I suppose it was about that time that Surji Rao began to consider whether it was after all for the best interests of the State that ee-Wobbis should remain in it. Surji Rao was first Minister to the Maharajah, and a very important person. He had charge of the Treasury, and it was his business to produce every day one hundred fresh rupees to put into it. This was his duty, and whether the harvests had been good and the cattle many, or whether the locusts and the drought had made the people poor, Surji Rao did his duty. If ever he should fail, there hung a large and heavy shoe upon the wall of the Maharajah's apartment, which daily suggested personal chastisement and a possible loss of dignity to Surji Rao.
Dr. Roberts was making serious demands upon the Treasury, and proposed to make others more serious still. Worse than that, he was supplanting Surji Rao in the confidence and affection of the Maharajah. Worse still, he was making a pundit of that outcast boy, who had been already too much favoured in the palace, so that he might very well grow up to be Minister of the Treasury instead of Rasso, son of Surji Rao—a thing unendurable. Surji Rao was the fattest man in the State, so fat that it was said he sat down only twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously, thin. To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer curiosity, to refrain from asking him what was the matter.
'My father and my mother! I grow poor with thinking that the feet of strangers are in the palace of the King, and what may come of it.'
The Maharajah laughed and put his arm about the shoulders of Surji Rao.
'I will give you a tub of melted butter to grow fat upon again, and two days to eat it, though indeed with less on your bones you were a better Rajput. What should come of it, Surji Rao?'
The Minister sheathed the anger that leapt up behind his eyes in a smile. Then he answered gravely—
'What should come of it but more strangers? Is it not desired to make a road for their guns and their horses? And talk and treaties, and tying of the hand and binding of the foot, until at last that great Jan Larrens[6] himself will ride up to the gate of the city and refuse to go away until Your Highness sends a bag of gold mohurs to the British Raj, as he has done before.'
[6] John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence and Viceroy of India.
'I do not think I will make the road,' said the Maharajah reflectively.
'King, you are the wisest of men, and therefore your own best counsellor. It is well decided. But the Rajputs are all sons of one father, and even now there is grief among the chief of them that outcasts should be dwelling in the King's favour.'
'I will not make the road,' said the Maharajah. 'Enough!'
Surji Rao thought it was not quite enough, however, and took various means to obtain more, means that would never be thought of anywhere but in countries where the sun beats upon the plots of Ministers and ferments fanaticism in the heads of the people. He talked to the Rajput chiefs, and persuaded them—they were not difficult to persuade—that Dr. Roberts was an agent and a spy of the English Government at Calcutta, that his medicines were a sham. When it was necessary, Surji Rao said that the medicines were a slow form of poison, but generally he said they were a sham. He persuaded as many of the chiefs as dared, to remonstrate with the Maharajah, and to follow his example of going about looking as if they were upon the brink of some terrible disaster. Surji Rao's wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and some one in the dark behind spat at him. Amongst them they managed to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable. But the old man continued to decline obstinately to send the missionary back.
Then it became obvious to Surji Rao that Dr. Roberts must be disposed of otherwise. He went about that in the same elaborate and ingenious way. His arrangements required time, but there is always plenty of time in Rajputana. He became friendly with Dr. Roberts, and encouraged the hospital. He did not wish in any way to be complicated with his arrangements. Nobody else became friendly. Surji Rao took care of that. And at last one morning a report went like wildfire about the palace and the city that the missionary had killed a sacred bull, set free in honour of Krishna at the birth of a son to Maun Rao, the chief of the Maharajah's generals. Certainly the bull was found slaughtered behind the monkey temple, and certainly Dr. Roberts had beefsteak for breakfast that day. Such a clamour rang through the palace about it that the Maharajah sent for the missionary, partly to inquire into the matter, and partly with a view to protect him.
It was very unsatisfactory—the missionary did not know how the bull came to be killed behind his house, and, in spite of all the Maharajah's hints, would not invent a story to account for it. The Maharajah could have accounted for it fifty times over, if it had happened to him. Besides, Dr. Roberts freely admitted having breakfasted upon beefsteak, and didn't know where it had come from! He rode home through an angry crowd, and nobody at all came for medicines that day.
Two days later the Rajput general's baby died—could anything else have been expected? The general went straight to the Maharajah to ask for vengeance, but His Highness, knowing why the chief had come, sent word that he was ill—he would see Maun Rao to-morrow. To-morrow he had not recovered, nor even the day after; but in the meantime he had been well enough to send word to Dr. Roberts that if he wished to go away he should have two camels and an escort. Dr. Roberts sent to ask whether Sunni might go with him, but to this the Maharajah replied by an absolute 'No.'
So the missionary stayed.
It was Surji Rao who brought the final word to the Maharajah.
'My father and my mother!' he said, 'it is no longer possible to hold the people back. It is cried abroad that this English hakkim[7] has given the people powder of pig's feet. Even now they have set upon his house. And to-day is the festival of Krishna. My heart is bursting with grief.'
[7] 'Doctor.'
'If Maun Rao strikes, I can do nothing,' said the Maharajah weakly. 'He thinks the Englishman killed his son. But look you, send Sunni to me. HE saved mine. And I tell you,' said the Maharajah, looking at Surji Rao fiercely with his sunken black eyes, 'not so much of his blood shall be shed as would stain a moth's wing.'
But Maun Rao struck, and the people being told that the missionary was dead, went home hoping that Krishna had nothing more against them; they had done what they could.
As to Sunni he told his grief to Tooni because it comforted him, and went into mourning for nine days in defiance of public opinion, because he owed it to the memory of a countryman. He began, too, to take long restless rambles beyond the gates, and once he asked Tooni if she knew the road to Calcutta.
'It is fifty thousand miles,' said Tooni, who had an imagination; 'and the woods are full of tigers.'
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