The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [75]
‘But you asked me what I thought!’ protested Ash in some indignation. ‘And that is what I think. After all, it was their country and they weren't doing you – I mean us – any harm. I don't think it was fair.’
‘Shades of Hilary!’ thought Sir Matthew with exasperation, and he explained tartly that, on the contrary, they had been doing a great deal of harm – what with murdering, oppressing and making war on each other, strangling harmless travellers in honour of some heathen goddess, burning widows alive, and generally obstructing trade and progress. Such horrors could not be allowed to continue unchecked, and it was both the duty and responsibility of Britain, as a Christian nation, to put a stop to these barbarities and bring peace and tranquillity to the suffering millions of India.
‘But why was it your responsibility?’ asked Ash, genuinely puzzled. ‘I don't see that it had anything to do with you – I mean with us. India isn't even anywhere near us. It's at the other side of the world.’
‘My dear boy, you have not been giving proper attention to your books,’ said Sir Matthew, striving for patience. ‘If you had read more carefully you would have learned that we had been granted trading posts there. And trade is not only vital to us, but to the prosperity of the entire world. We could not permit it to be disrupted by continual vicious and petty wars between rival princes. It was necessary to preserve order, and that we have done. We have, under God's providence, been able to bring peace and prosperity to that unhappy country, and bestow the blessings of progress on a people who have for centuries suffered atrocious persecution and oppression at the hands of greedy priests and quarrelling overlords. It is something we may be proud of, and it has not been without grave cost to ourselves in labour and lives. But one cannot hold back the march of progress. This is the nineteenth century, and the world is becoming too small to permit large portions of it to remain in a state of medieval depravity and barbarism.’
Ash had a sudden vision of the white pinnacles of the Dur Khaima and the wide sweep of the plateau across which he had ridden out hawking with Lalji and Koda Dad, and his heart sank: it was terrible to think that one day there might be no wild, beautiful places left where one could escape from the things that Uncle Matthew and his friends called ‘Progress’. He had formed an unfavourable opinion of Progress, and he did not continue the conversation, it being obvious to him that he and his uncle would never see eye to eye on such subjects.
Ash was aware (as Uncle Matthew was not) of a great many things in Pelham Abbas that were in need of reform: the waste and extravagance, and the feuds that raged in the servants' hall; the tyranny of the upper servants and the miserably inadequate wages that were considered sufficient payment for long hours of gruelling work; the unheated attics in which such despised underlings as kitchen and scullery maids, boot-boys and under-footmen slept; the long flights of uncomfortable stairs that the housemaids must toil up and down a dozen times a day carrying cans of boiling water, slop-pails or loaded trays, with the dread shadow of instant expulsion without recompense or reference hanging over them should they commit any fault.
The only difference that Ash could see between the status of the Pelham Abbas servants and those in the Hawa Mahal was that the latter led pleasanter and more idle lives. Yet he wondered what his uncle would think if Hira Lal or Koda Dad – who were both wise and incorruptible men – were suddenly to appear before the gates of Pelham Abbas accompanied by the guns, war elephants and armed soldiers of the Gulkote State Forces, and take over the management of the house and estates, setting them to rights according to ideas of their own? Would Uncle Matthew gratefully accept their domination and willingly obey their orders because they were running his house and his affairs better than he could run them himself? Ash doubted it. People everywhere preferred to