BOUND TO JOHN COMPANY

OR THE

Adventures and Misadventures of Robert Ainsleigh

CHAPTER XIX. THE BOLT About to fall.

WERE this a record of private griefs, I might dwell long upon the desolation of spirit and unutterable anguish of heart which followed the receipt of those tidings that gave the death-blow to all my hopes; and, Heaven knows, these had seemed faint and feeble enough since my cruel marriage and more cruel exile. I had lost all. Henceforth nothing was left me in the past; and I looked forward to the unknown future from a present standpoint as desolate as it is possible for the mind of man to conceive.

Yet, as I pen these lines, and recall the dull despair of those days, I cannot but reprobate my ingratitude to the one friend whom God had raised up for me in this unknown world, and my impious forgetfulness of the mercy that had secured me so kind and powerful a protector. If my situation was desolate in spite of Mr. Holwell's friendship, what would my state have been without that supreme advantage? By this gentleman I had been rescued from a crew of wretches, who were, for the most part, the very refuse and sweepings of English jails, and elevated to a position of companionship. The friendship of so respectable a gentleman won for me other acquaintances, and I soon occupied an established position amongst the gentlemen of the factory. Of the life which these gentlemen and their families enjoyed I will say nothing, save that to them it seemed a pleasant one. My own troubles unfitted me for such agreeable dissipations as prevailed among them, and I preferred the solitude of my office to the most boisterous dinner-party in Calcutta. The day came when the tragic and exciting incidents of public life blunted the keen edge of individual sorrow, and I was better able to appreciate the advantages I had derived from the happy chance that threw me across Mr. Holwell's pathway. But for more than a year after my receipt of Mr. Swinfen's letter I was able to take comfort from nothing; and though I still performed my daily round of duty, and contrived to give satisfaction to my employer, the pleasure and interest which I had hitherto felt in my work had completely left me.

The years which elapsed between the autumn of 1753 and the summer of '56 were years of comparative tranquillity; and before that memorable summer came, we had seen the reduction of French power in

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the East by means of French folly, cowardice, and ignorance in the West. Enemy to my country though he was, false as he had shown himself in his violation of the treaty of Madras, I cannot withhold my pity from that daring and ambitious statesman, Joseph Francis Dupleix, when I consider the ignoble treatment he received from the government he had served so well.

While the rival powers on the coast of Coromandel were fighting for the supremacy of their chosen native rulers, and disputing the validity of titles and grants given by the shadowy court of Delhi, where the Mogul himself was but a usurper of very recent date, the English Company at home pestered the Government with complaints that, despite a treaty of peace between the two nations, they were harassed by a distressing and dangerous war, produced by the ambition of the French governor. Nor were the French themselves better satisfied with the conduct of their Indian affairs. Too remote from the seat of war to be affected by the glories of success, they considered only the expense and loss entailed by those triumphs, and were unable to appreciate the future advantages which these struggles were to secure. Dupleix was too successful a man to be without enemies. These accused him of wasting the Company's money in ambitious wars; and France, after leaving this bold and faithful servant, inefficiently supported, to extend her dominions and maintain her army by the outlay of his private fortune, determined upon repudiating his claim for repayment and breaking him altogether.

At a conference which took place in London between the representatives of the French and British Governments, the French Ministry consented to recall Dupleix, and to send commissioners to India for the settlement of all differences between the two nations. Thus it happened that Monsieur Godcheu, a stranger to affairs in the East, was permitted to supersede the man who had first taught Moorish power to bow before European arms, and who had won for his country a name of might throughout the length and breadth of the Deccan. Injustice so glaring was second only to that which had flung De la Bourdonnais into a cell of the Bastille; and I doubt not that in the hour of his own misfortunes the Governor of Pondicherry remembered his underhand share in the downfall of his blameless rival.

Negotiations between M. Godcheu and Mr. Saunders, the English Governor of Madras, resulted in extraordinary concessions on the part of the French. That nation, thanks to the ambition of Dupleix and the prowess of Bussy, were now masters of the sea-coast of Coromandel and Orixa; but this advantage, together with many others, was precipitately resigned by the French Company in the general desire for peace. While evil fortune thus overtook Dupleix, his happier enemy, Clive, was in London, fêted by an admiring public, and gratified by the gift of a diamond-hilted sword, worth five hundred pounds, from the Court of Directors, which he, however, generously refused to receive unless

a testimonial of equal value were presented to his friend and commanding officer, Colonel Lawrence, to whose liberal encouragement he owed so much of his success.

In the November of '55, the hero of Arcot returned to India as Governor of Fort St. David, bearing a commission as lieutenant-colonel in the British army, which had been obtained for him from his Majesty's Government by the Court of Directors, anxious to prevent those quarrels about rank between the King's and Company's officers which had so often obstructed the progress of affairs.

Instead of at once proceeding to his new government, Colonel Clive landed at Bombay, where he found Admiral Watson and a little fleet, which had been prudently despatched from England at the time of the conference between the French and English Companies. Assisted by the admiral, Clive attacked and routed a famous pirate, called Angria, who, with his father before him, had been the scourge and terror of this coast for the last half-century. This Morattoe rascal's stronghold of Gheria Colonel Clive razed to the ground on the 13th of February '56, on which occasion the British forces shared ten lacs of rupees by way of plunder.

This was the last event of importance on the western coast before the revolution which overtook Bengal. Here a false security, or rather, perhaps, an habitual distaste for action or exertion of any kind, on the part of the chief authorities, civil and military, had prevailed ever since the fear of Morattoe invasion had ceased to alarm the native and English inhabitants of the settlement. Every species of neglect had been practised. The defences of fort and city were in a dilapidated and almost useless condition. In all the arsenal there was scarce a carriage that would bear a gun; while fifty-five cannon, eighteen- and twentyfour-pounders, sent out from England in '53, had lain ever since neglected beneath the walls. Nor had the orders of the Directors at home been better attended to with regard to the drilling and military training of the militia. These, though entirely untaught, were hardly more ignorant than the meagre garrison, not one in ten among whom had ever seen a musket fired in earnest.

This was our condition at Fort William when the tidings of Allaverdy's approaching death came upon us. The daring spirit of the grand old Tartar chief was fading out amidst a scene of intrigue and treachery-the last act in that drama of falsehood and ambition which is for ever being enacted in this Eastern world.

On the one side, Allaverdy's dying eyes beheld his beloved grandnephew, Mirza Mahmud, the adopted child of his old age, dear to him. as an only son, and whom he had installed as his successor two years before, with the Moorish name of Serauje-ad-Doulah, or the Lamp of Riches; who was afterwards known as Suraja Doulah, by which title he made himself infamously renowned to all time. On the other side, the deathbed of the old nabob was watched by his daughter-a woman

of more than doubtful character, who had been married to her cousin, Shawamut Jung, and was now a childless widow.

The close of Shawamut Jung's life had been darkened by a tragedy of which his nephew, Suraja Doulah, had been the hidden cause. He was Governor of Dacca-a province which could easily become the centre of a revolution-and possessed treasures and influence which might have made him a formidable opponent in any struggle for power. Suraja Doulah dreaded this; but his treachery assailed, not his uncle, but his uncle's prime counsellor and intellectual superior, Hassein Coolly Khan. Hassein's nephew was at this time deputygovernor of Dacca. Him Suraja Doulah caused to be despatched by assassins, who entered the city disguised in the dead of the night; and before the public mind had recovered the shock of this event, Hassein himself was murdered in the streets of Muxadavad in open day.

Gloomy were the anticipations formed of the youthful director of these crimes, who, of course, denied all participation in the bloody work. While Allaverdy yet lingered, death swept both his nephews, the two uncles of Suraja Doulah, from the stage of politics. Both died of fever, without suspicion of poison, though it must be owned their removal was convenient for the Lamp of Riches.

There now remained but one possible pretender to the sovereignty of Bengal, and this was a child of two years old, the orphan son of Suraja Doulah's younger brother. This infant's father had been adopted by the late Shawamut Jung, and the baby pretender was now in the hands of the Begum, widow of Shawamut Jung, and daughter of Allaverdy, who had succeeded to her husband's treasures, and towards whom Suraja Doulah looked with the eye of hate and suspicion.

Hassein Coolly Khan had been succeeded in his post of duan or prime minister to Shawamut Jung by a Gentoo called Raja Bullub, who was now supposed to exercise a paramount influence over the mind of the widow. Suraja Doulah had given this man a taste of his quality, having seized upon him, and, by imprisonment and other cruelties, endeavoured to force from him a full account of Shawamut Jung's treasures. This the faithful Gentoo resolutely refused, and was by and by set at liberty by the influence of his mistress, who, as Allaverdy's daughter, had some power at court.

Thus did matters stand at Muxadavad, the capital of Bengal, when the imminence of the nabob's end brought affairs to a crisis. Raja Bullub, trembling for the safety of his treasures at Dacca, determined to remove with his worldly wealth and his family to a place of safety. But to effect this he was obliged to screen his real motives under a pretended access of piety. He therefore wrote to Mr. Watts, the chief of our English factory at Cassimbazar, hard by Muxadavad, informing him that his family were going from Dacca to worship at Juggernaut, and would take Calcutta on their way, at which settlement he entreated their favourable reception.

In compliance with this request Mr. Watts wrote to our president at Calcutta, and to Mr. Manningham, his junior in command. These letters arrived on the evening of the 13th of March, and during the absence of the president. They had but just reached Calcutta when Kissendass, the eldest son of Raja Bullub, and the rest of the family, landed from the little fleet of boats that had conveyed them from Dacca. There was brief leisure for consideration, and the family was received with all possible courtesy.

Mr. Holwell shook his head doubtfully when his people brought him the news of this unexpected arrival, as he and I lounged in an open veranda in the cool of the evening.

"I don't like such visitors, Bob," he said gravely; "and yet I own it would be awkward to refuse them hospitality. In oriental politics it is hard to know what turn events may take. If the Begum, Shawamut Jung's widow, should succeed in getting her adopted brat proclaimed nabob-and we know that Suraja Doulah is heartily detested by all classes-it would be well for the English to have secured her favour. But if, on the other hand, Suraja Doulah holds his ownwhich is more likely, since he has his paw upon the old nabob's treasury, and sticks at nothing in the way of assassination we shall mortally offend him by anything like protection of these Gentoos. Would to Heaven we had better defences, Bob, and a more energetic garrison! for it strikes me this settlement is about as safe as a village built under the shadow of Vesuvius, or a chateau on the slope of Etna.”

It was on the day after this arrival that Omichund, the Gentoo merchant, came to wait upon my patron. This man's revenues had been considerably diminished during the last three years by the Company's withdrawal of the privileges he had so long enjoyed; and to a mind so avaricious even the possession of vast wealth would fail to atone for this diminution of income. The old man's influence had also been lessened, and his pride humiliated, by the Company's ceasing to employ him as a mediator at the Durbar; and this, I doubt not, he felt no less keenly than his more substantial loss.

His manner was even more servile than usual; but I fancied I detected a sinister light in his eyes as he complimented Mr. Holwell, who gratified him with a piece of betel-nut wrapped in a leaf called pawn, a kind of sweetmeat much affected by the natives, and the interchange of which is a token of friendship.

Omichund had heard of our guests' arrival, and began at once to discuss the subject.

"Company Saheb do well to receive Kissendass," he said. "Raja Bullub, the father of Kissendass, is great friends with Begum Saheb -much very great friends. Wicked people say Begum Saheb is too much friends with Raja Bullub; but Omichund is no man to believe lies. If Begum Saheb and the little child get into power, it will be good for the English Company; but if not-"