After his father's death Atma betook himself to Lahore, where dwelt
Lehna Singh, only brother of the departed Sikh. A man of a totally
different cast of mind, he had early adopted a commercial life, and now,
in the enjoyment of a vast fortune, yet undiminished by the
contingencies of war, lived in luxury and opulence, his dwelling
thronged by Sikhs whose possessions, unlike his own, had melted away in
the national catastrophe. The fact of his house being the rendezvous of
a discontented faction did not escape British vigilance, the more so as
Lehna Singh was one of the eight sirdars appointed to sit in council
with the British Resident. But the confidence of his countrymen in him
remained unshaken by the appearance among them of British envoys in
military state, bearing despatches to the friend of the national foe,
and the questionable attitude of Lehna became to the Resident daily more
and more the subject of suspicious surmisings.
Indeed, a whisper was afloat of secret messages from Feragpore,
whither, before the war, had been removed the Ranee Junda Kovr, deposed
Queen of the Punjaub, as a consequence of a detected plot against the
life of the Resident, which, together with her sullied reputation,--for
she had many lovers,--had induced the council to pronounce her an unfit
guardian for the little Maharajah, her son. This clever woman, a
constant source of vexation to the Resident, had long forfeited the
respect of friend and foe; but her intrepidity, cunning, and
unscrupulous thirst for power conspired to render her formidable to the
one, and to the other a partisan to be courted and retained. Her
messages of insolent defiance to the Durbar are historic, but of the
countless schemes and intrigues in which she continued to play the part
of chief conspirator we have only heard a portion. Suffice it to say
that the faithlessness of her policy alike towards adversary, or ally,
and the scandal of her retinue of lovers, had gained for her an
ill-repute, that combined with the watch set upon her movements by the
British to render men chary of dealings with the little court at
Feragpore, where she held mimic state.
But of all these tales of craft and crime Atma knew nothing. To him all
men were valiant and all women fair and good, and the wife and child of
Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjaub, were invested in his fond
imaginings with ideal excellence. "To the pure all things are pure," or,
as a later genius has voiced it, "He who has been once good is forever
great," and Atma lived in the corrupt atmosphere of his uncle's house,
and took no hurt; nay, his spiritual life by its own dynamic force grew
and thrived, for, governed by other laws than those that control our
physical natures, the food of the soul is what it desires it to be, and
moral poison has often served for nutriment. It is death to souls that
desire death. In another sense than Bonaparte's, every man born unto the
world may say, "I make circumstances."