# Benefit of Doubt/Chapter 8
### CHAPTER VIII.
#### “The benefit of the doubt?”

Ommony made shift for twenty-four hours without servants—rather fecklessly, being used like most Anglo-Indians to being waited on hand and foot. A man can almost forget how to pull his own boots off after twenty years, just as an admiral of the fleet can forget how to tie a bowline. The cooking was the worst part. He opened cans, ate out of them, and let it go at that, incidentally making discoveries about a Hindu cook's kitchen-keeping methods that are not good for the white man's temper.
Like most men who deliberately sleep at noon, Ommony burned midnight oil, reading omnivorously. So he was not in bed when the jungli returned at three in the morning. A twig struck the wooden shutter, making a noise not much louder than that of a big insect alighting, only different. A man's ears draw distinctions instantly after twenty years of life like Ommony's. He stuck a marker in the book and walked to the door without any more doubt or hesitation than a city apartment dweller who expects a friend.
Afraid, unseen, indiscernible, the jungli gave his version of what had happened, sending forth his guttural monologue from behind a bougainvillea. It being his experience that man gets punished for all kinds of occurrences that are beyond his own control, he kept out of Ommony's aim and reach, albeit trusting Ommony more than any other man. Ommony found a small bag of rice for him, which was a prodigious treat, tossed it in the general direction of the bougainvillea, and returned indoors to meditate. The sound of the falling rice-bag convinced the jungli. He decamped, and the rice lay there until morning, where the squirrels found it.
The jungli had been sure of two things: that King was dead, and that Mahommed Babar had ordered the slaying from the summit of a high rock. The rock was described so accurately that Ommony identified it.
“Benefit of the doubt?” he muttered, putting his feet on a chair and beginning to read again.
But he could not read—not even Schopenhauer, whom he idolized. His thoughts reverted ever to that rock—the pinnacle wolf-rock. The first time he had ever seen it was by moonlight. A wolf had sat alone on the very apex of it, howling dismally, and he had shot the wolf because those were the days when he still thought he owned the forest, and was consequently lonely and irritable. Later, when he came to know that the forest owned him and made use of him, just as it made use of light, dew, warmth and all the creatures, he always remembered that rock as the wolf-rock, and regretted the lone wolf, whose cured pelt was on the floor beside his bed.
Strange that King should have met his death in that place. He wondered whether there was any possible connection. The more a man reads Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Goethe and the prophets, the more convinced he is of subtle interwoven causes and effects, impalpable but governed by law—leisurely, unhurried, inescapable. Live twenty years in the jungle, and either you open your mind to the unity of all things and all actions, or else go mad. Ommony sat until dawn and remembered. He had slain that wolf wilfully, unjudged—he whose business in life it was to judge the jungle, always considering the greatest good of the greatest number. Had that slow, certain law impelled him wilfully to let King go to his death?
For he could have prevented. He could have dissuaded, diverted, forbidden. Had the same unreasoning impulse that blinded him to. the lone wolf's right to sit on a rock and howl if so minded blinded him, too, to the obvious treason of Mahommed Babar? If so, why had he sent King to his death instead of destroying himself? He laughed. It was early yet to beg that question; the law was leisurely! He was no such fool as to think that killing the wolf brought consequences. It was willingness to kill the wolf without good cause that would cause him to stumble forever until he should wake up and understand. Strange, though. He thought he had learned that lesson long ago. But if he had learned it, why should the circumstances force themselves so insistently on his mind now?
So a man thinks, who has lived in the jungle for twenty years and loved the jungle most of the time. Ommony sat and puzzled over the impartial law that governs all creatures without hurry or emotion, until he heard the horses in the stable neigh for breakfast and his dogs came and thrust damp, curious noses into his hand. Even then he had not puzzled it out. The horses needed gram, hay and water. More, they expected and would presently receive. The dogs wanted corn-meal and gravy in three plates set in a row on the veranda; and they, too, would get what they asked for, eyen if he had to cook the stuff. He himself wanted eggs, bread-and-butter and tea, and nobody would bring them.
Responsibility. That was the word that suggested itself as the answer to the problem. Sense of responsibility was better, perhaps. But to whom, and for what? All he could answer positively was that he would feed the animals before he fed himself, and that he was sorry he had let King go the day before.
He did not waste time being sorry for King. No man who understands life in its simplest aspect wastes a second being sorry for the fellow who dies in harness “proceeding as per plan.” That is the way to die. Whatever lies beyond that is inevitably based on good faith, hope and manliness. But he was sorry to lose King, which is quite different, and he was extremely critical of himself for having let King go on such a hare-brained mission.
He broke about a dozen eggs but managed at last to poach two, and ate the mess out of the frying pan. Then he went to the veranda for his morning smoke, and wondered all over again from the beginning why Mahommed Babar, or a lone wolf on a rock in the moonlight, should have been allowed to make such a mess of things, and what the connection might be. In a universe composed of units, every one of which was equally important—granted—nevertheless, why should Mahommed Babar—of the North, an interloper after all—be allowed to betray the hands that had fed and protected him and to order the death of a man—a real man such as Athelstan King?
Benefit of the doubt? Of what doubt? Which benefit? Cui bono? Murder was murder since Cain killed Abel, and why should the best man be the victim nine times out of ten?
So Ommony was entertained for the whole of a lonely day, while he and his dogs alternately or together policed the grounds and he fed the horses and chickens at intervals. Not a soul came near him. He did not dare go to the station to discover, if possible, whether trains were moving and there was none to send. He almost forgot that he had ordered the Moplah chiefs to send his servants back; and he quite forgot his threat to Major Pierson to have himself kidnaped rather than desert his forest post.
Not that his threat made the slightest difference. Major Pierson lay face-upward beside a wrecked and burned train, while the crows picked the holes where his eyes had been. The Moplahs were on the job, and meant business, if no one else did.
Toward evening the servants came back, looking foolish and afraid. Two had been beaten. One looked near death from exhaustion, and collapsed while the dogs went and sniffed him to make sure he was really some one who belonged. They all lined up before the veranda, headed by the butler, who gathered dust in both fists and heaped it on his head in token of abject repentance.
“O you children of disillusionment!” said Ommony, smoking his cigar with that day's first touch of contentment. “Shall I dismiss you all or take you back again?”
“Father of forgiveness! We have nothing and nowhere to go. The Moplahs took and drove us forth again. We will submit to fines and beatings without number. We are dirt. We abase ourselves. We have wept because the sahib's meals were not cooked and his bed not made. We are good Hindus. Pious people. We will not become Moslems! And we will serve the sahib faithfully forever—presenting ourselves for a beating forthwith!”
They all bowed repeatedly like a row of tall plants waving in the wind.
“Doubtless you have consulted on the way,” said Ommony, stroking his beard between puffs of the cigar. “That is a clever proposal you decided to make. Whose idea was it? Yours? Exceedingly clever, since not one of you has ever known me to beat a servant or impose a fine! Did you ever see me beat even a dog?”
“Sahib, you have been our father and our mother. We are very much ashamed. All nine of us eat sorrow.”
“Then why did you run away?”
“The Moplahs threatened us. We are Hindus and they vowed all Hindus will be slain or forcibly converted. They sent word again and again. They said unless we went to them, to a village a day's march distant, and became converts of the Moslem priest, they would come here and murder us all, the sahib included. So we ran to the village, hoping to save the sahib's life.”
“And you all became Moslems?”
“Nay, sahib. Therein out honor was at stake and we refused. Two of us were. beaten. We were all robbed of our possessions. One of us was made ill with too much fear. But we refused to be converts, and at last the Moplahs took pity or else admired, we knew not which, and drove us forth again.”
“A very pretty story!” answered Ommony. “So here you are—all honorable Hindus, eh?”
He chuckled. There is a certain way of knowing whether or not an individual has been admitted to the fold of Islam.
“Your clothes smell,” he said to the butler. “They have contagion on them, but that is not your fault. The clothes must be burned. There are no women here. Strip, then and enter the house. Take new cotton sheeting from my store-chest and clothe yourself decently.”
The butler hesitated. But what was the use? You could never deceive Ommony for more than five minutes. He stripped shame-facediy, and Ommony laughed outright.
“Nine new-made Moslems, eh? Well—you need comfort, not more punishment! Strip, all of you. Go and wash. Go to work. The butler shall give you each new cotton sheeting. Put that sick man to bed and I'll physic him presently.”
The sick man was carried off moaning “Not episin sawts—oh, no, not episin!” and the butler came out on the veranda carrying a bolt of white sheeting, to make sure.
“There is none to overhear,” said Ommony. “Tell me the truth now. Who ordered you to run away from me?”
The butler hesitated, showing the jaundiced whites of his eyes.
“Sahib, I am afraid. Is Mahommed Babar here?”
“No. He's gone.”
“Run away?”
Ommony nodded.
“Sahib, it was Mahommed Babar who ordered us. He said we should go to that village and be made Moslems, after which he would see that we were not slain. It was truly Mahommed Babar, sahib. He ordered us.”