'Good morning,' said Marjoribanks, slightly taken aback. He surveyed the yard with its muddy passage way, its beer barrels full of fruit, its cauldrons over the furnaces. He was sweating. The heat was terrible. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the beads of perspiration from the top of his bald head, taking care not to hide his eyes, as he heard footsteps behind him and he had the eerie feeling, encouraged by the penny bloods he had read at 'home' as a . 112 child, that a dark nigger with a dagger might suddenly spring from somewhere at his side and stab him to death. But it was Prabha who saluted him with a bow as he turned round to guard himself against the shuffling behind him. 'You master nere?' he said, in his Englishman's bad Hindustani. "Yes, Jenah,' said Prabha, trembling, pale and frightened. 'All right, Rai Bahadur,' said Dr. Marjoribanks, turning to Sir Todar Mal. 'I will see what I can do about it. I wish there were not all these people blocking my way up there. Can't you disperse them?' 'Jao!' shouted Sir Todar Mal, awakening to the Sahib's discomfort. I will see you off, Sahib,' he continued, brand- ishing his huge stick towards the crowd of men, women and children gathered at the head of the lane. 'Good afternoon, Sahib,' shouted Munoo mischievously from the door of the pickle factory. Marjoribanks turned back at the sudden unfamiliar voice with a frown which could not help turning into a smile at the sight of the ragged, brown boy speaking English. Prabha was in a panic. He thought that the Sahib would certainly send him to jail. He hurried into the factory and filled two jars of pickles and jams respectively. Giving them to Munoo 10 hold, he led the boy up to Lady Todar Mal, who was shouting as she stood in the hall of her house: 'Now, you wait and see. What a dance I will make you dance, you who have raised your heads to the sky!' Joiring his hands, Prabha bent and laid his head on Lady Todar Mal's feet, saying: 'Forgive me mother, forgive us all our faults. Here is an offering. Deign to accept it and forgive." 'What is he doing here now, this rogue! What does he want? I will see him ejected!' said Sir Todar Mal, coming back, feeling a new strength in his ageing limbs, the strength of that pride which showing himself off to the world as the friend of an Englishman gave him. 'Forgive them, let us forgive them,' said Lady Todar Mal. 113. 'Don't let us be the cause of our sending them to jail. Already we have a great many sins to expiatel'
'Offer the jars to Rai Bahadur, ohe Munoo,' said Prabha. The rich man's greed made him relent. For Prabha it was a very serious matter, because he was sure that Sir Todar Mal would land him in gaol. For Munoo it was all a joke as he sat boasting to Tulsi and Bonga and Maharaj that he had met an Englishman before and knew their language. For most part men realise themselves through the force of external necessity, in the varied succession of irrelevant and unconnected circumstances. Munoo soon got used to life in this primitive factory. It was a dark, evil life. He rose early at dawn before he had had his full sleep out, having gone to bed long after midnight. He descended to work in the factory, tired, heavy-lidded, hot and limp, as if all the strength had gone. out of his body and left him a spineless ghost of his former self. But he had learnt to be efficient. His first job was to sift the cinders from the ashes. Then he helped Tulsi to light the fires, waiting in suspense for the rich neighbours to burst out, for, though Prabha had placated them with bribes of pickles and jams and essences, there was no telling when they might forget about the gifts. The goat-face came bullying the boys, and hurrying them. But, since the quarrel with the neighbour's son, he had cooled down a great deal and even taken to visiting the temple with Prabha in the morning. As the ablutions in the sacred tank and the circumambulation round the shrine lasted till late into the morning, and as he went out can- vassing for orders to the bazaars after the midday meal, and for a ride on his new Japanese bicycle in the evening, his grim shadow was absent most of the time. Still he might come back at any moment. And then it I was difficult if he caught any of the boys lazing about. Munoo did not know what was, the matter with him. Why 114 did he always remain 'burnt up,' with a frown on his face, abuse on his tongue and his bullying fist upraised. He did not know that Ganpat was a rich man's son, born and bred in the lap of luxury, with a grievance against fate because his father had gambled away his fortune on the stock ex- change and left him penniless to work for his own living; and that, though he had been taken up by Prabha and lived in comfort through his partner's kindness, he was always afraid that he had neither the skill nor the will to work and felt himself a mere parasite. To ward off the possibility of his downfall he had cultivated a tough skin and a bullying manner which, with his ambition to amass wealth and to risc in the world, had developed into instruments of personal hate and a perverse selfishness, defeating the very ends they were employed to serve. The hate that gleamed from his bloodshot eyes made him loathsome to look at, demonish and malevolent like a would-be murderer, and people turned their faces away as he stared at them stubborn, tight-lipped, and relentless. Munoo did not laugh and talk even as much as he used to at the Babu's house. He went in continual fear of the goat-face. He was possessed by moods of extreme melan- choly in the mornings, dark feelings of self-distrust and a brooding, sinking feeling which oppressed his heart and ex- pressed itself in his nervous, agitated manner. He felt he could neither face nor talk to anyone in the mornings, least of all his master and mistress, that he would break down if they said a kind word to him or looked at him tenderly. The only thing that relieved these fits of depression was the silent comradeship which existed between him and the other coolies.
