He turned, started the least thing in the world, looked me fair in the face while I was speaking, and when I had done addressed himself to his companion in the barbarous native dialect. The second person, who was of an extraordinary delicate appearance, with legs like walking canes and fingers like the stalk of a tobacco pipe, (6) now rose to his feet.
"The Sahib," says he, "understands no English language. I understand it myself, and I see you make some small mistake - oh! which may happen very often. But the Sahib would be glad to know how you come in a garden."
"Ballantrae!" I cried, "have you the damned impudence to deny me to my face?"
Ballantrae never moved a muscle, staring at me like an image in a pagoda.
"The Sahib understands no English language," says the native, as glib as before. "He be glad to know how you come in a garden."
"Oh! the divil fetch him," says I. "He would be glad to know how I come in a garden, would he? Well, now, my dear man, just have the civility to tell the Sahib, with my kind love, that we are two soldiers here whom he never met and never heard of, but the cipaye is a broth of a boy, and I am a broth of a boy myself; and if we don't get a full meal of meat, and a turban, and slippers, and the value of a gold mohur in small change as a matter of convenience, bedad, my friend, I could lay my finger on a garden where there is going to be trouble."
They carried their comedy so far as to converse awhile in Hindustanee; and then says the Hindu, with the same smile, but sighing as if he were tired of the repetition, "The Sahib would be glad to know how you come in a garden."
"Is that the way of it?" says I, and laying my hand on my sword- hilt I bade the cipaye draw.
Ballantrae's Hindu, still smiling, pulled out a pistol from his bosom, and though Ballantrae himself never moved a muscle I knew him well enough to be sure he was prepared.
"The Sahib thinks you better go away," says the Hindu.
Well, to be plain, it was what I was thinking myself; for the report of a pistol would have been, under Providence, the means of hanging the pair of us.
"Tell the Sahib I consider him no gentleman," says I, and turned away with a gesture of contempt.
I was not gone three steps when the voice of the Hindu called me back. "The Sahib would be glad to know if you are a dam low Irishman," says he; and at the words Ballantrae smiled and bowed very low.
"What is that?" says I.
"The Sahib say you ask your friend Mackellar," says the Hindu. "The Sahib he cry quits."
"Tell the Sahib I will give him a cure for the Scots fiddle when next we meet," cried I.
The pair were still smiling as I left.
There is little doubt some flaws may be picked in my own behaviour; and when a man, however gallant, appeals to posterity with an account of his exploits, he must almost certainly expect to share the fate of Caesar and Alexander, and to meet with some detractors. But there is one thing that can never be laid at the door of Francis Burke: he never turned his back on a friend. . . .
(Here follows a passage which the Chevalier Burke has been at the pains to delete before sending me his manuscript. Doubtless it was some very natural complaint of what he supposed to be an indiscretion on my part; though, indeed, I can call none to mind. Perhaps Mr. Henry was less guarded; or it is just possible the Master found the means to examine my correspondence, and himself read the letter from Troyes: in revenge for which this cruel jest was perpetrated on Mr. Burke in his extreme necessity. The Master, for all his wickedness, was not without some natural affection; I believe he was sincerely attached to Mr. Burke in the beginning; but the thought of treachery dried up the springs of his very shallow friendship, and his detestable nature appeared naked. - E. McK.)
CHAPTER VIII. - THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSE.
It is a strange thing that I should be at a stick for a date - the date, besides, of an incident that changed the very nature of my life, and sent us all into foreign lands.