The Star of India

"A MAN MAY SMILE AND SMILE, AND BE A VILLAIN STILL."

One morning in the month of April, 1857, Baird Avery, an assistant surgeon in the employ of the Honorable East India Company, was on his way to Delhi, the ancient capital of the Emperors of Hindostan, and at that time the residence of the royal pauper known as the "Great Mogul" of the Empire.

The distance which the young gentleman had to travel was near one thousand miles, and he was fairly upon the frightful hot season, during which the thermometer creeps up day after day to over one hundred in the shade, and stands at one hundred and forty in the flaming sun.

Avery left the metropolis of British India on the Hooghly nearly two months before, and had traveled leisurely to the northwest since that time. Most of his journey was made by the Ganges in a budgerow, a craft of some fifty tons burden, one half of which consists of a decked cabin, several small rooms and awning. The front of the vessel was occupied the crew, including a manjee, or steersman, and eight dandies or boatmen, whose duties were to work the sails, or row or drag the vessel as necessity required.

Avery was now in the neighborhood of Cawnpore, and was journeying by dawk or palanquin, a slow but pleasant means of conveyance, and one that has been long peculiar to the country.

The box-like structure was borne on the shoulders of four men, with the same number walking beside them, ready to serve their turn. The palanquin was large enough to allow the occupant to stretch out at full length on the well stuffed mattress, covered with morocco leather, while a shelf and drawer contained books, a telescope, writing material and a bottle of diluted brandy.

In the morning the heat became so intolerable that a halt was generally made at the roadside in the shade of a friendly grove of mangoes, or at some bungalow, where the traveler awaited the lesser heat of evening before moving forward again. The greater part of the trip, therefore, was performed at night, when a Mussalchee ran by the side of the palanquin with a lighted torch to guide the bearers through the jungles. Wild animals and serpents were kept away by the flare of these torches and the shouting of the natives.

Avery had visited this section more than once before, and it was his intention to repeat a call upon a Rajah, between whom and himself a strong friendship existed. This Rajah had for some time attracted attention by his pretensions to the title and possessions of his adopted father Bajee Rao. Leaving his palanquin by the wayside, the surgeon went forward, up a broad avenue, on the right of which was a well preserved parterre. Reaching a house built for a former Commissioner, he sat down and sent forward his favorite attendant, Luchman, with his compliments to the Rajah, and a request to know at what hour it would be agreeable to receive a call.

The response was overwhelming. Three of the most distinguished attendants of the pretender, accompanied by an escort of native sowars on prancing steeds and with drawn swords and brilliant uniforms, came down the driveway, covered with cunka (a sort of clayey marl), at a showy pace, and halted in front of the young surgeon, who was waiting to receive them.

They were sent, as he was informed, in answer to his message, and the Rajah, in the usual extravagant language of the Orient, begged the favor of the gentlemen's company at the palace in the evening, when the air would be cool.

Left to himself, Avery spent the hours in looking over the grounds, while the palanquin bearers, having traveled all night, withdrew to cook their food for the morning meal, after which they passed the time in smoking their hookahs and in sleep. These fellows with their scant clothing and bronzed skins could have withstood the fervor of the Asiatic sun for hours when a European would have succumbed in a few minutes.

Just as the sun was setting, a gaudily caparisoned elephant, crowned with a towering howdah (the ordinary box-like saddle) swung down the avenue to the Commissioner's house, and Avery climbed to the seat by means of a small ladder. He was then borne through a score of bazars and native streets to the house of the Rajah, who was seated upon a charpoy or native bedstead made of wood, with feet highly gilded. His dress was of white muslin, consisting of two coats of that material and a drapery of muslin with a fanciful border. His turban was of the same light fabric, through which golden thread was interwoven.

The instant the Rajah caught sight of his visitor, he extended his hand. Avery made a graceful salaam, and felt a thrill of genuine regard for the barbarian, whose coppery face seemed to glow with delight because of his visit. Since the Rajah spoke only Hindustani he was obliged to employ his moonshee.

"Rajah sahib salaam. Ap ka mizay kaisa hai?" (Peace to you, honorable sir. How is your temper today?)

"I have hastened hither," was the response of the guest. "I have come a long way to grasp your hand."

The Rajah smiled when Avery uttered the sentences I have given in pure Hindustani, but since they included about all that the young gentleman understood of that language, the services of the moonshee were not cast aside.

"Will not my brother live with me always?" asked the host; "then the tears shall never come to my eyes."

"Great would be my happiness could I do so," replied Avery, who felt no compunctions in drawing the long bow; "but my Queen will not permit me to accept your gracious hospitality."

"Your Queen is the greatest and best of earth; I love her and her children, the Inglese. 'Twould be my heart's delight to be their servant all my life."

"That could not be, for the Rajah is her brother."

The eyes of the Rajah sparkled when this remark was translated to him, and there could be no doubt that it gave him much pleasure, for it was a tacit recognition of his claim as a ruler, which the East India Company would never admit.

The host was a little more than thirty years of age, with sallow complexion, strong, coarse features, with head and face closely shaven after the fashion with all Mahrattas, and he was quite fat, his corpulence being the unhealthy bloat of the Eastern voluptuary.

In his distant home in Calcutta, Baird Avery had heard of the mutterings in the Bengal Presidency, caused by the spread of the report among the sepoys that the cartridges for their new Enfield rifles, furnished them by the British government, had been prepared with the grease of the hog, abominated by the Mussulmans, and that of the cow, the sacred animal of the Hindoos. He sought to draw out his host, who, he hoped, would speak the truth, since he had some grounds for complaint because of the treatment he had received from the East India Company.

"Is it true that among the sepoys and natives there is dissatisfaction with the rule of the Inglese?"

"They never knew happiness until you came across the ocean and ruled our country for us. We are happy and content."

This sounded like oriental exaggeration, but the speaker was the picture of sincerity when he spoke the words, which he immediately followed with the remark:

"Evil persons have spread reports among the sepoys which are all falsehoods."

The Rajah, who had caused his hookah to be filled and lighted, bowed his head several times by way of emphasizing his last remark.

"It gives me great happiness to hear the words of my beloved friend Maharajah, and our blessed Queen will be pleased to receive such assurances from her brother."

"We will stop the lies; we will not allow the best queen and the most virtuous people in the world to be slandered; we are ready to lay down our lives that we may but gain a smile from the illustrious ruler. 'Tis my prayer night and day that the way may be opened for me to prove my devotion to her and her people."

The conversation went on in this fashion for an hour, when Avery made his salaam and withdrew, borne by the same gaudily caparisoned elephant and attended by the same showy escort that had brought him thither.

"I wonder whether there can be any foundation for the rumors that are in the air of Calcutta, of an impending revolt of the sepoys. Can it be that the whole country is on the verge of mutiny? Possibly such is the fact, but if the tempest of fire and blood comes we are sure of one friend, the Maharajah; nothing can swerve him from his loyalty to the Queen."

Now, let it be known that the Rajah from whom Baird Avery had just parted was Nana Dhoonda Pant, known in history as Nana Sahib, the most perfidious wretch since the days of Judas Iscariot. And yet, fiend as he proved himself to be by his massacre of the women and children at Cawnpore, only a few weeks after this interview, the Nana had his grounds for his fierce hatred of the British government.

Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poona, was the last ruler of one of those Mahratta dynasties which for centuries had shared the sovereignty of the Central Highlands and the plunder of all Hindostan. He was so vicious that the East India Company dethroned him, confiscated his territories, and forced him to take up his residence at Bithoor, a small town up the river from Cawnpore. His allowance was four hundred thousand dollars annually, enough to afford the old voluptuary all the magnificence, ease, amusement and enjoyment for which he yearned.

The Mahratta had one grief; he was without a son to inherit his possessions and to apply the torch to his funeral pyre. He therefore adopted a son, to whom, by the Hindoo law, belonged all the rights and privileges of an heir born of the body. This son was the one upon whom Baird Avery made his call in the month of April, 1857. Bajee Rao died in 1851, and Nana demanded a continuance of the pension which his adopted father had received from the Company, but it was refused. Although Nana was possessed of great wealth, he never forgave the Inglese for their treatment. But he dissembled well, and no one suspected the treachery of the wretch, until he plunged heart and soul into the sepoy mutiny and proved himself the nearest approach to a fiend ever attained by a human being.