No More Learning

The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting
pretends to be very poor.

This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants
in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the
chorus that comes in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo
was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made
capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in
Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.

And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The ekka did not run quickly.
It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's
Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that,
by reason of my condescension, it was absolutely certain that I should
become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair was yet black. Then we talked
about the weather and the state of my health, and the wheat crops, for
fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared
that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know
anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something
interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being
discouraged by the Government it was highly commended.

The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves. (If
the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is. ) Then, to
encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had
not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to
seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as distinguished from
the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo
admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he
told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was
a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of
the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and
that this news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he
had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could
be removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see
how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo
in the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything
was done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the way
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost two
hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his
son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.