Okhoy Babu's Adventure

I

‘YOUR HONOR!’ Okhoy Babu interrupted, with that oily smile of his, ‘I request an adjournment of the court, if your Honor pleases! I have just heard of important new evidence in this case! ’

Indranath Babu, my chief clerk, began to frown and cluck with his tongue. He was long-nosed and very dark, with a face like a wise bird; a fine fellow for all his ugliness, and to be trusted. He had that trick of clucking, like an offended wren, when things were going awry, and I had learned to watch for it.

So Indranath Babu clucked and frowned, and Okhoy Babu stood expectant, with his fat smile that was at once servile and cynical. I did not like Okhoy Babu, but that was hardly a ground for refusing an adjournment.

It was one of those bloodthirsty boundary disputes that every now and then come in from the outlying villages. Hari Dass and Kishto Dass had fallen out about a field and had clubbed each other so vigorously with bamboos that I had been called out at two in the morning to take their dying depositions; Oshotosh Babu, the subdivisional surgeon, meanwhile stirring them up with strong spirits of ammonia. They were not yet dead, however, and might pull through, so the police and I had gathered in an armful of their club-men, and I was trying to get at the rights of the story in my dingy little court.

I was tired, after a long and irritating morning which had included a verification of the subdivisional stock of stamps — soaked together into slabs during the rains — and the dispensing of enough opium and hashish to demoralize a city. Further, it was tiffin time. So I ignored the clucking of Indranath Babu, in spite of ripe experience.

‘How long do you want, Babu?’

‘ I shall be ready to go on later in the afternoon, your Honor! An hour or two, not more!’

‘Three o’clock?’

‘Very good, your Honor!’

So the court adjourned and went to tiffin, while Indranath Babu frowned and gathered up the papers of the case.

I inhabited a funny little Board-ofWorks bungalow close to the courthouse, and lunched in the half-darkness of the central room to escape the midday glare. Poonaswamy of the crimson turban fed me indifferent well on local moorghee, — which is to say, chicken, — with curried rice and vegetables from the bazaar. That was according to precedent. But Okhoy Babu added a diversion.

With a dashing carelessness I would not have believed him capable of, he came across the grass with a troop of witnesses and squatted down under a tree not twenty yards off in a ring of purple shade, and began one of those little rehearsals which do so much for an effective case in court.

It was rather like an open-air Sunday-school, Okhoy Babu reciting, and his witnesses repeating in chorus— that came to me as a murmur across the grass. I realized now why that, offended wren, Indranath Babu, had clucked and frowned.

After a while the Babu and his scholars trooped away again, letter-perfect by this time. I rolled a cigarette and smoked in the coolest of the verandas, and schemed the undoing of Okhoy Babu.

Three o’clock came. I took my seat in court. Indranath Babu had the case called. An old gray-beard testified first; Okhoy Babu was careful of precedence. Among other things, the gray-beard said, —

‘I know that the field belonged to Hari Dass, because I was present when his father planted a tree in it.’

Then Okhoy Babu called a middleaged man, who, among other testimony, declared, —

‘I know the tree which the father of Hari Dass planted. The field is his.’

Then a young fellow came, swaggering, and grinned familiarly at the court. He said, —

‘When I was a boy, I often climbed in the tree which was planted by the father of Hari Dass. Hari Dass caught me and beat me. So I know the field is his.’

Something flashed through my mind: the Elders and Susanna. —‘A Daniel come to judgment!’ — Okhoy Babu, you once attended missionary school, but I don’t believe you read the apocryphal books! At any rate it was worth trying.

So I stopped Okhoy Babu in midcareer, and had my court policeman gather all those witnesses into my private room, with strict orders to let no one else in. Okhoy Babu was puzzled but smiled energetically. Indranath Babu, scenting fun, suspended his ominous clucking, but his brow was still furrowed.

I had the elderly party brought back first.

‘You were present when the father of Hari Dass planted a tree in his field?’

‘I was present, your Honor!’ answered the elderly party, glancing round toward his counsel.

‘Do not look at the Babu! Look at me! ’ I held his eye. ‘What kind of a tree was it?’

The elderly party blinked, cleared his throat, and finally said,—

‘It was a — cocoanut tree, your Honor!’

Okhoy Babu began to wriggle round toward the door of my room.

‘ Please remain where you are, Babu! The witnesses are quite safe!’

‘Yes, your Honor!’ and Okhoy Babu smiled a large but rueful smile.

Then I told my policeman to admit the middle-aged man.

’You remember the tree which the father of Hari Dass planted?’

‘ I remember it very well, your Honor!' and, curiously enough, he too looked round to Okhoy Babu.

‘Never mind the Babu. Turn toward me. What sort of tree was it ?’

He too winced and pursed his lips.

‘It was a — date-palm, your Honor!’

Okhoy Babu’s face was worth watching. Indranath Babu’s brow was smooth and in his eyes was a look of deep content.

I had the young fellow in.

‘You climbed the tree in the field of Hari Dass, and Hari Dass caught you and beat you?’

‘Yes, your Worship!’

‘What kind of tree was it?’

He brazened it out; did not look round at Okhoy Babu but said boldly,—

‘ A jack tree, your Worship! ’ —which is a kind of bread-fruit, with green, hedge-hog fruits as big as your head.

By this time Okhoy Babu was on thorns.

From the remaining witnesses, I collected a few more kinds of tree. Then I called my policeman: —

‘Constable! Take these witnesses back into my room and keep them! Then to Indranath Babu: —

‘Babu, please make out warrants for perjury against all these witnesses; and as for you, Okhoy Babu—

But Okhoy Babu was gone. A cloud of dust whirling down the road to the bazaar indicated his line of motion.

I watched him through the unglazed window, considered a while, and decided not to decide. I was well content to lose Okhoy Babu, for all the clucking of my chief clerk.

II

That was late in October. A month later I was in camp, on the western border of the subdivision. I had been going over the wage-books of the village watchmen, examining the nice, oily litthe chaps in the school, hearing them do Euclid in Bengali, and trying to hold a Local Board election, where the free and independent voters had evidently got their instructions from their landlord, the local zemindar, and voted for him with meek unanimity. Great are democratic institutions in a land like India!

Evening had come, and I had made arrangments to return to Berhampore by palki, to arrive the next forenoon. Poonaswamy of the red turban had fed me on wooden-flavored moorghee and tiny potatoes, with really good coffee and a cigarette, and I was ready to go.

The palki-bearers were standing about, whispering and laughing; big, stalwart chaps, grayish-yellow in color, with large cheek-bones and huge hands and feet. There was evidently a lot of Santal blood in that part of the subdivision.

An awkward thing to get into, a palki. You have to sit down on the ground and crawl in, and when in, you must lie down; there is n’t room to sit up without bumping your head. Just a long box with a sliding side-door, and swung on two long bamboos; comfortable enough, though, to sleep in.

So, feeling decidedly sell-conscious,

I sat me on mother earth, and crawled sideways into my box.

‘All ready! To Berhampore!’

It was one of those lovely evenings that the beginning of the cold season brings, not too warm, and scented like a garden. My bearers swung the palki up on their shoulders and pattered off barefoot in the dust, chanting a jig-jog song that Kipling renders, ' Let us take and heave him over! Let us take and heave him over.’

We took a short cut across the wide rice-fields and by the edge of a bit of forest. There were huge trees, their boughs twisted together, and hung with masses of a kind of wild cucumber whose tendrils were like enormous skeins of yellow floss silk, with here and there a scarlet fruit hanging down, like a huge Easter-egg. A fine wildness about it all.

‘Let us take and heave him over! Let us take and heave him over! ’

They could, too, with the greatest ease. Here am I, twenty or thirty miles from the nearest man of white race, absolutely defenseless, unarmed, amid three hundred thousand natives, according to the last census, who might easily enough have a grudge to wreak; but I am trusting myself to their tender mercies in complete confidence. I suppose a Deputy Magistrate could not disappear without some stir! The paternal government would look him up. . . . Might not do him much good, though. . . . However . . .

At this point I went to sleep. . . . Something very soothing about the jog-jog of a palki and that ’heavehim-over’ song and the patter of bare feet on the earth. . . .

Once, during the night, I was wakened by the wild, diabolic yelling of jackals, an inferno broken loose in the midnight jungle. Something startling and hair-raising about jackals; they begin so unexpectedly.... But I rolled over and went to sleep again, with the patter-patter in my ears.

Then we came to a stop, and there was some kind of a row among the palki-bearers. That wakened me again. I pulled open the sliding-door, and, in the curt phrase of Anglo-lndia, said, —

‘Shut up, dogs, and let me sleep!’

They did, and I slept — till morning this time, waking when it was full sunlight, with the expectation of recognizing the Berhampore landmarks by the roadside.

One thing intrigued me: we seemed to be jolting uphill. But there is n’t a hill within thirty miles of Berhampore, or anywhere in the delta; not even a mound as big as an ant-hill. So I slid the door open to see.

‘Where the mischief—?’

We were in thick jungle, a hillside apparently, with a kind of cattle-track running up it, under huge, matted trees laced together with creepers like tangled skeins of yarn thrown over the branches. A kind of green gloom, and a fresh coolness in the air.

I shouted to the bearers to stop. They stopped, and I crawled out, in the wormlike, undignified fashion inseparable from palkis, and repeated my question: —

‘Where the mischief are we?’

I repeated my question in English, chiefly for my own benefit, in Bengali, in Hindustani. The bearers only grinned sheepishly and shook their heads.

I was very angry and made vigorous use of the vocative case and the imperative mood. I might as well have spoken in pluperfect subjunctives, for they evidently did not understand a word.

Like the harmattan wind, I raged myself out, and saw that it was perfectly useless to talk to these gray-yellow dunderheads, who grinned foolishly at my best objurgations.

I began to realize that I was getting hungry. Also, I wanted a smoke.

Fortunately this last want was easily supplied. I had the makings and matches. So I sat down on a rock — there is n’t a rock in Berhampore,or in all the delta, for that matter — and rolled and lit a cigarette. That appealed to those yellow-gray kidnappers. They produced tobacco leaf from their dingy shoulder-cloths, a knot in the corner of which forms a Bengali pocket, and began to roll al fresco cigars. They even had the cheek to borrow my matches — with such child-like innocence in their eyes that I gave them. So we all smoked, out there in the jungle. They were very respectful, nay, deferential, for all their kidnapping, and if I had had some breakfast, say some good coffee and rolls, it would not have been half bad. But I was beastly hungry and getting hungrier. What had become of Poonaswamy of the scarlet turban, I could not even speculate on.

Finally I appealed to an old chap among the bearers — there were eight of them, two relays — who had crisp white hair on his head and jowl, and a mat of white hair on his chest. I said to him in English, —

‘Old gentleman, please get me some breakfast!’

He shook his head and replied, at great length, in a tongue of which I did not know a word, but which I guessed to be the Santali of the hills. We can see them, pale blue on the horizon, from the western edge of the subdivision. As we were palpably among hills, — or at least, upon one hill; you couldn’t see much of anything, because of the dense jungle, — and as there were n’t any other hills, I supposed they must be the ones. So the old gentleman talked, very eloquently, and with gestures; but from all his eloquence no breakfast supervened. I was n’t even certain that he was talking about breakfast, but I was quite certain that I wanted mine.

So I fell back on a language more practical than Esperanto or Volapük — I opened my mouth and pointed down my throat. That evidently went home. The old gentleman’s face lighted up, he smiled luminously and pointed up the trail through the forest. Then he pointed to the sliding door of the palki. That was good sense. If breakfast would not come to me, I must go to breakfast, and the palki was the only way. I did not even consider walking back along the track we had come, because I knew that, in that direction, breakfast was at least forty miles off, and the jungle fairly well stocked with big game, — leopards, tigers, to say nothing of snakes, — and my only weapons were a box of matches and a pencil.

So I sat down on the ground, and slid back into the palki, to the evident relief of my bearers, who shouldered me and went forward, seemingly much rejoiced in their minds.

About noon — I had beguiled the hours, and tried to beguile my appetite with cigarettes — we came to a clearing, and they set the palki down.

A horribly undignified way to make one’s entrance, crawling out of a beastly box, but it had to be done. A crowd was there to receive us, the same grayyellow folk with big cheek-bones, chiefly adorned with peacock feathers stuck jauntily in their hair; and, among the leaf-mat huts, a mob of women and children.

I got on my feet and looked about. The crowd gathered about deferentially, saluting by bringing their finger-tips up to their foreheads and then stretching out their arms, as if they were going to dive; apparently Santali for ‘Good morning!’

The old gentleman from among my bearers then saluted a revered old person in the crowd, and made a little speech. The old person seemed pleased. He said something monosyllabic and unintelligible to my bearer and then stepped forward, and said to me, in fairly good Bengali, —

‘ Incarnation of Virtue! We offer you respectful salutations! ’

I replied that I was glad of it, and asked,—

‘Where are we? Who are you? And why, in the name of Mahadeb, have you brought me here?’

Here is his astounding reply, just as he made it: —

‘Umbrella of the Poor! This is a village of Men, whom the Bengalis call Santals. We have a Babu. We are going to kill him, and we wished your Honor to be present, to see!’

‘We have a Babu, and we are going to kill him’ — just that. It took my breath away.

Astonishment, the desire to gain time, and primitive instinct, worked together in my reply: —

‘That is all very well. But you must not kill him until I have had some breakfast.’

So they fed me, under the village fig tree: india-rubber-like moorghee, with curried vegetables, and the finest rice I ever tasted. But no coffee, and I particularly wantecl coffee.

As I ate, the dignified elderly person sat beside me, very affable and friendly. I approached the question obliquely: —

‘How does it come that you speak such good Bengali?'

My speech was really more polite than that. These Oriental tongues have shades.

‘I spent ten years in Berhampore,’ he replied very courteously, ‘in the Sudder jail. I was on road-gang work at Kandi, and the foreman — a Bengali pig — hit me, so I killed him. The judge asked who did it, and I of course told him, so I was sent to jail. There I learned Bengali, and, because of my knowledge of English law, my people have elected me Headman.’ And he smiled, very much pleased with himself.

Yes; English law; but how about killing babus? I put it a little less directly, but it amounted to that.

He said that, of course, this was different. He would make it all plain after breakfast, and then they would kill the Babu. Everything should be done in an orderly way.

All the men had spears, as well as their jaunty peacock-feathers. I, as I have said, was armed with a lead pencil; not even a fountain-pen. If it came to physical force, it was a blue look-out for the Babu. Fine, vigorous men, too; manly, open faces. One could not browbeat them, as if they were Bengalis. I began to be anxious about that Babu.

After breakfast, a cigarette. I drew it out as long as possible and considered. Oh, Indranath Babu, why are you not here, to warn me off shoals by your clucking? I wish you were, but, since you are not, I must go it alone.

So, my cigarette ended, — and I felt rather like a condemned man with his last cigar, at the end of which the proceedings are to culminate, we all went to the village grove, where the prisoner was brought, tightly bound, haggard, disheveled, wild-eyed. A Bengali, undoubtedly, but a very ill-used Bengali, physically speaking.

Suddenly I caught his eye. He was making signs. I went over to him, in the midst of his guard of sturdy spearmen.

He half-whispered, in English, —

‘ Sir! Do you not. know me ? ’ I looked closer. ‘I am Okhoy Kumar Ganguli, pleader of your Honor’s court.’

‘Ah! Okhoy Babu!’ He flashed back into my memory, as he had disappeared in a cloud of dust down the village road, on the day of the perjury case. With equal rapidity it flashed into my mind that if I wanted to get the Babu clear, I must show no sign of ever having seen him before. So I shook my head and turned away to the fine old graduate of Berhampore jail.

We took our scats in a circle in the grove, on stools of wicker-work shaped like dice-boxes. I recognized the pattern. We have them made on contract in the jail. Evidently the old headman had brought the arts back with him. I sat in the centre of a half-circle, made venerable, I hoped, by a big pith helmet. The old headman, whose name, I believe, was Soondra Manjee, sat at my right, hand; the stalwart men with spears, gaudy in their peacock-feather crests, completed the half-circle. At its focus Okhoy Babu squatted on the earth, with a knot of spear-men about him. He was tightly bound and evidently galled by his thongs. I pitied Okhoy Babu. It remained to be seen whether I should not very soon have even better cause.

The women gathered closer, finelooking, some of them, and not so cowed and abashed as Bengali women. Most of them had flowers in their hair. They had brass bracelets and rings, too, and bright-colored muslin saris—a long strip of cloth, draped into a skirt and bodice, that showed their fine, graceful, upstanding figures admirably.

But Okhoy Babu was not thinking of feminine beauty or adornments of Ashoka flowers,— at least, his face did not suggest it. It was grim earnest, with him. I would do my best for Okhoy Babu, but I had my doubts.

We opened the proceedings. The old gentleman stood up and made a little speech in Santali. I guessed the subject: their exceeding good-luck in having caught a magistrate, albeit a very young one, whose presence would regularize their proceedings. I knew he was talking about me, as every one looked in my direction and the women smiled. The men were too dignified for that, but their big, childlike eyes spoke.

Then old Soondra Manjee turned to me and said,—

‘Your Honor, we are ready,’ in his best Bengali.

Okhoy Babu winced and shrank together. Evidently he was not ready at all.

So, as severely as I could, I asked, —

‘Of what is the prisoner guilty?’

‘Your Honor!’ Okhoy Babu began, in English. That would be fatal. So I said to him, in a tone that evidently went home, —

‘Don’t talk to me, you thundering idiot, if you wish to save your neck!'

Okhoy Babu sighed deeply, but had the wisdom to shut up.

So I asked again, —

‘Of what is the prisoner guilty?’

‘Your Honor,’ said the fine old Santali, with genuine moral indignation, ‘the Babu told a lie! He came to us, one month ago, hungry and sick. We sheltered him and fed him. After two days, he began to make mischief! There are the boundary stones; they mark the limit of our territory and the territory of the Bengalis. This Babu told us he would show us how to move the boundary stones — secretly, in the night — so as to enlarge our lands and double the size of our rice-fields. The Babu is a cheat and a liar, so we are, of course, going to kill him.’

Oh, tribe of honest men! I like those Santalis. And the fine Italian hand of my Okhoy Babu! He ran like a hare to escape trial for perjury, in the matter of that cocoanut, date, jack, and so-on tree in the field of Hari Dass, and straightway set himself to seduce the blameless Santalis and lead them into guile.

Babu, for two or three minutes, I seriously considered saying, ‘Let the law take its course!’ Perhaps what checked me was the consideration of how you would squeal while you were being speared. At any rate British legalism won the day, and I determined to save you for a more regular tribunal.

How to do it, though? I thought first of trying to explain the English law, making clear to them that they would be guilty of murder and riot and dacoity and ever so many things. Then I thought of asserting the right of eminent domain over the Babu — of claiming him as my own peculiar prey. But I was pretty sure they would ask, ‘Will your Honor promise to kill him?’ And various considerations would prevent my doing that. To get him away by strategy just entered my mind, to leave it again instantly. I could not risk having these honest men hand down among their village traditions, that they had trusted a white man and that he had cheated them.

Then I noticed something curious enough, — but the nature of woman is inscrutable.

A singularly pretty girl, light-colored, with pretty eyes and quantities of glossy hair decked with crimson flowers, her lithe, graceful young body charmingly set off by the sari with its pattern of rose-colored twigs, had been edging closer to Okhoy Babu, and now, eluding the vigilance of the guards, she gave him a cocoanut shell of water, which he greedily drank, and, — oh, mysterious feminine heart! — she was patting his cheek. I began to see daylight.

The first thing was, to gain time. So I made a quick decision and, rising, said in my best Bengali, —

‘The Babu is evidently a wicked man, and deserving of death. He has lied, and he has advised you to lie But to-day is the seventh day of the moon’ — fortunately I had noticed the evening before—‘and this is, therefore, an inauspicious day for you to put the Babu to death.’

That was true enough. Any day would be, for they would have to stand trial for murder, and very possibly hang for it. But they did not take my words in that sense. Indeed, they looked genuinely frightened. They were chockfull of superstition, and they had nearly killed a Babu—on the wrong day! They were genuinely glad that I had come. I saw that, and went on more confidently, —

‘Not before the tenth day will the time be auspicious. Therefore let the Babu be left bound in a hut, with none to keep him company, and let us wait until the auspicious day. Meanwhile, if the village wishes to hold a feast in honor of the Sahib, the Sahib will graciously be pleased to take part in it.’

The joy, the feasting, the rice-wine generously flowing, the wild song and dance — all t his must go unrecorded. Babu Okhoy Kumar Ganguli was not present at the feast. He languished in his cell — that is, in a leaf hut at the jungle-edge of the village.

That night, after a long day’s revelry, the village slept well. All, that is, excepting the Deputy Magistrate, who kept an alert ear, and, it would seem, that pretty girl with the crimson blossoms in her hair. Early in the night, the Deputy Magistrate, who was enjoying the moonlight, as the sentries snored over their fires, saw a lithe figure steal over to the prison-hut. Then there was silence, but for a faint sound of rending leaves; then the Deputy Magistrate went to his own hut, for matches, and smoked a philosophic cigarette. Then he went to sleep. . . .

Babu, I hope you have good legs and wind, for an hour after sunrise your inexplicable absence was discovered; the absence, too, of that pretty girl with the crimson flowers in her dark, glossy hair. I hope your legs and your wind are good, for, ten minutes after these discoveries, forty able-bodied Santalis, whose power of wind and limb was unquestionable, were on your trail, armed with boar-spears. And I think, that if they caught up with you, they would finish you without benefit of magistrate!

Shortly thereafter, I succeeded in scraping together half-a-dozen hoaryheaded men, past the age for Babu-baiting, who consented to carry my palki, and, with sincere regret, I bade farewell to the Santal country; regret, in part, for that I had in fact contributed to deceive these honest men for such a one as Okhoy Babu, procurer of perjury. But not for the sake of Okhoy; for the honor of the law.