Мистер Нобл во время мятежа

There is one event in Ibn-ul-Waqt's life that may have had a great deal to do with his change of ways, and it is something of a story. In the last years of Bahadur Shah's reign the office of heir apparent was disputed between Mirza Fakhr-ul-Mulk and Mirza Jawan Bakht. Mirza Fakhr-ul-Mulk, being the eldest son, able and of fine presence, had many supporters, among them the English, and in that same party was Nawab Mashooq Mahal Begum Sahib, who was also Mirza Fakhr-ul-Mulk's aunt. Mirza Jawan Bakht leapt and capered on the strength of his mother, Nawab Zinat Mahal Begum, who had great sway over the Emperor's temper. Had the Emperor had his way, he would have put Jawan Bakht on the throne in his own lifetime; but the English wedge was very strong. Mirza Jawan Bakht was treated in every respect as heir apparent, with only two things lacking: first, the heir's allowance remained in the custody of the royal treasury; second, the English did not accord him the formal honours of an heir. In this tug-of-war the supporters of Mirza Fakhr-ul-Mulk suffered heavy losses. Nawab Mashooq Mahal, seeing the Emperor's favour somewhat turned from her, had the great and famous palace of Rahatgah-e-Jawan, outside the Fort near the Kashmiri Gate, put in order, and on the pretext of a change of air began living in the city. She did not stop going to the Fort; but she had all her goods, possessions and furnishings carried to the Rahatgah.

Although a year or two later the Jawan Bakht commotion died down, Nawab Mashooq Mahal had grown so fond of the Rahatgah that she kept to the same routine. In the morning, after breakfast, she would go to the Fort; she said her afternoon prayers at the Rahatgah and spent her nights there too. So it went on until the day of judgement allotted to Delhi arrived: the Mutiny of 1857. After the Mutiny broke out, Nawab Mashooq Mahal Begum Sahib never set foot outside the Fort. Some two and a half or three months after it began, an hour or two after nightfall, the first shell fell and burst in the Diwan-i-Am, and the whole Fort shook with the blast. No sooner had the shell burst than such terror entered the heart of Nawab Mashooq Mahal Begum Sahib that, from the shock to her heart, she passed away on the third day. To God we belong and to Him we return. She was a most well-meaning, God-fearing and generous lady, and God spared her the disgraces and humiliations written in the fate of the house of Timur. Well then: on the very day after the Mutiny broke out, Nawab Mashooq Mahal ordered Ibn-ul-Waqt to have every last scrap of the Rahatgah's goods carried into the Fort and the Rahatgah buildings locked. And what goods they were! Twenty bullock carts made four trips a day, and even then it took a month or a month and a quarter before that mountain of goods was stowed away.

It was the sixth day of the Mutiny. With about two hours of daylight left, Ibn-ul-Waqt, having sent off the last load, was making his way towards the Fort, himself and two servants, all three armed. In those days whenever two people talked it was of nothing but the Mutiny, and so these three were talking as they went. As they came out past Mohsin Khan's ward into the open ground between the Magazine and the College, what should they see but some English corpses lying on the left of the road. At the sight Ibn-ul-Waqt's heart missed a beat. At that moment the place was so fearful that any man, however bold, would have been struck dumb with terror had he been alone; but they were three. Ibn-ul-Waqt stopped short opposite the bodies and, with great anger and sorrow, said to his companions: "Look what an outrage the brutes have committed! It seems a terrible punishment is about to fall on the city. Innocent blood never goes unavenged, we are told. God knows at what ill-omened hour Shah Jahan laid the foundation of this wretched city, that it has never known a full century of peace. But this time things look as if people will forget Nadir Shah." His companions agreed with everything he said. It was still about half an hour to the sunset prayer. In the west they had already wrapped the sun's corpse in its blood-stained shroud of twilight, ready to lower it into the grave of the horizon; and here the unshrouded bodies had put on the mourning shroud of the walls' shadows. A city like Delhi, the evening hour, an ordinary day, a place like this: on any other day you could not have moved there for the crush, shoulder rubbing against shoulder. But Ibn-ul-Waqt stood at the crossroads and saw that, as far as the eye could reach, there was not a soul. For fear of the city's ruffians, people had wedged their doors with stones well before dark and shut themselves in their houses. Ibn-ul-Waqt stood dumbfounded in the silence until one of his companions said: "Sir, the hour for breaking the fast is near and the Fort is far. What was to happen has happened, and what is written will be. It seems many of the weevils must be ground along with the wheat of these wretched Telingas. Come, let us go."

They had come a little way short of the water mills when they heard footsteps behind them: someone was hurrying after them. The sight of the bodies had so shaken them that at the sound all their hearts began to pound, and in spite of themselves they kept turning to look back. Thank God, the man was unarmed. He came on at a run, and as they were walking slowly down from the mills he caught them up. Seeing their backs from a distance, he had made out which of them was the master. Coming abreast, he saluted Ibn-ul-Waqt like a respectful, well-trained servant. Ibn-ul-Waqt looked him over: a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty, dressed like an Englishman's butler or orderly, a cloth tied round his head and a sash round his waist, as if he had come straight from duty. Fear, grief and agitation fairly dripped from his face; his lips were cracked and parched; he could not get his breath; he wanted to speak to Ibn-ul-Waqt but kept turning again and again to look towards the bodies. Though the small magazine stood in between, still he could not help himself, could not keep from looking. He did not even wait for Ibn-ul-Waqt to question him, but burst out: "My name is Jan Nisar, and I am one of the Pathans of Bahadurpur. For four years I have been orderly to Noble Sahib, the Joint Magistrate of Rohtak. My Sahib has been ill for several months. He was going home to England on leave and taking me with him as far as Bombay. Today is the fourth day. We came and put up at the dak bungalow, and at midday the Mutiny broke out. The Sahib was unwell and could not run away anywhere. The Telingas took him and imprisoned him in the guardhouse at the Kashmiri Gate. Some other Englishmen had been caught there too. Today they stood all the prisoners up and, for no reason, unlawfully, fired a volley into them. My Sahib too fell wounded. But there is life in him still. I was too frightened to look at him properly, but when no one was watching I took a water pot from the mosque and left it beside him. This is a deed for the sake of God: if you can, save my Sahib's life, and great will be your reward. He is an Englishman, but a gentleman and a friend to gentlefolk, good-natured and merciful beyond measure. Ask anyone in Rohtak: he has fixed allowances for scores of orphans and widows, and when in criminal cases he is forced to fine someone, he pays the fine into the treasury from his own pocket." Saying this, Jan Nisar fell at Ibn-ul-Waqt's feet and said: "I was hiding behind a door and heard what you were saying as you stood by the bodies. That gave me the courage to speak to you, and my heart bears witness within me that God has sent you at this hour for no other purpose than to save my Sahib's life."

Ibn-ul-Waqt raised Jan Nisar from the ground and said: "What these villainous, low-born, faithless, rebellious Telingas are doing is beyond doubt sheer cruelty, permitted by no religion or creed; and if I can protect your Sahib, I count it my duty as a human being. But at what time did they fire the volley?"

Jan Nisar: "At two o'clock."

Ibn-ul-Waqt: "Oho, two o'clock! (Turning to one of the servants:) That firing we heard then, it must have been that volley. (To Jan Nisar:) Well then, how do you know your Sahib is still alive?"

Jan Nisar: "Until a little before your honour came, the sun was on the bodies. The other bodies had gone quite white, but there was a flush in my Sahib's face, and I saw movement in his body with my own eyes. When I went to leave the water, his breath seemed to be coming and going. God knows where he is hurt, that he is still senseless. From the moment the Sahib was seized at the dak bungalow I have stayed close by him all the time, never parted from him for an instant. I cannot say anything about his wounds, but until now there was certainly life in him. For God's sake, come and look. If any life is left, take him under your protection; perhaps, God willing, he may live. And if he is dead, what is that? Fifty poor men like me will have died with him. I am only a two-penny foot-soldier, and even to speak before you is presumption; but, sir, this government is not going to be swept away. This is a few days' uproar. If the Sahib lives through your kindness, then you will see how he repays you."

From the moment Ibn-ul-Waqt heard that a Sahib was lying wounded and alive, he had begun thinking out ways of protecting him. Outwardly he attended to Jan Nisar, but much of what the man said he did not hear at all. At last Ibn-ul-Waqt said to his two servants: "Well, brothers, what do you advise?" (One of them said: "We were born in your house; our lives and goods are at your service.") Ibn-ul-Waqt said: "All I need from you is this: first, since we are all fasting, swear an oath of secrecy; second, if the Sahib is alive, lift him by whatever means we can and bring him home."

Ibn-ul-Waqt's two servants raised their hands towards the qibla and swore, and the four men turned back to the bodies. Jan Nisar led them all to where Noble Sahib lay and stood them at his head. Dusk was falling. Jan Nisar touched him: the body was warm. Because he was smeared in blood they could not tell then where the wounds were or what kind. Though no one was to be seen anywhere, they started with fear whenever so much as a leaf stirred. At last Jan Nisar, with the help of Ibn-ul-Waqt and his servants, got the Sahib up on his back. The Sahib was so senseless that it was hard to hold him, and all the way Ibn-ul-Waqt and his servants kept propping him up. It was a great comfort and encouragement to them that wherever they looked there was no one coming or going.

Ibn-ul-Waqt had had the wounded man carried off, but until that moment he had not given the least thought to what he would do when he got home. In truth he had had no time to think of it. As soon as he heard Jan Nisar's pitiful story he had rushed off to lift the wounded man, and after lifting him he had been busy all the way holding him steady. He had reached the corner of his house when it dawned on him: what have I done, and how am I to see it through? Ibn-ul-Waqt's widowed aunt had lived in that house with her children since the start of her widowhood, and her late husband's estate had left her well off. Now that her children were grown, she had wanted a house of her own. From her father's estate she had been given land beside Ibn-ul-Waqt's house, and that land had lain idle for years. About four months earlier, as soon as the fine weather came, building had started, and by now the house was finished in every respect except the plastering, when the Mutiny broke out. The building was stopped. To guard the building materials, and also so that a lamp should be lit in the house at night, one of those same two servants who had carried Noble Sahib slept there each night by turns. Ibn-ul-Waqt had Noble Sahib set down in that empty house, and left the servant whose turn it was to sleep there with Jan Nisar, telling them: keep the doors bolted from inside, and until I come, wash the Sahib's wounds; but take care that no one so much as hears a sound.

In his agitation and haste Ibn-ul-Waqt had at least reflected that the rebels and the city's ruffians had become so bold that they were out for people's lives and honour on the mere pretext of some connection with the English. Without the backing of someone powerful it was not wise to take so great a risk upon his own head. Tomorrow or the day after, walls have ears; God forbid the evil hour, but if the matter came out, what could he, one lone grain of gram, do against the oven? Nearby was the hospice of Shah Haqqani Sahib. In a sense the whole city revered him, thousands of men from the frontier were his disciples, and forty or fifty, sometimes even a hundred, of them stayed at the hospice to receive the grace of his teaching. It came into Ibn-ul-Waqt's mind that if Shah Haqqani Sahib would lay his hand on his head in this undertaking, there would be no danger of any kind. Ibn-ul-Waqt was also fully confident that even if the Shah Sahib did not agree, he was too lofty to reveal the secret to anyone. So without even setting foot in the house he went straight to the hospice. There what does he see but the whole hospice packed so full of people that there was not room to set down a sesame seed. He learned that the rebel ringleader had come to get the scholars of the hospice to seal a decree of jihad. The argument had been going on since midday. Shah Haqqani Sahib would on no account agree, and kept calling war against the English sedition and "corruption in the land." At such a moment, in such a crowd, it was impossible to reach the Shah Sahib and speak to him alone. So Ibn-ul-Waqt turned back somewhat disappointed; but in his heart he applauded the stand of the scholars of the hospice, and was glad at the thought that, not one ringleader but the whole world on one side, the men of the hospice would not be frightened or bullied in a matter of religion; and what could the rebels do to them anyway? If a hair of anyone's head in the hospice were harmed, the dead would be piled in heaps. So Ibn-ul-Waqt came home again. As he stepped through the door, Jan Nisar gave him the good news that on washing and cleaning they had found no mortal wound anywhere, and the Sahib had even opened his eyes, but was too weak to speak.

As for ointments and bandages, what could be had? Yet by God's power, with nothing but cold water dripped on them, all the wounds healed in about a month and a half. Although the morning and evening patrols had stopped, and though Ibn-ul-Waqt, with Jan Nisar's help, could do whatever was needed, the diet was very different from what the Sahib was used to. Even so, the Sahib's original illness, for whose cure he had been going to England, had almost disappeared. Probably from too much reading, he had suffered a constant slight headache. Now reading was stopped entirely; the brain was given rest from the strain of study; and, the one remedy worth a hundred, his mind was occupied with other things. Even the headache came only now and then for a short while, and the Sahib himself put it down to the change of diet. Noble Sahib stayed three months and nine days in Ibn-ul-Waqt's house. In that time such an intimacy grew up between the two as has never, to this day, existed between any Indian and any Englishman. At first Ibn-ul-Waqt held back somewhat, mindful of their difference of kind and of the Sahib's high station; but books, newspapers, court, the evening drive and visits had all been replaced for the Sahib by Ibn-ul-Waqt's company, and he could not bear Ibn-ul-Waqt to leave his side for a moment. Prosperity and adversity are the two touchstones of a man's true nature. Noble Sahib was wounded, disabled, dependent, helpless, far from home, his life in constant danger, his escape a fancy, his death all but certain. Yet, good God, what a steadiness of temper he had! In all the time of his stay he never once showed weakness or alarm. He was, as it were, a guest who demanded, a refugee who swaggered. Poor Jan Nisar did not count at all; even Ibn-ul-Waqt, with all his special claims and rights, hesitated to go into his presence unannounced. History, geography and the newspapers had already made Ibn-ul-Waqt an admirer of the English. So the conversation between Noble Sahib and Ibn-ul-Waqt was an endless chain. Half the night would often pass in talk, and neither would think of rising. Their conversation was mostly of three kinds. Most often it was of the Mutiny: beginning with the day's events, as far as Ibn-ul-Waqt learned them through the Fort, it would end up in general questions. Why had the Mutiny happened? How far was this calamity likely to spread? Was this a moment when the different peoples of India, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Marathas, Bengalis, Madrasis, Rajputs, Jats, Gujars, would join together in the effort? What was the military strength of the people of India? Which of the princely states were feared likely to rise? What standing did the pensioned king have in the eyes of the people of Delhi? Would the frontier peoples, such as the Gurkhas and the Afghans, join the revolt or not? Was there any contemporary power that might covet the empire of India at such a moment? Was this Mutiny a sudden outbreak of the army, or had the pot been simmering for a long time, and were the people at large in league with the army? Were people content with English rule or discontented, and if discontented, why? How far had religious feeling been a cause of the Mutiny? In the beliefs of the Muslims, did this Mutiny count as jihad or not? So one thing led to another. Sometimes Noble Sahib would ask Ibn-ul-Waqt about the customs, civil life and social ways of Indians, and Ibn-ul-Waqt would split every hair to explain and make him understand. It had always been Ibn-ul-Waqt's habit to dig and probe everyone about the ways of foreign lands. He asked Noble Sahib, with an open heart, whatever came into his head, and Noble Sahib, as far as his tongue allowed, held back nothing, good or bad, about his country and his people. In Noble Sahib's company Ibn-ul-Waqt gained such a detailed knowledge of the English that all that was left was to see them with his own eyes. We believe that Ibn-ul-Waqt already had a kind of reverence for the English, and that after living three or three and a quarter months with Noble Sahib his ideas became still firmer; and it would be no wonder if it was in this time that he resolved to change his ways. It is not our purpose to write the history of Noble Sahib or of Ibn-ul-Waqt in the Mutiny. For the thread of the story it is enough to say that from the moment Noble Sahib came to his senses in Ibn-ul-Waqt's house, to the very end, he never once complained of his own pain or misfortune. But this was his constant refrain: "Alas, I am in such a state that I can neither help my people nor serve my country in any way." He thought death by many degrees better than an idle, useless life, and the lack of news made his days a torment. As long as Ibn-ul-Waqt was with him he talked; otherwise he paced up and down the veranda. His wounds had not yet properly healed when he began pressing Ibn-ul-Waqt to get him by some means to the English camp. Ibn-ul-Waqt was deeply hurt at heart by this untimely and unreasonable insistence, but he knew that a man with a purpose is a madman. Had the Sahib been out and about, he would have seen what a fire was blazing on every side. Shut up within four walls like the women of our country, knowing nothing of the world and what is in it, perhaps he thought in his heart that Ibn-ul-Waqt was deliberately shirking. As soon as his wounds healed, Noble Sahib grew so disheartened that several times he lost his temper and threatened Ibn-ul-Waqt: "If you keep me back any longer, I shall run off on my own." Ibn-ul-Waqt would laugh at such talk, and sometimes lose patience: "If your life is such a burden and you are bent on killing yourself, then let me at least earn the merit of a holy war by doing it."