The Story of Sonny Sahib by Sara Jeannette Duncan (short story to read .txt) 📕

of the remarkable attitude of Lalpore.

A week before, when the news reached him that the Viceroy was sending three hundred men and two guns to remonstrate with him for his treatment of Dr. Roberts, the Maharajah smiled, thinking of the bravery of his Chitans, the strength of his fortifications, the depth of his walls, and the wheat stored in his city granaries. No one had ever taken Lalpore since the Chitans took it--in all Rajputana there were none so cunning and so brave as the Chitans. As to bravery, greater than Rajput bravery simply did not exist. The Maharajah held a council, and they all sported with the idea of English soldiers coming to Lalpore. Maun Rao begged to go out and meet them to avenge the insult.

'Maharajah,' said he, 'the Chitans are sufficient against the world; why should we speak of three hundred monkeys' grandsons? If the sky fell, our heads would be pillars to protect you!'

And after a long discussion the Maharajah agreed to Maun Rao's proposal. The English could come only one way. A day's march from Lalpore they would be compelled to ford a stream. There the Maharajah's army would meet them, ready, as Maun Rao said in the council, to play at ball with their outcast heads. There was a feast afterwards, and everybody had twice as much opium as usual. In the midst of the revelry they made a great calculation of resources. The Maharajah smiled again as he thought of the temerity of the English in connection with the ten thousand rounds of ammunition that had just come to him on camel back through Afghanistan from Russia--it was a lucky and timely purchase. Surji Rao, Minister of the Treasury, when this was mentioned, did not smile. Surji Rao had bought the cartridges at a very large discount, which did not appear in the bill, and he knew that not even Chitan valour could make more than one in ten of them go off. Therefore, when the Maharajah congratulated Surji Rao upon his foresight in urging the replenishment of the arsenal at this particular time, Surji Rao found it very difficult to congratulate himself.

It all came out the day before the one fixed for the expedition. His Highness, being in great spirits, had ordered a shooting competition, and the men were served from the new stores supplied to the State of Chita by Petroff Gortschakin of St. Petersburg. The Maharajah drove out to the ranges to look on, and all his Ministers with him. All, that is, except the Minister of the Treasury, who begged to be excused; he was so very unwell.

Some of the men knelt and clicked and reloaded half a dozen times before they could fire; some were luckier, and fired the first time or the third without reloading. They glanced suspiciously at one another and hesitated, while there grew a shining heap of unexploded cartridges, a foot high, under the Maharajah's very nose. His Highness looked on stupefied for ten minutes, then burst into blazing wrath. Maun Rao rode madly about examining, inquiring, threatening.

'Our cartridges are filled with powdered charcoal,' he cried, smiting one of them between two stones to prove his words. There was an unexpected noise, and the noble General jumped into the air, bereft of the largest half of his curled moustache. That one was not. Then they all went furiously back to the palace. The only other incident of that day which it is worth our while to chronicle is connected with Surji Rao and the big shoe. The big shoe was administered to Surji Rao by a man of low caste, in presence of the entire court and as many of the people of Lalpore as chose to come and look on. It was very thoroughly administered, and afterwards Surji Rao was put formally outside the city gates, and told that the king desired never to look upon his black face again. Which was rubbing it in rather unfairly, as His Highness's own complexion was precisely the same shade. With great promptitude Surji Rao took the road to meet the English and sell his information, but this possibility occurred to the Maharajah soon enough to send men after him to frustrate it.

'There shall be at least enough sound cartridges in his bargain for that,' said His Highness grimly.

The Chitan spirit did not flourish quite so vaingloriously at the council that night, and there was no more talk about the sky falling upon dauntless Chitan heads. The sky had fallen, and the effect was rather quenching than otherwise. The previous stores were counted over, and it was found that the men could not be served with three rounds apiece out of them. When this was announced, nobody thought of doubting the wisdom of the Maharajah's decision to shut up the gates of the city, and trust to the improbability of the English venturing to attack him in such small numbers, not knowing his resources. So that very night, lest any word should go abroad of the strait of the warriors of Chita, the gates were shut. But all the city knew. Moti knew. Sunni knew.

Two days later, Moti and Sunni heard the English bugles half a mile away. They were playing 'Weel may the keel row!' the regimental march-past, as Colonel Starr's Midlanders did the last half mile to their camping-ground. The boys were in the courtyard among the horses, and Sunni dropped the new silver bit he was looking at, held up his head, and listened. He was the same yellow-haired, blue-eyed Sunni, considerably tanned by the fierce winds of Rajputana; but there came a brightness over his face as he listened, that had not been there since he was a very little boy.

'How beautiful the music is!' said he to Moti.

Moti put his fingers in his ears.

'It is horrible,' he cried. 'It screams and it rushes. How can they be able to make it? I shall tell my father to have it stopped.'

Presently the bugles stopped of themselves, and Moti forgot about them, but the brightness did not go out of Sunni's face, and all day long he went about humming the air of 'Weel may the keel row,' with such variations as might be expected. He grew very thoughtful toward evening, but his eyes shone brighter than any sapphires in the Maharajah's iron boxes. As to an old Mahomedan woman from Rubbulgurh, who cooked her chupatties alone and somewhat despised, she heard the march-past too, and was troubled all day long with the foolish idea that the captain-sahib would presently come in to tea, and would ask her, Tooni, where the memsahib was.


CHAPTER IX

Sunni had his own room in the palace, a little square place with a high white wall and a table and chair in it, which Dr. Roberts had given him. The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper. There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked box. There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on. So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his charpoy at eleven o'clock that night. For a long time he had been listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and thinking of this moment. Now it had come, and Sunni quivered and throbbed all over with excitement. He lay very still, though, on the watch for footsteps, whispers, breathings in the passage. Four years in the palace had taught Sunni what these things meant. He lay still for more than two hours.

At last, very quietly, Sunni lifted himself up by his elbows, put first one leg, and then the other, out of the charpoy, and got up. More quietly still he drew the locked box from under the bed, took a key from his pocket, and opened it. The key squeaked in the wood, and Sunni paused again for a long time, listening. Then in the smoky, uncertain light of the chirag flaring in the niche, he took from the box three gold bangles, two broken armlets, enamelled in red and blue, and a necklace of pearls with green enamelled pendants. Last, he drew out a little sword with rubies set in the hilt. For an instant Sunni hesitated; the ornaments were nothing, but the sword was his chief possession and his pride. It would be so easy to carry away! He looked at it lovingly for a minute, and laid it with the rest. All these things were his very own, but something told him that he must not take them away. Then he took the long coarse white turban cloth from his head, and wrapped everything skilfully in it. Nothing jangled, and when the parcel was made up it was flat and even. Then Sunni, with his English pen, printed in Urdu:

[Urdu text]

which in English letters would have been spelled 'Maharajah ka wasti,' and which meant simply, 'For the Maharajah,' upon one side of it. Upon the other he wrote in the large round hand that Dr. Roberts had taught him--

'To your Honner, the Maharajah of Chita. Sunni will take your Honner in his hart to his oun country, but the gifs are too heavie.'

Sunni had certainly learned politeness at last among the Rajputs. Then he put the parcel back into the box, softly locked it, and laid the key on the cover.

Still nobody came his way. Sunni took another turban cloth from its nail in the wall, a finely-woven turban cloth, with blue and gold stripes, nine yards long, for festivals. He twisted it carelessly round his neck, and blew out the chirag. Then he slipped softly into the passage, and from that into the close, dark, high-walled corridors that led into the outer courts. He stepped quickly, but carefully; the corridors were full of sleeping servants. Twice he passed a sentinel. The first was stupid with opium, and did not notice him. Mar Singh, the second, was very wide awake.

'Where go you, Sunni-ji?' he asked, inquisitively.

'I go to speak with Tooni about a matter which troubles me so that I cannot sleep,' answered Sunni; 'and afterwards I return to the little south balcony that overlooks the river; it will be cooler there if the wind blows.'

As Sunni went on, the thoughts of the sentinel became immediately fixed upon the necessity of being awake when the sahib's son should pass in again--the sahib's son had the ear of the Maharajah.

The ayah's hut was in the very farthest corner of the courtyard she had begged for, somewhat apart from the others. It was quite dark inside when Sunni pushed open the door, but the old woman, slumbering light, started up from her charpoy with a little cry.

'Choop!' said he in a low, quick tone; and Tooni, recognising his voice, was instantly silent.

Sunni made his way to the side of the bed, and took one of her hands.

'Listen, Tooni,' said he, in the same tone, 'I am come for what is mine. Give it to me.'

'Sonny Sahib!' quavered