 ern and hybrid about the youth which even in 
 the dark provoked that tongue. 
 
 He listened to sugared flattery, questions 
 about his health and his treatment in gaol, sweet 
 compliments embalmed in affected ignorance or 
 surprise, insinuations of the greater triumph 
 imminent and the share in the fruition by those 
 who had sown the seed. 
 
 His eyes were becoming accustomed to the 
 gloom, and he was beginning to see the features 
 of them dimly where a mote-shotten beam of 
 light from a chink in the shutters hung across 
 the room, when Ramji Das called out to the 
 servant to show him the chamber where the 
 food had been prepared, and he went off, impa- 
 tient of the interlude, famished as he was. 
 
 He found the richest banquet spread on the 
 floor. Beside the usual substantial messes there 
 w.ere flattering delicacies and sweets of every 
 kind, balU'Shahi and rose-scented qala qund and 
 ice, and bottles of pink raspberryade and 
 sherbets flavoured with strange essences from 
 the aerated water shop in the bazaar. Siri Ram 
 sat and ate and drank and wondered. 
 
II 
 
 When he returned, the shutters had been 
 thrown open, the room was light; the con- 
 spirators had gone; Ramji Das sat in a corner 
 alone. Siri Ram was the first to speak. 
 
 "Can it be true that the end is so near?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "It is true." 
 
 " Who were the people who have gone ? " 
 
 "They came to honour you. Also they came 
 to learn if imprisonment had weakened your 
 resolve, if it had reconciled you any more to 
 the Mlecchas. Have you lost any of your 
 boldness ? " 
 
 Siri Ram said that he had not. 
 
 "We thought so. I said your body would 
 be on fire. Also," he added reflectively, "it 
 would not have been so easy for you to obtain 
 a living wage. What were you going to do?" 
 
 Siri Ram did not know. 
 
 "You are a great patriot. Are you still ready 
 to serve the Cause ? " 
 
 " I am ready. But how ? " The thought of 
 the glory-proof gaol walls appalled him. 
 
 "All that you saw here just now have their 
 265 
 
266 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 bridegrooms to meet to-night. The troops will 
 rise when the first Europeans fall." 
 
 Siri Ram's heart throbbed. He remembered 
 Narasimha*s dream of the day of liberty, and 
 he believed Ramji Das; or if he only half be- 
 lieved him he kept the doubt that would creep 
 into his mind the other side of the threshold. 
 
 "Why was the room dark?" he asked incon- 
 sequently. He could not have explained why 
 his mind lighted on this obscure detail in such 
 a crisis of confused revelation. The bunniah 
 looked at him curiously. 
 
 "The patriots always meet now in a darkened 
 room,*' he answered slowly. "If one is taken 
 it is easy to deny knowledge of the others. To 
 the police, to the magistrate, to the judge the 
 answer is always one : ' The room was dark. I 
 could not see.' You could not see any of 
 them ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And they could not see you. You could not 
 see me. You do not know what house you are 
 in. You were taken here blindfolded." 
 
 Siri Ram admitted the advantage of darkness 
 to conspirators. The art of silence under cross- 
 examination was simplified. It had not been 
 so easy in the Kali-Yuga case. 
 
 "It has become our habit," Ramji Das added, 
 "though to-day there was surely no need. 
 To-morrow we shall be answerable to no man." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 267 
 
 "Tell me. How will it burst out? How has 
 it come so soon ? ** 
 
 "We have not been idle. The people are 
 moving about the streets like angry wasps. 
 Many of the Society are in gaol or in the 
 Andamans." 
 
 Ramji Das noticed an involuntary recoil in 
 the scapegoat. "But to-morrow they are the 
 victors," he added, seeing fear uppermost. It 
 was necessary to draw the rope a little tighter. 
 
 "Siri Ram, if you are taken do not resist. 
 The day of the trial may be fixed, but when 
 the courts are held we shall be the judges. The 
 prison doors will be thrown open, and those 
 who have led the way " 
 
 "If I am taken?" Siri Ram faltered. "Do 
 you mean to-night ? " 
 
 The bunniah was impressively still. The 
 pupils of his eyes were filmed with a dull 
 moisture like wet beads; the streaky whites were 
 almost hidden under the sagging lids. 
 
 "We have waited for you, Siri Ram," he 
 said. "The organisation is perfect. To-night in 
 every city young men will be ready. Hundreds 
 of other officials will fall at the same time." 
 
 "Other officials?" 
 
 "The fall of this tyrant will be a match to 
 light the conflagration." 
 
 "Which tyrant?" 
 
 " Who has oppressed you, Siri Ram ? " 
 
268 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "Merivale?" 
 
 "We have preserved him for you." 
 
 At the name Siri Ram*s flickering resistance 
 gave out. It was easier to yield ; the current 
 was too strong. He did not fully believe Ramji 
 Das, who had been speaking strangely in a 
 high-flown Urdu, and in a voice which sounded 
 unnatural, like a wheezy parody of Narasimha. 
 Still he snatched at the dream. What else was 
 there left? 
 
 He barely listened as Ramji Das held forth 
 on the honours in store, how the heroic sons of 
 Bharat Mata would be garlanded and memorial- 
 ised, and crowned as the saviours of their 
 country, their persons sacred, the highest offices 
 or the most retired leisure op)en to their choice. 
 For the moment he thought only of himself and 
 Merivale, oppressor and oppressed. The Cause 
 had narrowed down to that. 
 
 Ramji Das unfolded the plot. Siri Ram 
 should carry his revolver in a bunch of mari- 
 golds. The barrel in the centre would be con- 
 cealed by the stalk of one thrust up to the calyx. 
 His finger would be on the trigger inside the 
 paper fold, so that he could hold it straight to 
 Merivale*s breast. 
 
 Siri Ram did not like the idea of the mari- 
 golds. Ramji Das found him obstinate. 
 
 "So many flowers will turn away the bullet," 
 he objected. 
 
THE SACRIFICE 269 
 
 The bunniah reassured him. 
 
 "One Uttle stalk in the barrel," he said. ** It 
 is nothing. Or it may be a hollow wreath." He 
 described the trial of Merivale who had been 
 condemned by a court of patriots. He was to 
 be executed by the man he had wronged, the 
 innocent victim of his tyranny. That had been 
 decided before the conspiracy had come to a 
 head. By the laws of retribution Siri Ram had 
 been chosen for the deed. He must employ the 
 means that were most certain. 
 
 Siri Ram remembered the hint that Mohan 
 Roy had given him, and asked the bunniah for 
 a wafer of poison to conceal in his ear. 
 
 "I can give it, Siri Ram, but there is no 
 need." 
 
 Ramji Das watched his resistance ebb out. 
 His fear was that the victim might become too 
 limp. It was but a step to the sacrificial stone. 
 
 "You understand; it is funeral wreath. Mari- 
 golds are at the sacrifice." 
 
 As the tension became less he relapsed into 
 English again. He was more insidious and 
 intriguing in that tongue. His spurious exalta- 
 tion had not seemed natural. 
 
 The strange pair sat opposite each other all 
 the afternoon. Siri Ram made one or two 
 efforts to escape. He wanted to find Banarsi 
 Das, to wander in old haunts, to see the streets 
 and shops and the free crowd, but the bunniah 's 
 
270 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 eye fascinated him. He could not turn his back 
 on it. 
 
 Long minutes passed in silence. Ramji Das 
 looked at him doubtfully. He feared his nerve, 
 but not his loyalty. 
 
 "Siri Ram, is your body still on fire?** 
 
 "I will give my bones to the goddess like 
 Dadhichi.** 
 
 He was thinking of the hero who offered his 
 ribs to the gods to make a thunderbolt to slay 
 the giant Britasura, but as he spoke he wished 
 he were bearing witness before Narasimha. He 
 did not like the bunniah*s eye. Even in the 
 dark he felt its watchful cynicism. 
 
 At seven a second meal was prepared. This 
 time the bunniah shared it with him ; he gorged 
 noisily. Two thin wicks flickering in an 
 earthen saucer were lighted in the niche above 
 his head, and he was illumined fitfully like some 
 triple-paunched idol in a cave. When he had 
 finished he wiped his hands and sank back again 
 into his vigilant repose. He spoke less and less. 
 Siri Ram was hypnotised. Thoughts revolved 
 like wheels in his head. He could not fix his 
 mind or separate the sense of what he had to 
 do, what he had been through, the reward and 
 suffering, the heights and deeps before him. 
 Every now and then the bunniah punctuated the 
 silence with some slowly-delivered caution. 
 
 "Do not be at all premature, Siri Ram." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 271 
 
 "You have Browning Automatic?" "Do not 
 put your finger in paper handle in the street." 
 
 It seemed almost midnight when the servant 
 entered and called him to the door, and the 
 bunniah quavered benedictions. Siri Ram 
 followed the man down the corkscrew stair 
 clenching his bouquet, and through the wicket 
 gate into the street. A figure was waiting at 
 the end of the alley with a lantern. He pursued 
 the light, which paused and hovered like a will- 
 o'-the-wisp, through a maze of turnings. Soon 
 they crossed a familiar thoroughfare, and Siri 
 Ram saw an Englishman in a white dinner 
 jacket driving a dogcart, and looking confident 
 and unconcerned though he was alone amidst 
 thousands of Asiatics. His syce stood on the 
 step behind and called rudely to the crowd to 
 make way. Cold misgivings crept into Siri 
 Ram's mind again as he followed his guide into 
 another warren of alleys on the far side of the 
 crossing. The echo of his lonely footsteps 
 frightened him, and when he stopped to listen 
 he thought he heard other footsteps following. 
 He wanted to throw his garland into the gutter 
 and hide, or run back into the open, lighted 
 street. 
 
Ill 
 
 As Siri Ram passed darkling through the 
 streets his intended victim was being f^ted at 
 the Club. It was a stifling May evening, and 
 the odd dozen Englishmen left in Gandeshwar 
 had collected to give Merivale a send-off. 
 
 The hot weather grip was in the air. Every 
 day the sun's tentacles let go their hold of the 
 earth with more reluctance. Old night was like 
 a worsted wrestler weakened with every new 
 bout. There was no vigour in her. Darkness 
 had ceased to be refreshing save for the half- 
 hour before dawn. 
 
 The punkah-proof lamps on the table, the 
 smell of the Khuskus tattis, the white dinner 
 jackets all round, Merivale's furlough, awoke 
 nostalgia in every one, and reminded them that 
 for many weeks the pleasure of living would 
 become more fugitive in Gandeshwar every day. 
 
 Skene and Merivale talked of home. They 
 were both Devonshire men, and had the knack 
 of remembering little things which one forgets — 
 things which call up a picture. 
 
 "Do you remember what a basketful of trout 
 272 
 
THE SACRIFICE 273 
 
 looks like when you spill them on a bank of 
 primroses ? " Merivale asked. 
 
 Skene recalled the smell of hot mint in 
 September stubble on a cub-hunting morning. 
 
 Merivale capped him with the purple fields of 
 scabious by the Torridge. 
 
 Both thought of old Homer, and from purple 
 fields their minds travelled to Asphodel — the 
 Bog Asphodel on Dartmoor, the vivid green 
 moss under the rose-coloured wilderness of ling, 
 the stone circle in the mysterious hour of sunset 
 with Yes Tor limned up behind it. 
 
 "You know Rattle Brook?" Skene asked. 
 
 "You are going to tell me about the snipe at 
 the corner where it joins that other stream." 
 
 If Skene had been a Frenchman he would 
 have kissed Merivale. There is no endearment 
 like that which grows out of the common love 
 of earth. They tried to dovetail in their 
 leave so that they might shoot there together. 
 If Merivale got extension and Skene fur- 
 lough combined with vacation they might 
 do it. 
 
 Skene looked at his friend with envy. "Good 
 heavens, man ! Do you know that in less than 
 three weeks you will be walking on turf ? " 
 
 "Where flowers grow on their stalks out of 
 the grass, and are not shrivelled up." 
 
 "And virtue oozes out of the earth." 
 
 Merivale laughed. "Old Jones says he is 
 
274 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 coming home for three months to get straight. 
 He is fed up with this Municipal Inquiry." 
 
 "Feeling a bit choked, I expect," Skene 
 muttered, with a confused image in his head of 
 the compressed air in a diving-bell. He tugged 
 at his collar, which had become pulp, and 
 wondered how much crookedness and indirec- 
 tion the cursed clime was accountable for. 
 
 "How long do you think we could hang on 
 to the country," he said, "if we stayed here and 
 bred and reared our children in it?" 
 
 "Four generations, perhaps." 
 
 "Human tissue couldn't stand more. It 
 never has or will." 
 
 " Not with education ? " Dean suggested, 
 looking across at Skene with friendly irony. 
 The conversation had become general. 
 
 "No, not with education." 
 
 "Here's an educationist who does not believe 
 in education," Hobbs broke in. 
 
 "Oh yes, I do. It must come, and it all helps, 
 but it can't charge the battery." 
 
 "It can't give fibre, you mean," Merivale 
 suggested. "That only comes from the soil." 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 Skene was not a pessimist. He believed that 
 it would all pan out right in the end — ^after 
 many incarnations — with the slow wave of 
 evolution, though the line had unexpected kinks 
 and curves in it. In the meantime his own 
 
THE SACRIFICE 275 
 
 particular concern was with the hybrid, the 
 forced product. 
 
 "I'm tired of 'whipping and wheedling the 
 reluctant East,'" he confessed to Merivale with 
 a smile. 
 
 "Don't let your cubs get on your nerves," 
 Merivale said. "They are all right. I like 
 them better than the Mission crew with their 
 self-conscious, bulging ideals. But about Dart- 
 moor. Where shall we put up ? Chagford ? " 
 
 The two cronies fell to their Devonshire duet. 
 
 On Merivale's left Hobbs was instructing the 
 very young subaltern across the table on the 
 probable effects of the changed military situation 
 in the case of another mutiny. Sedition and 
 revolution were in the air. Skene caught 
 snatches of the Colonel's argument. No guns. 
 Shortage of ammunition. No cohesion. What 
 could they do in the long run ? They haven't 
 got a navy, aeroplanes, wireless. 
 
 "What about education, sir; wouldn't that 
 give them a better chance ? " 
 
 "Whoever heard of education stiffening an 
 Asiatic ! " Hobbs bawled out. 
 
 The boy steeped his prunes in his finger glass 
 sadly and engaged his right-hand neighbour. 
 A moment afterwards Skene heard him say in 
 his high, assured voice — 
 
 "She's the vulgarest woman I have ever been 
 seriously introduced to." 
 
 T 2 
 
276 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 His resonant laugh roused the table. Every 
 one looked at him smiling, and began to laugh 
 too, and to stamp on the floor and cry, "Skene I 
 A speech 1 ** though Skene had never been 
 known to make a sp>eech in his life. He looked 
 towards O'Shaughnessy at the other end of the 
 table, hoping he had not heard. The Irishman 
 caught his eye, happily unconscious, and lifted 
 his glass: "Here's to you, Skene.*' The table 
 rose and gave him the same musical honours 
 they had given Merivale five minutes before. 
 Then they sang "Auld Lang Syne," and called 
 to him again for a speech. 
 
 The big man met the demand with an evasion. 
 He made a sign to Hobbs, and between them 
 they picked up little Merivale and carried him 
 round the room struggling on their shoulders 
 and crying, "Time I Time! " 
 
 "Time, what for? A speech?" 
 
 "Time for anything you like," Skene panted; 
 "the bosun, the briny, chalk cliffs, hayfields, 
 strawberries. Try to bear up." 
 
 Other voices caught up the litany, vying with 
 one another for what was homeliest. 
 
 "Trout." 
 
 "Clover." 
 
 "Soles." Skene recognised the padre's 
 unprofessional voice, and knew that he was 
 innocent of the double entendre, 
 
 "Shrimps. Mixed bathing." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 277 
 
 "Mussels and cockles alive, alive, O ! " 
 
 "Some one suppress that youth," Merivale 
 gasped. It was the very young subaltern. A 
 digression was made towards the buttery hatch, 
 through which the cub was thrust like a 
 crumpled envelope. They carried Merivale to 
 the porch and deposited him in Innes' 
 brougham. 
 
 The Club servants followed the jostling sway- 
 ing crowd into the verandah. Abdul Karim 
 and Mustafa Khan, greybeards of Islam, stood 
 above the steps in their turbans and starched 
 chupkuns, virginally white, and made solemn 
 salutation. Mustafa approached with the gravity 
 and gait of Abraham and the wisdom of all 
 the Orient in his disillusioned eyes. The little 
 old man, Mouse, of shrivelled dignity, who had 
 never smiled, salaamed gently to his lord borne 
 on high. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mouse," Merivale called out in 
 Hindustani. "I should like to take you too." 
 
 Mouse saluted again sadly, tenderly almost, 
 but without elation. 
 
 You might have thought that Merivale Sahib, 
 Judge and Protector of the Poor, was always 
 carried thus on strong men's shoulders from 
 room to room, his hair ruffled, his collar broken, 
 his helpless feet dangling in the air. 
 
IV 
 
 Half Gandeshwar was at the station to see 
 Merivale off. The Club disgorged its diners, 
 and there were scores of his Indian friends. 
 Native officialdom was there, magistrates, tehsil- 
 dars, barristers, judges and minor folk, many 
 of whom had come with addresses and applica- 
 tions, leaving things to the last after the manner 
 of their kind. Some bore wreaths of threaded 
 jasmine which they hung round his neck, and 
 large bouquets of flowers without leaves packed 
 into a tight ball. An old native physician 
 squirted scent on to his coat. Chaprassies 
 brought rupees on handkerchiefs, which he 
 touched regally as if it were a king's healing. 
 Lala Dwaka Das, M.A., Barrister-at-law, pro- 
 duced a framed illuminated address, a panegyric 
 in high-flown Persian, in which the letters of 
 Merivale's name were designed like a fish, and 
 the verses that bespoke his virtues rose like 
 smoke from a censer or curled up into geo- 
 metrical rosebuds, or spread themselves like 
 parrots flying. Then a Treasury clerk offered 
 a scroll with a petition for increase of pay. 
 
 278 
 
THE SACRIFICE 279 
 
 Merivale glanced at it and handed it to Skene 
 with a tired smile. 
 
 "The charming and fascinating way in which 
 you magnetise your subordinates has been 
 noticed by me. Sir, I do not wish to use studied 
 and culpable flattery or to bandy oriental adula- 
 tion, but pity it is that the rumour of your 
 departure has recently collected into dismal 
 cloud of fact. But our loss, your gain. 
 
 " Happy have we met, 
 Happy have we been, 
 Happy may we part, 
 And happy meet again." 
 
 Your honour knows the narrowness of my hand. 
 My motherless children and I are sitting in the 
 corner of adversity guarding our empty pockets. 
 I hope your grace would look sharp and do the 
 needful by securing desired increment." 
 
 Skene wondered if this were the composition 
 of Banarsi Das. 
 
 Then a pitiful little old man with a stoop 
 came up and presented a poem. He was a 
 schoolmaster. The hair under his turban was 
 white, and his birdlike face was puckered and 
 wrinkled with the passive resistance of years. 
 Merivale recognised him, and said the right 
 words. He looked at the poem and saw that 
 it was entitled "Valedictory Verses,** and that 
 each stanza ended with the same burden — 
 
280 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 "The greatest work of God on high, 
 Is Mr. Merivale kind." 
 
 The gentle old thing had the knack of looking 
 only momentarily happy, as if bliss could be 
 reflected but in the sunshine of Merivale's 
 presence, and it were worth waitin^^ for. lIis 
 smile had survived two score years of the din 
 and drudgery of school-rooms, and he continued 
 to make it appear that the sadness in it was half 
 for his own distress, half for the passing 
 of Merivale, his patron. 
 
 "My dear fellow," Skene replied to an 
 unsympathetic comment of Hobbs', *'he feels it, 
 or thinks he does, and he thinks Merivale will 
 like it, and he likes Merivale. It comes to the 
 same thing." 
 He mentally summed up the old man's position. 
 
 ** Eighteen rupees a month — no rise for twenty- 
 five years. Five children at school. Retires in 
 six months on half-pay — that's nine rupees, what 
 we pay for milk or bread or boots or socks, and 
 he has to clothe himself and look clean. It's 
 rot to talk of humbug. For the moment 
 Merivale is his god. He stands for immanent 
 power." Skene turned to Merivale. "Send him 
 to me to-morrow. I have a vacancy on twenty- 
 two rupees. That would mean he retires on 
 eleven. He is no good, of course, but he can't 
 do much harm in six months." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 281 
 
 Merivale explained the arrangement to the 
 obsequious old man, who detached himself 
 from the group with difficulty, his smile set 
 permanent. 
 
 "Here is another," Hobbs said. "I'm d— d 
 if I would stand it. Why do you let 'em dik 
 you ? " 
 
 "I wouldn't mind the show if we could fix 
 them all up like that," Merivale said, feeling 
 that the pedagogue's smile would linger with 
 him to Bombay. 
 
 Skene, seeing Lala Ram Prasad bearing down 
 on them, intervened. 
 
 "Look here, old chap, you've had enough. 
 We'd better ring you in." 
 
 "No, it's all right, it's only for a few minutes. 
 Here's Ram Prasad. He would be hurt if I 
 did not speak to him, and he's a very decent 
 little fellow. Works like a horse, if only he 
 didn't bukh so much." 
 
 A short and portly official approached with a 
 step that suggested the consciousness of a grave 
 charge. 
 
 "Mr. Merivale," he said, "can you spare me 
 a few minutes of your valuable time upon a 
 matter of grave urgency ? " 
 
 Merivale allowed himself to be led away, 
 suspecting some municipal entanglement. They 
 walked through the crowd conversing, until the 
 
282 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Indian's discourse became a monologue of care- 
 fully chosen phrases. Merivale soon discovered 
 that it was a matter that might have been left 
 to his successor. Lala Ram Prasad had glanced 
 off on to half-a-dozen side questions before they 
 had reached the lonely end of the platform. He 
 liked to listen to his own voice and monopolise 
 an important official. 
 
 Merivale listened carelessly. He was thinking 
 of the mile of trout fishing he had hired at 
 home. There had been a drought in Devonshire 
 the year before, and it was lucky his leave had 
 been put off. The alders would want trimming 
 a bit on the far bank. 
 
 They passed Mrs. 0*Shaughnessy in com- 
 mand of a hand-barrow laden with crates of 
 cackling chickens. She smiled sympatheti- 
 cally as Merivale took off his hat. "My hus- 
 band is coming to see you off," she called after 
 him. 
 
 Lala Ram Prasad was delivering a sonorous 
 indictment on a bogus claim for a building site 
 on municipal ground. 
 
 They entered the dimly-lit spaces at the end 
 of the station. The huddled groups of pas- 
 sengers became fewer. It was an interminable 
 platform, stretching away almost to the distant 
 signals. It might have been built for a 
 metropolis. The passing trains were few, but 
 
THE SACRIFICE 283 
 
 all nip^ht long the cracked voice of a coolie was 
 railing out, "Line clear," and aimless engines 
 pemed to be eternally shunting goods trucks in 
 the different sidings. Merivale wondered why 
 they made these stations so big. At the far end 
 humanity was packed thick, and there was a 
 babel of shrill tongues, but the desert itself 
 seemed to close in on the platform before the 
 last lamp. A string of empty horse-boxes was 
 drawn up on the right, the doors down on the 
 coping littered with straw and hay. The smell 
 was homelike, and sent Merivale's thoughts 
 wandering back to the Torridge while Lala Ram 
 Prasad blew his loud bassoon. Would the old 
 pedagogue still be teaching the multiplication 
 table while he waded in the cool stream ? Was 
 his pension all right? he wondered. He felt 
 strangely depressed, wasting a deal of needless 
 pity as was his wont. Then he remembered 
 that his neck was hung with wreaths of flowers. 
 What an absurd figure I An Englishman 
 in a dress-suit garlanded like a beast for 
 sacrifice. 
 
 As they turned back he saw another belated 
 bouquet emerge into the lamplight from the 
 direction of the empty horse-boxes, a huge 
 garland of marigolds, massed like solid flesh 
 as only Indians tie them. The youth behind 
 this yellow aegis tacked towards him uncertainly 
 
284 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 out of the darkness with a reluctance that 
 consorted oddly with his enormous signal of 
 j good-will. 
 
 I For a moment Merivale could not remember 
 why the face was so familiar to him. The 
 thought of the plague village came into his 
 mind, and the tail of Scorpio and the long hot 
 embankment beside the nulla, bridged by a 
 plank. Then the court-house, and the tragi- 
 comedy of the KaluYuga, and the pathetic 
 defence of Siri Ram. What is this child of 
 megrims doing here? Merivale asked himself. 
 Is it irony or amendment or gratitude for Shiv 
 Dai, or a tentative bid for favour ? He dismissed 
 each suggestion as it entered his head. The 
 Municipal Secretary continued his harangue, 
 clipping this syllable, rolling that, with the 
 complacency of an artist. 
 
 "Regarding the lighting charges. The cost 
 of illuminations to commemorate happy and 
 auspicious occasion of His gracious King 
 Emperor*s . . ." 
 
 Merivale noticed that Siri Ram was clasping 
 an iron pillar with his free hand, and stayed his 
 approach as if resisting an invisible current. His | 
 attention wandered off to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, 
 who was bending over her crate of fowls 
 amongst the lumber on the platform where the 
 goods van drew up. He had observed a bag 
 
THE SACRIFICE 285 
 
 of grain tied to the wicker-work of the lid and 
 an empty tin pan, with the inscription "Please 
 feed us." *'A little water, please." *'We are 
 thirsty too." The Irishwoman was giving them 
 a send-off herself. She scattered the grain and 
 filled the water-pan, and tied up the bag again 
 in a precise workmanlike way that was almost 
 graceful. Merivale noticed that her corseti^re 
 had given her a shelf-like bust that protruded 
 from the neck. He was the victim of one of 
 those unaccountable waves of depression in 
 which the ugly details of life gather at the 
 threshold of the mind, crowding out comfort. 
 He wondered why he was so unhappy. He 
 was going home, yet somehow he did not believe 
 in it, but felt like a goldfish in a globe as he 
 circled round with Lala Ram Prasad in a current 
 of futility. 
 
 Mrs. O'Shaughnessy was closing in on him, 
 and there was the feeling of Siri Ram with his 
 absurd bouquet behind, a presentiment almost. 
 All these things were soon to be shaken off ; for 
 the moment they demanded a pretence of con- 
 sideration. Lala Ram Prasad had begun to 
 discuss the drain by the Mori Gate and the 
 removal of the dhobies' ghat, but Merivale was 
 wondering if the hurdle-gap was still in the thick 
 sloe hedge at Oakley Bottom. It was such an 
 infernal nuisance going round as you walked 
 
2S6 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 up-stream when the light was failing. One lost 
 the best five minutes of the day. 
 
 "The road would be widened, no doubt, if 
 the drain were removed to the other side," the 
 Municipal Secretary was saying. 
 
 Merivale made a movement of escape towards 
 his friends at the farther end of the platform. 
 
 "It would necessitate the removal of sundry 
 stalls for the barter of country produce." 
 
 Merivale heard the patter of Siri Ram's feet 
 behind him. The dejected youth had let go of 
 the post, and was breaking into a shuffling trot 
 to catch him up. Lala Ram Prasad was aston- 
 ished to see him present his bouquet to the small 
 of the magistrate's back. Merivale, swinging 
 round, saw Siri Ram's face, and knew by a flash 
 of intuition that the trout stream and buttercup 
 meadows and the alders dipping their dingy 
 twigs into the ripple were unattainable. He saw 
 these things as through some dark green glass, 
 which was splintering in on him with a resound- 
 ing crash as the station roof and walls and 
 girders swayed inwards, enveloping him. He 
 sank to the ground on one arm, and tried to fix 
 his gaze on Siri Ram and Lala Ram Prasad, 
 who were swinging past him automatically. He 
 wondered if they were riding bicycles. The 
 noise of a train entering the station suggested 
 to his flickering senses the idea of wheels. Then 
 
THE SACRIFICE 287 
 
 the supporting arm gave way under him, and 
 he felt a twinge like a hot needle in his back. 
 
 "Bit of glass," he murmured. His bewildered 
 eyes closed and his head collapsed. 
 
 Siri Ram stood at bay, drunk with achieve- 
 ment, and waved his sinister bouquet in rapid 
 circles like a bacchanal. His fingers still 
 clutched the trigger. Another bullet hit the 
 stone coping at his feet and ricochetted into an 
 empty goods train. Lala Ram Prasad, taking 
 cover behind an iron pillar, cried out to him — 
 
 "Place it down, place it down. It is heinous, 
 abominable I " 
 
 The bouquet was hanging from the trigger 
 guard. For a moment these two had the drama 
 to themselves. In the din of shrieking engines 
 and the clang of couplings no one recognised 
 the sound of the revolver shot. Mrs. O'Shaugh- 
 nessy was the first to see Merivale down and 
 realise what had happened. She ran forward 
 like a bull and struck at the murderous yellow 
 Catherine wheel. She threw her whole weight 
 on Siri Ram and hurled him to the ground and 
 knelt on his neck and wrenched the garland 
 from him. A bullet was flung high over her 
 head into the girders of the roof. 
 
 The crowd rushed in and pinioned him. 
 
 Merivale had not stirred. The bullet had 
 struck him in the spine. It was the only time 
 
288 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 in Siri Ram*s fruitless little life that chance had 
 intervened to help his aim. 
 
 "Did he say anything?" Skene asked Lala 
 Ram Prasad; "you were there." 
 
 "He talked something about a glass. I did 
 not understand. It is a crying crime indeed. 
 All India will be shocked." 
 
 Skene lifted Merivale*s head. He and Dean 
 and Hobbs and O'Shaughnessy carried him on 
 their shoulders to the gate. A parallel pro- 
 cession halted to let them pass. Skene watched 
 Siri Ram with disgust ; the miserable youth had 
 a jaunty air : he looked ahead with an effort at 
 complacency as if expecting an ovation, and 
 then aside at the spectators; he would have 
 strutted if he had not been so roughly handled. 
 He tried to address the crowd. Shrill sentences 
 were jerked out of him as he was dragged along 
 between two constables. 
 
 "Oh yes, you may put me in prison, but you 
 will see. English are not long for this country." 
 
 A lanky policeman followed, carrying the 
 bouquet and the disclosed pistol. 
 
 They carried Merivale to Innes* brougham, 
 which was to have taken them back to the Club, 
 and drove him to his bungalow. Skene laid 
 his friend's helpless head on his shoulder and 
 steadied him with a strong arm round the waist. 
 Hobbs leant over from the back seat and held 
 
THE SACRIFICE 289 
 
 his knees. He had not spoken a word. The 
 Bombay mail with its freight of homeward- 
 bound passengers rattled over the railway arch 
 as they drove under. The metallic throb as it 
 became faint in the distance sounded to them 
 both like the knell of everything. 
 
SiRi Ram showed a calm spirit in gaol. He 
 had gone through the trial with credit to the 
 conspirators. Banarsi Das wondered at his 
 coolness. He was imperturbable; he betrayed 
 no one ; he held his head up even when he was 
 told that he would be hanged by the neck until 
 he died. And he had learnt by heart the defiant 
 heroic little speech he was to make to the Judge. 
 
 "You may hang me to-morrow, but you 
 cannot destroy my spirit. That will pass into 
 another frame, and in fifteen years if there are 
 any Mlecchas left, it will be fighting against 
 them then as now. The usurpers are doomed. 
 They " 
 
 But Siri Ram was led out declaiming. His 
 vision of triumph had come to pass, the hand- 
 cuffs and the gaol, the sacrifice and martyrdom, 
 the sea of upturned faces, the witness-bearing 
 in the crowded court. He was apotheosised. 
 They were selling his picture in the street. 
 Banarsi Das was in the crowd that pressed round 
 him. He said that Siri Ram was looking glad. 
 
 *'I saw my brother coming in a company of 
 police. The scene passed before my eyes; he 
 
 290 
 
THE SACRIFICE 291 
 
 was a martyr going to stake and saying ' I am 
 glad.' I was very proud to see him strong. 
 His face was so bright on account of his inno- 
 cence that I could not recognise him. In con- 
 trast the faces of the guards were pale and 
 moroseful." 
 
 Siri Ram had purchased eternal fame, and 
 the price might not be called for. The army of 
 young men were tarrying, but if Ramji Das 
 had spoken the truth he would be garlanded and 
 not hanged. The bunniah and his friends alone 
 understood the secret of his calm. His counsel 
 who had visited him daily in the lock-up had 
 explained that "the day" had been put off. 
 There had been a hitch, but the end was the 
 more sure. Ramji Das had tried to stop Siri 
 Ram, but the messenger had come too late. The 
 rising would be in fifteen days. The European 
 gaolers would be the first to be killed, and the 
 prisoners would be set free. 
 
 As the days passed, Siri Ram nourished a 
 lean hope. In the long evenings in his cell he 
 used to listen for the guns. He would ask the 
 warder if the English were still lords. A rumour 
 spread that he was mad, and his friends put up 
 the plea of insanity. The vernacular papers 
 demanded a medical board. Siri Ram noticed 
 a change in the manner of the prison staff. 
 
 The superintendent who had passed on his 
 rounds with a bare word to him or none, would 
 
 U 2 
 
292 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 spend a few minutes in his cell every morning. 
 At first Siri Ram thought he was spying. He 
 answered no questions, fearing to betray his 
 companions. Then he became sure that it was 
 interest in himself that attracted him. It was 
 natural enough. He was hero, martyr, patriot. 
 The thoughts of millions were centred on him. 
 The major could no longer pass him by. 
 
 He would stop and talk ethics with him, and 
 ask him a dozen questions every day. 
 
 "Were you glad when you struck? Do you 
 think it right to do wrong that good should 
 come ? " 
 
 Siri Ram answered these questions in the 
 same set phrase of the tyrannicide, proud, 
 obstinate, impenitent. They awoke the witness- 
 bearer who had answered the judge. He was 
 primed in that catechism. 
 
 The Major was so impressed that one day he 
 brought another gentleman to see Siri Ram, a 
 taller gentleman who was addressed as Colonel. 
 The Colonel was more interested in Siri Ram 
 than the Major. He spoke to him with gentle 
 respect, thinking no doubt that he was some 
 avatar, the embodied scourge of his country's 
 foes. 
 
 *' Do you ever hear voices ? *' he asked. *' Have 
 you ever been visited at night in your cell ? Is 
 it true that you received a messenger who told 
 you to kill this Englishman?" 
 
THE SACRIFICE 293 
 
 Siri Ram was insensibly flattered. When 
 they left him, he heard their voices in the 
 corridor outside. One of them said, "All right," 
 and the other, "No trace of it." And after that 
 nobody took any interest in him again. He 
 listened day and night for the guns. The warder 
 grinned when he asked if the English were still 
 lords. 
 
 In his condemned cell he could not look out 
 on his fellow creatures. His heavy bars opened 
 on a small, solitary yard shut off from the world 
 by a black door. He could see the kites through 
 his iron clerestory window, which shut to with 
 a sudden clang in the afternoon when he was 
 not expecting it, and drew his mind, which had 
 been mercifully ranging, back to the thoughts 
 of solitude and death. Then he would circle 
 round his cell like a revolving bird, his dull 
 thoughts shot with vague apprehensions which 
 gathered into images of fear and pain. In the 
 plaster of the wall by his bed some doomed soul 
 had scratched his last calendar. Siri Ram 
 counted twenty-one notches. Did they lead him 
 out after that, he wondered; did he keep his 
 tally to the end? He himself had reckoned 
 eighteen nights and mornings, or was it 
 nineteen ? 
 
 He threw himself down on his brick bed and 
 felt for the little wafer which he had hidden in 
 the crevice under the plaster. He had carried 
 
294 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 it in his ear from the court ; it was a precaution 
 he had learnt from Mohan Roy. As he was 
 feehng for it he heard the warder*s step, and 
 started guiltily. To his "Are you there?" he 
 answered, "Yes, I am here. How many days 
 have I been here ? " But the automaton passed 
 on indifferent to his term of life, and the night 
 wore on in silence, broken only by the frightful 
 cries for liberty of a lunatic in a distant cell, 
 shrill and spasmodic like an enraged orang- 
 outang. The man had wits enough to know that 
 he was caged and helpless and alone. 
 
 As the days passed he became the prey of 
 fear. He forgot politics. Hope deserted him. 
 Everything slipped away from him but the bare 
 walls of his cell. The universe and his Bharat 
 Mata had sunk to that. He sought escape in 
 Yoga, but could not concentrate his mind. He 
 thought of Narasimha chanting his holy song. 
 
 " Beings are manifest in their origin ; manifest 
 in their midmost state. Unmanifest are they 
 likewise in their dissolution. What room is 
 there then for lamentation ? " 
 
 There was no longer comfort in the words. 
 Solitude and the cold fear of death strip formulas 
 bare. The doomed trunk is paramount, the 
 mind its shrunken attendant. Siri Ram saw 
 himself with infinite pity, a lone spirit fearful 
 of damage to its shell, caught in a whirl of 
 unsympathetic matter which swept it slowly to 
 
THE SACRIFICE 295 
 
 its end, the cruel man-ordained ejection with 
 violence in the chill of the morning when the 
 sun had barely risen. 
 
 One evening the attendant reminded him that 
 it would probably be in three days. Siri Ram 
 slept, overcome with weariness. Early in the 
 morning before it was light a tramping warder 
 awoke him. The abyss of emptiness still yawned 
 round him, and a mist of the spirit through 
 which the vanity of the physical world loomed 
 like a mountain. Often had he lain thus in 
 doubt and fear, the consciousness of self slowly 
 returning, the spirit stretching out in vain for 
 hope and warm comfort in the grey interval 
 before the magic lantern in the brain has time 
 to throw its coloured pictures on the wall. 
 
 But on this morning there were no pictures 
 to cheat him till he slept again. The sense of 
 identity gathered slowly out of the mist with 
 cruel definiteness. "I am Siri Ram," he 
 thought. "Though I am alive, I am dead. My 
 body feels the bed, its hard and soft. Once 
 more, perhaps, shall I sleep. After to-night my 
 body will lie somewhere, but there will be no 
 hard or soft. Iron spikes or wood or down will 
 be one." The thought of the flames was com- 
 fortable. He put his hand over his heart to feel 
 the throbbing. He tried to revive the warmth 
 of pride. He reminded himself that he was 
 already haloed. He thought of Kamala Kanta 
 
296 SIR! RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 and the Shop of Fame. His features were well 
 known ; thousands of cheap prints of him would 
 be circulated in Bengal ; the ladies in the 
 zenanas who had given up wearing silk would 
 be weeping for him. He was the equal of 
 Mohan Roy, but 
 
 Voices outside sent the ice into his blood. He 
 heard a thin, hungry, mocking howl, tasting of 
 teeth and worms and the last indignity of human 
 clay. It was the jackal chorus which in a land 
 of shallow graves makes men fear God more 
 than they love Him. 
 
 While his spirit cowered, Siri Ram thought 
 of instant escape with relief. He felt in the 
 crevice of the bed for the little wafer of poison. 
 He was calm and master of himself ; the horror 
 he had feared had gone. He opened the packet 
 almost indifferently. A grain or two fell on 
 the blanket, and he licked it up with his tongue, 
 afraid that there might not be enough. Part 
 had become paste and stuck to the folds of the 
 paper. He detached it carefully with his finger. 
 Then he threw^ his head back in the way Mohan 
 Roy had showed him and shook it down his 
 throat. ' 
 
VI 
 
 A RAINLESS June had succeeded a rainless 
 April and May at Gandeshwar. The ther- 
 mometer was 1 16° in the shade. Work in the 
 College began at six and ended at eleven, but 
 there was not a cool breath of air at night or 
 even in the early morning. The Ode to the 
 Nightingale had come round again with the 
 revolving year, inevitable as the season. 
 
 It was a stifling June morning when Skene 
 entered the class-room to lecture on "the 
 immortal bird." The crows outside were open- 
 mouthed with the heat. Every now and then 
 a burning blast of air broke through the 
 Venetian blind, filling the room with glare and 
 dust and the breath of a furnace. The punkah 
 rope swung idly on an unoiled pulley. The 
 sickly scent of the khuskus pervaded the air and 
 filled the room with a tepid, ineffectual moisture. 
 As Skene passed to his desk a student's notebook 
 caught his eye, scribbled over with some Hindu 
 annotator's ruthless logic. At the top of the 
 page was written — 
 
 "Title. Nightingale, a bird that sings in 
 
 thicket." 
 
 297 
 
298 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 Skene told the student, a sleepy youth with 
 large calves, stocking^ with embroidered flowers 
 and patent leather slippers, to read the first 
 stanza. He read raucously with the grating 
 undulations of a saw — 
 
 ''My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
 
 My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
 Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
 
 One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : 
 Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 
 
 But being too happy in thine happiness, — 
 That thou, light-wing^ dryad of the trees. 
 
 In some melodious plot, 
 Of beecben green, and shadows numberless, 
 
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease." 
 
 The words carried him away far in a daydream 
 to a hazel copse festooned with dog-roses and 
 traveller's joy, the murmurous haunt of flies on 
 summer eves — in which the rasping voice of 
 the unhappy young man who read became a 
 subconscious menace. Then he was wading 
 through deep hedge-parsley under the elms to 
 a brook where the pike lay motionless among 
 the water-weeds in the sun. The scent of water- 
 mint and willow-herb perfumed the air, and all 
 along the banks of the osier bed a forest of lush 
 umbelliferous weeds starred with convolvulus 
 and hemp-agrimony and purple loosestrife. 
 
 When he awoke to reality after this merciful 
 anaesthetic of associations, the profane mono- 
 
THE SACRIFICE 299 
 
 tone had ceased, and the student had relapsed 
 into the cocksure accent of exposition which he 
 employed in prose. 
 
 "The poet calling nightingale ' light-winged 
 druid of the trees ' says further, * I am not sad 
 because of envy a low person might feel with 
 bird for its sweet song.' " 
 
 "Yes. You have got the idea," Skene said. 
 "But you must remember it is * Dryad,' not 
 ' Druid,' " and he explained the difference. 
 
 Then he read some notes which he had written 
 on the stanza years ago. He could not con- 
 sciously murder the piece again. In every 
 stanza flowers withered, embodied loveliness was 
 mortified, the ghosts of passion were dissolved 
 in pain. So he read mechanically, and let his 
 thoughts wander far away. Thus only could he 
 escape remorse. 
 
 The hot reek of stable manure came to him 
 from the cricket field, which he had been returf- 
 ing, and the smell was homely and welcome. It 
 carried with it sweet early-morning memories of 
 hunting days in Devon when he used to get up 
 in the frosty starlight and find his mare ready 
 saddled in the stable, her coat warm and sweet- 
 smelling like a morocco-bound book ; the long 
 ride to the meet in late autumn, the glistening 
 scarlet of the wild cherry and the guelder rose, 
 the babbling brook in the wood with its ferny 
 
800 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 banks under the holly trees and the naked silver 
 birches. 
 
 Necessity had taught Skene to let his mind 
 set three ways at once. Mixed with these images, 
 which were intermittent with the business of 
 dictation, he had a sense of being watched which 
 was associated somehow in his mind with a feel- 
 ing of deep depression that had hung over him 
 for weeks. Some one was peeping into his 
 class-room from behind a pillar in the verandah. 
 Between the approach and retreat of the punkah 
 he caught a glimpse of a brown cap and spec- 
 tacles, and thought he recognised the penitent, 
 uneasy figure of Banarsi Das, long forbidden 
 the College precincts. He was going to drive 
 him to the gaol to bid farewell to Siri Ram, 
 and he had promised to take him back into the 
 College afterwards. Skene could not think of 
 Banarsi Das as a serious menace to the British 
 Raj, or believe that he had the stomach for 
 conspiracy. If he had, the condemned cell 
 would lay any ghost in him of missionary or 
 proselyte. 
 
 He looked at his watch. There were twenty 
 minutes to the end of the lecture. He would 
 take Banarsi Das then. 
 
 The student who had been reading had 
 stopped, and was speaking in unrhythmical 
 prose. The change into the expository accent 
 
THE SACRIFICE 801 
 
 warned Skene that he must be an accessory to 
 the murder of another stanza. 
 
 "Fly away and I will dog thy steps, but I 
 will not come to thee by taking seat in the 
 carriage of God of Wine and Leopard. I will 
 accompany you in flying by reciting and writing 
 poetries." 
 
 "You have misunderstood the second line," 
 Skene said. "What is the literal meaning of 
 * not charioted by Bacchus and his pards * ? " 
 
 The youth looked blankly at him, and as he 
 hesitated another student, the most daring 
 adventurer in those unfamiliar lands, rose and 
 volunteered. 
 
 " Sir, may I ? The poet says boastfully, * I 
 will not intoxicate myself like drunkard in order 
 to be with nightingale in the jungle. I will go 
 to sweet songster on wings of the poetry.' " 
 "Yes. That is the idea." 
 Skene smiled sadly. His physical discomfort 
 was an anodyne. It was gathering for a dust 
 storm outside, and a thin draught reached him 
 from the chink of a window at his back like the 
 hot puffs of air a dentist blows into the roots of 
 a tooth from his indiarubber bulb. The sweat 
 stood on his face. When he wrote he moved a 
 blotting-pad up and down with his hand : the 
 contact of skin and paper meant pulp. The ink 
 was smudged in his register and notebook where 
 
802 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 his finger had touched the page. The little 
 pocket edition of Keats on his table was warped 
 like a dry leaf. 
 The next stanza carried him far away — 
 
 **I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
 
 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
 
 But in embalm^ darkness, guess each sweet 
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild ; 
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
 
 Fast fading violets covered up with leaves." 
 
 After the first lines he heard nothing. He 
 was in a canoe in Byron's pool under the 
 dappled shade of a willow. The fragrance of 
 meadowsweet permeated the air, and the river 
 smell rose from the weedy shallows. A water 
 rat was performing his toilet on a crooked alder 
 stump, and he pinched the leaves of the book 
 he w^as carrying — the pocket Keats on the table 
 — lest a rustle should disturb him. Near by a 
 mill wheel ceased suddenly, and a distant echo 
 of children in the Grandchester meadows rose 
 and fell and seemed to be connected in his mind 
 somehow with a patch of buttercups on a 
 shelving bank. He was wondering how long 
 it would be before the shelf tumbled over into 
 the pool when he saw the College chaprassie 
 pass the window towards the gong. 
 
 "Read the next stanza," he said, and shut his 
 
THE SACRIFICE 808 
 
 cars to the lines which enshrine romance for all 
 time — 
 
 "Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for 
 home, 
 She stood in tears among the alien corn : 
 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 
 
 The gong struck knell-like. Skene took up 
 his warped Keats. He had found a midge 
 pressed between the leaves in the middle of the 
 stanza where 
 
 "haply the Queen-moon is on her throne 
 Clustered around by all her starry fays." 
 
 It had once danced with the motes of a sunbeam 
 on a June morning in Grandchester. 
 
 He rose and threw the bar down which had 
 kept the door shut against the growing typhoon. 
 The hot air rushed in. The students crowded 
 round him from behind, begging to be allowed 
 to go to their homes before the storm could come 
 to a head. He let them go, and beckoned to 
 Banarsi Das, who had been shivering by his 
 pillar, to follow him. They drove off on their 
 miserable errand to the gaol. 
 
 As they entered the passage Skene was sur- 
 prised to see the door of the outer cell open. 
 The Superintendent met them on the threshold 
 
804 SIRI RAM— REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 and drew Skene aside. Banarsi Das heard them 
 talking in low tones. He began to be afraid 
 that they had already hanged Siri Ram ; he 
 almost hoped they had. A hospital assistant 
 came out of the cell as he waited with a basin 
 and a bottle and a long tube. Banarsi Das was 
 sick with fear. He heard the Superintendent 
 say, "Perhaps you had better let his friend see 
 him." 
 
 He entered the inner cell with Skene. Siri 
 Ram was lying quite still on his hard bed. 
 Banarsi Das spoke to him, but he did not 
 answer. He took him by the shoulder and 
 swayed him gently to and fro, but his head fell 
 over inertly on one side. He bent over him 
 and shouted in his ear. 
 
 "Siri Ram ! Siri Ram ! Siri Ram ! " 
 
 He shook him almost roughly, and called 
 again, raising his voice each time — 
 
 "Siri Ra-am ! Siri Ra-am ! " 
 
 But Skene laid his hand on the boy's arm. 
 *'We are too late," he said. 
 
 Banarsi Das' voice broke, and he began to 
 weep. 
 
 " He has shaken off mortal coil ! He has ^ 
 shaken off mortal coil ! " 
 
 "Poor little devil," was Skene's inward com- 
 ment. "He never had a dog's chance." 
 
 He led Banarsi Das out of the cell. The storm 
 
THE SACRIFICE 805 
 
 had spent itself in a few drops of rain, just the 
 scent of it without the relief. The air was hot 
 and gritty. Ineffectual thunder rumbled in the 
 distance. As they drove back to the College 
 without a word Banarsi Das was shaken with 
 silent weeping. 
 
THE ARYA SAMAJ 
 
 During the troubles of 1907-8 the Arya Samaj 
 was under a political cloud, but it would be a 
 mistake to infer that the whole body of the 
 Society was seditious. A large proportion of the 
 educated Hindus in the Punjab are members of 
 the Samaj, and the agitators belong, or belonged, 
 to the same class and were naturally Samaj ist. 
 They may have formed only a small proportion 
 of the Society, but that they should have tried to 
 use so delicate and complex an organism for 
 political ends is the most natural thing in the 
 world — that they did so use it was the general 
 impression at the time, and is my impression 
 now. In December 1909 the Aryas, themselves 
 anxious about their position, approached the 
 Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab for an an- 
 nouncement of Government's attitude to the 
 community. They were informed that member- 
 ship of the Samaj would not be allowed to tell 
 against them, and that any charges that were 
 brought against them would not be prejudiced 
 on account of such membership, unless and until 
 the Samaj was proved and declared to be a 
 seditious body. 
 There is no doubt that a great change has come 
 306 
 
THE ARYA SAMAJ 307 
 
 over the temper of the Punjab and of the Arya 
 Samaj in particular since the agitation of 1907- 
 10, the period covered by this book, and it would 
 be most unfair to infer that "Samajist" and 
 "Seditionist " are synonymous terms. To pre- 
 vent any such misconception I inserted a note 
 at the end of the volume in the first edition of 
 Siri Ram — Revolutionist, pointing out that the 
 Samaj stands for reform and that it represents 
 a revival, religious and national, which we can- 
 not but admire, though it is our business to see 
 that it does not threaten the stability of British 
 rule. As for the Gurukul at Kangri I should 
 be sorry to think that Siri Ram had harmed it. 
 I am ready to believe that it is the best educa- 
 tional institution in the country. It certainly 
 ought to be, as it is of the soil and is bound up 
 with the traditions of the people. The staff has, 
 I hear, identified itself warmly with the ideals of 
 Government. Possibly if there were no Eng- 
 lish schools and colleges, but only Gurukuls in 
 the country, there would be no Siri Rams. The 
 reader should remember that Gandeshwar, 
 Skene's College, was responsible for Siri Ram. 
 rhe anarchists "got at" Gandeshwar in the 
 book, just as they "get at," or tried to "get at," 
 the Gurukul, whose honourable aim is the attain- 
 ment of independence, not by bombs or Brown- 
 ing automatic pistols, but by the strengthening 
 of character. Siri Ram was not worthy of the 
 Gurukul : he did not attain it. 
 
\ 
 
 308 Smi RAM-REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 It has been objected by a critic sensitive to the 
 honour of the Gurukul that Siri Ram was offered 
 a post in the school, and that this implies that 
 theauthorities harbour budding anarchists, "an 
 implication which is disproved by the ejection 
 of a real anarchist the other day." It appears, 
 then, that the anarchists have been trying to "get 
 at '* the Gurukul after all. Whether the Gurukul 
 would have taken a youth like Siri Ram in 1907 
 is another question. If I have wronged the 
 Samajists by the suggestion, I am sorry for it. 
 Siri Ram was a nationalist — I have given him 
 that credit — and a revolutionist — a nationalist 
 because his true instincts were patriotic, a revolu- 
 tionist because these instincts had been perverted 
 to violence and race-hatred. The line between 
 nationalism and sedition is not always easy to 
 define; it may be drawn, I think, at the point 
 where passion enters in to the blinding of true 
 judgment and the endangering of the State. 
 The aim of the Guru kul is, or I have been mis- 
 taken, to weld young India into a nation that 
 will be able to stand by itself without foreign 
 support. It is an appeal to the best of what is 
 indigenous, and as such it has earned our respect, 
 though a natural issue of the revival is the bias 
 against Western ways and ideas, which has 
 shown itself in the literature of the Samaj. 
 
 RicharJ Cl*y ^ Sms, Limited, Limden and Bungay. 
 

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