The Elephant God eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 338 pages of information about The Elephant God.

The Elephant God eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 338 pages of information about The Elephant God.

The Rajah abused the hated English, root and branch.  But he was forced to admit that Chunerbutty was right.  Open violence would ruin them.

He sank back on the cushions, exhausted by his fit of anger.  Draining his glass he filled it up again.  Then he clapped his hands.  A servant entered noiselessly on bare feet, bringing two full bottles of liqueur and fresh tumblers.  There was little difficulty in anticipating His Highness’s requirements.  The khitmagar removed the empty bottles and the broken glass and left the apartment.

The Rajah drank again.  The strong liqueur seemed to have no effect on him.  Then he said: 

“Well, find a plan yourself.  But I must get the girl.”

Chunerbutty pretended to think.  Then he began to expose tentatively, as if it were an idea just come to him, a plan that he had conceived weeks before.

Maharaj Sahib, if I could make the girl my wife—­”

The Rajah half rose up and spluttered out furiously: 

“You dog, wouldst thou dare to rival me, to interfere between me and my desires?”

The engineer hastened to pacify the angry man.

“No, no, Your Highness.  You misunderstand me.  Surely you know that you can trust me.  What I mean is that, if I married her, she would have to obey me, and—­” he smiled insinuatingly and significantly—­“I am a loyal subject of Your Highness.”

The fat debauchee stared at him uncomprehendingly for a few moments.  Then understanding dawned, and his bloated face creased into a lascivious smile.

“I see.  I see.  Then marry her,” he said, sinking back on the cushions.

“Your Highness forgets that the salary they pay a tea-garden engineer is not enough to tempt a girl to marry him nor support them if she did.”

“That is true,” replied the Rajah thoughtfully.  He was silent for a little, and then he said: 

“I will give you an appointment here in the Palace with a salary of a lakh of rupees a year.”

Chunerbutty’s eyes glistened.  A lakh is a hundred thousand, and at par fifteen rupees went to an English sovereign.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” he said eagerly.

The Rajah held up a fat forefinger warningly.

“But not until you have married her,” he said.

Chunerbutty smiled confidently.  Much as he had seen of Noreen Daleham he yet knew her so little as to believe that the prospect of such an income, joined to the favour in which he believed she held him, would make it an easy matter to win her consent.

He imagined himself to be in love with the girl, but it was in the Oriental’s way—­that is, it was merely a matter of sensual desire.  Although as jealous as Eastern men are in sex questions, the prospect of the money quite reconciled him to the idea of sharing his wife with another.  His fancy flew ahead to the time, which he knew to be inevitable, when possession would have killed passion and the money would bring new, and so more welcome, women to his arms.  The Rajah would only too readily permit, nay encourage him to go to Europe—­alone.  And he gloated over the thought of being again in London, but this time with much money at his command.  What was any one woman compared with fifty, with a hundred, others ready to replace her?

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The Elephant God from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.