Book: Son of Power

W >> Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost >> Son of Power




Police Commissioner Hichens was such a man. He was stationed in Bombay
and there is nothing better in appointment in all India. His
responsibilities were heavy like those of an empire. Personally he was
austere--entirely unapproachable. Of his home life no one knew
anything whatever, outside the very few of equal rank. It was
understood that the mother of his two small children had died more than
a year ago. Some indiscreet person had mooted that she was not sent
Home in time. Still, European women do not live long in that climate
anyway; and it is common knowledge that to maintain a family requires
several successive mothers.

The present Mrs. Hichens was but recently a bride; a mere girl and
lovely; but within a few weeks of her landing, Bombay fever had begun
to destroy the more tangible qualities of her beauty--which could not
be permitted.

It does not take long for the most exalted official to discover that
Bombay fever resembles the Supreme Being in that it is no respecter of
persons. Yet it was not even so nearly convenient to send this Mrs.
Hichens Home, as it had been to send that Mrs. Hichens Home; and that
had been quite out of the question. But the Western Ghat mountains
furnish a very good barricade against Bombay fever. (Devoutly inclined
persons have even intimated that they were specially placed there for
the convenience of men who are much attached to their homes.)

Extending a thousand miles parallel with the coast, from five to forty
miles inland, built mostly of pinnacles and peaks rising a few hundred
or a few thousand feet from near sea level, more rugged than any
mountains of their size in the world, the Western Ghats are like a
section of Himalaya in miniature. The railway line up has a
reversing-station proclaimed far and wide to be the most splendid piece
of railway engineering on earth. (That there are several more splendid
in the Rocky Mountains is unimportant.)

Just over the top, about seventy miles from Bombay, is Khandalla and
Lanowli and further on, Poona. Poona is a military station, sometimes
too far. Lanowli is a railway station--which means that no one lives
there who is fit to associate with a police commissioner's wife. But
Khandalla is no station at all, being only a small mountain village
with three or four abandoned bungalows far apart from each other.
Heaven knows who built them in the beginning, but whoever it was, they
must have done it too late, because there is a neglected grave or two
near each one.

The native agents got in every good argument for the bungalows, but
Police Commissioner Hichens was not persuaded. He seemed to have a
constitutional antipathy to those bungalows.

No, the bungalows might be safer and dryer and warmer at night; they
might be cleaner and healthier and more comfortable all the time; but
he wanted a tent and he meant to put it where he wanted it. So, at
great expense of time and labour on the part of natives, but very
little expenditure of money on his part, he succeeded in hoisting a
tent from Bombay to the top of the Western Ghat mountains, of a size
and of an age and of a strength which suggested a military mess-camp.

The tent was set up in the Jungle at the edge of Khandalla. The
servants would find quarters in Khandalla village; a cook, a cook's
servant-boy and a butler for the entire household; a boy for the small
son, an ayah for the wee girl and a very expensive ayah for the lady
herself.

If an ayah is expensive enough, she is usually a very intelligent
person, thoroughly informed on most general subjects pertaining to her
own country and entirely competent to impart that information. It is
understood she will always interpret the native standpoint relative to
any matter under discussion. Her value as a servant may be great, but
her value as an instructor will be greater. It was necessary that each
of the ayahs should be wife to one of the men servants, but it is
always possible to make a temporary arrangement of that sort to
accommodate the customs of a high official.

So the present Mrs. Hichens was to be established in the tent, very
comfortably matted as to the floor and furnished with all necessary
appointments of a satisfying quality and wealthy appearance. Men of
high rank must do all things with a certain pomp and circumstance,
otherwise the ignorant might sometimes forget their rank. And rank
must never be allowed to be forgotten.

Police Commissioner Hichens would spend all week-ends with her; that is
to say, he would leave Bombay by the first train going up after Court
closed on Saturday and would be obliged to take the Sunday evening
train down. The two children so recently come into the care of a
second mother, would be occupied and entertained by their servants; and
the little girl, not quite three years old, would be under the
additional guardianship of a Great Dane dog who had once belonged to
her own mother.

It will be observed that the Great Dane dog is spoken of as a
personality. He was so. He seemed to have quite fixed conclusions
about the family. He ignored the servants (excepting Bhanah the cook,
who was a servant as far out of the ordinary as the lady's own ayah).
He tolerated the small boy. He approved of the new lady. He never
ceased to mourn for his dead mistress; especially in the presence of
the man.

He would extend his great length on the floor in a low couchant
position, not too close to where the man sat--and search the strong
human face with eyes more strong. Without the twitch of a muscle
anywhere in his whole body, he would endure the man's gaze as long as
the man chose, with a level look of cold, untiring rebuke. There was
no anger in it, no flash of light, no flame of passion--but it had a
way of eating in.

The servants bear common witness that it is the only thing they have
ever known to drive the Sahib away from the delightful relaxations of
his own home, which he claimed as sanctuary from the stress and grind
of his official days. But the Great Dane Nels had done it more than
once. Afterward the Sahib would sometimes take Nels on a
hunting-furlough.

It was the first Mrs. Hichens who took the puppy with her, when she
went to India with Police Commissioner Hichens; and before she died he
was made to promise her on his honour, that he would care for and
protect Nels as if Nels were his own son, so long as Nels should live.
There was no help for it.

Especially as it was quite well known among the servants, that on the
very day of her death she had made the Sahib with his own hands lay the
sleeping child over on the bed underneath Nels' out-stretched paws;
because this was done in the presence of Baby's ayah and of her own
ayah also, and therefore two witnesses had heard her say:

"Nels, I am giving my baby to you. The Sahib her father is not able to
be with her, much. But you are to care for my baby for me. Do you
understand, my dear?" She often called Nels "my dear" with a peculiar
inflection on the _dear_ and an upward lilt of tone.

And Nels had agreed, because he pressed the little body hard and lifted
up his big grey head and cried a long, low cry. And the lady had
laughed a little and wiped glistening tears from her death-misted face,
for her baby would be--not _quite_ alone.

So all the servants knew that Nels had owned the child from that day.
Now it is not a wise thing to antagonise a body of East Indian servants
in matters which they consider sacred; and Police Commissioner Hichens
was a lawyer and a judge and a wise man. He might fear Nels as he
feared death itself, the two being equivalent in his mind, but he might
not destroy Nels with his own hand, nor let it be known that he had
caused the great dog's death. Still, if he took Nels with him on
hunting-furloughs, as often as possible setting him to charge most
deadly game, there was always the possibility of an accident.

To many it seemed strange that the present Mrs. Hichens, a regal young
English thing, was made to live in a lonely tent, well back among dense
jungle growths, quite out of sight or call away from any human
habitation, with her husband's little son and littler daughter and the
Great Dane dog. Certainly the servants were about during the daytime;
as much out of sight as possible, according to their good teaching.
But at night there were no servants about; they were all far away at
the other end of the village, because the natives who lived at this
side were low caste.

And it was at night the thing developed. A slow-driving inquisition,
night after night. It drove her through and beyond the deadly fever
lassitude. She was not building up out of it; she was beaten down
below it. She was beaten through all the successive stages of breaking
nerves. She used all the known arguments, all the intellectual methods
to sustain pure courage, to hold herself immune. She used them all up.

At first, when her husband came up for his weekends, he was quite
evidently pleased with his arrangement. And it would take a
self-confidence which had long since gone a-glimmering out of her, to
break in on his enthusiasm with any criticism of his provisions for her
comfort; certainly no criticism on any basis of noise. It has been
said that Police Commissioner Hichens was an unapproachable man; and
some things are impossible. One can die, you know, any death. But
some things are entirely impossible.

The day came when she dragged her weary weight up from the couch and
drove her unsteady frame along the new pathway through jungle thickets
toward the village. The idea had been gnawing in her consciousness for
days; to find the nearest house or hut or any kind of place where human
beings lived, so as to have it in her mind where to run when the time
came. It had come to that. It went in circles through her brain; when
the time came to run, she positively must know where to run.

Her progress was slow and painful. When her limbs shook so she could
not stand alone, she leaned against a tree. She must not lie down on
the ground on account of the centipedes and scorpions.


"Hello--"

Startled a little, she turned toward the voice. A man's voice, very
low. It came from somewhere behind her. She broke away from her
support and the fever-surge caught her and whipped her from head to
foot. Her balance was going--

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

She was kept from falling by the arm of the stranger.

"No. It's the fever. I assure you it's the fever."

Now he just steadied her with one hand. The fever was filling her
brain with a dull haze. . . . He was slender and not tall. He was
much bronzed. She could see only his eyes and his mouth. He spoke
again:

"Why are you alone in this jungle--with such a fever?"

The words dropped into her consciousness; even, smooth, like pebbles
gently released into water.

Then the blackness of outer darkness came up between.


. . . That was how the present Mrs. Hichens began to know Skag.

He carried her back along the path, fresh-marked by her own footsteps,
to the tent.

Next afternoon he called to learn how she was. He had a sheaf of wild
mountain lilac-blooms in his hand.

"Oh, lovely! I haven't seen lilacs since England."

"They make me think of my mother," he said, giving the flowers into her
hands.

"I would so much like to hear about your mother."

Skag had not the habit of much speaking, but he found it easy to tell
this English girl about the mother who had died when he was a child.
She leaned against banked pillows and watched the changes flow across
his face. They were almost startling and yet so clean, so wholesome,
that she felt inwardly refreshed, as by a breath from mountain heights.

Naturally he went on to tell her about Carlin; but when at last he
spoke her name, the English girl interrupted him:

"Is it possible you are meaning Doctor Carlin Deal?"

"Yes; do you know her?" Skag asked.

"I have met her several times--quite frightened at first, because I had
heard about her--you know she is very learned, even for one much older."

"I know she is a physician."

"Yes; London Medical. But it's not just her profession; it's herself.
She's really wonderful; her sweetness is so strong and--all her
strengths are so lovely."

"She is wonderful to me," Skag said.

"I'm congratulating you, you understand?" The present Mrs. Hichens
smiled as she added: "I've heard that she has a fine discernment of
men."

He went before sunset. After he had gone she asked her ayah to find
out about who he was and whatever concerning him.

When Police Commissioner Hichens came up that week-end, he was so
seriously dissatisfied with the tediousness of her recovery, that she
had no inclination to tell him about having gone out from the tent on
her own unsteady feet, at all. Certainly it would be calamitous for
him to hear of her having been carried in by a perfect stranger. For
which reason she called her ayah, while the Sahib was in his bath
before dinner and said to her hurriedly:

"Ayah, will you do a thing for my sake?"

"To the shedding of my blood, Thou Shining."

"Then guard from the master that he shall not learn of my going out, or
of the stranger who appeared."

"He shall never learn. Never while he lives shall he learn, unless
from your own lips."

"Will all the other servants help you, Ayah dear?"

"It is already considered and determined among us. He shall never
learn from us."

"Why are you all good to me?"

"Because by the hand of our master, who is our father and our mother,
our bodies live; but by the grace of thy soul our hearts are glad. _It
is better to have joy in the heart one day than to endure upon the
fatness which grows out of a full stomach for ten years._"

"Oh, Ayah, don't tell me things like that, because they are never to be
forgotten."

"That is a great saying, oh Flower-of-Life. A saying come down from
many generations. My people have found in it much food. The most poor
among us go empty many days by the strength in it. And it is known
that holy men have lived long years of holy life, without any
satisfaction to the body at all, dwelling in that courage by which the
unutterable of suffering may be endured, entirely by the _memory of one
day_."

The ayah's voice finished in the tones of ceremony; and she moved
smoothly from the room, unconscious that she had not been dismissed.

The following evening, after the police commissioner had gone down, the
ayah brought report concerning the stranger. His name was Sanford
Hantee Sahib. He was an American Sahib. He did not consort with any
of his own people, nor with Europeans. Of all human beings he had only
one friend and associate, Cadman Sahib, who was a great man among
men--as was well known by even the ignorant. Cadman Sahib had been
heard to call him "Skag," but Cadman Sahib would permit no one to call
him by that title excepting himself; therefore it was a sealed title,
to pronounce which few are worthy. Five days ago Sanford Hantee Sahib
had come by train from far in the interior, beyond the Grass Jungle
country, to meet an Indian Sahib of high rank in the railway service,
at Poona. It was an appointment personal to himself; no one knew the
purpose. Also, why Cadman Sahib had not come together with him was not
known, unless--

"Oh, Ayah! I don't care a bit about Cadman Sahib--_will_ you be good
enough. What about the man? Now go on."

"Most illustrious lady, the thing is an exaltation. I am poor and
ignorant. My head is at your feet. One like I am should not approach
power like his save turning fresh from a bath."

"Ayah dear! I am prepared."

"He has the power to control all wild animals. So great is his power
that not long ago, when he and his so-fortunate friend Cadman Sahib had
both fallen into a tiger pit-trap and a mighty young tiger in his full
strength had come after them, falling bodily down upon them and being
full of fright and fury, had turned upon them to destroy them,
beholding his master's face, the beast had become subject to him in the
instant and had sat quietly before him the whole night, without moving
to hurt them. What man will require more than this?"

"For Heaven's sake! What a tale. But Ayah, what sort of man is he?"

"Who will be able to know what sort of man? Is it not enough?"

"We require much more than that."

"Lady, I--who am not as you are--I have not bathed since dawn. Surely
calamity will fall on me, if I set my tongue to the nature of such an
one."

"If he is holy, then he will be willing to help."

"The knowledge of him among men is that he _is that_."

"Then, Ayah, I will take the danger of calamity away from you, for I
have need. Speak."

"It is known that he resembles the most high masters themselves, in
that he is _always kind_. And yet there was a strange saying, that he
permitted his friend Cadman Sahib to destroy the head of a mighty
serpent who had feasted upon the creatures and children of a Grass
Jungle village. Now these things could not both be true at the same
time, unless he had taken a vow to protect the children of men. In
that case his presence in the land was a benediction beyond the
benediction of twenty years of full rains. He might even be one of the
high gods, incarnated to serve Vishnu the Great Preserver, if what they
said was true, that he had been recognised by Neela Deo, the Blue
god--king of all the elephants--in _his own place_."

"Then, Ayah, fasten it all into one word."

"That he is a very great mystic. Not one of the yogis who are unclean
and scrap-fed, but a true mystic; a master and an adept in one of the
greatest of all powers."

"_Have no fear_. I alone shall carry the burden of speaking."

Since there are few more potent benedictions than "Have no fear," the
ayah withdrew in deep content.


While Skag sat in the tent next day, the police commissioner's wife
said to him:

"I have learned that you are a wonder man."

"That is a mistake."

"Is it true that you and a friend spent the night in a pit-trap with a
living, unchained tiger and that he did not hurt you?"

"A part of the night, yes."

"Will you explain it on any ordinary grounds?"

"Maybe not quite ordinary. I travelled several years with a circus in
America; and I learned to handle animals, especially big cats of
different sorts."

"How do you do it?"

"A man does it by first mastering the wild animals in himself. Then he
must have learned never to be afraid."

"Is that all?"

"He must always be fair to them. I mean he must never take advantage
of them; never do anything to them that would make him fight back, if
he were in their place."

"I am thinking what a difference there is between your standpoint and
that of the hunters of wild animals I know. But tell me--have you ever
been afraid?"

"Yes, once."

"Really afraid?"

"Yes."

"I want to hear about it some day, if you will be so good; but first I
want to tell you a story of fear; two kinds of fear. There has been no
one I could speak to--and I am in need of help."

"I would like to help you. Tell on."

"Do you know much about hyenas?"

"I know they are the most unclean of all beasts. I have never heard
that they are dangerous to men."

"Sometimes they are. Only a little way from where we sit in this
jungle, a woman was killed and eaten last year, by a hyena. But I am
not afraid for myself. I have said my fear is of two kinds. First, I
am seriously concerned for the children; especially the baby. She is
frail at her best and if it were not for her long afternoon naps, I am
unwilling to think what would come to her just from the sort of thing
which has been happening. She is highly organised; and one has heard
that any kind of nerve-shock is most dangerous to such children. Then,
there is a different kind of fear, _quite_ different; it is for her
Great Dane dog."

"Won't he charge them?"

"That is the most awful part of it. Of all creatures I have ever
known, I may as well say of all people I have ever known, he has the
most splendid courage. One night in every week he is taken to Bhanah's
own quarters, so that his master shall not be disturbed. The change
seemed to relieve him, at first. But--one who had not seen could never
conceive how gradually, through the long, long nights--I have watched
his almost super-human courage--breaking."

Skag opened his lips to speak, but she put up her hand.

"This is hard to tell because I have never known that I could be
afraid. I have always supposed that I had perfect courage. But while
Nels' courage has been in the wrecking, my own has been wrecked--quite!"

Her voice was very low and very bitter.

"I don't believe it's as bad as that."

She glanced up and smiled the slow smile of extreme age upon extreme
youth.

"My husband, the police commissioner, has hunted in India more than
twenty years; some of his friends longer than that. I suppose they are
as familiar with the natures and doings of most animals in this country
as foreign hunters can become. But of course the natives know jungle
creatures even better. We have two servants, born in these hills, my
ayah and Bhanah the old cook; I have much from both of them. But my
experience here in this tent, has--as the natives would
say--established it all in me. You will have heard that hyenas are
almost always the scouts for tigers."

"Yes, Mr. Cadman told me that."

"Jackals run with them. The hunters say that between the hyena, whose
stench is beyond description awful, and the jackal, whose stench is
strong dog, they obliterate the tiger smell and so prevent the
desperate panic coming in time to the hunted creatures, who fear the
tiger more than anything."

"Hyenas in captivity do not smell so exceptionally bad."

"One has heard that all flesh-eating animals in captivity are fed clean
meat, reasonably fresh--"

"They are; and for the moment I forgot their reputation--that would
make a difference."

"It is claimed here, that they eat only two kinds of flesh, at
once--human and dog. They say that the hyena entices and betrays to
the killing, the tiger kills and eats his fill, then the jackals come
in and leave only bones and tendon-stuff for the hyena. This is what
he devours as soon as it is old enough to suit his taste."

"Are all these animals here in this jungle?"

"Plenty of jackals; but the tigers have been killed out of all this
part of these Ghats by the European sportsmen of Bombay and Poona. The
hunters disregard hyenas; so there are many left, with no killer to
kill for them."

"That might make them dangerous."

"And they will tell you that when a hyena is forced to kill for
himself, he invariably hunts for a dog. It has become very important
to me that dog flesh is their first choice. And dogs never fight
hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl
while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near
they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and
submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the
power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in
this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the
spartan soul of Nels the Great Dane dog; and I have seen and I have
heard the _process_ of the hyena's lure."

"That is what I want to hear about."

"You shall hear; but will you be good enough to remember, please, Nels
is no average dog. There is nothing better in lineage than his. Also,
he is a thoroughly trained hunting dog. My husband, the police
commissioner, has used him in hunting tigers and cheetahs, black
panthers and leopards of the long sort, the big black bears of Himalaya
and jungle pigs, which we call wild boars at Home. To different famous
hunting districts of the country he has taken Nels, on many
hunting-furloughs; and Nels' courage stands to him and to his friends,
the very last word in courage. I have often heard him say he does not
know a man with courage to equal that which has never once failed in
Nels."

"I should like to know that dog."

"You shall certainly meet him; and it may be you are the one to know
him. I am confident no one does, now."

"About the hyenas?"

"The hyena has three kinds of call. The most common is the bark of a
puppy. (If you ever hear it you will not wonder why mother dogs go out
to it, to their death.) Presently the bark breaks into a puppy's cry.
It whimpers, then it climbs up into heart-breaking desolation; the
wailing cry of a lost puppy. It snaps out in distraction futile little
yappings; then it whimpers again, like sobbing. So on for hours.

"The next most common is a laugh; a harsh, senseless laugh. The effect
is to terrorise, to paralyse its prey. It is wicked. It climbs up
into piercing, high, falsetto tones; all maniacal. . . . So insane
that though one knows perfectly well what it is, it chills one's blood.
This keeps on a long time, with variations. Every change seems worse
than the last. But sooner or later it brings one up standing with a
laugh impossible to describe, unless it is devilish--so clear, so keen,
so intelligent, so beyond expression malicious. Toward morning this
sometimes brings sweat. Oh, maybe not if one were alone; but with
Nels, watching Nels--indeed yes!

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