Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

Tarvin got himself out of the cart, unfolding his long stiffened legs with difficulty, and unkinking his muscles one by one. He was a mask of dust--dust beyond sand-storms or cyclones. It had obliterated the creases of his clothing and turned his black American four-button cutaway to a pearly white. It had done away with the distinction between the hem of his trousers and the top of his shoes. It dropped off him and rolled up from him as he moved. His fervent 'Thank God!' was extinguished in a dusty cough. He stepped into the verandah, rubbing his smarting eyes.

'Good evening, gentlemen,' he said. 'Got anything to drink?'

No one rose, but somebody shouted for the servant. A man dressed in thin Tussur silk, yellow and ill-fitting as the shuck on a dried cob, and absolutely colourless as to his face, nodded to him and asked languidly--

'Who are you for?'

'No? Have they got them here too?' said Tarvin to himself, recognising in that brief question the universal shibboleth of the commercial traveller.

He went down the long line and twisted each hand in pure joy and thankfulness before he began to draw comparisons between the East and the West, and to ask himself if these idle, silent lotos-eaters could belong to the profession with which he had swapped stories, commodities, and political opinions this many a year in smoking-cars and hotel offices. Certainly they were debased and spiritless parodies of the alert, aggressive, joyous, brazen animals whom he knew as the drummers of the West. But perhaps--a twinge in his back reminded him--they had all reached this sink of desolation viâ country bullock-cart.

He thrust his nose into twelve inches of whisky and soda, and it remained there till there was no more; then he dropped into a vacant chair and surveyed the group again.

'Did some one ask who I was for? I'm for myself, I suppose, as much as any one--travelling for pleasure.'

He had not time to enjoy the absurdity of this, for all five men burst into a shout of laughter, like the laughter of men who have long been estranged from mirth.

'Pleasure!' cried one. 'O Lord! Pleasure! You've come to the wrong place.'

'It's just as well you've come for pleasure. You'd be dead before you did business,' said another.

'You might as well try to get blood out of a stone. I've been here over a fortnight.'

'Scot! What for?' asked Tarvin.

'We've all been here over a week,' growled a fourth.

'But what's your lay? What's your racket?'

'Guess you're an American, ain't you?'

'Yes; Topaz, Colorado.' The statement had no effect upon them. He might as well have spoken in Greek. 'But what's the trouble?'

'Why, the King married two wives yesterday. You can hear the gongs going in the city now. He's trying to equip a new regiment of cavalry for the service of the Indian Government, and he's quarrelled with his Political Resident. I've been living at Colonel Nolan's door for three days. He says he can't do anything without authority from the supreme Government. I've tried to catch the King when he goes out pig-shooting. I write every day to the Prime Minister, when I'm not riding around the city on a camel; and here's a bunch of letters from the firm asking why I don't collect.'

At the end of ten minutes Tarvin began to understand that these washed-out representatives of half a dozen firms in Calcutta and Bombay were hopelessly besieging this place on their regular spring campaign to collect a little on account from a king who ordered by the ton and paid by the scruple. He had purchased guns, dressing-cases, mirrors, mantelpiece ornaments, crochet work, the iridescent Chrismas-tree glass balls, saddlery, mail-phaetons, four-in-hands, scent-bottles, surgical instruments, chandeliers, and chinaware by the dozen, gross, or score as his royal fancy prompted. When he lost interest in his purchases he lost interest in paying for them; and as few things amused his jaded fancy more than twenty minutes, it sometimes came to pass that the mere purchase was sufficient, and the costly packing-cases from Calcutta were never opened. The ordered peace of the Indian Empire forbade him to take up arms against his fellow-sovereigns, the only lasting delight that he or his ancestors had known for thousands of years; but there remained a certain modified interest of war in battling with bill-collectors. On one side stood the Political Resident of the State, planted there to teach him good government, and, above all, economy; on the other side--that is to say, at the palace gates--might generally be found a commercial traveller, divided between his contempt for an evasive debtor and his English reverence for a king. Between these two his Majesty went forth to take his pleasure in pig-sticking, in racing, in the drilling of his army, in the ordering of more unnecessaries, and in the fitful government of his womankind, who knew considerably more of each commercial traveller's claims than even the Prime Minister. Behind these was the Government of India, explicitly refusing to guarantee payment of the King's debts, and from time to time sending him, on a blue velvet cushion, the jewelled insignia of an imperial order to sweeten the remonstrances of the Political Resident.

'Well, I hope you make the King pay for it,' said Tarvin.

'How's that?'

'Why, in my country, when a customer sillies about like that, promising to meet a man one day at, the hotel and not showing up, and then promising to meet him the next day at the store and not paying, a drummer says to himself, "Oh, all right! If you want to pay my board, and my wine, liquor, and cigar bill, while I wait, don't mind me. I'll mosey along somehow." And after the second day he charges up his poker losings to him.'

'Ah, that's interesting. But how does he get those items into his account?'

'They go into the next bill of goods he sells him, of course. He makes the prices right for that.'

'Oh, we can make prices right enough. The difficulty is to get your money.'

'But I don't see how you fellows have the time to monkey around here at this rate,' urged Tarvin, mystified. 'Where I come from a man makes his trip on schedule time, and when he's a day behind he'll wire to his customer in the town ahead to come down to the station and meet him, and he'll sell him a bill of goods while the train waits. He could sell him the earth while one of your bullock-carts went a mile. And as to getting your money, why don't you get out an attachment on the old sinner? In your places I'd attach the whole country on him. I'd attach the palace, I'd attach his crown. I'd get a judgment against him, and I'd execute it too--personally, if necessary. I'd lock the old fellow up and rule Rajputana for him, if I had to; but I'd have his money.'

A compassionate smile ran around the group. 'That's because you don't know,' said several at once. Then they began to explain voluminously. There was no languor about them now; they all spoke together.

The men in the verandah, though they seemed idle, were no fools, Tarvin perceived after a time. Lying still as beggars at the gate of greatness was their method of doing business. It wasted time, but in the end some sort of payment was sure to be made, especially, explained the man in the yellow coat, if you could interest the Prime Minister in your needs, and through him wake the interests of the King's women.

A flicker of memory made Tarvin smile faintly, as he thought of Mrs. Mutrie.

The man in the yellow coat went on, and Tarvin learned that the head queen was a murderess, convicted of poisoning her former husband. She had lain crouching in an iron cage awaiting execution when the King first saw her, and the King had demanded whether she would poison him if he married her, so the tale ran. Assuredly, she replied, if he treated her as her late husband had treated her. Thereupon the King had married her, partly to please his fancy, mainly through sheer delight in her brutal answer.